Advocating for Mental Health

You've done a lot of hard things in your life. Why was getting out of the military the hardest thing that you've had to do No one ever prepared you for it When you get in the teams, any military, but especially special operations, it becomes your identity. It becomes the only thing you do and it becomes a justification for everything you don't do. Why don't you do this because it' will affect the end state When you transition away from it, you never thought it was going to be hard. You thought you were going to transition, you were going to find that same love and passion and energy you had for being in the military. And then when you don't find it, it's a huge fall from grace. But I mean you hear these fairy tales of billares is going to pay you hundreds of thousands of dollars to live on as a ranch and to do nothing but tell war stories and shoot coyotes and whatever. any place you want to go, they'll pick you up because of your background, because of your resume and all these different things. and you get out, you quickly realize That's all a lie No one's going to pay you to a compound assault. No one's going to pay you to skydive. No one's going to pay you to assault a cruise ship or whatever else you did They don't exist. So I've spent my entire adult life developing a skillet nobody wants What am I supposed to do now I don't know how to do anything. Im to Home Depot. Like, what am I supposed to do I've avoided getting my picture taken for twenty years I've avoided conversations with normal people. I don't have a Rolodex because I've never opened myself up to anybody who wasn't inside of that twelve man team I don't have anybody. I don't know the CEO of Apple or Google. I don't know any of these people. There's nothing for me to do except contract which just keeps you in the same.s the exact same thing. You're with the same people, the same deployment schedules, same routine, and you just chip away until you're too old to do anymore and then you just phiz out. That must feel to a lot of special operators like they basically can't out a leave. Exactly Even the guys who do leave, the majority of them they're either miserable or they transition to a job that's so similar to the military. It's like they're still in. What like Contracting, agency work, black waterater, triple canopy, stuff like that. you're basically doing a very similar job just you get paid a little bit more? orr the guys just come right back in We've had guys get out and go to Goldman Sachs and try to reinvent themself. They make it six months, three years Nope right back in. No way. Oh yeah. they miss it that much I mean Wall Street trading feels a lot. It's probably the closest thing that you can get to war in the finance world H Yeah, if the adrenaline of million dollar movements every couple of seconds on a market isn't good en for you got to get back into something with a bit more of a Kinetic energy Kinetic energy is, what it is. You need something where You have a little bit ofisk of dying. R? You've never felt more alive than when you're right on the teetering edge of death. And once you feel badly and you survive it. Okay, more of that Whatever that was, I need to feel that again. Itn't matter if it's skydiving, if it's combat, if it's whatever else You're ching me adrenalind dum. I need I need to feel the adrenaline whatever I'm doing But they don't feel it? What does that feel like You ever been in like a bad car accident or almost in a bad car accident? Yes When you get done your handshake a little bit. H. can't believe I made it through that It's one of those and then it becomes Of course I made it through that. I've been training to make it through that. And then it's almost like an ego check. Like how close can I come Or how successful can I be with everything you do How much can I plan? How much can I dedicate my life to buy down as much risk as seemingly possible to be effive on the battlefield whatever that battlefield might He's saying that Being a soldier, being a special operator is essentially A war equivalent of an extreme sport that people decide to do recreationally. Exactly Exactly. You'd be surprised how many guys do extreme sports while why they're in or that was what they did when they came in. L mine was skateboarding. you got guys Andy was big into the skydiving, base jumping, wingsuiting, all of that How many guys come from the MMA world ultra competitive world? And we get inside there it Okay, well, if I mess this up, there is no Bronze medal. If I mess this up, I'm going to die or worse, you'll die O people too other people not How much of a different Eergy? Do it give things if you're someone that's an adrenaline junkie that's happy to do dangerous things for yourself your decisions and your actions almost going to put somebody else in danger too. Does that make it more exciting? When you're putting your friends lives in danger, that's where it's not exciting. You're trying to buy down as much of that as possible. and it's really want you to do is just obsess over your craft to where you can control all the variables because it makes it safer. And it's where a lot of the leadership really don't buy off on that If you want to make skydiving safer, make it mandatory to skydive more Lqu and you'll tell you the same thing The most dangerous person in the military is a skydiver with one hundred and eighty jumps that thinks he is a ninja is not If you want to make it safe, have thousands of skydives and jump every single week every single month and stack those years over years and you buy them majority of the risk.s the same thing as need to be ising three thousand, something like that. mayaybe even more. He's got to have more that. I'm at four thousand. He's been jumping long than M. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, but that's how you buy down the risk God do it more. G gott to fight more, got to shoot, got to jp more, got operate more. So me and him, we had this conversation two days ago. And he goes, do you think if we limited how much combat people saw you wouldn't have such a huge fall from grace You know, anxiety, suicide ideation, all those things. when they leave it, if you could compartmentalize them and not let them burn the candle at both ends. Do you think that would be better off for him I said absolutely no they need it That's how you get really, really good Could you imagine if if I locked you in a room, I never let you play another team and then you just played on the Super Bowl? in this Super Bowl if you lose your die That's not very good. I want to play every single day We're doing two at days the entire time gettingt ready to go. buys down the ris And it increases your confidence and confidence in the entire team. That's where you see Level to unlock when everybody truly believes that you have covered all your basis. I couldn't burn another rep, I couldn't spend another hour. We're as good as you could humanly be Ople. How many times have you been undployment and seeing somebody that shouldn't have been there based on expertise or disposition you know Andy came through and explained an awful lot about what his selection was like and then he went back and was the guy with the bullhorn as opposed to facing it Um And you think, well, this is supposed to weed out people that aren't supposed to be there. It's incredibly rigorous. But it can't be perfect and simply can't be perfect because it's unable to replicate what you're actually there to do So Yeah, have there been any times when you've got out there and thought that guy' not, you shouldn't be here with us There's definite times when you get people inside the team you wish were not there You just do. Like you get there and you're like, man But it goes back to you know, I had a mentor, hes talked about being clonable Would we be better off if I had five of you? If the answer's not yes, then you shouldn't be here at all. I don't even want one of you So why they might not be the best guy for the job, if you can compare them to all the other guys you've worked with are so much better. that it doesn't really matter. group the strength of the overall collectiveion is going to make up whatever deficiency he might have. if it's a cultural thing or a personality trait Those are harder to navigate, believe it or not because everybody can perform that you're not going to find a guy that can't shoot, move, communicate, skydive, dive, do all the things He might not be a ten where this guy is But he's a solid eight, no matter what his personality I just don't like. and nobody off us either So I was learning about the way that bands form. I've been thinking a lot about music over the last couple of years And not Many times you might have someone that's a savant guitarist or an unbelievable bassist But they're a shit hang. onn the tour bus. And what you don't see, I suppose Um the job is not finished in the bounds of what you do professionally, it's well How do you impact the morale of the team And what's the energy that you bring when you're on your way to a job and on your way back from a job and how the debrief are you keeping in touch when you're not on tour, whether you're a musician or a comedian or a special operator Like are you whatsapping every so often? Are you kind of keeping that connection? and what's the sort of vibe that you get Do you just low key irritate everybody? Or is it just a mismatch of this one particular type of personality? Maybe if you were with a different group your annoyances wouldn't annoy quite so much? you know, can have people? There are certain people that are universally annoying, and there are some people that are specifically annoying, like idiosyncratically annoying. But whatever it is, it's, hey, this particular node doesn't slot into this particular network You you get that At a certain level, we do a draft So when you get to the tier one organizations, they draft you no dance to do in football or anything else. they break you off performance Performance, culture, trusts, all these different things. And you might get a guy that checks into your team. He's there for six months, two years, whatever. it's just not working. Sometimes they will lateral transfer him to a different team. Personality is perfect cultural doesn't clash and just everything makes sense for them You see that Ion't say often but offt enough to where you remember it. explain how the different tiers and things work. I have an understanding of this from the British side I've never really learned it when it comes to Very similar. Do you think baseline and Everybody will say they are higher tier than they actually are So a lot of people say that the SEL teams are tier two They're not. It's a two or three It's A lab is based off your parent unit. in your response times to catastrophic things Okay, so if you're anywhere on the planet within thirty six hours, you're quite high Or sometimes you're on a thirty minute recall And That's where you live for months throughout