This episode is sponsored by Transcend, a veteran
-owned and operated performance optimization
company that I introduced recently as a sponsor
on this show. Well, since then I have actually
been using my products and I have had incredible
success. There was initial blood work that was
extremely detailed and based on that they offered
supplementation. So I began taking DHEA. bpc
157 for inflammation based on the fact that i've
been a stuntman a martial artist and a firefighter
my whole life lots of aches and pains dihexa
to help cognition after multiple punches to the
head and shift work and peptides four months
later they did a detailed blood work again and
i was actually able to taper off two of the peptides
because my body had responded so well to just
one of them that it was optimized at that point
So I cannot speak highly enough of the immense
range of supplementation that they offer, whether
it's male health, female health, peptides to
boost your own testosterone, which I would argue
is needed by a lot of the fire service, or whether
it's exogenous testosterone needed, especially
after TBIs or advanced age. Now, as I mentioned
before, the other side of this company is an
altruistic arm called the Transcend Foundation,
which is putting veterans and first responders
through some of their protocols free of charge.
Now, Transcend are also offering you, the audience,
10 % off their protocols. And you can find that
on jamesgeering .com under the Products tab.
And if you want to hear more about Transcend
and their story, listen to episode 808 with the
founder, Ernie Colling. or go to transcendcompany
.com. Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast.
As always, my name is James Geering, and this
week it is my absolute honor to welcome on the
show Australian firefighter Matt McLaughlin.
Now, what makes this conversation so powerful
is, as you will hear, Matt, like many of us,
had his own mental health struggles and tried
the therapies that were presented to him, the
counseling, the EMDR, some of the other areas.
But it was only when he came across MDMA -led
psychotherapy that he truly began to see true,
true results. So we discuss a host of topics
from his journey into the fire service. His time
in the military, serving in East Timor, responding
to wildfires and cyclones, losing his father,
his powerful experience with MDMA -led psychotherapy,
how that helped reframe the loss in the fire
service, and so much more. Now, before we get
to this incredibly powerful and important 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 1 ,100 episodes now. So all I ask in
return is that you help share these incredible
men and women's stories so I can get them to
every single person on planet Earth who needs
to hear them. So one last note, three quarters
of the way through the interview, my internet
died in my street. So it was a few days before
we were able to reschedule and finish off the
conversation. So there may be a slight overlap
in a couple of things that we talked about. So
with that being said, I introduce to you Matt
McLaughlin. Enjoy. Well, Matt, I want to start
by saying thank you so much for coming on the
Behind the Shield podcast. It is 8am here. It
is 8pm in Perth, Australia. So thank you for
staying up a little bit longer to have this conversation
today. Thanks, Matt. It's a pleasure to be here.
I've been listening to your podcast for a long
time. So it's pretty humbling to be on the other
side, I guess. Well, what you're about to tell
us, though, is amazing. And I think especially
coming from that side of the world, I haven't
had a huge amount of guests. I think I've had
one from New Zealand. I think that's it. And
then a few people from Australia. But this is
a global message that we're going to be talking
about. And what you're able to do in Australia
is very unique compared to a lot of parts of
the world. So I'm excited for this. Very first
question. I kind of mentioned Perth in general.
Where exactly are we finding you this evening?
Yeah, I'm in Perth. Just, I guess, out of metro
suburbs, seven or eight k's from the city. Perfect
spring day here today. We had a long winter,
late long winter. So, yeah, we sort of had nudging
30s all week and blue skies and sunshine. So
it's been perfect. I'm going totally off the
track for a second. But when you're talking a
few kilometres away from the city. What is it
like as far as a ratio of salary compared to
the affordability of homes for a lot of Australian
firefighters? It's ridiculous, if I'm honest.
I think the median house price, I'm in Bayswater,
which is a... They've built a bit of a transport
hub sort of close to or in Bayswater. So we're
connected well to the city, to the airport, and
then out to a couple of other places. But that
has contributed to it a bit. But Perth in general,
I think Australia in general, the house prices
are just ridiculous. As far as our salaries go,
we're in the middle of EBA negotiations at the
moment, and that's sort of part of it is we've
had. probably 10 years of $1 ,000 a year increases
in our salary, which when you look at, especially
through COVID, the probably CPI has gone up 5%,
6 % every year. Yeah, we haven't kept up with
it at all. So it's a bit of a worry, especially
having kids that are, I've got a 17 and a nearly
19 -year -old that I really can't see how they
would ever really be able to afford a house.
So what about public support? You know, we, especially
after 9 -11 here, you know, the support for the
American firefighter went through the roof. A
lot of people meant that from their heart. There's
also a large portion that it was lip service
when it came to negotiations or paying for FDNY,
you know, cancers after 9 -11. That support wasn't
as obvious. What are you seeing as far as Australia,
the general population being behind you guys
when you're negotiating or asking for help? It's
been good. They've taken a bit of a different,
we've had a bit of a change in leadership in
our union. So the tack they've taken is very
much more trying to get some public support,
just marking up trucks with chalk and a lot more
on the social media. And that's generated a lot
more support from the public as far as every
job that we go to now, there's always someone
who's... seen the trucks or seen the social media
and they're really quick to say we didn't realise
that you guys were so poorly paid and it's not
really reflected by the politicians here, the
state government. I think I'm pretty sure it
was our minister for emergency services who basically
sort of said, oh, you know, it just means that
you need to go out and work on your days off
or get a second job, which is... Pretty disheartening
to hear, really. How many hours do you guys work
a week? We do the 10, 14, so two 10 -hour days,
two 14 -hour nights and four off. Our airport
flyers have just gone over to 24 on, 24 off,
24 on, five days off, which they're loving. But
this is not really a practical thing for us.
Just with bushfire through summer, we have –
and our summers are getting – longer and hotter.
I think our last – pretty much the bushfire season
is now almost six months of the year, so we can
respond sort of a few – up to a few hours out
really and potentially be on firegrounds for
up to sort of 18 -plus hours. So it's just not
really a practical thing for us to do 24 -hour
shifts. They looked at it, but it's not – it
would be nice lifestyle -wise, but I just don't
think it's really a practical thing to be doing.
Is there any way of having 24 -hour shifts during
the non -fire season than when you're actually
deployed to bushfires, then it's broken down?
They probably could. The other problem is that
we're pretty understaffed at the moment. The
last couple of years, they have pushed a heap
more through training schools, but really since
COVID, there hasn't been. enough staff to cover
what we need to cover. So, yeah, I mean, they
potentially could. They did look at one stage,
I think, at adding an afternoon shift, so they
would just sort of, you know, work from two.
Because most of our bushfires, they start after
lunch and they cross over the shift changeover.
So, yeah, it may be something that could work,
but I don't mind the 10 -14s. It's more if you
get... you get hammered for the two nights or,
you know, there is that requirement to do the
overtime, it can wear you down a bit. What about
the frequency of wildland fires? A lot of the
guys have had on, you know, smokejumpers and
hotshots that have been here. Yeah, you'd think
of your average wildland firefighter might lean
politically towards the right a little bit more,
but that's not the case when it comes to this
conversation. And not that any real issue has
a left or a right, but when it comes to poo -pooing,
global warming, and the environmental element,
the wildland community seem to be pretty vocal
about the fact that, yes, no, it is getting drier
and hotter every single year. What's the kind
of conversation in Australia? It's a really hard
one. It seems every year they're saying it's
going to be the worst fire season that we've
had and then it goes up and down. I think it
just seems that the summer's pushing easily into
March, April and we're still getting decent bushfires
then. In my 20 years, there's always been fires
sort of starting October, November, but the last
few years it just seems that we get busy. sooner
in the year and it just stretches on through.
I think our USAR task force does a fair bit more
of the, through summer's damage assessment is
the big one for us and our USAR is all off shift.
So, you know, it's called in on overtime on days
off to respond to the fires. So, yeah, by the
end of April, May, you're sort of ready for a
bit of a break. You mentioned about struggling
with recruitment. Has that always been the case,
or like here, are you seeing a declining recruitment
in the last 10 or 15 years? Definitely. The problem
we've got here probably more so is the resource
boom. That's probably pretty soon after I started,
so sort of late 2000s to 2010s. there's heaps
more money to go and work up north in mining.
So it dropped off. I think when I applied, it
was the first year I applied, $3 ,500 applying
for 36 jobs. And then when I applied, I think
it was about $3 ,000. Same thing for, I think
I applied for 45 that year. I've been involved
in recruitment in some capacity for... I think
at one stage it dropped off to about 500 or so
applying for the same sort of thing. You know,
they increased the size of the schools to 24,
so say 48 -ish jobs for the year down to about
500 applying for it. But it seems to have bounced
back. The people in charge of recruitment now,
I think, are doing a better job at what they
do and getting more people interested in it and
a bit of, I think, a better process as well.
So, yeah, I think recruitment this year, say
1200 people but they they did put they've been
putting about 90 through per year just try and
get the numbers back up and uh we're just sort
of starting to see that but the problem we've
got is the um trying to get a profile on a on
a truck is is difficult just because we've got
so many junior fires around it's interesting
as you hear over here i don't know if it's the
same there one of the problems of recruitment
is kids today just don't want to work And if
you actually look at it, you know, the Wall Street
Journal did a piece a while ago now that I shared.
A lot of the young people are going into the
trades because if you now have access to the
Internet, you can see Australian, British, American
firefighter. You know, these are the pros. These
are the cons. And if you're coming over here,
the cons is a pretty significant list these days
when you see all the even what we're going to
talk about, you know, the illnesses and the mental
health challenges that are attributed to what
we do. They are also able to look at college
and go, well, tens of thousands of dollars for
a piece of paper doesn't guarantee me a job.
I don't think I'm going to do that either. So
they are going into the trades. And it's an interesting
thing that you just presented. There's a lot
of young Australians, obviously, that want to
work. But if the mining industry is showing that
they've got better pay and or working conditions.
then it's drawing them there. So it's not that
the young people don't want to work. It's how
does the fire service stay competitive? And of
course, there's an element of service, no question.
But as you alluded to before, if you're not able
to pay for somewhere to live, that's going to
be a challenge for someone entering the fire
service. So this is a conversation that we need
to be having. Yeah, I mean, you could go up north
and work as a cleaner and get paid 150 or 180
grand a year. to go and clean dongers or drive
trucks. And I think for us, when you finish at
a fire school, I think they're on around $80
,000 for the year. So it's a bit of a problem
when you've got people that come from those jobs
into, you know, you might have someone who's
been an electrician for 10 years or 15 years
and they come into this job and they have to
take a massive pay cut. Yeah, no, I really push
back against the whole this generation doesn't
want to work. It may take a bit personally just
having a 19 -year -old and a 17 -year -old who
both started working as soon as they turned,
the day they turned 14 pretty much, started working
at Macca's or a supermarket and they've both
got a really great work ethic. And I see it from
their friends as well. Yeah, same from junior
fighters coming into the job. I just don't really
see it. And I think the people that say that
are the – it goes for a few things with even
female firefighter recruitment. But they – I
won't mince words. It's sort of the fat old blokes
that are quite happy to sit around and sit in
the TV room the whole day and not do anything,
you know, whinging about the state of the world.
And so you're not really doing anything to change
it. But you're also – Not really an example of
hard work. Yeah, 100%. I couldn't agree more.
It's so funny because I talk to people all over
the world and it's the same issues. All these
different conversations that we're having, at
its core, it's the same thing. So the more voices
that we have from all over the planet, the more
you start debunking some of the things that are
myths and getting behind some of the movements
that do need to change that are a reality. Yeah.
It's interesting. I sat on the interview panel
for the recruitment last year and, again, like
I said, I've got a good relationship with our
recruitment team and have been involved in it
and I'd like to sort of stay involved with it.
But sitting on the interview panel, it's really
hard. I did it last year and I was the only uniformed
person on the panel. So trying to convey the
HR. What I think, and again, it's my opinion,
but what I think would make a good firefighter
sometimes very different to what HR are looking
for. And I don't mean quotas or diversity or
anything like that, but we don't need salespeople.
You get people that can sell themselves really
well. We get a snapshot. It's a half an hour,
40 -minute interview. That's all you see of the
person. And if you get someone who's really good
at bullshitting, they can... And a HR person
goes, well, this person's amazing. And you go,
yeah, but they sort of said this and this. And
they're the ones that you see that come out to
the station and everyone goes, how the fuck did
this person get through recruitment? Surely someone
saw it. And he goes, well, that's probably what
I like to be able to then say is that you can't
see it. You can't always tell. The people that
you rank in the top five out of the 200 that
you end up interviewing. they can be duds because
they can sell it really well. You don't have
time to fact check. They could say that they
were a personal firefighter for the Queen of
England and you have to take it at face value.