the year thirty minute recall, that page goes off, that text goes off. you were on an airplane in thirty minutes, you've got to go. No fucking way. I me go Anxiety just boosts you. I mean like, you know, Really, it isn't much. and I was just talking about this not too long ago. you get more funding, but really what they do is for the tier one organizations They cover all the logistics. They put you inside of Disneyland all the ranges, all the assets, all the intelligence folks, the human performance, the best gyms. everythingverything you could imagine is inside of a compound. they stick you inside it and they try to lock you inside it Just come here and only focus on a craft becausecause as soon as we tell you to go, you're going to have to go at one hundred percent. You're ready to go. The other ones It's a very similar workup routine It'll be a year, two years long sometimes and you'll for deploy, do operations for X amount of months, three, six, nine, twelve, whatever the unit deployment cycle is you come back, rinse and repeat Volunteer one organizations, it's just a constant Revolution O and over and over again It's amazing. How long are you doing this? I joined Navy in two thousand two and I retired in August of twenty nineteen So right at seventeen years And How long Ter one side twenty ten til twenty nineteen So you did nine years of being on call within thirty minutes basically. Not the entire time, but every year you spend a significant block of it on the alert schedu amazing becausecause you matter And you wake up every day You're watching the news, you're hearing all the intntel bries and you have a dude stuck up in your locker or up in the team room that you're actively just hunting with your friends all day long and you're just waiting for some dude to send out a text and you're gonna go, yes. So you know, have little cod words with the wife, like going fishing with the boys where you going fishing that I have no idea Wow takeake off and go That is that is the coolest thing you can do in the milar. Why because it's just like in the movies You've seen the greatest waror movie ever made, Navey Seals in the middle of that wedding. That's what everybody wants. I want to be in the middle of That Pager goes off, Gotta go right now, right now. Leave. Three people from the party leave, It's a lot of pressure but it gives a reason why. On those days you don't want to get up, You're going to get up The team deserves it, the mission deserves it, the nation deserves it G it up and go And now that I'm out, I get to see these savants throughout their cf. They guys go down and talk to Houston Rock. It's Kevin D Rantance over and you can four goalld medals, one the greatest is a greatest score and in Olympic basketball history And you get to see what they do day in and day. Steh Curryes of the world little Bron James Michael Phelps, Tiger Woods, all those people. Do you see parallels? Bet what was constructed for you guys and what is constructed for them too. They just self made it They live in isolation, they broke out a routine, that just super exceeds everybody else's minimum standard because nobody else can main it if you If I dropped Sth cururry on that table right there, I was like, walk me through a typical day in life of Steph Curry. He's got a minimum shot routine, he's got his warm upps, his workouts, his massage therapy, the cold plunges, like whatever he does, He just does it unbroken for so much longer than everybody else. That's why he's able to hit that level and maintain it for a twenty year career where' the average lifpan at NBA guys Four and a half coming up on twenty. It's not a fluteke, It's not luck. it's notetics Yeah, like At a certain point, like people want to say, it must be nice Sorry nothing nice about his schedule, notothing He's been liaving that unbroken. That's why you know his name What else to say? Like Michael Pelt, he's a fre He's a free genetically gifted for sure His discipline is why he has all the sil medals If I would have given him a baseball bout at eight years old and never put him in a swimming pool, you'd still know that. That's why you seem when they transition now youre like Michael Glfing. He's an amazing golfer Just imagine if we' doing it since he was four Hy Tiger Wood The work ethic, to discipline and the passion it takes to hit that level, it's a universal There's a cool thought experiment Brian Klass wrote a aboutook called Fluke And he's talking about, um realities that are convergent or coincidence. And he's basically saying if you were to run reality back thousandousand times in all of the other universes, in how many of them would you have got an extraordinary outcome, the talking about this.. I get the sense that someone like Michael Phelps is nine hundred of the thousand uniververses, he becomes world class in a thing And the goal, I think should be to try and construct a life where in as many universes as possible you would have ended up with the kind of outcome that you're looking to have. I' the same thing If you live the routine, if you look at every rep they've ever burned throughout their entire life and you just replace with a different medium That is the recipe for success just ten thousand hours. they've logged so much more than I mean, you break ten thousand hours down four hours a day. Is it roughly eight years breakdown E hours a day, roughly four years. That's why I tell guys, once you get into your lane, if you sacrifice everything else for the first four years, you lay down those ten thousand hours You can find a balance point for the rest of your career. That's just not what I did That's what most of the guys didn't do. drinking party and chasing women and doing the whole thing. Sit your hair on fire and run around throughout your early twenties, notot what I wish I would have done So you got to make it that time on the backside Be a pro, be a pro early Yeah, a lot of the time U at the live shows that I do, Young G typically come up and they hear me talking about, well, I'm trying to use other fuel source is than just putting my foot on the gas pedal. I'm trying to give myself time to be creative because there's leverage in creativity that there isn't in white knnuckling it. In fact, we did manage to white knnuckle something today, which is one of the few times in my history that I've white knuckled creativity, but it's very rare And that's huge step changes because of what I do maybe if you are somebody that's doing a special kind of battle plan for you guys that's in the intelligence side and they're trying to come up with the perfect operation to reverse engineer exactly You know, that's the guy that you'd probably actually need in a hammock for a couple of hours a day just thinking about shit. But for the most part, and in most industries, and even him back in the day when he was learning exactly how intelligence assets move and what the different ways that this geographic region relates to this particular culture and what this guy did in his background, he was doing his eight hours a day. and Young guys come and ask because they're hearing me talk about I'm trying to use different leverage functions as opposed to what I did for best part of two decades, which was like nose grindstone. just just doing that, eating shit And'd be I'd typically ask them, I, you look pretty young. How old are you? I'm twenty two. not bro I don't mean to be that patronizing asshole that was to me when I was twenty two but you're made of rubber and magic the moment Like you're indestructible. You can do you can do fourteen, sixteen hour days for multiple days in a row, then have one day where you have a bit more sleep and then run it back and run it back and run it back. And yeah The games of front loading your skill acquisition h and setting down those paths of least resistance. what do I expect? You know how many Uh guys end up in the seals what probablyrob in some form of bought as a kid, some degree of disciplined a routine Probably many. Now I know that there's some, Andy's told me just total tearaways seemed like how the fuck is this redneck guy that never did. but even within them, you can see something, there's some sort of spark that seems to sort of lock them in But yeah, defining your paths of least resistance by setting your habits early I think is a It's a superpower. It's a way, it's a superpower that you can give yourself it becomes routine. It becomes easy. You don't even realize you're doing it I I have in I have an amazing support group on social, it's amazing I'm shocked with the amount of people that hit me up and they say this phrase. I just can't get up that early You have a twelve hundred dollars phone in your pocket. The simplest featureon is the alarm. She said it C in I always hit snoozs. I've never hadit toneooed my whole life I have no idea what you mean So I'll give a tip. Instead of putting next to your night's in, because I knows where it is, put it in the wall eight feet off your bed Once you swing your feet out to unplug the phone, just continue the movement Next day to layout your clothes the night before, Get your bottle of water next to your bed, get your pills all laid out, everything you have to do in the exact order you're going to get dressed, watchatch how fast your morning routine closes Like I can be in and out of that house, rush or not rush Four and a half min C me fast But I've also had to live my life like that the whole time As soon as you feel the momentum getting created, you're like I just have to follow the routine. very easy I gott to get hurry. I jumped auber and Ive here last n J just to make sure I knew the building was, makeake sure I knew where the stairs were, right I don't want walk around. I don't be unprepared so that's why'm late for anything. I show up I dirt dab the night before, I knowew the traffic patterns I know everything's going to happen and then I just show until it Most people don't realize how much being dehydrated impacts their performance, which is why for the last five years, I've started pretty much every morning with Element. Element is a tasty electrolyte drink mix with everything that you need and nothing that you don't. This orange salt in a cold glass of water is like a Seet, salty, orangey nectar and I really tell the difference when I take it versus when I don't. It plays a critical role in reducing muscle cramps and fatigue, helps to optimize brain health and regulate your appetite while also curbing cravings. 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You won't see a panic attack grab somebody who is living that alert Surgeons have it, ER docs have it. likeike if that phone rings, you have to go, watch a dude who lives his life like that, go to zero bars or his phone does panic at the disco Because if that thing goes off and your phone is dead, there's no excuse for it. Just just constantly checking it all day. If your phone goes off in the next room I jump and grab my phone. Everybody else does too it back away Two thirty one try to fall back to sleep, it's hard to sleep because you're such on edge. you're waiting for that moment to come. You're waiting to spring out of it Just got to learn how to power down. It takes a long time though How exciting is being on a plane going out to do an operation when you've only had thirty minutes to get ready, but you've been thinking about it for a couple of months or years? ation. I mean, even on the Helo flight on a normal deployment, it's The greatest thing you'll ever do It is like there is nothing more set nothing that I found so far They can replace that feeling of setting on the Helo fine. thirty seconds out you get the call and you just watch all the guys. Thousand yard stairs. I mean they might as well be smoking cigarettes with their feet kaked up. They are so calm so ready to send it It makes you feel eerily comfortable I don't care what happens when that ram drops we are golden Great pressure to get there That's all it is. Like a lot of it's K kind of like meditating. You sit Iive, ho Whine of the engines, the smell of the fuel, Nobody's talking. Guys will put in iPods They won't just sit there and they'll kind of just blank stare out and you'll think about everything you're about to do the momentsent you land and you get off the Hilo, where youre gonna sit The Ho back bllast, blowing all the dust all over your hair. E You think about every single detail. so when you get there, if anything happens, I've rehearsed this fifty thousand times. It feels like I' I feel like you're all Nippped at the point There's not a single detail you have not thought of that I haven't thought of, we all collectively have not thought of. So everything gets wrong make it happen you have to think about it a lot You have to be obsesset You don't find a lot of guys that do that job who have extracurricular activities. I mean, when I got there, they make you sign a piece of papwork.' not going to try to get a college degree you're not try to get a real estate license for your first four or five years. I forget what it was We just want you to do this, notothing else So they realize the price of obsession and the benefits of obsession. And even if you don't, once you get there when you see the guys that have been doing it It confirms it They are amazing. Thear you think growing up, you, in that community spending all that time in the teams didn't getting to the You know, the varsity level that it would be roughly the same. It couldn't be forever part Everything they do is purpose built. Everything don't do is purpose built The morning routine, the workouts, the recovery, what they drink or don't drink and then how they departmentalizeed stress. I've never seen anybody do it better How so they can block it out No matter what happens You're on you're in the middle of an opop, you come back, you've been gone for four and a half months and you have an email, your wife just left, you took two kids and moved to Missouri right back to I'll that when I get home. They won't even care. They don't even think about it. You've seen that happen? M moreore times than Ic count Apartmentalization is like number one strength How bads it going right now? I don't know. I don't even think about it block it out It's hard to do though. When you get a family and you get all the other people that are drawing your time and attention, your bandwidth, it becomes hard to block out. surprised in some degrees, that There isn't a rule that you are not going to get married or start a family while you're inside of the I said that for years. in a perfect world they wouldn't And Kpop stars aren't allowed. They sign away on their contract when they go get created as a group Um I think it might even be to be celibate, but it's certainly to not have a partner abbsolutely to not get married, absolutely to not have kids. One of the interesting things, South Korea has got the lowest birth rate in the world and one of the reasons that some demographer, friends of mine think that's the case is that the single most powerful cultural export and cultural influence in career as KPop and all of the K pop stars by contontract unpartnered and childless. but if you can do it to people that Coordinated dances is on stage I would expect that there would be a tier that you would get to where the government says, hey, while you're here, I'm afraid You're in K pop mode I always say? builduild a lab. And you could build nothing but prmum masalters, what would you want them to be like Jented one Orphans, no wife, no kids, no external commitments, just focus on this craft. I mean that's why when you look at James Bonnie', he's focused fucking women. He is, but he's not He's not getting married. He has nothing So you get the hybrid between him and Neil McCauley from Heat C can't get attach anything you can'talk away from thirty seconds you feel he coming around the corner It's that kind of comparison then what do you want them to be able to do? Because you can't have it both. You can't have people that have no empathy. because you want this Captain America, this superhero figure that saving babies and killing the bad guy and rerecuing princess and all this nonsense. Is that really what you want? It now with in me have D don't have at all do you want And I feel like people can't make up their mind It's really interesting, you know the last few years, we've seen walk at that any. Uh I've been waiting so long drinking these. I'm going gonna allow you to enjoy this without me distracting you in case you're one you't find these in Virginia Beach There it is. Coast nut's good Good for you. Mrads. Thank you You know, we've never seen Kinetetic encounters be as widely broadcast as Russia, Ukraine Middle East. even this year, this year. It rockets going through Dubai hotel windows and stuff being shot down over airports kind of fascinated by collateral damage. is has always been a part of U well, or another way to put it would be sort of the The ugliness, even forget the collateral damage because I'm aware modern war techniques you would like to think We can minimize those. there can be precision that's done. and I think you get into a discussion that's probably pretty ret pretty honest there But another one would just be There are certain elements of war many elements of war. in Adjust messy and very ugly and that includes the people that are doing it. Uh and It's strange now to think that There's a level of sort of sanitization. that many people from a country want to who wouldn't want to be invaded or attacked are also unhappy with the peopleople who are doing it on their behalf who are the shield. or the spear. that are ensuring that they stay safe I don't like the way that they're doing it being done in a manner that seems uncouf. or barbaric Yeah insufficiently empathetic. and um I'm just interested in what you think about this additional level of of scrutiny around not just what happens which is one part of it, but the way that it happens to I want you to I want you to care more about this. and you go for every percent that I care My effectiveness goes down by However much more than a percent, I would imagine Um How do you come to think about that fromom the US side and I'll see from the five ey side. UK same way You put the soldiers at such a disadvantage tactically. because you're trying to mitigate all the risk to civilian populace They put that First and foremost So anythingything, but collateral damage. that is the number one thing they're concerned with. don't want to kill women, they don't want kids, they don't k innocent bosyiners and they put you at significant risk to try to avoid that They didn't do it in World WarI, they didn't anywhere else, but they're doing it now. I just wish people would shut their TV off and just say thanks. You don't really want to see what happens. You don't You're going to pick up a gun go do it You want to sit here and shine a bright lights at us and point fingers. I see what they're doing in Australia to B been Robert Smith. and I watch I watch the UK do with my buddy, Jamie You string these guys up like they're criminals. What is it that's happening with exam W crimes and stuff like that. likeike my buddy, J two two SAS, him and his whole team got wrapped up on a triple murder charge, saying they killed innocent Afghans who hadad AKs were shooting at them and enemy fighters and they spent up this whole campaign. They gave them a silver star equivalent for the operation. And then two years later, he can't come to the US becausecause he's got toirectode? Yeah. we've been trying to we're trying to fight it right now. We're trying to get someone to give him a visa to let him come to the US And right now it won't It's crazy. Now B Robert Smith and him SASR in Austalia, didn' the same thing he got the medal ofonor Like he is a he is a legitimate war hero and they're trying to string him up because They're saying he murdered Afghan civilians I haven't seen any Anybody by I've never seen a murder People don't do that. It's not a thing.. And people think it is in World War two is a thing World W I was a thing for sure. Vietnam probably a thing. It's not a thing now. Whise too much technology Ts too many eyes the sky, can' do it. You feel like you' under CCTV surveillance though. It's one hundred percent. So you're saying that it's not necessarily that guys wouldn't want to or that guys wouldn't It's that the likelihood of you being cold is so high that you know, if I do this, Jhab I don't w want to confuse murder with actual war But what you would classify as murder C me isn't murder. That guy has an AK, he's shooting out of a second story window at us. And if we go in there and kill him And he threw the guns six feet that way you're saying he's unarm No cousin. He was just shooting at that window. He just shot one of our dudes. And now you're saying because I plugged and I gun six feet over there He's not an enemy combatant. Yes, he is. They know how to play the game They're screwing with you because you can avoid the Okay, tell me tell me about what's happening from a enemy combatant standpoint where they're trying to manipulate those rules. Because now they know because we fought that war for way too long Start in Afghanistan and it's spilled over to Iraq. so you'd see these guys They shoot out of the windows, youd run in, you do a whole raid. You can't find a single gun in the house. No. How is this When I was outside the house, I saw you with a gun now I' inside theouse, I don't know where the fuck they. don't wear this. And you find a false wall with RPGs, explosives, everything in there Oh yeah, he's got a drop cloth, pulls it down throw it on there, slams it back up. There's a big post or a painting behind it and you just don't check and now we get really, really good at searching houses. Now we really get to see them But somebody else comes in there, you plug a guy in the corner, you take your photos, there's no gun next to him, you're going to jail for that There was a gun in here. No