You can't sort of push back too hard then. I
mean, you can do your checks afterwards, but
really you have to take it at face value. So
if you get someone, if the weight of the recruitment
is on that interview, then it can be a real problem.
Yeah, no, it's absolutely, I've never even thought
about that before as far as, yeah, some people
just have silver tongues. It is what it is, you
know, and yeah, I think this is what usually
you can see the true desire from someone, you
know, when you're answering, you know, why do
you want to be a firefighter? You know, and it's
funny because people say, oh, don't say I want
to help people, but it is why you want to be
a firefighter, but elaborate, explain to me,
give me stories. But yeah, I mean, we all know
there are those people that just, yeah, they
could sell ice to Eskimos and that's not exclusive
to. you know, outside professions. It also applies
to police and fire and EMS. And then, as you
said, now they're on a rig and you're like, how
the fuck did they get here in the first place?
Well, they talked their way in, as you said.
Yeah. Also, they went away. I sat on an interview
panel in 2011 and the questions they asked were
kind of, you know, what do you know about the
role of the firefighter and a day in the life
of a firefighter, basically, and then, you know,
and why do you want to... Why do you want to
do the job? They sort of went away from that.
And, again, I think they really sort of went
towards questions that allowed the salesman to
get in. But they have gone back to it. I really
like the questions that they've had the last
couple of years. I really liked them. They've
gone back to having a few more information nights.
So amazing how many people, again, when I did
it last year, didn't really know anything about
the job. You sort of ask. you know, why do you
want to do the job? And it was, you know, a personal
trainer and one of my clients said I'd be good
at it. Or, oh, yeah, I know I can work out when
I'm on station. So, you know, it would suit my
lifestyle to be able to do that. You know, there's
a little bit more to it than that. They don't
realise that the, you know, you're signing up
for a job where we've got our presumptive legislation
is pretty good, but the presumptive legislation
says you're joining a job where. there's a fair
chance that you'll get cancer, that you'll get
PTSD, that you'll have hearing loss, that it's
a carcinogenic occupation going by the World
Health Organisation. The fact that we're at work
and we clean our own toilets and do our own gardening
and there's not a cleaner that comes in every
day and we just sort of move our feet while we're
watching TV and they come in and do it. It's
doing that and we're living with each other sometimes
24 -7. We're living like we're living in a share
house and if you can't get along with people,
then you're going to be a problem for everyone
else. Yeah, there's a mentorship program here
that one of my friends started, and I think it's
phenomenal because it starts to give them all
that. They do the training and the gear, and
I believe they do ride -alongs and all those
kind of things because that's exactly it. I came
in kind of blind myself, but when I got hired
in, when was it, two departments ago, one of
my classmates was actually assigned at a station
I wanted to work at, funny enough. I got a call
one day saying, hey, Gearing, you can come over
to 70 now. And what had happened is that he had
left because he didn't realize that you had to
clean toilets. Exactly what you said. So, you
know, I mean, great. I got the spot and he obviously,
you know, got to find out early that it wasn't
a career for him. So I don't think that's a bad
thing. But, you know, if you're not understanding
what we really do, and this is what I've said
to, you know, to about the American Fire Services,
we've done a terrible job of telling people what
we do. People still think that we sit around
the station playing cards and petting the Dalmatian
and every 12 months taking our shirts off to
make a calendar and that's it. And that's absolute
bullshit. A lot of our men and women are running
24 hours straight, fire, EMS, and everything
else that people have their worst day. And therefore,
when it comes to trying to get public support,
trying to get funding, if you've got that vision
that all you do, like you said, you have a gardener,
you have a cleaner. They're like, well, why do
these people need more money, more time off?
They're not doing much anyway. So we've done
a disservice thing as a profession of really
storytelling what a shift looks like for a true
firefighter. Yeah, we've started doing, they
did it a few years ago where they call it a realistic
job preview. And it was part of the recruitment
process. It wasn't compulsory, but it kind of
gave them a little bit of a tick in the box.
One person speaking about kind of a day in the
life, one person speaking about all the great
things in the job and then one person speaking
about the negative side of it. And I had a few
people, I did a bunch of them one year and had
a few people after each time come up and just
sort of say, you know, I don't think this is
for me. I didn't realise that you actually go
to a traffic accident. So they sort of... Just
think it's all about firefighting and, yeah,
like you said, calendars and working out. And
when you realise that it's – there's a lot more
to it than – yeah, I think it's a good way of
probably preparing people for the process going
through. The one we had was a guy – and from
all reports, great guy, would have been a great
fiery, but – due to religious reasons didn't
work saturdays um so he got through a school
and then when he got posted it was um he just
said yeah no i can't work saturdays and um i
thought i'd better just sort of just take saturdays
off or something like that so um yeah i think
the more information we can get out to people
before they put their hand up for it the better
yeah i agree completely All right. Well, we kind
of jumped the gun a little bit, but that was
an interesting rabbit hole to jump down. So thank
you. So let's start at the very beginning of
your timeline then. So tell me where you were
born and tell me a little bit about your family
dynamic, what your parents did, how many siblings.
It's weird hearing that when you're asking me
it. I was born here in Perth, probably three
or four kilometers from where I'm living now.
I had a twin brother, so I've still got a twin
brother, and a brother three years younger. We
just had a very normal childhood. My parents,
my dad, they both worked for the government early
on. They met working for a government department.
Mum was a stay -at -home mum once she had us
until probably we were a... definitely in high
school, probably when my younger brother started
high school, she started working as a teacher's
assistant and worked at the school that we had
gone to until she retired a few years ago to
look after my grandparents when they started
sort of getting into old age and needed some
help. My dad was studying to be a priest. He
was a bit older than mum. He studied, I think,
Probably four or five years here in Perth and
then over to Rome for a few years to become a
Catholic priest. I had an older brother who was
a priest, a sister who was a nun and another
brother who was a teaching brother. So Irish
Catholic family that they all kind of gravitated
towards the church. I was going to say saw the
light. I don't know if it was the light. It was
definitely something he went all the way through.
He did all his studies. But before he got ordained,
he jumped ship and came back to Perth and started
working. And that's where I met my mom. With
your upbringing and the philosophy that was in
the house, this is interesting because I've had
this conversation recently. Here in the States,
I mean, I'm sure it happens all over the world.
We have a lot of people that I would argue have
hijacked Christianity and said that it aligns
with these values, whether it's gun control or
insert whatever here. And it's actually disconnected
from at least the Christianity that I was raised
on, which was Jesus was compassionate and empathetic
and believed in community and love and kindness.
Even though your dad didn't commit fully to the
cloth itself. What was his kind of philosophy
on Christianity and the values that were taught
to you as young men and women? They're pretty
moderate with the whole thing. The church was
a big part of his life the whole way through.
They were both involved with the local church.
I went till I was 17 and then when I finished
school, decided it wasn't really for me. I was
never really into it. For me, a big part of it
was the community side of it. My parents were
really social, so we had a big group of friends.
I mean, they had their own friends that my mum's
still friends with to this day. But once we started
school, probably five or six families that we
probably most weeks would go. after school to
someone's house and the mums would catch up and
the kids would all hang out and we'd go away
a couple of times a year for holidays. So it
was really communal. And I think that the church
played a little role in that, but it was more,
I mean, Sundays we'd all go to church and then
all go to the beach for a surf. So it was, I
think that the community side of it, they didn't
go over the top with the moral side of it, definitely.
I had the conversation with my partner today
just because our daughters, we've got an interview
with a high school tomorrow. She starts high
school in a year after next. So we're going through
the interviews and she's at a public school now,
but we are looking at Catholic schools for high
school and just sort of talk about what... If
they ask what our view is on the Catholic Church
and religion, I think we live culturally Catholic.
We're not Catholic. We're both kind of non -believers
in that. But I think it's a Jordan Peterson quote.
You don't have to believe in God but you can
live like you do and I think that's the way I
like to do it. You don't have to believe there's
someone watching over your shoulder the whole
time but you can still live like you do and have
that sort of moral code, I think, where you're
just a good person and, like you said, compassionate
and caring and that's definitely how my parents
were growing up. It's interesting hearing all
these different perspectives, all these different
faiths. I've said this on here a few times. I
do believe in a God, something bigger than us
and something that we're all connected to. And
I see God in nature. That's kind of my church.
But wherever on the planet you found your lineage
growing up in, there's some sort of book, religion,
ancient wisdom that seems to be telling the same
thing. Like, don't be a dick, basically. And,
you know, if you look at evolution, even if you
want to lean into the science side now, I would
argue the evolution of man is kindness, compassion
and empathy, because we were very brutal a long
time ago. And I feel like we've got better and
better and better, even though at the moment
we're turning our heads to some atrocities that
we need to be standing up against. But I think
overall, these the Bible and the Koran and the
Torah and, you know, Ida Ching and all these
other. you know, manuals of wisdom that have
been passed on have been saying the same kind
of things. Don't kill each other, you know, come
together, you know, be kind. And I think even
in the body, there's an intrinsic reward system
that when you're a good person, it feels good
as well. That's a, that's a biological thing.
And when you're an asshole, you know, when you
look in the mirror that you're an asshole, you
do deep down. So whatever, you know, uh, doctrine
people lean into, you know, I think there is
a unified kind of feeling of wherever you are
on the planet, just as you said, we all know
really deep down what a good person is, and you
just try and be that. Yeah, and I think, not
to jump forward into psychedelic stuff too early,
but from having some experiences both with mushrooms
and then with the MDMA, my thinking is that If
you do the right thing, you do the wrong thing,
your body remembers it. It's in there stored
somewhere. And when you're on your way out, let's
say your life flashes before your eyes, I think
what flashes before your eyes is, you know, all
the good things, all the bad things. And if it's
overwhelmingly bad, then that's kind of like
a hell for you. You get to, you know, watch your
greatest hits kind of thing. And same thing if...
if you've had a good life and you've done right
by people the whole way through, as you're, you
know, making that transition into death, then
that's what you see. And I think that's, you
know, if that's happening for you, it makes you
feel good, you know, in that moment as well.
And I think that's kind of what I see heaven
and hell as. But I think I went right off just
being more probably scientific and pragmatic.
I went right away from... religion for a long
time probably to the point where we're almost
being anti -theist where you know just didn't
really see the point in any of it and um it just
from from reading a bit more listen to podcasts
i listened to it uh it was uh again I used to
love Jordan Peterson. I think he's kind of lost
the plot a little bit, but he did a psychological
interpretation of the Old Testament that was
amazing. It was just he's sort of basically sort
of saying, you know, this is what they've said
and this is kind of what it could mean from a
psychological point of view. And then after listening
to that, my two older kids were at a Catholic
primary school. I used to actually quite like
going when they had to go to a mass, go to mass
and listen to the readings and listen to the
sermon and take. the meaning out of it or take
what's underneath it and and for me it was i
actually really liked it because i go like they're
talking in metaphor a lot of the time so if you
you take you know what they actually mean out
of that um they're actually telling some really
good stories and you can sort of see you know
how beneficial that is in in people's lives i
also think and again i'm generalizing extremely
broadly but i almost feel like the old testament
is like hey here's how we used to do it And then
you have, you know, the New Testament is like,
well, here's how we change now, you know, forgiveness,
compassion, et cetera, et cetera, rather than
an eye for an eye and cutting babies in half.
And so I think this is an interesting thing,
too. I really feel like those two books have
been separated because it's like a growth again.
It's, you know, a progression of human psyche
away from that kind of. primeval man and the
brutality that we were to trying to move us towards
that forging of community so as you said i think
there are a lot of metaphors in there and i don't
think the old testament is like how to live your
life it's like hey this is how it used to be
done let's try and not do that anymore because
it didn't work yeah there's also there's just
a fair bit in there where you strip it back and
um yeah And I for an I doesn't literally have
to mean, you know, someone does wrong by you,
you do wrong by them. It's what you take out
of it. And you can always have a probably more
generous, put a positive slant on it to make
it less of a control thing and more of, you know,
this is a good way to live your life and sort
of use that as a compass. Absolutely. All right,
well, let's go back to your high school. What
were you playing and doing as far as sports and
exercise? I think I tried every sport available
and I sucked at everything. I probably wasn't
very coordinated and I was so small and probably
more learned towards the academic side of it.
But I went to a little Catholic primary school.
Soccer was the... was the main game so i played
soccer all the way through primary school i think
we started playing it was probably sort of first
grade all the way through um but yeah i enjoyed
it but i was never very good at it and played
i played basketball i sort of played that all
the way through primary school to high school
and then um but i started working at a supermarket
in year year 11. You could only really work on
Saturdays and Saturdays was the day the basketball
was on, so I stopped playing then. School -wise,
I tried hockey, I tried footy, I tried zeroes
footy, that is. I played something every term,
but I wasn't really very good at any of it. When
you say hockey, are you talking about field hockey?