his wife grabbed it and shoved it in there. That's how it happened,. Why do you need to take photos to justify the kill because you ultimately're going gonna pay money at the end of the day Every person you shoot in Iraq or Afghanistan gets a cash pout Well they don't the family does R It's crazy whether they're a combatant or not ether's aboutat or How w you some money I don't remember off the top my head. I mean for a while, I think we were paying like five thousand dollars for a door. If you blew their door, you had to pay them money It might an expensive door Afgh. I've seen of the doors on video in Afghanistan. they don't look like five thousand do. No, they don't. But I mean To them, it's monopoly money. they just throw it out there. when it hurtss minds whenin it hurts minds why Why we win heart to minds? I'm not here to w hearts ofind I'm not here for that at all that a bit I don't care about hearts and minds. I know that makes me sound cruel. I'm not cruel. I'm of the nicest people I know But you can't play the game like that You cant Let's go both hands side behind your back. It's craz becausecause now they've been in this system so long, they know exactly how to manipulate it. They know exactly what to say. They're going to get thrown in jail for two weeks. They're gonna get fed three times a day more than they ever having their whole life, hot shower, clean bed, air conditioning, TV They'll get released and now they know the exact process. When did they get thrown in jail? Whenever you arrest him Okay, so you're basically, you're basically glorified police Yes unless you Unless it's Osama Bin Laden, like somebody else like in actual terrorist network You're just out there door to door gangbuster style Baghdad, two thousand five just hitting every house. You're just wrapping up as many military age mail as you can You find the A, you have all the atmospherics, you know what they're up to. And if you don't have a gun' wrapping them up. What's atmospherics U, I mean, all they're deep so Everything they're saying on cell phones, emails, radios, you have all that, you build out your profiles. So I know exactly who you are. I know exactly who your neighbor is, I know you're banging his wife. I know everything. So when I get there, you don't have a gun. I wp you in, take you in for questioning You don't give us anything, but now you know exactly what our tactics are. You know where I have to put you, You know exactly what to say to get released in forty eight, seventy two, two weeks, whatever it knows They go back out there, they spread the gospel to all their friends, and now they know And they get really good. It's like the Somali day cares of the Middle East. I don't get you started on smelling Yeah That's a place everyone to visit. You've seen Blackog then? most realisticorr movie I' ever seen It's exactly what it is Aome It's Lawa Do whatever you want to. It's like Lore of the F can do whatever they want to If I dropped you in Mogad isissue right now Be car market right now they cut your arms and legs off you' white Nobody's gonna stop him Wh why wouldn't your head, put it on out J zer burn American flag, they'll go off and a bunch cott and go sleep wake the morn and do I don't care It's lawless. Before we continue, most people in their thirties are still training hard. Their protein is dialed in. 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Best of all, there is a thirty day money back guuarantee plus free shipping in the US and they ship internationally. and right now you can get up to twenty percent off by going to the link in the description below or heading to timeline dot com slash modern wisdom and using the code mododern wisdom A check out that's timimeline. com slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom, a check out the like mutual level of danger. that you need to be able to match on both sides Um If you are made to adhere to a particular set of rules basically makes you less effective at your job. and more likely to be injured or killed Yeah. all in the name of Optics. It's a weird, man, It's a weird. becausecause I understand that You're supposed to be better Right? You're supposed to go in adhering to law. It's the same reason that Seeing a police officer who's texting while he drives feels particularly egregious Like, hey do You enforce the law, okay I feel like you're supposed to adhere to it. Come on, baby, better than that. Yes Plit the phone up. Yes M However, I wonder whether or not the modern world is incompatible. with some of the ugly things that need to happen in war Mhm. Anybody who's been to Afghanistan, anybody who's been to Iraq or any of the wars, they know If we really wanted to win that war We could win it fast They don't want us to win it first I don't know who doesn't Tell me more about this. what do you mean If you grabbed all the five eys US, UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand If you just grabbed us and dropped us into Iraq and said you have six months to close out the entire thing one hundred percent they don't want us to. And I think that's for a bunch of different reasons but one of them is you don't want to see what that actually looks like Like you don't want to watch special operations and all of this the whole military might push through fallusia and cleaar it all out They don't want to see what clearing fallusjia actually means. when you hear the Marine clear fallujia They don't know what that means. What does it mean? They went door to door and killed every single male that was still there Everybody who's willing to fight, they killed them all That's how you clear the village. The game him Told them the time, getet out by this day, if not, we're pushing through. and anybody who's left the fight, we're gonna to kill. All. That's what you did you do it Pople don't want to see that. peopleople don't want to live that. They don't realize that's reality. So all your grandfathers are fighting in World War II, I promise you they weren't handed out Hershey kisses and handsakes That's not what they did. They did flamethrers for God's sake Is Inegity was a flamethrower now? Noope. We can't even usemore minds. There's a whole bunch of stuff we used to use back in a day and because it's now its Too cruel and unusual Jve convention through it out B bunch of munitions you can't use, rounds, you can't shoot people with, a bunch of different weird stuff. Is that being adhered to by the other side? No blowing you up, they're doing whatever they want to suicide vest on children, like They do whatever they want to That makes it very, very hard to find So for you, you run in your dad, your husband, your your friend, your're an uncle littleittle kids all around, you have no idea if they have a suicide vest on now? Are they holding grenades for their father? You have no idea really makes you lose trust in people Now you don't know As soon as you drop your guard, one thing happens, you're like, I'll never let that happen again Technology advances, you get ew pieces of tech and now you can see through clothing you can buy down the risk a little bit, but they get very, very smart Th smart bombs they try to sneak through TSA all the time. They they understand exactly we're trying to do And you're trying to countn it every single How frustrating is that as someone whose life's on the line and also is trying to dedicate their career to doing this well. It's a big cat and mousek g I move my piece here, you move your piece. So you just you've kind of accepted this as the cost of doing business that you're going to have to adhere by set of rules that the other side doesn't have to. You're not allowed to pick the ball up you have to kick it they're allowed to pick it up and run with it It's exactly what it is. It was like, do you really want us to win or do you really want us to engage in this twenty year war because of All the technological advancements that are come out of that war, advancements in armament ISR platforms, body armor, liced medical devices Briing work creates a lot of m. A lot of people became billionaires really, really fast because of the war should. All these companies sprung up and Raytheon, Boeing, everybody is involved Everybody's making just piles and piles of money. And he's saying that Uh protracting out extending an end meashurement between two different sides That's the sort of thing that would continue to grease the wheels of that. blasting through quickly and the money printer I mean, it's like It's like Trump and I ran right now. He doesn't want to be in for twenty years I want to go in, I want to smash you, show you I'm not going to take this shit anyore and then I'm going to leave. is going to work? I have no idea. We've never tried it before. We always get put in these long drawn out conflicts We know you don't need to What would you do if you wanted to end the war in Iran quickly You you don't know what I' do You're allowed to this is hypothetical only. We're playing Syiddmia as civilizations and You need to end it quickly Nobody's going to like my answer This' is just not If I say one thing, then I'm on the Israel side. If I say this, and I'm against it. Okay're always Let's forget that. let's forget that. Let's imaginary country and somewhere that's in the Middle East that doesn'tist for the ability of nuclear weapons She ready to use them?. And we know they have them Press a button There's no other way You s'. drawn into a twenty year campaign doing the entire thing or All the countries all coming to align be like we can't let this soop them. Everybody in ag gres? Okay can't do it any what if you What if that's not a threat? How would it not be a threat They don't have it, they don't have the materials. they're not able to make it the nuclear armaments on the other side is not a concern. seems to me like If you're unable to use that unless you can drop the Fatman equivalent Uh then it becomes a much more difficult operation, because then it does look a lot more like presumably door to door stuff. you could just flying black ops and some really cool dudes in multicam snatch a president out of their house in midd of night T today That's happened recently. Pretty cool job Do you know much about you were you excited sort of tracking that? Oh, I was no Nobody jumped up fast r out of the chair and cheer than I did. I was so stoked for them. is a that's a cool out to do. Why snatchs the president out of his house and no one night like no one else is pulling that off Nobody Do you think anybody's going gonna fly a black hawk and land in Whiteouse la and run and grab Donald Trump and bring him out I think lots of people have probably thought about doing that. Nobody's going to pull that off Nobody's pulling that off. That That is a unicorn raid. A you Yeah, you surprised by What was done, what you know about how it was done No Pre pretty standard procedure just done at a very, very elite precise level. to do 's what they do Ebody, everybody who was involved in that was like me