Field hockey, yeah. Yeah, it's funny because
I played that. I played it in high school and
then in college. I played for the college too.
And in England, if you talk about hockey, it's
like it's a girl's sport. But when you play men's
hockey, you're running around. There's no pads
whatsoever. You're holding a big stick. I think
it's an underappreciated sport as far as how
rough it is, actually. Yeah, I enjoyed it. I
mean, I've always enjoyed team sports. I could
never make it into the footy team. I think I
got to be the goal umpire a few times and that
was probably the limit. Even when I went to the
army, I was the goal umpire. I was a late bloomer.
When I went to the army straight from school,
I was under 55 kilos, ringing wet. I probably
went through puberty at 17, so it took a little
while. They started a rugby team when I was in
year 12, so I played rugby union, which was good,
but again, I just got smashed. I've always enjoyed
sport, but I didn't really start playing. I started
playing Aussie rules footy when I was about 22,
I think. I played that until I got a bit too
busy with kids. Then went back and played Masters
for a few years. So, yeah, I enjoyed playing
as a rules footy, but you sort of get to that
age where your brain likes playing it, but your
body doesn't really like playing it that much.
Yeah, well, maybe the other way around, actually,
with contact sports, your brain just doesn't
realise. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, well, then...
You mentioned the army. So as you were progressing
through the school ages, what are you dreaming
of becoming? Is it the military or is there something
else prior to that? No, it wasn't really the
military at all. My dad had a psych degree and
I was science minded, did all the science subjects
in year 12 and was aiming towards going to uni
and doing psychology. But I wasn't 100 % really
sure what I wanted to do. I had a bit of a leaning
towards police. But here you can't start with
police until you're 19. So everyone I spoke to
sort of recommended going to uni first and then
progress over to police after that. But I can
remember one morning sort of coming out, Dad
was reading the paper and he showed me an ad
for... a new program that they had with the Army
where you could do a year full -time and four
years part -time and they paid for you to go
to uni during that time. And I still remember
the ad, it said you can earn $19 ,000 a year.
And I was like, oh, shit, yeah, sign me up. I
could do with 19 grand. So, yeah, it was sort
of the best of both worlds because it wasn't
a huge. Huge commitment. I didn't turn 17 until
November, so it was just a good way to get out
and see the world a little bit or definitely
see Australia. So, yeah, I turned 17 in November,
a few weeks overseas, Singapore and Thailand,
just having a bit of a look around and then shipped
off to basic training. over in new south wales
and what did you start studying as far as university
when you went through that program uh i did a
bachelor of science so um yeah i did my my year
full time and then um yeah australian's union
i hated it i spent more time at the beach than
i did at uni um probably dad's advice that peas
get degrees It wasn't the best advice because
I think I averaged about 52 in my first year.
I just hated it. I think going from sort of the
structured, I guess, the army life to a uni life,
I didn't really transition too well. Couldn't
really see the point of a lot of things. used
to start broad with science and then go into
psychology i really hated first year psychology
and i quite liked uh we had it was called human
movement which ended up becoming um uh kinesiology
or sports science keeps changing its name but
human movement there was sports involved with
all of it and a lot of um because it sort of
leads on to phys ed teaching there was lots of
chicks as well so it was sort of more more following
that that path than anything else it was uh it
was a good fun course um but when i got into
second year it gets a little bit more into the
physiology side of it i really enjoyed that um
and the anatomy as well we did did gross anatomy
every year so um yeah i end up quite enjoying
the human movement side of it and that's that
was what my my major was in human human movement
human biology um but yeah you kind of end up
at the end of a three -year science degree with
enough to go and work in a gym and be a glorified
personal trainer yeah it's funny how our lives
are parallel i was a late bloomer i didn't have
my growth spurts when i was 18 so i totally understand
what it's like being surrounded by adults and
still looking like a child and then i did the
sports science thing too Talk to me about the
deployment to East Timor. So with the Ready Reserve
Scheme, it was supposed to be a bit of an intermediate,
I guess, between regular army and reserve army.
So we went and did 35 days. At summer holidays,
we went and did a 35 -day exercise every year.
And then each uni break, there was a two -week
exercise that you could go and do. So as long
as you did. 50 days a year you maintain your
currency and sort of got bonuses and stayed in
that scheme. So we would go over east and do
our training for a couple of years and then they
canned the scheme and transferred us to a reserve
unit in Perth that had a regular army company
as well. So I sort of kept that up. I didn't
want to. We stopped going over east for the training
and were working more with the General Reserve.
I kind of lost interest a little bit with it.
But after my three -year degree, I took a year
where I was going to go travelling and did just
enough time army -wise to stay on the books.
And then I went to Europe for four months, came
back and... I'd got into an honours program for
the following year to do exercise rehab and was
working at a friend's family business in a hardware
store and got a phone call from the army just
asking if I wanted to basically sort of sign
up for 12 to 18 months to go to Timor for six
months. Difficult conversation with the girlfriend
at the time, but, yeah, there was kind of no
way I wasn't going to say yes to that. So, yeah,
I said we did a couple of weeks of training here
and then we moved over to – we deployed over
to Brisbane for some lead -up training. I think
Timor kicked off in September 99 and – We were
over in Brisbane by October and we deployed to
Timor in April of 2000. I know Timor is an Australian
military member. Obviously, it's one of the conflicts
that a lot of people did go to. Talk to me about
the backstory of that conflict in the first place
and then what did you see with your own eyes?
The reason we got involved with it was the...
The Portuguese had been there for some time.
They gave independence to Timor. I think when
they left, the Indonesians took over. And when
the decision was made to give East Timor independence,
when the Indonesians were told to leave, they
just ran roughshod through. and kind of just
atrocities all the way through on the way out.
And so Australia, a bunch of countries got involved
with it to go and, I guess, get the Indos out
and to help the East Timorese people. So it was
just kind of the first proper conflict or proper
war -like. that Australia had been involved with
for a long time. So a lot of learning from the
training that we'd done wasn't really that, you
know, we were all based on the Vietnam sort of
era training and so it was all quite different.
But when the border of East and West Timor, so
West Timor was Indonesia, basically East Timor
was independent. The border was a series of rivers.
So through the wet season. Rivers fill up, the
border becomes uncrossable and everything had
sort of simmered down to a degree. So by the
time we got over there in April, there hadn't
really been anything happening for a bit of time.
So I remember the first patrol we went on, which
happened to be on Anzac Day, I was a lead scout
in my platoon. So your weapons, you've got...
the states that they can be in is they're loaded,
which means it's got a magazine in it. They're
at action, which means it's cocked, and then
instant means the safety's off. And we were patrolling
around at load, and then the lead scouts could
be on action, which means that your weapon was
cocked, but you're kind of not really ready to
do anything with it. Within about a week or two,
there started to be a few contacts with, they
were calling them militia, but they... There
was sort of no uncertainty around the fact that
they were Indonesian army that were coming over
and still trying to create havoc around the border
regions there. So it escalated pretty quickly
to the point where we were able to patrol around
it at instant on the front of the groups. And
we were there for six months and we were... I
think there were four 12 -week rotations just
in different parts of the border. But, yeah,
it's pretty – I enjoyed it. It was just when
things started to go to heat up a little bit,
it was – you're just in a state of constant threat
the whole time, which probably by the end of
it I'd had enough. I've asked this to many people
that have been deployed to combat, and obviously
the op tempo might be different depending on
who I'm talking to. But regardless of the politics,
was there a moment where you got over there where
you realized there were some horrific people
that needed to be taken care of? Yeah, for us
it was a bit different because it's not like
we're – it was people coming – groups coming
over the border. They would – do something and
then head back over. So it's probably a little
bit different in that we were there as part of
a UN peace enforcing mission. So the whole thing
was dealing with atrocities. It's not like we're
not dealing with a normal population and there's
some good ones and some bad ones. Everyone that
we were dealing with was under threat from these
people coming across the border. So it was very
much kind of a humanitarian thing. You wouldn't
walk into a village and have to go, I wonder
if this person is on our team or on the other
team. They're all on our team. So, yeah, we did
some pretty long patrols as far as a couple of
weeks bush at a time. Every village that you
walked through, they were coming out with coconuts
and water and they couldn't have been any happier
to have us there. So, yeah, it was... And that
part of it was a great thing to be part of. You'd
have a trail of kids running behind you every
time you came through a village. And we always
took a bunch of extra lollies and things to hand
out to them. It was cool. So fundamentally, was
the intent in Indonesia take over the whole of
Timor then? Is that what they were trying to
do ultimately? It was more just when they didn't
want to leave. They got kicked out. So when they
left, they just demolished everything. I think
they took every... I think it was almost literally
every piece of corrugated iron. So they just,
you know, burnt places down, destroyed homes
and terrorised the locals on the way out. The
intent afterwards was more just to kind of destabilise,
I think. I don't know if it was officially sanctioned,
the guys coming over, but, yeah, it may have
just been groups of... Indonesian army guys coming
over and, yeah, like I said, unsanctioned just
coming over to create a bit of havoc. Yeah. I
mean, it's so sad. The last book I just wrote,
there's an element of that that the Germans did
in that story. I mean, you see this, the My Lai
massacre by the Americans in Vietnam. I mean,
you get these horrendous people that they're
not under the control of whatever military group
it is. They just start going off on their own.
And I mean, there's nothing to be gained by doing
exactly what you said on the retreat. So it makes
no sense and it's disgusting. Yeah. Yeah, I think
that was definitely the case. Let us know from
the contacts that we did have over there. I was
always pretty lucky over there. I don't want
to overplay it. We'd be in a platoon of 30 that
would get split up. You have three sections of
10 in there. So if you're out on a section patrol,
it just sort of seemed to be the other sections
that would get into a firefight or get into contact
or that we'd split in half and the other half
would get some action. At one time they just
kind of got lucky where they pulled out, you're
walking along a river or a creek line, pulled
over for lunch and then happened to see a couple
of guys coming down the river and they contacted
them and ended up killing the two guys. At the
time they were being treated as militia but once
they got into contact, the way that they were
operating was very much that they were... well
trained and and knew what they were doing and
then um i think it was the there was a a new
zealand um infantry soldier who was killed but
the when they counter -attacked the the guys
dropped a heap of their gear and it was all military
gear that was all you know they were squared
away in a way that that wasn't just a bunch of
farmers coming over or people coming over to
you know to steal things or anything like that
So how did that ultimately lead you into testing
for the fire service? So when I got finished
with the army, I still had my place to do my
honors. So I did honors in exercise rehab. And
so that was 2001. I was pretty lucky in that
I got a job while I was studying. I got a job
in exercise rehab in what I ended up working
in for several years, which was workers' comp.
So exercise rehab for workers' comp claims. So
I started working that pretty early in my honours
year and I knew that I didn't love it. Like it
was a good job as far as the exercise rehab went.
It was probably better paid, better conditions.
heaps of work around but um i didn't love it
i still i guess i enjoy i didn't love the army
army was never going to be a career but i there
was something about the um working a team working
not sitting in an office all day um and working
with something that's a little bit different
and exciting that i um i was missing and i knew
that that kind of wouldn't work from from staying
in an exercise rehab or something like that.
So I still had police as an ambition early on,
but I think when I finished my first year at
uni, I hated it. I was looking at police. I spoke
to one of the dads at the school my mum was working
at who was in the TRG, the special ops police
here, who said, no, no, go and finish your degree
and then look at police. And then in the meantime,
my twin brother joined WA police. I didn't want
to do the same thing as him. That was enough
for me to go, no, no, I'll probably need something
different. Through my honours year, I then applied
for a bunch of different jobs, federal police
as a sky marshal, what else, customs. When I
heard you on a podcast, I sort of mentioned that
you'd mentioned. drugs in a in an interview and
that was what sunk me in in a job for customs
where that uh it was a full day of psychometric
testing and i um had ticked a few of the boxes
honestly and a few probably not quite as honest
and when they are sitting across from them in
an interview and they sort of said oh you know
they waited till the end of the interview and
then they said oh yeah we just got a couple of
questions about your testing you said that yeah
you had used but you hadn't used any other drugs
in one part of the test and then there's another
part where you said you have used other recreational
drugs and my wheels spun for a little bit and
I tried to come up with a decent, you know, when
I was at uni I tried a few of these things but,
you know, it was only once or twice but that
was enough to rule that out. But I was working
for, sorry, part of my prac for uni, the guy
who was running the lab at uni was... the guy
who did all the physical testing for the fire
brigade at that time he run the functional testing
and um he suggested that i look at fire brigade
um and it's sort of in the back of my mind but
they did one recruitment every year and then
9 11 happened and it might sound a little bit
cliched but i can remember i was doing some night
film while i was at uni coming home and The TV
was on and it was all happening and just standing
there. I stood there probably two or three hours
in the same place just sort of watching as they
burnt and then collapsed and that was probably
cemented in my mind that fire brigade was probably
something that I want to look at a bit closer
and potentially sort of step into that. I had
a mate from the army who had just got into fire
brigade. So I spoke to him and I guess probably
then made my mind up that that's what I was going
to do. What was the on -ramp experience like
for you as far as physical fitness training and
then also the mental health conversation? Mental
health conversation was non -existent. I think
as I was 25, I think when I started applying,
it just wasn't really a factor at all in any
of it. The physical side of it, I was working
in gyms and I'd worked in gyms since I finished
my undergrad degree. I started doing some personal
training and working in gyms. So I was pretty
fit. The only problem I had was the... I had
reasonably high blood pressure. I think the job
that I was doing was pretty stressful. It was
60 or 70 hours a week of long hours. And, yeah,
amazingly, as soon as I started in the training
school, my blood pressure went down to perfect.
So it was obvious that that was the reason for
that. They did one recruitment a year and, like
I said, there was several thousand applying for
30, 40 jobs a year. So the first year I applied
and didn't even get through to an interview.
And then the second year, between then, I signed
up with the volunteer brigade and sort of got
to a few of the bigger campaign fires over a
summer. So I was probably a bit better equipped.
to then apply the second time. And, yeah, it's
just weird. I think people sort of think that
you have 3 ,000 people applying for 36 jobs,
that it's the best of the best to get through
or you have to be, you know, really fit or really
switched on or whatever it is to get through.
But you look at my school, you look at any of
the schools you get through, it's just such a
big range of people that you just line up the
holes and, you know, you're lucky enough to be
able to slide through. So the process itself,
it was long and I think I applied, I think it
was sort of, say, February or so, they called
for applications. So I applied February of 2004
and then I missed out on the first school, which
was running from July or so, and then it was
April the following year that... They said, we'll
find out by Friday. And I can just remember I
was working at a gym and it ticked over four
o 'clock and I thought, that's it. This is the
day that they're contacting us. It's obviously
not happening this year. So it's another full
year to 18 months to wait again. And I went and
laid outside in a park, just feeling sorry for
myself, watching the clouds go over. And then
the phone rang. um got offered a spot sort of
starting in three weeks which is the way they
do it for some reason you wait 18 months to to
then get three weeks notice to to go and start
but um yeah so then yeah april 2005 started in
the in the uh in the training school here so
walk me through some of the you know what we
call a career call some some of the ones whether
it was a a beautifully powerful call or whether
it was something that maybe contributed to some
of the struggles later on um when i started i
started at a out of metro station so 30 35 k's
from the city on the on the rural urban interface
but we had a bunch of highways around so there
was there was a heap of high speed high impact
um traffic accidents and um It was a low socioeconomic
area as well, so a bunch of house fires. But
I was a bit of a black cloud my first few years
in the job. It just sort of seemed after two
years at that station, I went to the city and
was relieving out of the city, so floated around
a little bit. It just seemed wherever I went,
we ended up with the shit mix of jobs. Probably
one that sticks out was... Called to end up being
a triple fatality, but it was a car full of teenagers
that are way too fast over a bit of a rise where
the kids go fast over that. So you get that little
bit of a feeling of losing control, but the Australians
were a tree. But one of the senior firey on the
shift that I was on, he had a son who was 17
at the time, who's now a firey as well. I remember
it was yesterday. As we arrived, he had one look
at the car and he thought it was a little BMW
3 Series, same sort of car that one of his son's
mates had. And he went straight to the car, had
a look in the back and just turned away, took
a few steps and started throwing up. And he said,
I think Luke's in the back. One of the kids in
the back had the same jacket that his son had
had on to go out that night. It ended up not
being him. But it was when we got there, there
was one deceased in the car out of five, and
I remember talking to the – and I was only probably
three years into the job at this stage – talking
to the driver. It was a young bloke. He was doing
the usual, you know, I'm really sorry, didn't
mean to do all this sort of thing. And just kind
of turning back to him to say something and then
the next minute he died straight there in front
of us. And then start working on the next person
and it was kind of the same thing. So it was
just ended up three of them died and it was just
like the car was fully wrapped around a tree.
So it was just kind of just sort of kids everywhere.
But the thing that stuck with me from that one
was. the reaction of of this other guy and i've
spoken to him since and it's it's been one that's
um you know for him it was a it was it was one
that kind of never never left him as well um
uh yeah so it's just i had a run of of jobs another
one um i probably it is probably leading into
when more um My mental health started to go down
a little bit, but I had a fire where a couple
of kids had burnt in a house. They died in a
house fire. But I got tasked with sort of standing
where one of the bodies was. cooling the area
down enough so the family could come in. It was
a cultural thing. I think they were Vietnamese,
I think. But the family then needed to see the
body as part of their process. Again, at the
time it was kind of – that's why it wasn't too
bad. It was easy. I did four years of anatomy
at uni, so we were doing wet labs the whole time,
so cadavers and body parts and things. That side
of the job hadn't really worried me too much
to that point. But once the family came in, it
was the screams of the things, like I say, mum,
grandma and auntie all standing there just moaning,
wailing and just sort of went straight through
you and didn't go straight through you, went
straight in and sort of sat with you. But then
my young bloke was probably five at the time
and I couldn't just – you get that feeling where
all you want to do is go home and hug your kids.
Walking home and we'd been stuck at this fire
a bit late, got home and he was already in bed.
But as we walked in, he was in the fetal position,
the same position this kid had been in, and that
rocked me. It was – yeah, just – Yeah, probably
came out of left field a little bit for me, like
as much as it was kind of, I was looking forward
to seeing him. As soon as I saw him all I could
see was this little girl that, you know, that
had been burnt. So, yeah, that's probably a bit
of a negative. I've had, probably from the positive
side, I started with the USAR Task Force here
in 2011. And that's probably the opportunity
to go to some amazing jobs all around the state.
So some of the bigger natural disasters, the
cyclones, the floods up in the Kimberley region,
big fires down south, just where the whole community
is impacted, but they're actually really grateful
to have us there. And then the opportunity to
do some different things, flying around in helicopters
and just sort of seeing things that you otherwise
wouldn't be exposed to on the positive side.
What are some of the notable rescues from some
of those incidents? With the USAR side of it,
most of our tasking is damage assessment really.
It's not going in there and still working in
active rescue as much as getting around to the
communities. doing damage assessment also we
do pre -impact in pre -impact assessment but
then also just sort of helping the the community
out with studying on the on the recovery side
of things so you touched on the beginning of
your kind of mental health downward spiral kind
of walk us through you know where it where it
landed um so probably 20 i had that job and i
had another job um which at the time it was one
when people sort of asked if you've been to an
interesting job lately. It was one that sort
of stuck out as being almost interesting, almost
sort of, I guess, humorous in a way, which was
just called to, I think, probably stay four in
the morning, early hours. A guy in his 60s hadn't
come home from work and they thought he might
have had a heart attack. They went to try and...
It was an older building in the city. Try and
force the door. They couldn't get in. They thought
he might have collapsed at the door. So we forced
the door. The guy's son was with us. And as we
walked through, I was in the front with the son.
He was showing us where his dad's work was or
his workstation was. And he had accident, death
by misadventure, autoerotic asphyxiation. type
thing walking in but as we saw him um the sun
it sounded like he'd been punched in the gut
i just sort of made this noise all the wind being
knocked out of him um so yeah we didn't hang
around too long um he he was obviously um he'd
obviously died so we we left and it was one of
those ones well you know that was a bit weird
it was yeah again sort of interesting um but
then Probably within about two or three weeks.
And, again, it didn't sort of affect me straight
away, but within two or three weeks I was still
working in gyms on my days off. I remember walking
into a gym and as I walked in I've seen someone
dead hanging on the wall and I had to take a
little bit of time to sort of shake it off and
actually just stay. It was a bathrobe or a towel
that was hanging on a hook in the gym change
rooms. And that happened to me two or three times
and then I kind of realised that's what a flashback
was, not having had any real experience with
it. At the time I was going through some, I'd
been married for a few years and that wasn't
going too well. I had two young kids at home
and just found myself a number of times sort
of out the back. sort of sitting under the kids'
cubby house crying and not really knowing what
was going on. I thought I was just depressed,
so I went and saw a psychologist through the
EAP and it didn't take her very long. She just
sort of said, no, I don't think you're depressed.
I think you've got PTSD, which I didn't really
think I did at the time, but she explained it
and just said, oh, would you be open to a thing
called EMDR, which this was... It was 2010, 2011
by the time I saw her for that. Obviously, I
hadn't heard about it. It wasn't really well
known then. But you've spoken to it. I've heard
a few of your guests speak about it as well.
But you're just sitting there and she's waving
her fingers in front of your eyes. You're watching
the fingers go side to side. And she got me just
to think about the... the job from start to finish
we went with the guy who hung himself first uh
you know just think about the and the beauty
was i didn't have to tell her anything or go
into any details with it it was just you know
start thinking through it from when you got the
call at the station to when you arrived and um
and as i was doing that it was it um it something
just sort of uh clicks and then next minute you're
you're actually there feeling it again and you
you're um you're getting all these emotions come
through and you go into a real, you know, fight
or flight state. And then she goes, cool, let's
go, let's stop there, go back. And you do that
again and you basically sort of go through that
so you can go through the whole job and she's
not noticing any reaction or any arousal in you.
And then we did a session of that. I went back
a couple of days later. We did another session.
We worked through that and we worked through
the other incident with the little girl that,
again, that's another one that was giving me
flashbacks. And within a couple of sessions,
I was pretty much fixed. I had no more. I felt
really good. And, yeah, the flashbacks and those
PTSD symptoms had all kind of stopped. So not
long after that, my marriage came to an end.
I won't go into too much about that, but it basically
wasn't my idea. I kind of tried to do everything
I could to keep that one alive, but my opinion
and the opinion of professionals at the time
was some undiagnosed mental health issues at
the time. It was pretty rough, I guess, 12 months
leading up to that. Through that time, we had
tried to do some couples counselling. I think
we did three sessions and the counsellor just
sort of said to her, you need to go and see your
own psych and figure out what's going on for
you because this isn't going to go anywhere until
you've dealt with whatever you need to deal with.
But she didn't want to. She wanted to move on.
started a different life in different ways so
she um i started seeing at the same time um probably
after six months i went back and saw the counsellor
by myself and just i can't get her to re -engage
with anything she wants to move on and so the
counsellor said i'll go back and see your psych
that you did the emdr with so i started seeing
her weekly um that was sort of back at the time
when we got more than six sessions a year with
a site we could i could stretch it to i saw her
weekly fortnightly for almost six months um to
the point when we um she uh yeah well when my
ex said she she was done she she didn't want
um to even try anymore so um yeah we were down
south at the time down in margaret region um
and I sort of thought we were going down there
to try and sort of figure things out. But she
just sort of said, no, that's it. So I just jumped
in the car, just said I needed a couple of days,
drove home, cranked Amity Affliction, just the
heaviest, loudest metal that I could for a three
-and -a -half -hour drive at full volume on the
way back up. And that was kind of the end of
that. But she then decided that she wanted to
make the separation and divorces. hard for me
as possible. So I had kind of threats of everything
from being reported to police, RSPCA, you know,
calling work and trying to report me for different
things, which probably over the 12 months after
that I'd been to some other jobs and I was just
really sort of starting to get into a I don't
know, just feeling really hopeless. I couldn't
see any way out. There was threats to take the
kids and I'd been really heavily involved with
them. I had two great little kids at the time
and all I could see was all these tricks and
traps to try and take them off me and see them
being taken away. But at the same time, I then
started seeing my partner now and that was a
bit of a lifesaver, really. I can still remember
my parents saying, you know, I don't know what
you would do without him because I was just being
attacked at all sides. So she's probably one
of the reasons why I got through that period.
But, yeah, just over sort of from there, I saw
– I stopped – my psych retired, so I'd just every
– it would just be then to every sort of three
or four months, I'd just go and touch base with
a psych through the EAP, but probably got through
the next probably to about 2020 or 2021 without
really sort of anything too crazy, I guess. Well,
one thing that I know we haven't hit is also
losing your father. Talk to me about that. Yeah,
that was a big one. We called him Kev. Probably
from when we were about 10 or 11, we, for some
reason, transitioned from dad to Kev and not
in a sort of, yeah. all mean sort of way. It
was just, you know, he was a super easygoing
bloke. So, you know, even when he had his first
grandkids, it was, you know, do you want to be
called sort of granddad or pop or whatever? He
goes, no, I just want to be called Kev. So they
called him Nana Kev for a little while, but then,
you know, he was just always Kev to everyone.