and everybody else who ever did that job, you are praying that that is going happen Your p Super Bowl. Oh my God. If if you had an opportunity and I promise you, they'd also say the same No, Andy say the same thing. Right now you won't be on the h Ho. Yep, cut off the finger. doneone. I cut off right now and jump healing one hundred percent That's the only reason you're on the planet. You want to do things like that because no one else can pull them off It is, but it showose the reallyally the strength and milar He will do it My last my last rotation was Trump's first one and I don't know what he says on those phone calls I don't know how he he avoids conflict. and I think Everybody thinks he just wants go to war, wants go to war We guys swun up on a really big up that ain't gonna to talk about today don't ask me She canceled us on the ramp We were getting ready to jump in and send it and they canceled us on the ramp because he worked it out with a phone call I don't know what he says. I don't know what he does But he does something Proably just something like don' make me do it I'll do. Domain me somehow they come their senses and somehow they solve it. That's one of the kind of catch twenty two s of having leader who seems to be at least somewhat predictable and a bit bombastic, that he actually might press the button. You know people are severely concerned that he might run for a third time. That would be kind of the domestic equivalent of doing this. E the fact that you think that he might be the sort of guy that would go for a third term. That's internally And what do you think he would do to someone that's the enemy And I I don't know whether anybody on the planet has the IQ play like seven dimensional chess of I am going to construct this incredibly unpredictable, very gregarious outgoing guy who seems to say things that almost might be like a WWE character if they were the president and then what that means by playing that game is that people will believe that I'm going to be like that so that then actually need to use the threat because they believe the threat more Not because they think that I'm aggressive, but because they think that I'm kind of crazy I mean, that's what I don't realize Is he crazy or is he just crazy enough to make you believe he'll really do it. O with crazy a genius is the question. It's hard to know, but mean you know, we say effective is fad as most, right? Effective. He's avoided more conflicts and anybody I ever served on He h P peopleople knew the amount of conflicts he's avoided, they'd give him more praise than they do But he's not able to talk about them He just doesn't. I don't know why you wouldd think that it would be something that he could flex that he would be able to talk about. this is how close we got to this thing. we have come to a deal. I think he's done that so many times. It's just lost an theether. Like he didn't even think about it. It's just a Thursday.'s like, the H Madaay thing of 's a c sinom Do I think you lost sleep over that? No? I mean, like, yes, full trust and Confidence in the force. Yeah, ye, you know what? I'm sick of it send him Nice month, great job get small cheeseburgers She goes on Tuesday I think it's yeah I don' Based on what I know about Trump, he's not the picture of health. U from a physical training standpoint. No Psychologically, do you think that he would make a good spepecial forces operator No H Eagle gets in trouble quite a bit don't know if If he wasn't a leader, I don't know how good he'd be as a follower If you don't have overall say, how well can you get in line that's why the ego gets in the way. Yeah, it's not your plan, will you still adopt it as your plan That's that's thing a lot of guys have an issue with. That's where you see the EO come in. I had a mentor, actually really good friend. his name's Brad Gary retired of a teams not too long ago, An amazing guy He says a quote. pultured strategy for breakfast every day It does. You can have the're in the mind gym Wh who' in the Navy Sils Mind Jam Um, he was definitely there when What's his one? Brad Gary He was on Seaw Ry not too long. I want to say Brad Jacobs that did some mental training stuff we had we had a No, who's the guy that works with CcCom, Rob Moore helped to publish his book? Fuck. Bad someone anyway Yeah, Culture Eat strategy for breakfast is et ca. It's just aligning the incentives, but it's aligning the incentives at a group level R right, Hey, this is how we do things. Not we need to just enforce these things. this isn't happening top down, it's happening bottom up, but we also have the routines that are built in top down Exactly I don't know how well hed do if he wasn't one coming up on the plan. If he disagreed at all How loud would he vocalize it?, I don't know as an only child I can fully empathize with Donald Trump in that regard If it's my way or the toys are going out of the pram. I've had to learn to, you know, desensitize, deprogram that Oh What do you think's the biggest misconception that civilians have about spepecial operations looks like day to day I think a lot of them watch the expendables and think that's what you do all day picking your teeth is the Bowie knife, throwing stuff in there or it looks like Zero dark thirty, walking around playing horseshoes with pop collars and camies just The more routine than you think it was moreore structured than you think it was? But a lot more lawless than you think it would be. L more like a, um More like a professional sports team 've been a military organization. That's what it feels like. Oh yeah I mean you're rarely in uniform unless It's a promotion or unless you're at a funeral, you don't put them on Most guys are relaxed grooming standards long hair, big beards You don't take your photo, you're not on social media, you're not writing books.' not You just live that life And to them, it's no different than play our professionalaseall team football te They show up every single day trying to earn their seat at the table every single day and they put the group before themselves and everything to do If you do that you'll be a successful player I've never met anybody that was worth his weight that was not obsessed Nobody that I would ever clone that didn't wake up every dayo You can't believe I get paid to do this don't get paid a lot But if I'm honest now, and I think everybody would say it too ninety percent of the time if you had the financial means, you'd pay to do that job Like was if there was a club you could join and do that. I'd swipe plastic so fast. It's an amazing experience I think a lot of people think thatm, You're kind of like a cave man There's no empathy You know, people aren't well educated, they're not well read, they're just Gunts, too many tattoos, say too many cuss words, get too much Copenhagen, spit it on your floor, kind of just broods All the guys I worked with, all the guys I looked up to, they are Th' more philosophherers than anything else, someome of the conversations we've had around those tables have absolutely changed my life. training methodology, just thought provoking conversations, like the way they analyze targets and people and navigating human terrain, I've never seen anything else like it. This episode is brought to you by Gyms Shark. If you're going to spend an hour in the gym, you might as well look hot and feel comfortable while you're doing it. Gymshark makes the best men's and women's training gear on the planet And here is something I realized a few years into training. 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So it's the prevalence of violence perpetrated by IQ standard deviation. so seventy seventy nine, eighty to eighty nine all the way up. and basically it's Asking the following question, have you been in a physical fight or deliberately hit anyone in the past five years That's the question And the prevalence as a percentage linear going down. And when you get to the middle of the distribution, it's somewhere between eleven point four and seven point nine percent. So what's that let's call it ten percent, something like that. ten percent of people with one hundred IQ have hit somebody or being in a physical fight within the last five years goes down and down. But if you're talking about wanting somebody who has got quite elite mental capacities as well five point two percent between one hundred and ten and one hundred and nineteen. two point nine percent between one hundred twenty and one twenty nine And I saw this tweet that said the percentage of guys with one hundred and thirty plus IQ both enjoy books and bar fights is incredibly small, and that is why you can't mass produce elite special operators for the military D trs I don't have a one hundred and thirty IQ for sure, but I do like reading books and punch people in face for sure.. N wrong with that. Nothing wrong with that They're way more constrained than you would imagine And then sometimes they, um A lot times you don't want them to be To me, my special operations guys don't have flat top haircuts, they don't blouse or boots. They don't say sir, they don't salute. They have all the ability to do those things, but The job's filthy. Like, why would why would I don't want a Kend all doing that job. Is it seen as sort of unnecessary and circumstance and uh, ritual that doesn't contribute to the outcome to jump through those hoops, to do the you mean Pay the song and dance. Yeah, of course on. Yeahah ye Yeah, yes, know so the clean shaven, the no tattoos and stuff like that. They only do that as punishment Anytime anybody does anything wrong, cut your hair shave your face. That's why we hate it. That's why most guys when they get out they grow a beard, grow their hair out, they're like, I am sick of this. I'm never doing that again. Okay. They run that for a year and then they shave it all and whatever. They go back to normal. No, I mean, you can't tell me what to wear Mum equivalent of being in the Special Forces You ever seen the name? It's got a bunch of green braes sitt around hands and pockets. Hands and pockets. It' the only reason I went this selection I want to be able put my hands my pockets and spit cop and haging on your floor and grow beard No, like I want to be a one per center.. No. And you're allowed to do special things. You said it's more lawless than people might realize. What do you mean by that Everything's black and white. spepecial operations find a way to live in that gray area. ay are and navigation toours rununning every thirty minutes. we will find a way to navigate through the gray area to get to the Inate. As long as we know what the Y is, what we have to get accomplished, we'll find a way to get there. And sometimes it's not pretty, but I mean I'm pretty honest. I'll break every rule in the book right now if it puts a team in a better position. E if it puts myself at a disadvantage or threats my career, maybe my life, If it's good for the group, I'll do it anyway. but not lawess in a sense like people don't People aren't murdering people. There's no rape, notot a lot of drugs anymore. Bado There's not a whole lot of guys who transition to be police officers Too constraining. Too constraining. I don't want to be conerned I don't like 'a everybody asked when I got out like, why don't want Be a cop, you go to FBI, absolutely not I love those guys. They're amazing Nothing but respect, I can't do that job. I'm in the gray area too much. undernderstand But I'm open honest about, I don't he that a bit. I think this is what I was trying to get out before when I said the modern world being incompatible with some of the ugly parts of war Um If you're focused on outcome, if you're focused on the ends, the means can sometimes become up for debate. and The ends are often not scrutinized by the means are byy people. that make sense. Yeah Ive a way to word this. I've never seen anything in my military career that I would even put morally questionable on any level N for cop, not for a fireman, not for a schoolteacher. Everything has always been above board, but there are times where you just want the hose of bllack flag and start slitting the throats. You just do, right. I can't believe we're going to put this dude in the back of his helicopter and let him l. I can't believe we're going to let him do it because you know that he's a bad guy. Yeah. O some of the things you see, some of the things you know that you're doing you have because it's not an assault on you, but Its on the stuff they do with children. It's so disgusting that if if I didn't have that flag in my arm, and I was just a tourist, I'd kill you If I get away with it right now, I just kill you because I have this flag on my shoulder, now I cant and now I resent the flag because I can't do to you what I know needs to happen to you How does that real that systemic constraint when You've got righteous anger It's hard, now It is to it especially when you've lost friends or You know, abortion one seven happened in August of Extortion seventeen Adam The whole troop get killed Kilo got shot down, killed everybody on board, thirty one guys haaving to back those guys up on deployment in that exact same place, living in their beds If I'm being told out, I just want to kill everybody. and to not be able to do it It's hard because you have the opportunity. it's like Please not do anything bad now Okay, I guess I gota put you in handcuffs,'re on Halo, drop off here. They'll put you in detention center for ten days. They'll release you Okay. They wouldn't do that to me If they wrap me and put me in handcuffs, they would saw my head off in fifteen minutes. Now we all know it. It's not fair Have you been tracking this u fallout after Rob was on Andys show talking about the Assamaid What do you make of that I hate the fact we're even talking about it if I'm being honest Like they did such a good job about not talking about it I mean, Rob is my first team leader andrupt I ow a lot to Rob because Rob drafted me and brought me in I wish nobody would have ever said a word. When they left you on the raid, I don't know where they were going Were you on compound or whatever it was called? I was in a team. So you didn't get chosen? No. Nother fuckers. T junior. No U how We'll say we rack all the teams. We'll say there's seven guys. One to seven. they took choose an above and took them off from everything guys. Oh interesting. It's the first time they ever did it closer to being And how many how many peopleeople in total Oh You can't talk about it. No, okay, fine We'll talk about offscreen way less than you think. so it's closer to me what it sounds like. I'm living in the sports analogy. It's more like having a league of teams And then you've got The Steph Curry. or the c to run from each team and then you're able to top filtering Does that not create that surely that must create a um A lot of animosity, a lot of resentment U some of that but complete ye, ye, because you know hang on, you the fuck whats? I'm a number fucking six am I? M so complexity that The verticals of the teams Culture O baked in and as you start to take people. I I mean Perfect example. when players come together to play for their national team when they've played for rivalrous. h local teams. That doesn't always work well. L sometimes, team which has the maximum play a stat for each individual player but not the cohesion doesn't necessarily perform as well as a vertical team that does have the cohesion with ' somebody that's got less experience or whatever. Look at me sat in the stands talking about how the special forces should be around. I mean, that's how it's always been wr Take a team, take a troop, take a squadron whatever it is, and you go out and do the thing they cherry pig from inside of the same squadron And none of us knew I don't know We knew they were spinning up on something and they would tell us like it's some bullshit training mission. L It was my first cycle. I had just gotten through selection and all of them are like Enjoy your first rotation. He's like, you ain't missing shit Trust me, this is going to be a dog and pony. We're going waste our time and nothing's going to happen. promise you aboutb five days before they went to go do the thing. We all came in, had a big blowout due to buying new watches, buying thousand dollars sunglasses because they didn't think they were going to come home. We all thought they were going to go get Gaddafi So when Obama walked out and did the newsnouncement, I was in my living room with my wife, with my shooting buddy on speaker phone and as soon as they said it, screaming like so proud Be you knew that that was Oh yeah. so happy, never been more proud of my fucking life. Oh my God And then we came back and Everything started to roll out news cameras everywhere. they're coming to people's houses, they're out in town. youd go get a beer, they bump into you, like they're constantly trying to dig in to see who you are, They're trying to film you. I mean It became a zoo and it stayed like that for a long time. Has it ever been more highly scrutinized than around then? No. It was unlike anything else I've ever seen. That kind of launched the seals to some degree, I think, in the public consciousness We they' had a couple big ones before then You know, They had june twenty eighth with Marcus Latrell, W sururvivor. that got into a fanfare. I mean, that was an operation going wrong In two thousand nine, they had Captain Phills, they rescued Merk, Alabama. That was another huge one. S Squadron Yeah, like've been knocking these things out for a bit. So when that thing happened pissed us off the most is right after you got to think may twenty eleven. that happened. August twenty eleven anotherother squadron get shut in Shes an RPG, whole troop goes down. The amount of people and the people today that say that was an inside job, I wish I could launch you in Afghanistan to a raid and kill you It is the most disrespectful thing I've ever seen. Why did they think it was an inside joob because apparently that squadron knew too much about the UBL raid and we got to kill them off. The fact that people say that, ninety five percent of these guys are all married to now all their kids They all read that shit they read those comments, they watch his YouTube videos of these disgruntled fat army guys talking all this nonsense, and now they don't know. Its like mom did Did a government kill that No, no, no he's like, This guy's a green brain. He says he did. He're like, Oh my God, here we go. It's the spince his hateful narrative. It's the Sandy Hook parents equivalent in reverse the wall It is. cause lot of d downo cause a lot of doubt in people Absolutely not possible Nop awesome No one would ever do it. Nobody Yeah, it seems to me, I mean, again that in the Rosed of the stand talking about what the fuck goes on in the American military country that I've only just moved to Hh. The fact that things are heavily scrutinized that war stories have got a kind of all lure and romance and sort of sexiness to them means that dose response of information being put out is so unusually magnified and yeah, with the Osama bin Laden raid, you have everyvery single second of potential information is going to be just It's game tape. It is like game tape in some World Cup final There's a critical mass that you can reach of information And when you get even close to that, you basically have a kind of nuclear self sustaining reaction where it just generates more and more and more. and Yeah, I watched I watched Rob talkk on Andy's show tonight If nothing else, this is going to create an awful lot more nuclear reactions really wish she wouldn't have said it You think about all those guys that are still in They're the ones' are going have to deal with I had to deal with it Rob this Rb things, you know, guys got out and they wrote books. If you weren't in that command When those books dropped, you have no idea the hell we all went through Anybody who had association with them, we had guys comb in the ceilings for bugs You know, they leave listening devices. I mean, it was it was so because nobody knew who was feeding them information. So once they separated out and they started writing the book They're like, o, well, somebody's communicating with them. They know too much active information that is happening now. You could tell with some of the emails going back and forth they were following guys home. Oh there was there was I didn't realize this some of the people who had been in and then got out we're then allowed to talk about what had happened included information that they couldn't have known had it not have been passed on from people who were still inside you gotta be just pointing fingers at each other like you're talking to him. You're talking to him Can we just go back to work, man? Let's just go back to work. I wish nobody would have ever said a thing. Just kill him. put up on news. He' dead Don't say how, don't say it was compound raid, donon't do any of that. Don't say how, don't say who But then on the same side We gott to be honest, everybody who's in special operations right now Today serving. The only reason you're in there is because you read a book, you watched a movie or something from somebody in Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Black Hawkedown. Is That's the only reason. Isn't that strange? It You're telling them not to, but the only reason we're all in this building is because somehow many people wanted to become Navy seals. How many people have become Navy seals because Not many, but a lot of people have tried. ye. Snebody asked me other today about David Agens. You know, what do you about David Aags and like ye When I was in a teams, it was different because he was up He was a poster child. He was an athlete for the Navy I'll say between David Goggins in Joco those two people have probably put more people in the services over the last ten years than anybody else in the last fifty. It have Millions and millions of people have read their