But he was amazing support for all of us. My
brother was a police officer up north, so he'd
fly up to look after the kids so they could have
some time off or just for when he retired. Anytime
he called, he'd come around straight away. 2016,
we did a... Sorry, my partner and I had our daughter
in 2015. So then the house that we're in, we
kind of chopped in half, demolished the back
of it and got a house built behind. But we renovated
the old house at the front from top to bottom.
And so I reckon Kev was around pretty much every
day doing something. Even days that I was at
work, be around there and um you know he just
uh yeah we're wearing sand or stacking bricks
or you know whatever it was he was sort of always
around there so i had a heap of time with him
um over the over that period um but then yeah
one night we were around there for dinner i was
instructing at the the training school for a
couple of weeks at that time And so he was doing
a fair bit of the school runs for the boys and
we'd been around there for dinner. Emma, my partner,
left to catch up with some friends. I took Charlotte
home and the boys slept the night over so that
he could take them to school. We'd been turning
our phones off just for the radiation or 5G,
whatever it was. Get better sleep. So we were
sleeping without phones. For some reason that
night Em left her phone on about 10 to 5. Got
a phone call from my younger brother and his
now wife. We were living with my parents at the
time. Got a phone call from my sister -in -law.
I remember Em taking the call and just sort of
saying they think Kev's having a heart attack.
They're doing CPR and it's not looking good.
jumped up my parents only lived um five or six
k's away so i just got dressed jumped in the
car and shot over um when i got over there same
time as the um the second lot of ambos got there
and yeah walked in um gave mama hug my brother
and his and my mum were just sort of standing
there in the kitchen. I said, he's in the bedroom.
So I just sort of went in and had a look and
they just put the Lucas machine on him, which
I kind of knew was a sign that it probably wasn't
going to be a great outcome, but really just
then went in and went into work mode, which yeah,
it was at the time sort of felt like the right
thing to do was to sort of block out any emotion
or, or don't, don't treat it like it's, it's,
it's Kev. It was more just, you know, it's let's
look after mom. Let's look after my mom and my
brother had done CPR for, um, 10 minutes or so
until the ambos had got there. So, um, it was
just look after their mode, um, touch base with
the ambos every now and again to see what was
going on. But, um, I think it was probably more
for, as much for optics as anything, but they
popped him in the ambulance, kept the Lucas machine
on him. I drove with mum to the hospital behind
the ambulance and just kind of kept asking why
they weren't driving lights and sirens on the
way. And I think kind of as hard as it was, I
think I did say, look, it probably means that
it's not going to be a great outcome. And he
got to hospital. We just got put in our own little
waiting room. And then maybe after an hour, a
nurse came in and just said, like, they're going
to stop working on him soon. Nothing's working.
Do we want to go in and see him or see what's
going on? And I said to mum, I said, don't. Like,
there's probably nothing to gain from that. But
the nurse talked her into it, which... I was
a bit pissed off at the time. So we went through
and he was in a recess area. But mum took one
look and then turned and said, no, I don't want
to go in there. So, yeah, they stopped working,
popped him in a little, I don't know what you'd
call it, a viewing room. And we took him in there
just to sort of say goodbyes with him, cover
it up. It's interesting because you hear, I've
been, I think it was my paramedic clinicals where
they started bringing the families in when we
were working the codes a lot. And I can see how
that creates closure on one hand, but on the
other hand, do you want the memory of your loved
one to be with defib pads and an ET tube down
their throat? I mean, bodily fluids, whatever's
going on at that moment. So it is a kind of 50
-50. It might work for some people, but it might
make it worse for other people. Yeah, and I think
I kind of half knew what to expect and that's
why I was pretty sure that it wasn't really what
mum needed to be seeing. And, again, the luxury
machine is just pretty brutal with the pumping
that it's doing. Yeah, but, again, I was pretty,
I guess, shut off from the whole thing. My twin
brother was up north at the time. So it was just
sort of me and mum at the hospital. And my godparents
came in. So it was my godfather. He actually
got ordained as a priest, but he was one of dad's
mates growing up and then through their studies
and they'd been really good mates ever since.
They came in and same thing. They sort of said
their goodbyes. Em came in. and then subsequently
left. And then when I was ready for, you know,
we sat in there for a while when I was ready
to leave. That's probably the only time that
I guess that it hit me. But as we walked out,
so we walked out of the room, walking down the
hallway and I sort of got 10 metres down the
hallway and it was just like, yeah, I had a little
bit of a breakdown and all I could think was,
We can't just leave him in there. How can we
just leave him in there by himself? It took a
little bit just to, I guess, keep walking because
I guess that's when it hit, the finality of it.
Yeah, that was really hard. But again, I felt
it then, but I just packed it away, pushed it
down and got into it. um into work mode and you
know started looking at logistically logistically
what needed to be done um yeah i guess i yeah
in hindsight i never really um never really grieved
him at that stage it's that's something that
kind of came a lot more recently with the uh
with the treatment that i went through well let's
go to that then so you're talking you know 2021,
you're still doing okay. Talk to me about 2022
and how that led you to MDMA -led psychotherapy.
I was at a busy station. We were going to a lot
of calls. There was some stuff that was going
on work -wise. I think, again, I know you've
spoken about it a bit with the imposter syndrome,
but for me that was kind of always a pretty big
thing. I did about 10 years as a firey and then
got promoted to station officer and I had a great
crew, but I still felt like I didn't really have...
Always looking at other people and just thinking,
you know, I'm not as good as them or I'm not
really feeling like I'm in charge. And, you know,
that was despite a lot of, you know, feedback
to the contrary and a lot of, you know, people
can sort of tell you that you're doing a good
job, but if you don't believe it yourself, then
it's never really going to sink in. But I went
to a job on Father's Day 2022 and... It was,
again, it was just one of those sort of weird
calls where it was called to a chemical suicide.
Five coppers, sorry, five police officers had
been taken to hospital with some sort of exposure
to something. And when we arrived, we were first
arriving, sent sort of two guys in BA just to
have a look at what was going on. Did some testing
and it ended up being nothing. Well, not nothing,
but so there was no chemicals, there was no hazmat,
and they thought it was chemical suicide because
the fella was in a full sort of latex set up
with a tube hanging out of it, but it was some
sort of BDSM thing where you can pump up the
mouthpiece of it to cut off a bit of oxygen,
but not enough. Something had failed in it and
he'd died, but he'd been there for five days
with the air con on full in a brand -new house
that had just been painted. So his parents had
rocked up and found him, but the police, to the
chemical smell of the paint, saw the tube and
then thought it must have been a chemical suicide,
which we'd had a few of. Sort of, yeah, around
that area and around that time. But the job itself,
I had, because the police had all been taken
to hospital, an inspector, like a relatively
high -ranking police officer had rocked up. We
still weren't 100 % sure what was going on, but
he demanded to go inside. I said no. He asked
to speak higher up the chain. I got on to...
you know, my next level up with someone at the
communication centre just to sort of see what
his right was to go in. I was told, no, I don't
have to let him in if I don't think it's safe.
But he sort of, you know, almost forced his way
in and I had to sort of let him go, which, again,
it just sort of added something to that scene.
But, you know, we did what we had to do. But
when I went home, I had the family around for
dinner for Father's Day. And I fell off straight
away. And my partner worked for the department
for 12 or 13 years. And she just started back
there last week. So she sort of knew sort of
enough about it for me to come in and just say,
look, I'm just not really feeling it tonight.
I just, I can't. Father's Day is kind of hard
enough for me anyway. But I had a shitty job
and I'm just not really feeling it. And so I
sort of had a low -key night. But then in the
few days afterwards, I started having sort of
nightmares, night terrors, and I knew something
wasn't quite right. So then I tried to – I rang
one of the EAP providers and sort of said, I
want a clinical psych, someone over 30, someone
who's dealt with some first responder issues.
and someone that does EMDR and I was told that
they don't do EMDR sort of anywhere in that provider.
Actually, no, sorry. The person I spoke to said,
oh, can you just tell me a little bit about what
you're going through? And I said, well, you're
a psychologist? And she said, oh, no, no, I'm
admin, but I need to get a bit of an idea about
what you're going through. And I said, look,
I'll talk to a psychologist. I'm not prepared
to go into that. And then she said, oh, yeah,
we don't do EMDR. So I couldn't get in. I then
went to one of our other providers. We're pretty
limited with who we can see. But I found someone,
but it was a six -week wait to have any treatment.
Probably I didn't have any time off work. The
next set of shifts I went to, I can't remember
what the job was, something else that rocked
me a bit. And then maybe two weeks later I was
– We were called to just a normal alarm. As we're
getting in there to check us out, they redirected
us to another suicide in a car. And the whole
way there didn't quite feel right. And as we
pulled into the car park where the car was, I
was just lucky that the guy that was driving
the pump at the time was someone I knew reasonably
well. And I had a panic attack. I had had a couple
of panic attacks before, but this one I just
said, I can't do this. I can't get out of the
truck. I was just sort of frozen in the front
seat. So he just sort of went out and did the
360 and basically did my job for me. And then,
yeah, I mean, that was – then I started the EMDR
probably two weeks after that. And again, I had
really good results with the EMDR, but I had
a heap of sessions and I found every time I'd
sort of start getting towards the end of one,
I'd get a bunch of other things coming from the
side to the point where it was really increasing
my anxiety and I was just in a state of, I guess,
kind of uh like fear all the time all day every
day just um couldn't shake it the the mdr it
was working to a to a degree as far like okay
i stayed at work i had we had one call to a um
it was a five or six hour drive to a an abattoir
where someone falling into the machinery and
the other officer on my shift just said i know
you're going through all your treatment you know
i'm happy to take the call for you but i actually
felt I said, no, I think I'm in a pretty good
place. So I went to the call. And as it was,
I felt okay with it. But the psych that I was
seeing then went on maternity leave. And so I
said, I think I'll send this to one of my colleagues
who I think you'll get along well with. So I
started seeing another psych. But through the
EMDR, I'd used up my entitlement with the the
eap so they'd scale it right back so you only
get your six sessions and you can get an extra
four if you if you need a uh so as soon as i
started my first session with him the new psych
was the um the last one that i was entitled to
so he he just said look i don't think we'll be
able to get any more sessions um he ended up
getting me an extra couple And then when I went
back to our wellness section, I said, look, I
just need an extra six sessions to get me through
the year. I want one a month. They said I couldn't
have had to go to workers' comp. If I wanted
extra sessions, I had to go through workers'
comp, which is kind of to not speak to. I think
I've had great support through our workers' comp
when I actually did get the claim in there and
through the MDMA therapy. So they do a good job,
but at the time it was just that. reliance on
having to go through insurance because they're
not paying for it that way. But that year, so
through 2023, I was seeing this guy probably
every three weeks, but my symptoms were getting
worse. When I first saw him, I saw my psych this
morning and I was just talking about sort of
some of these things with... the suicide ideation
which um i've heard the term i didn't really
know exactly what it was but um all i wanted
i'd spoken i've got a really close group of mates
and i had spoken to a couple of them about it
when i sort of got to the stage where i i'd never
say i was contemplating it but it was it was
just a constant thought with me that um everyone
would be better off i'm just making everyone's
life hard i was i was um was much fun to be around
with much fun to be with at home still having
i guess issues with with the ex and and kids
and just thought with me out of the picture they
can just get on and do their thing and um but
also thinking about And suicide gave me a massive
sense of relief as well. Like if I, you know,
it was kind of, you know, some people turn to
booze or drugs or whatever it is. For me, as
soon as I thought about doing that, I just got
an instant sense, instant sense of relief. And
it sort of then got to that point where it was,
when I was in a bit of a funk driving, it would
just be. That would be my thought all the time
was I just need to pull the wheel into the next
truck that I've passed or into the next tree
that I go past. But towards the end of 2023,
I went and saw my psych and it was around Halloween
and every time I basically I was having panic
attacks. It reads me regularly, but I was having
flashbacks constantly. Every time I walked past
the car, I'd see a body in the car. I'd see if
there was a blanket or a scrap on the road driving,
I'd see a body. It's amazing how the brain works
in that it's not – everything in the corner of
my eye was a dead person basically. So when I
saw my cycle, I said, look, I'm having flashbacks
constantly. I'd had a couple of panic attacks
at work where a call, as soon as the bells go
off at work, I was frozen and I couldn't do anything.