books, seen all of that. They've become cops, firemen, Navy seAals, they' joined a c. J. they'll do They did it right. They did a good job So you put them up on a pedestal. they weren't talking about war stories. they weren't doing all this stuff. but you take that and then you take the actual operational side of it. and you're like Well you're okay with they do that But you can't do that. Why I don't know if people are okay with anyone there's there's a degree of and I only I'm on the periphery of this shit. But my YouTube every so often feeds me veterans talking about veteran drama shit and It seems like there is a kind of noble silence that's expected of anybody, especially as you get up toward the higheriers too Um It would be an interesting question to ask those people would you rather people adhere to the noble s? Would you rather veterans adhere to the noble silence? or would you rather have However many more million t bodied men trying to serve their country or their community in the police or the FBI or the Special forces It's hard to figure out, because you look like the UK. I'm very, very small They're only very small Not very, very small. Very, very small. The small And' disagree with it. But England is small how they conquered All of that Pre pretty incredible. Yeah, the accent helps. The accent helps. They don't give their military enough credit There's not enough people growing up in England that want to grow up to be in the services.. There isn' this I need It is unbelievable to me. I remember the first time that I started coming to America and the first time that I got on an inter internal domestic flight from somewhere in America to somewh el in Americ And you hear them come over the Tani and they say we would like to invite active military and first responders to or whatever it is to get on the plane first I'm thinking I have never, ever heard that. The idea of a veteran community I once wore a black rifle coffee shirt getting onto a plane. this a few years ago And um it's u Kaki green with gold print, like classic sort of military common thing. and it's got the American flag on one arm. and as I walked past, there was an older gentleman really nicely dressed, one of the early rows And as I walk past, Biger guy short hair So thank you for your service. I'm like And you know, there's all of these people behind me and I'm like my t shirt has just given me stolen valor and I have no idea how to fucking wipe this. I might want to I must remind I'm actually British. Like there was no way for me to but I remember thinking There is such a reflexive response especially maybe among older generations to just revere people who served in the military, and it is Whatever the opposite of that is, actively ignored Uh o. kindind of look down on as if you did something a bit stupid you weren't smart enough to go into whatever else 's why you join milit. That's precisely, that is exactly how British, military veterans are syn E exactly how they' saying This population in America, same thing But now they appreciate it because we got attacked here. nine eleven, a lot of people have forgotten about that, but I going to try to remind the guys often the only reason we're not speaking German is because of' militar The only reason we're all actually free is just because the military, noody really wants to uncork that the reason we're free right now is because nobody really wants to fly over here and find out That's it They just don't. If we did not have the military if we do, we would have been taken over a long time ago This episode is brought to you by Whoop. According to my Whoop, I've tracked nearly two thousand days of my life And the thing that still gets me is that I could have predicted almost every bad day before it happens. 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Right now, you can get the brand new whoop five point zero and that thirty day free trial by going to the link in the description below. orre heading to joinot whoop d. com slash modern wisdom. That's join dot whoop d. com slash Bottn Wisom Can you try and find? it's going to be a little tough to find? It's a short, a YouTube short And it's a guy talking about, do you know who has the number one Navy in the world And do you know who has the number two Navy in the world? Do you know who has the number three Air Force in the world and the number one and the number two? It's a guy kind of ranking all of the different things. He's on a podcast and it is so fucking cool I think The U.S. Coast Guard is the fourth biggest Navy in the world And then the Navy is the first biggest Navy in the world. And then something else is the second biggest.s This country has got and he basically makes the point the reason America as a country is so overpowered. militarily Uh Every time that I think about that, I also think about that video, I can't remember who the admiral is But the someone else will raise your mothers and daughters for you You know that video heard y It is there's a metro booming like hip hop edit of that which is kind of a bit gratuitous, but it's Holy shit. I mean, if you want to talk about what the sort of best elements of American culture U yeah, let's go let's go on that one actually with the black rifle edit. I'm sure this will be good We have been honed into a machine of lethal moving parts that you would be wise to avoid if you know it's good for you We will not be intimidated We will not back down. We've seen war We don't want war But if you want war with the United States of America, there's one thing I could promise you, so help me God Someone else will raise your sons and daughters Bro, bro. I got goosebums. Oh. burn him to the ground, dude. I love that. Yeah, that's it Uh, R. Fix bayets. That's one of the that's one of the sickest lines. , I mean, Freedom isn't f omain free You have to be for Mid a while Aversar, if not they're going to take everything off biggest time. got to be ready Theyay ready. What are some of the adaptations that normal people might not realize spepecial forces operators go through when you become hyper otimized for combat depends how far they take it S guys adjust their entire lifestyle everything people they associate with, the time they wake up, the time they go to bed The majority of the guys are suffering through something They could be alcohol, it could be prescription pills, it could be injuries. E. And what are the typically ing with what's the thing that is causing them to use injuries obviously make sense, but psychologically Um It's he for me Pro probablyably the quintessential d kind of represent everybody. I'm not a unicorn by any means, I'm a product of the culture. H time sleeping She start taking Amen every night and that doesn't work Your memory starts getting shot too many TBIs, you get put on Aerall and now you're taking upers and downers and pain elements and start avoiding surgery and then You you have a hard time trying to balance being a full time husband, a full time father or being a full time Navy seL, pilot or whatever else you're trying to. so you start to come departmentalize everything. I can't be a husband, I can't be a father right now. I can't be a best friend, I can't be an uncle, I can't be a son. I can only do this one thing. so I'm going compartmentalize everything else. I'm going to shift it away And then when I get done, I'll reintegrate As soon as you try to reintegrate, you can the wife's off her routine, you're late for the bus stop. She's got her whole schedule set and now you drop back in and you just screwed it all up. Now you don't feel like you're at home. So what do you do? You just run back into work. point all your time back in there and you feel this big dissociation between a thing you're actually fighting for because now I can't even be around it I don't feel at home there I feel like I'm seeing Airbnb,. I feel like I'm seeing my aunt's house. Like I'm trying to creep through the kitchen, like I open up the refrigerator, didn't have anything that I want in here because I haven't been grocery shopping in eight months Well, now I'm too ashamed to ask her to buy this or buy that and youre another trip. I think people will be shocked with how much the guys are on the road Mimum, two hundred and seventy days, three hundred and twenty five, three hundred and fifty a year. I mean, they are gone gone. And even when you're there, like that typical morning We'll call Dana life Random Tuesday in Virginia Beach up at five clear in the gym five thirty Wor out five thirty, six thirty, eat breakfast. Go do a recovery session. that could be a float tank, a cryo chamber ASTM, coal plunge, whatever go back up K AM briefing Train for three four hours, eatunch, trarain three four hours eat dinner, drink couple beers in the team room, go back home nine PM. kids already in bed. Yife start already taking a shower. She's watching Netflix You go in You're sleeping twenty thirty minutes or at least half asleep You wake up four, five, six times a night, can't really fall asleep, wake up five o'clock, do it again over and over. so your kids don't see you for prettyre much the entire week. If you're lucky you'll come in six, thirty at night during bed by eight You're two hand texting, frantic, you're trying toack yourself, trying to do laundry, you' about to leave in a day. You're just never really truly present And that's when everything else starts to happen. The injuries stack up, sleep deprivation stacks up. you're on a shitty diet, now you're drinking too much, youre popping these pills And it doesn't feel like you're doing the excess. The doctors' given you this stuff, you just keep eating them L I feel better Th threeree or four days, you feel worse. Eet know another out all, wake up and do it again, do it again, do it again. And a lot of it is It is ego centrered because everybody around you is better than you are and you feel like I have to see them see me work I want you to notice and I am in here before you, I'm staying here after you, and I want you to know that I know I'm not great God damn I'm trying. It won't be for a lack of effort, won't be for a lack of commitment or discipline. I'm going to show up every day trying to be better than I was yesterday. And that's what everybody has You just get really used to just being inside of that thing. And you sac guysu become the best at hiding injuries Catastrophic enturs. What are the most common injuries? Shoulders, hips, knees, TBI. Low back. what's this from? From shooting froming Sydiving Skydiving, climbing boats, everything. It just It's rough, man. It's rough on the body. And now You don't sle When I say don't sleep, I mean realistically actual sleep. hours a n. Like you don't sleep And a lot of that is you think when you get overseas, we're on vampire hours. so you don't see the sun for three to six months, however long youre going to be overseas. but you wake up fiveive in the afternoon and you drink coffee all night. You get back home at five AM you eat breakfast, and you