I really just had to struggle to go to the truck
or get someone else to take the call. And what
I told him, he said, I think you need to have
some more EMDR. And I said, that's great. Can
you do that? And he couldn't do it. And I said,
well, if I go back and see. someone else for
that. Can I still keep coming and seeing you?
And I think, and he said, no, that's not what
he does. And I've got to sort of pick and choose
who I've got to choose one or the other. And
then it was a big wait to then try and get him
to see someone for the Indiana. I just felt really
abandoned. And yeah, I guess there's a couple
of months period where it was, Yeah, it was so
frequent. It was really having a massive impact
on me emotionally. My emotions were that close
to the surface that, yeah, it really sort of
impacted everything. I had started studying psych
a few years before. During COVID, I wanted to
do something to sort of occupy my brain a little
bit. I was just starting my honours and I got
lucky enough to get onto a psychedelic project
looking at MDMA -assisted therapy for PTSD. And
at the same time, my brother went to a wedding
and was talking to someone whose brother was
involved with MDMA and ended up being the CEO
of Emeria, which is one of the pharmaceutical
companies that's doing the trials. And he offered
to put me in touch with him. And I met with him
to talk about the project, but then he just sort
of said, if there's anything you need, get in
touch with me. That night we went to a... a nasty
job, and I emailed him the next day and said,
mate, is there any chance I can get in there
and see one of your therapists? Because I couldn't
get in and see someone through the EAP. So I
started seeing one of the psychs in at a place
called the PAC Centre, which was linked to the
MPACs, which does the therapy. Yeah, through
that year, I saw psych in there reasonably regularly.
The psych that I'd seen the first few months
started the process of me trying to get into
the trials at that stage of MDMA -assisted therapy
or there were some other trials that were going
on through Veterans Affairs. He left and I started
seeing a psych in there named Dion who... Kept
that on the table. I went and saw him one day
and I told him what was going on and that was
sort of when things were peaking and he just
said, like, why are you still going to work every
day? And I couldn't answer him. And he said,
like, you've got to think either you need to,
sorry, to go back a little bit. I saw a psychiatrist
through Veterans Affairs who diagnosed me with
panic disorder and PTSD. that I start on SSRIs.
When I saw Dion, he said, look, I don't think
it works the best thing for you at the moment.
You've got to look at coming off the trucks or
looking at a different career path if you want
to stay within Fire Brigade. But if you start
on the SSRIs, then you won't be able to do the
trial. So I opted to self -fund. At the time,
I had a PTSD claim that got knocked. Well, it
got... Didn't get accepted. Even with the presumptive
legislation, they, for some reason, they didn't
accept it. So I was given the option to self
-fund and just do one dosing cycle of the MDMA
assisted therapy. So again, Em was brilliant
with that, with outlaying 13 grand of our own
money to do a single dosing cycle. And that's
how I ended up doing the MDMA assisted therapy.
Well, I just interviewed Dr. Ben Sessa for the
second time, and he's one of the pioneers when
it comes to MDMA -led psychotherapy. And it was
so amazing when you and I connected and started
talking about the treatment that you've gone
through that this wasn't so kind of black ops
in Australia, that you had a pretty open path
to get this therapy. So talk to me about how
this treatment is viewed, and then let's go to
your first experience. It's still relatively
unknown, really. I think I went and saw, I suppose,
our equivalent of MAPS here, the Australian Psychedelic
Society. Went and saw the top dog from that speak
in about 2018 or 2019. He just did an open lecture
at a university on the psychedelic renaissance.
And sort of from what he was saying, we had the
chance to – sort of lead the way um back in the
early teens but um some political changes at
the university that was going to be doing it
um so they saw drugs and and scrapped it so he
got put on the back burner but um then in 2020
mid -2023 um the they uh rescheduled um psilocybin
and mdma as prescribable medicines as opposed
to scheduled drugs. So that opened the door for
places to do some clinical trials in earnest.
So, yeah, I think it's not something that's really
well known, but I did my honours dissertation
last year on MDMA -assisted therapy for PTSD.
I knew a lot about it and I did a systematic
review, which then ended up being a scoping review
just because there wasn't as much, I guess, research
as it looked like from what was in the literature.
But I'd read pretty much everything that Ben
Sesser had written on the MDMA side of things
as well as all the other MAPS researchers. So
I guess it was one of those ones in psychedelic.
labs around at universities and that here was
well known and the mainstream media had started
talking to a few of the people that were doing
the trials. So the trials here was mainly paramedics
that were involved with that as well as other
non -uniformed PTSD sufferers. So it's still
kind of an emerging thing. When I did it, I think
I started screening for it in about October last
year. And that only finished the trials, I think,
midway through the year. So it wasn't really
well known. Well, people listen, they don't realize
that we lost connection two thirds of the way
through the interview. So if there's a little
overlap, you know, that's why. I can't remember
if we talked about it before or if I spliced
this together or if it was after. But talk to
me about. why that treatment is available to
you in Australia versus the UK, America, where
it's still demonized at the moment. Yeah, I was
probably in a bit of a privileged position having
done the dissertation on it. But what was going
through the process, it's been a 20 -year process
for MAPS to try and get MDMA -assisted therapy
off the ground and approved by the FDA as a treatment.
But in Australia, it sort of came out of the
blue. A couple of... Well, not out of the blue.
There's been a lot of work behind it. But about
two years ago, our FDA... Sorry, our TGA, which
is the equivalent, gave approval for MDMA therapy
for PTSD and psilocybin -assisted treatment for
treatment -resistant depression. So that's when
they... started doing the trials here. And then
by the time I started, it was already out of
the trials and just into clinical practice. But
that's where in the States, I think it was August
last year, everyone was expecting it to get approved
because the results of the stage three trials
had been so promising. I think they were looking
at around about 90 % of people had clinically
significant improvement in PTSD. And this is
people with moderate to severe PTSD. So about
90 % had clinically significant improvement,
which I can't remember what it is, but it's a
big drop in PTSD symptoms. And it was around
about 60 % had full remission of PTSD, which
was then lasted for up to 12 months, I think.
So sort of huge numbers, but it then got knocked
back by the FDA because of... Some political
reasons and some reasons I understand with the
way that the trials were run. And that's what
we were looking at was the non, we're looking
at the non -drug aspects of the MDMA assisted
therapy. And there just really wasn't a huge
amount published on it. And yeah, there's a lot
of reasons why it got knocked back and a few
of them I understand, but there's a really interesting
podcast. I think it's called the MDMA assisted
therapy podcast. And Rick Doblin speaks on that
about exactly. sort of how it came to get knocked
back. And it's quite understandable when you
say that. I've said this a lot on here, you know,
because obviously I witnessed that happening.
I was told about it, but prior to it, and obviously
we were all excited. And then with it being pushed
back and this was denied by the same FDA that
approved OxyContin that caused our opioid crisis
here in America. So people need to understand
that, you know, the one drug that's shown over
and over again to be helping PTSD and, you know,
veterans and first responders and civilians that
is truly working gets rejected yet again. But
OxyContin, where it was, you know, basically
steeped in lies on the addictive qualities of
it, not only did it get approved, but some former
FDA members then ended up working for Purdue
Pharma. That shows you the corruption of the
FDA in areas, not sweeping generalization, but
how it can be abused. Yeah, it's nuts as well.
I think it's largely because with the MDMA, there's
no money to be made from it, really. It's off
patent. So kind of anyone could just make it
and run with it as a treatment. No one's making
a huge amount of money out of it. I think the
interesting thing with it as well is it... kind
of half came down to the fda not and this is
my understanding of it that the fda wouldn't
approve it because it's a therapy with a medication
as a um as a way to augment the therapy so it's
mdma assisted therapy it's not just taking the
mdma sort of closing your eyes and and the and
it does its own thing but the therapy part of
it is really important i mean the in the trials
well the process is you do a cycle which is three
90 minute sessions of preparation an eight -ish
hour dosing day and then three 90 -minute sessions
of integration afterwards. And then you times
that by three with three cycles of it and you're
sort of having 50 or 60 hours of therapy. And
in the trials, if you did the placebo, you then
did the medication as well. So they were having
double that. So they're having up to 90 hours
of therapy through that process as well. So trying
to pass out what the therapy does and what the
MDMA does. is kind of tricky, but at the end
of the day, I don't think it really matters.
It's glaringly obvious that the MDMA -assisted
therapy works. And so I think Australia and Perth
is the most isolated capital city, Western Australia.
It's a big state, but we are kind of a little
bit behind with a few things. So then to be leading
the charge as far as these therapies goes is
pretty cool. talk to me about what you experienced
that first time and again bearing in mind that
you've had you know numerous therapy sessions
you've done emdr you know what was your experience
in the first time that you took this and then
what were the knock -on effects initially after
that first dose yeah probably a good one for
those that have had emdr it's not dissimilar
to that and you look at the way that it's it's
proposed work in your brain it's kind of doing
the same thing but And like I said, I've done
a huge amount of EMDR and I've done some holotropic
breathing as well, which is the way they train
the clinicians to administer the MDMA -assisted
therapy. So again, they all kind of work in the
same way, which is, to put it really simply,
shutting down some parts of your brain and then
allowing other parts of your brain to work better.
So I think it's just kind of an important thing
to realise is that all of your senses, everything
that comes into your brain, going through your
reptile brain first and it kind of gets filtered
to that and then that gets to the outside of
your brain, which is the logic and reasoning
and thinking. So the MDMA helps to unlock the
hippocampus, which is where all the memories
get stored, well, the facts of the memories,
I guess, and then your insula attaches all the
internal feelings and interoceptive information
to the memory. Your amygdala attaches the emotion
to the memory. And then it kind of goes to your
prefrontal cortex, which sort of tries to make
some meaning out of it. So when you're exposed
to a lot of trauma, it all gets changed around.
So the connections change, the chemicals change,
and it actually shrinks your hippocampus, reduces
your prefrontal cortex's control over your amygdala,
so it can't really shut off the threat detector.
So with the MDMA, it works almost the exact opposite
way of what trauma does to your brain. allows
your hippocampus to work, full access to all
the memories that you might have tried to, well,
not tried to shut off, your body's tried to shut
off in a defensive sort of way. You get full
access to that. The insula gets kicked in, so
you get all the feelings and emotions, not emotions,
all the feelings and sensations that you got
at the original incident, but your prefrontal
cortex is working as well. they call it in the
literature a corrective emotional experience.
So you're actually able to reconsolidate the
memory but change the emotional valence of the
memory. So instead of everything feeling sort
of scary or feeling that sense of dread, you
can redo it with a more positive vibe. So for
me, the dosing, I did the three 90 -minute sessions,
but one of my... um i guess caveats was that
i'd asked for my therapist to be one of the co
-facilitators and he was trained in it so um
i had i've been working with him for for um six
months prior so he knew a lot about it and as
same as with emdr part of the preparation they
tell you it's a lot of education about what the
mdma therapy is going to be but you also work
on setting some goals for the therapy and part
of that is looking at what narratives you're
telling yourself at the moment or narratives
are sort of running the show at that time so
for me it was things like um i'm not enough i
don't matter and that was probably a big one
for me was going to all these jobs and having
negative outcomes, even though you get told there's
nothing that you could have done with it or couldn't
have done anything different or the person was
already dead, even things we get told through
the school, treat it like a dummy, treat it like
a piece of meat, whatever it might be. It was
all adding up for me, just not really feeling
like I had any control over anything at work,
which was then flying over to normal life, and
that really just didn't matter what I did or
that nothing I did mattered at all. So that was
sort of the few weeks lead up to the therapy
itself. And then on the dosing day, all the sessions
you have prior to the dosing are in the same
room. So it's a really comfortable room. It's
the setting that they talk about with psychedelics
is really important in this case. So your mindset
is the set and then the setting. The room is
not like a normal therapy room, but it's got
a fold -out couch. It's really comfortable. There's
music playing, and it's just an ethereal AI -generated
music track that the clinicians can adjust a
little bit as far as the intensity of it, but
they're pretty big on making it a track that
you won't recognise later, I guess. It's just
music that can help facilitate the experience.
So, yeah, then the morning of the dose, They
asked you just to bring in some photos to remind
you of family and loved ones. So I took in a
few photos of the family, set them all up. They
do a few of their measurements just to make sure
that medically you're in a good spot. The psychiatrist
oversees the whole thing as well as the two therapists.
And, yeah, one of the therapists brought in a
small bowl with two capsules in it and I took
the medication and then we just sort of sat and
chatted for a while. partly about, again, just
going over my intentions for the dose as well
as a little bit at the time I thought it was
going to be weird. They sort of asked me about
sort of what some of my earliest memories were
and, yeah, we chatted a little bit. As soon as
I, probably 20, 25 minutes into it, I started
noticing that my words weren't coming out the
way I wanted them to and I was feeling. The music
was kind of taking over a little bit. So I said,
I think I'm ready to go inside. So I put the
blindfold, put an eye mask on to black out and
the noise cancelling headphones on and then just
snuggled back into bed. It's a really hard experience
to understand. And again, that's... part of the
whole MDMA assisted therapy is that there's a
phenomenological aspect to it. So it's the way
I'll explain it to you so I can get through it
in five or 10 minutes. It might sound a little
bit silly or a bit simplified, but when, so the
dosing session, it was sort of two hours and
then I had a top up dose of another, you take
another half of what you took the first time.
So probably went back in for another two hours
and then. um another hour after that so i probably
had five hours where i was under the influence
of the mdma blacked out with the with the headphones
on but it it felt like i was inside for six months
if i was about it up everything that i experienced
through that so i just wanted to say that before
i launch into it because it's um it's really
easy when i've told people before it sort of
even as i'm saying it just sounds a little bit
um i guess trivial but the um so the first thing
When I was blacked out, I sort of started to
see some shapes, I guess, materialise. It's just
like that period as you're drifting off to sleep,
that liminal period where you feel like you're
still half -dreaming but you're half -awake.
So I could sort of see shapes start to materialise
and then I sort of say it felt like I woke up
in the backyard of the house that I grew up in,
which it got demolished 30 years ago. It sort
of started to materialise in black and white
and then over a few minutes came out into full
HD, full colour, and I could make out everything
in the backyard of this house. We lived there
for about 15 years. Again, in minute detail.
I spent a bit of time, again, time is a little
bit irrelevant, but I sort of felt like I spent
time walking around the house and I could remember
every bit of carpet, every bit of furniture,
curtains, again, full detail, things that I'd
forgotten a long time ago. But even things like
my old man had a leather briefcase that he took
to work and I could remember the smell of that,
distinctly the smell of the leather with the
cigarette smell in it. Yeah, kind of just everything.
So, yeah, I felt like I spent a long time in
the house, just walking around, reacquainting.
And for me, again, when I explained this to the
therapist during one of the breaks, the only
way I could really explain it was like Happy
Gilmore's Happy Place. But instead of the dwarf
riding a hobby horse around, it was my dad out
in the veggie garden or my granddad out building
a chook pen or whatever it was. But it sort of
had that real vibe of just that vibrant colour.
Everything felt good and happy and positive.
And then from there it was like I'd kind of got
like an old record jukebox playing where I could
see the cover of a record come out and it would
have a face on it and then I'd get sucked out
to the incident that related to that person.
The first one I got sucked out was the first
fatality I ever went to, which was a couple of
weeks into the job. It sort of like started spinning
and then I materialised in the truck on the way
to the job. And I can remember, and again, it
might not be exactly accurate, but I can remember
the conversation I had with the senior fire that
I was driving with, just being my first decent
traffic accident. And then getting to the job,
seeing that it was a guy who... off a motorbike
at a decent rate of knots and was in a in a drain
drainage ditch on the side of the road but as
soon as i saw him he then rewound and sort of
came back out of the ditch to the side of the
road and his and two people came to him which
again i assume he's like his parents coming to
him everyone sort of felt happy and content and
reacquainted and then um they sort of This is
what happened with all of the incidents I went
to. They rewound back to the person was whole
in one piece and happy again and then family
members or a group of people would come around
them and they'd kind of thank me or they'd sort
of say, thanks for being here. I'm glad that
you're here. It's good that you're here. So then
they would just walk off but then they'd walk
off back into this house, into my family house,
which was my happy place. I diarised all this
as soon as I got home that night and I just,
before today, I was just reading through it just
to, and there was a lot of things I'd actually
forgotten, even just from that experience, but
I basically went through probably, I don't know,
20 or 30 incidents and all of them were the same
where I'd turn up. I'd say the incident, but
it's not just seeing it. You see it, you smell
it, you hear it, everything is in. It's full
detail, all sensors involved, but there's not
an ounce of fear or threat involved in any of
it. Everything sort of feels positive and feels
right. And then, yeah, so I then just felt a
tap on my leg and took my mask off and it was
the therapist that's offering me the supplementary
dose. My blood pressure had gone up a little
bit, so I just... They took me through some breathing
exercises just to get my blood pressure down.
But all I said to them at that time was this
is a time machine because that's exactly what
it felt like. It was amazing just the amount
of detail in it. So I took the supplementary
dose, went back inside, spent another probably
two hours in there and some of it was going through
the same job, some of it was going through some
other. Most of it was fire brigade related, but
it did get taken back to East Timor with these
two dead soldiers. And they're the same thing.
They come back to life and they're just standing
in the jungle, all their family around them,
and just kind of waving, smiling. Everything,
it sounds silly saying, but everything just feels,
it just felt right. It felt positive. And again.
The only way I can really explain it to the therapists
in the second break was that, again, it was another
Happy Gilmore reference, but when Chubbs and
the alligator are standing in the cloud just
sort of waving and smiling, it was exactly the
same as that, but this is these two sort of dead
Indo soldiers, the bad guys, but at the time
a lot looked back and waved to them. And the
other one that I was talking about the night
that my old man died. um got taken back to that
but the got taken back to when we're at dinner
at their place earlier but instead of leaving
it was like i stayed around and just watched
my dad take my two boys to go and brush their
teeth put them to bed read them a story and then
he came out it was just doing the dishes and
just seemed Really happy, really content. He
sat and watched TV for a bit and then went to
bed and then it kind of fast -forwarded through
to when we were in the hospital with him. And
I was in the room with him after he'd passed
away and he was just kind of... Kind of comforting
me, acknowledging that I was struggling with
it. But then when I left him in there, he was
standing up. The same thing at the time when
I broke down, when I looked back at him, I just
couldn't leave him alone in that room. Looked
back, but instead of sort of feeling all that,
I could see him at the door giving me a bit of
a wave and a smile at the door and I just sort
of thought that's... He actually had, instead
of it being, like it was one of the worst nights
of my life, but for him it was actually quite
a pleasant night. Like he got to spend time with
his grandkids, quality time with the family,
and then in this re -experiencing of it, he's
basically quite happy going where he was going.
So that was pretty much the way the whole thing
went. It sort of felt like in that, that was
probably the two times after I dosed was so four
hours of just going through every almost negative
experience in my life but changing the emotional
tenor of it to being a positive one. And when
I came out after the second dose, the second
top -up, I debriefed the therapists with everything
that I'd been through. And that was really the
only therapy part of the dosing day. So I've
seen on how to change your mind that some of
them are actually under the influence and talking
to the therapist. But with me, my therapist encouraged
me to stay inside as much as I could just to
try and get as much out of the medicine as possible.
So debriefed them. At one stage, and I know I've
had it with other psychedelics in a different
setting, is where you come up with the meaning
of life and you know that... you've got something
massive and profound. You've just got to try
and remember it when you come out of the effects
of the drug. And I kind of had that, but I knew
that I'd told the therapists when I came out,
I knew I told them what the meaning of life was
basically and these messages that I was getting
from deep inside. But then the next day when
I had my integration, I said, oh, can you just,
I said, I know I told you what this real profound
message was. And he starts flicking through his
notes and he goes, oh, yeah, I found it here.
It's all good. I was like, fuck, no, it's not.
I was like, that's way deeper than that. Like
it wasn't, it was something, it was more than
that. Have a look through your notes. You said
it's all good. But I guess at the time it was,
that's what I was getting from all these dead
people that at the time I'm thinking, you know,
it's a horrible way to go. It's, you know, for
them, it's horrible. What I was getting was it's
actually all good. They've got, you know, in
those moments as they're going from life to death.
they're having this experience where they're
seeing everyone that they've loved and actually
sort of feeling calm and relaxed about the whole
thing. So then, yeah, after I did that, I started
to feel, because the MDMA sort of comes in waves,
sort of started to feel it come back a bit. So
they just encouraged me to go back inside, covered
me up with some weighted blankets and I probably
had another hour. back inside but this time when
i went in um we went back to the house and everyone
was there but then got pulled out to um again
it sounds a bit silly when i say it but it was
like being at a um on a ski resort where you're
halfway up the hill and you're at a restaurant
or whatever it might be and there's lifts going
up and lifts going down and people going but
all of these dead people that have been at the
house and their families were there in a big
line And they were either jumping on a snowboard
and going down the hill or jumping on a ski lift
and going up the hill. And it was this big, like,
you know, infinity -type figure -eight thing
that they were going down. And I said goodbye
to my old man. He jumped on a snowboard and took
off down the hill. He'd never snowboarded a day
in his life. But for me, it just felt – I love
the snow, and so maybe that sort of played into
it. But for me, it was just a way of actually
saying goodbye. And, yeah, it was just really
cool. It was just seeing everyone actually say
goodbye to their family and have a chance to
do that and then jump off and ride down the hill.
I mean, it's so powerful listening to you explain.
I know, as you alluded to before, that's just
the tip of the iceberg of the experience that
you had. But some of the things that popped out
immediately. Firstly, I've talked about this
on the show a lot. I never had a single code
save in 14 years. And that's, you know, including
the, you know, time as a paramedic ride along
and my EMT clinicals and, you know, volunteering
for a little bit like zero and the black cloud.
And so that inability to save is crushing. And
I've said this before, you know, we've got to
be careful how we train. young firefighters and
paramedics because if the expectation is if you
do a b and c then you get sinus rhythm and then
they give you a hug and then they bring a cake
to the station a week later you're setting them
up for failure because you know 95 of codes will
die you know things even higher depending on
where you are um so there's that shame and the
guilt but we showed up and we trained as diligently
as we could for that moment And, you know, a
lot of times, especially if it's someone in a
more desperate situation, you know, we might
be the only person that would have shown up at
that point. So both of those experiences, that
initial trauma coming from the shame and the
guilt of, you know, not being able to help these
people, not being able to help your father, now
kind of come full circle where you're forgiving
yourself because you didn't do anything wrong.
You know, you showed up prepared with the equipment,
with the team. to see these people kind of, you
know, be like, it's okay. And I think when we
talked off, off the, um, you know, not prior
to the recording, excuse me, you'd said about
that. It was like that they, they just had this
gratitude for even being there. And I've, you
know, held many hands of people that died right
in front of me numerous, numerous times. And
so it is beautiful the way it's reframed in the
mind because that shame and the guilt has no.
No place whatsoever. It's completely unfounded
in our profession. Unless you were the world's
worst paramedic and you did everything wrong,
then yeah, maybe. But for everyone else, we had
all the best intentions to try and bring that
person back from the brink, but it wasn't their
time. It was their time to go. It wasn't their
time to be brought back. removing all that emotion
and allowing yourself to tap back in and then
really kind of revisit these in a positive way
it's no wonder that this drug works so well with
so many of us because that moral injury that
a lot of us carry from first responders from
war you know it's something that most people
will never understand now i think i think we
spoke about it early on in the conversation um
about what we're looking for on the recruitment
side of things and empathy empathy and humility
are big parts of i think what makes people good
firefighters or paramedics or or police officers
so if you've got someone with that empathy empathy
is feeling someone else's pain so it not everyone
that see you know everyone sees sees these traumatic
events differently and not everyone's going to
be affected the same it can just be the way they
think about it and me coming through so it's
now been seven or eight months since i did a
second dosing cycle in february so it's been
seven months since the second dose and when i
had my six month follow -up i barely raised a
blip on the pts scales but sorry ptsd scales
but i also have been to a number of fatalities
since and Whatever changed in my brain on that
day has endured up to now in that I don't enjoy
going to a fatality, but when I do go, it's almost
that I can see a positive side to it. So it's,
like I said, I've still got the empathy. I still
feel for the person, but I've reframed it. I
think some people just have that naturally. You're
seeing it all day and you're not affected by
it. Maybe they've got a process where they can
do it. I think we spoke about it a couple of
weeks ago and you were saying the same thing
with your beliefs and what happens afterwards
can help when you're dealing with that sort of
trauma. But for me, yeah, I couldn't until now.
And I can't remember if we spoke about it or
not, but a mate who was working as one of our
wellness officers put me onto a process called...
the pause or the sacred pause did we have we
mentioned that um i can't remember so again i
mean we've talked three times now because of
the the internet let's just talk about it again
just in case yeah it's just it's something that
um it kind of makes a lot of sense i think it
came out of of uh emergency rooms in the us after
a particularly bad job where they work on someone
for a fair bit of time and then lost them um
and it was almost like wheel the body out everyone
was sort of standing there like they needed something
but There was going to be someone else wheeled
in that needed help. But they just took literally
30 seconds just to pause and reflect on that
person. And there's a little sort of paragraph
that goes along with it, something like, let's
just take a minute to remember Matt. He was loved
by people and loved people, and now he's not
going to be in their life. It's something like
that. You can make it what you want to make it.
For me, I started using that afterwards and started
working it into like a post -incident, like a
hot debrief at the scene because normally it's
just make your gear up, jump in the truck and
go back to station and get ready for the next
one. Whereas this just gives everyone that time
to instead of, you know, to actually sort of
start processing that we have dealt with someone
who's died and, you know, they're not going to
be around anymore instead of just, you know.
I guess when you're in an incident, you get that
tunnel vision and you're supposed to get the
tunnel vision so we can stick with what we need
to do operationally. But there's a lot of other
things going in our eyes and in our ears and
into our brain that we're not really aware of.
So this just gives you a chance to, I guess,
start unpacking that, but also to personalise
the experience and you're actually dealing with
a person here, not just, you know, it's not just
a dummy in a training drill. I think I can't
remember again if it was this interview or prior.
But yeah, because I remember when when you told
me that I did do that. When I think back, I always
sat with the body for a moment and just just
had that that brief moment. And it was I guess
I was probably saying I'm sorry, but it wasn't
like, again, coming from a crippling guilt or
shame that we did anything wrong. It's just I'm
I'm sorry that this has come to an end at this
point because. You know, my whole philosophy
is I don't know what's next, but I know that
I fucking love this life at the moment. So for
me, it's still sad when we lose someone. Now,
hopefully there's something beautiful next. And,
you know, that ties in. But that was definitely
something that I did very deliberately, whether
it was, you know, DOA, 90 year old, you know,
cancer patient who'd finally passed away or whether
it was someone that was, you know, nailed by
a semi. It was the same kind of thing. It was
always just like, OK. making sure that you stay
connected that this was a human being with people
that love them that's now being lost and just
just acknowledging that tragedy because it is
tragic and then you know circling around to what
you were able to experience turning that into
a positive way but you were there you responded
to that point but yeah i mean if you just see
people as you know cadavers then i think that
again can be detrimental to your mental health
yeah because i think as as humans we know you
can tell yourself and again i did a fair bit
of anatomy at uni so i was used to cadavers and
bodies and but in that context they are just
body parts and and you're in a nice calm environment
when you're at incidents it's generally a fair
bit of stuff going on and as humans you can sort
of tell yourself whatever you want to tell yourself
but the reality is there's things that are going
to happen as empathic beings that uh you know
they start to build up and and change the way
that your brain's working i think absolutely
well sadly depending on which country people
listening to this on you may have to go underground
to find this incredibly powerful treatment for
mental health but you alluded to in australia
obviously it's a lot more accessible so for people
listening in your part of the world how are they
able to start the road to accessing this treatment
themselves That's a real tricky one. When I went
in for... I still see Dionne for therapy. That
was part of the... I had a works comp review
after my second dosing cycle and she was basically...
The psychiatrist I saw just said, like, you basically
don't have PTSD anymore, but, you know, continue
on, just still keep seeing the psych every three
or four weeks. Which then, strange enough, means
the insurance company says it's maintenance treatment
and they're not going to fund it. So kind of
back to my six sessions a year. God forbid you
get into preventative care. That just sounds
crazy talk. Yeah. But, yeah, so when I went in
last week, I was just asking one of the staff
there that works next door at the MDMA, where
they do the MDMA therapy. But they had... I think
it was, say, from July last year to July this
year, they had 30 people through the program,
and this year they've had 60 through already.
So it's getting bigger, and some of the big insurers
here are starting to fund it. And I know we're
covered by the state government insurance. I
was the first one to get the approval, to get
that approval. So I paid for it up front, and
then I got every cent paid back from insurance,
which was great, and work were really good with
advocating for that. But I know there's – I've
got another mate from work who starts in the
next couple of weeks. So he's already got funding
approval for three full cycles, which is really
cool to hear. As far as getting – there's only
– when I did mine, there was only three psychiatrists
in – I think it was either in Western Australia
or in Australia total that were – that were licensed
prescribers of MDMA. So while it's been classified
as a medication, it's still under a special license.
So that makes it really hard to get access to.
I don't really have a real answer to you. I did
my treatment through the clinic where I was seeing
the psychologist, which is called the PAX Centre.
And MPACS is the company that's doing the...
mdma assisted therapy and now they've got approval
to do psilocybin assisted therapy um which is
the combination of ameria which is the the pharmaceutical
company or the research company more than pharmaceuticals
research company um so yeah all i can say is
probably if they speak to their gp or their their
doctor or psychiatrist about it and then try
and figure out an avenue in from there otherwise
I think if everyone starts bombarding the PAC
center, they're probably going to get, they're
going to run out of slots pretty quickly. Yeah.
I mean, but that explains it though. Supply and
demand. You know what I mean? And even from an
insurance point of view, and I was talking to
Ben Sessa, you know, if you have a therapy that
costs, I mean, I know you were alluding to Australian
dollars. So it's even less to people listening
American. I think it's almost like two to one.
So let's say, you know, 15 ,000 us for the three
treatments together, 20 ,000. What is that going
to save down the road for all the mental health
treatments and the psychiatric meds and everything
else when you can literally knock this on its
head with three sessions? And then, as you mentioned,
the imperative top up sessions, of course, life
doesn't just suddenly become like a Disney movie.
So even financially. It makes so much sense.
For mental health, there's not many medications
that actually cure a mental health condition.
They're used to manage it. You go on SSRIs. For
some people, they could go on them for a few
months just while they have some intensive treatment
and come off, but largely people stay on them
for life. I've seen it in my 20 years in this
job is people don't come back from taking...
workers' comp leave for mental health. They'll
have probably 12, 18 months off work and then
they're medically retired. So it's a really small
cost in the scheme of things to say if you're
doing the three cycles, you have three months
off work because a big part of it is the changes
in your brain from the MDMA persist for three
or four weeks afterwards. Ben and Cesar talking
to you about that was that neuroplasticity. The
neuroplasticity is a really important thing.
Your brain stays in that altered state essentially
for a few weeks and that's why the integration
afterwards is so important and that's probably
why I'd probably just if people are looking at
the underground sources of this sort of treatment
is that they do it pretty cautiously because
the therapy side of it is really important. I
think I probably had underplayed the role of
the MDMA as far as the experiential side of it.
So that phenomenological aspect of it is very
important and the MDMA is very important. But
if you go in underprepared or you don't really
have a clear intention, you haven't really worked
out through therapy what's going on for you,
I think some people could have a really negative
experience from it. So it's one of those ones
you can't just... grab some MDMA off the street.
And also you never really know what you're getting
with this. It's pharmaceutical grade straight
out of a chemist. So, yeah, I think people have
to be a little bit careful, but money -wise it's,
like, say for us it's $30 ,000 for the course
of treatment and three months off work, so make
another $30 ,000, $60 ,000 to fix someone. And,
you know, for me... I'd like to be doing another
15 years if I could. I can do that now because
of a relatively small investment in the scheme
of things. Well, this is what makes these conversations
so amazing. And obviously, this is why I have
the podcast is to immerse people in all these
different tools. MDMA may not be the right fit
for one person. It might just be equine therapy.
talk therapy and that's all they need, all that
person needs. But then you've got others that
need a full Ibogaine because they've got a crushing
addiction at the same time. But understanding
that there's this toolbox, I think is so important
because now you restore hope. If someone's just
done EMDR and psychotherapy and they're like,
well, I'm broken. They can't fix me. There's
no point. Why should I carry on? But then someone
holds their hand and said, well, look, there's
all these other things that you can try. Don't
give up yet. Try these other things. You know,
the most powerful thing I'm getting from all
these conversations is post -traumatic growth.
And, you know, we have a very victim mindset
really ingrained into American society here,
where, for example, you know, when I hurt my
back, I could have gone down the back injury
medical retirement route. But I was like, well,
no. If I hurt my back with a trauma, there's
got to be ways where I can fix my back with movement,
with strengthening, with all the things. And
there's some things like my knees, my meniscus,
that was surgery because it was flapping around.
There was no rehab in that. But with the back,
I was able to do it through foundation training,
through movement, through chiropractic. And so
then, like the other day, I did a firefighter
kind of fundraiser fitness competition that I
do every year. And it was numerous deadlifts
and all kinds of stuff at 51, and I'm still doing
it. And I'm not breaking world records, but I
overcame that back injury, figured out how I
got hurt in the first place, fixed those things,
and made it even stronger. And I think this is
the hope of post -traumatic growth. When you
tell your story and all these other people that
have come on here tell their story, and not like
I am fixed, I'll never be sad again, but I came
out of that dark, dark place. I went through
the crucible, and now I am. mat 2 .0 i'm a better
version of a more resilient version of myself
that then gives hope to the people that are struggling
like oh no if i get through it's not going to
be living with my ptsd air quotes and my therapy
dog and all this stuff and i don't mean to sound
condescending but that's the message that's given
yeah versus fuck that i'm going to go through
and i'm going to use this trauma to to become
a strength the same way as i became a good firefighter
because i went through some shit when i was young
that never ends And so I think this is what makes
it so powerful about your story and so many others
on here. And thank you so much for telling it
is that I hope people listening were going. So
I can get better, not just better. I can be a
better version of myself than I was prior to
going through these struggles. And I think if
that was front and center, it would really inspire
people to actually do the work and look for the
solutions. Yeah. And I think I was a really big
fan of EMDR. And like I said, The way EMDR works
is very similar to the MDMA and the feeling of
it is very similar. And the difference is with
the EMDR, you kind of have to, one is that your
amygdala is not taken offline. So with me, towards
the, after 10 years of having that treatment,
I was just getting to the point where there was
too much in there and I was getting a lot of
negative and a lot of, I was getting really confused
and discombobulated when I was having the EMDR
and I was leaving feeling worse than when I started.
But when I first. had it it worked a treat it
it actually i think it helped me reprocess some
of those things but obviously there's a little
bit too much that built up as well as you know
that's that's just my my makeup but i never i
wasn't never really a big fan of of post -traumatic
growth because again it was me probably being
a bit defensive but i sort of saw it as if you've
got post -traumatic stress and post -traumatic
growth then Post -traumatic growth is a choice
and, you know, I'm failing because I can't turn
these things into growth and it was a sense of,
I guess it was a sense of shame for me, you know,
I should be able to and probably a little bit
more. open to seeing a psychologist and maybe
a little more educated on some of these psychological
things. So I should be one that's actually having
this post -traumatic growth instead of really
struggling with it to the point where I can't
stay at work anymore. But having gone through
this, that's exactly what it is. It's of being
able to have a massive mindset change where it
has been. And probably what this does is it helps
you remember everything as well. There's all
these things in your brain that you've packed
down or you've compartmentalised without decompartmentalising
it. So I can now remember everything in graphic
detail, but like I said, it's now been remembered
with a positive charge to it. The line I like
from a Pearl Jam song is the... Who forgets will
be destined to remember. And I think that's exactly
what it is. If you forget about it, it's going
to come back up. You need to keep remembering
these things. And this treatment just gives you
that way to remember it but to come out with
that. It really is post -traumatic growth. You're
growing from it. You're becoming a better person
and better able to handle life afterwards. Beautiful.
Well, Matt, I want to be mindful of your time.
I know it's super late there in Brisbane now.
I think collectively we've been talking for well
over two hours now. So for people listening,
if they want to follow you or reach out to you,
whatever it is, where are the best places online
to do that? I'm always happy to chat with people,
as you can probably tell by this podcast. I don't
mind a chat. I'm on Facebook, Instagram. I'm
always happy for people just to... Send me a
DM or a PM or whatever they call them on those.
I've done it with several of your guests just
to reach out and hit them up just to try and
get some information on peer support or some
of the processes. So, yeah, I'm more than happy
to chat to people on those. Brilliant. Well,
I'll put your Instagram on the show notes so
people, if they can't find you online, they can
look there. I want to thank you so much. So,
so much, as I say to so many people that really
come here and have the courage to be truly vulnerable,
you know, your stories are saving lives full
stop. And then especially when we're venturing
into these areas that some people still frown
upon, pulling that veil back and showing the
healing qualities when done responsibly of some
of these. And again, not going to save every
single person, but. is another tool in the toolbox.
It's so important. But to hear it from you, from
a nation where they've actually allowed their
citizens to have access to this lifesaving treatment,
it's been phenomenal to hear. So I want to thank
you so, so much for being so generous with your
time and coming on the Behind the Shield podcast
today. Yeah, thanks, man. I appreciate the opportunity.
It worked so well for me. I just hope that...
Other people that are listening that are getting
to the end of their rope or, you know, something
like this could really turn their life around
or, you know, save their life. So I think it's
just an important message to get out there.