try to go to sleep. Now the sun's up, your body gets that dose of vitamin D, and now you're just chasing it. Are you using light therapy, Sad lamps or any sort of equivalent when you're over there?, We need't have WiFi my first three or four deployments now should be better now, but Back in the day, they couldn't even they couldn' even prescribe you vitamin D because it was a hormone replacement. That's where they classified it in the military.. Now it's different. But I mean, fingernails falling out, hair falling out. Why? Not seeing the sun for six months, likeike literally not seeing it You turn into a bat didid you feel like death face all suck in food's terrible. L you got a food allergy or like dude, I can't I couldn't eat a boiled egg right now if you gave me a million dollars I've eaten thousands and thousands of hardardboard bs I'm not thousands of them. You get a recet you're like, I cantat this food dude. can't What are you eating hardard boiled eggs and white rice Th times a day. I'm going to keep going It's exhausting man It's surprising to me that Every would be so optimized in the build upp And then seemingly so under optimized once you get out that. and also Why whyy is no probably the single biggest performance enhancer for anybody is sleep U because you don't always get to dictate when you're going to go. But when you're at home and you're training How come that's not more prioritized? You got to think about So'll see on a train schedule. We'll say you get it at five You run through the entire day and we'll say you're doing a night profile at night. You're not going to get geared up for that night profile until eight thirty at night. That's going to go until two or three in the morning. So when you wake up, you're still going to clock in and do a full normal day. So you can either come in at six You can come in at seven or you can come in at five and just live the exact same routine. So a lot of guys have hammocks in their cage area that sleep in a cage knoc in into me the cage Probably a quarter siz this room. everyverybody has their own. So all your gear is in it, guns, bullets, bombs, all the stuff is in there. they'll string a hammock and they'll sleep in it. gots tamprapedic mattresses on the floor to sleep in Was it easier than having to commute to go back home to then come back because you're losing half an hour each way or maybe exactly. I go in, I wake up my wife. my alarm clot goes off. She's like, whyy are you getting up? You gott to have this awkward conversation, jump back in a car, just drive back in, rinse and repeat again. So a lot of times guys just stay there You get used to it When it's happening in the moment, you don't realize what it's doing. Like you'll watch your weight fluctuate. like you know, everybody gets overseas, everyverybody trust get big and jacked onemployment, you come back home and I can't maintain this, I'm not sleeping, I'm not eating right All the stuff starts to happen toam. You start to rote a little bit of yourself. you go on these stintents where you get really, really jackged, in great shape, like, oh, I can maintain this, be your sleepest garbage We keep pushing too hard And it's one of like if I talk to anybody else about, you're doing too much. You need a break it down, you need to take two weeks off, don't do anything physical My mental health will just spiral out of control so fast. I have to stay on the routine becausecause if's not my confidence dris So I know I need to sleep. I know I shouldn't do anything in the gym today. I know I shouldn't But if I don't, my confidence draws in one then what you want me to do Constident ch in your feedback loop Dicious Is your mood and health better? when because it seems like being overseas in some ways, might be a little bit easier because there aren't the distractions, you're sort of locked in. You're also vampire mode with shitty food and all of the other issues This time'm're in your The Universates most hesit to you they sleep better Now when I now because I'm out, I've got a bunch of different modalities that help me sleep better now, but I sleep way better overseas than I do What'm int tell even now Always just do I can't remember what movie it is M maybe Rembo or maybe it's the expendables or something I know it's a cliche It sounds like it might be true. There's a guy who comes back home after he's been on deployment or he's been on some sort of operation and he's struggling to sleep in the bed, so he decides to sleep on the floor and just put his ar under his head and he kind of feels a little bit like that. You become conditioned to have one particular type of environment and one that's objectively better is subjectively Aien Man, I miss it. you made me time travel right now It is the most fun you'll ever have in your entire life. It is like even all the bullshit to sleepless nights, and being whatever else I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world. Give me ten million dollars right now to erase those memories. I wouldn't touch it. tested. But in moment it seems its worth I just wish I was able to find a better balance one becausecause for me, I wasn't able to. I had had too many things in Wan Amy, too many things in a family, and it became so much easier to be overseas and to isolate Not throw up family photos, limited times you're going to faceime, limited times you're going to call home Because in the moment The last thing I want is for that window to light up. I've got to run over there and deal with it and I don't want to think about orf meing my kids, making my wife a two time widow, I don't want to do that. I can't have that inside of me. so it sounds selfish, but I've had a lot of ammazing mentors that have said the same thing. If you think that I'm thinking about my wife on that Hilo flight in I'm not If you think I'm wondering what my kids are doing, I'm not. only thinking about that dude, because I've been staring his face for the last seventy two hours. That's the only thing I'm thinking about. The Helo flight in, the walk in, the patrol, atmosphherere, everything. That's the only thing I'm thinking about. It's like compmentalization again. It's an interesting study that I learned about. that was looking at attachment styles and they brought people into a labbing classic psychological study fashion The study began before people realized the study began and they're in this waiting room together And over the far side is a computer and the computer begins to just drift a little bit of smoke out, small amount like it might be about to catch fire, something like that. beforefore they' gone in, They've done an attachment style assessment on it All of the people that were in there and there was some that were anxious, some that were avoidant, there was some that were securely attached was interesting was The anxious people were the first ones. that noticed that the smoke was coming out of the computer. But the avoiding people were the first ones out the door And that explains why you need inner You know, Dunbar number, one hundred and fifty person tribe. Why you need a variety of attachment stars because you need someone the type of vigilant who's always watching that ridge where sometimes the animals or the enemies come over But we need other people that are decisive and one of the skills the avoidance side seem to have is an ability to compartmentalize So the anxious people would be more likely to think Is' it okay, should we can we leave? Are we allowed to? Whereas even only people like it's just w the coyote, It's just a puff of dust. and they're gone. and um, What I thought was interesting about that was I imagined that I was putting together a police force or something and You want There Swat guys and the ERs You want them on average to be avoidant. You want them to be able to compartmentalize what it is that they've got going on. Like, noope, I don't need you right now. This person needs me to look after them But you want the detective to be anxious You want him to pay a level of attention to things where they can't switch out they' thinking and ruminating and ruminating It was behind the kitchen door, you know? like that's and it's just interesting to me that The things which you are praised for in public, you pay for in private and your inability to switch that sort of stuff off You know, like those adaptations that you've gone through and the same traits and focus that make elite operators effective can probably make normal life and relationships extxtremely difficult It does because at a certain point you start to think that everything is just a time sucker, a bandwidth Like right now this conversation we're having It doesn't make me better at work It doesn't. In fact, it just makes me want to go to work to avoid this right now It really makes me just want to stay on employment and not come home so I don't have to deal with this shit and then you started to spit and venom 's talk about trauma, it sacks up inside you, gets the right You've got yards of beer in the UK. Yeah That's just trauma. It starts to come out of your mouth. It's hey, it's hostility, it's all this stuff. Before you know it, you can't control it. Every time you go home, just launching it Well, the only place I never launch it is at work because everybody else is the same as me We talk about the same things. We only speak in movie quotes, We're on the same workout routine, we fight together, shoot together, sleep together, do everything together. and I never feel like I'm outside the group I never feel like I'm a bothothers ever Every time I come home, I feel like this is not my place It's not my place because I'm never here You don't realize that way you're inside it Like I don't realize that I've been gone for three hundred days this year. I wonder why I don't feel like this is my house Like every time I come home you change the You change it, whyy do I have all these pillows eres I hong this' another pill change the bedspread and all this stuff you just You never really feel like you're there. Just recompartmentalize right back to work. Also, you're asking an awful lot of a partner Right? You're saying, hey this connection that is going to be almost entirely severed except for a few brief moments here and there across an entire year. When I come back, I want you to immediately drop into this. I've got my problems to go through donon't want to have to deal with the problems that you've got because that's additional capacity that I've already blown more said This is exactly what it is. So now when I talk to the guys I tell them likeike unless you la se a unicorn, which I did I mean, she was into it. She was in a Navy, she was mared to a SEL that got killed. her dad was the SEL. She knew the culture, she knew what she was getting into I wanted Its like he was bred to be the wife of a sale, for sure. Yeah. It's like I wanted that picture perfect life. I wanted my dream job. I wanted the house, the two point five kids, the Labrador, the white picket fence. I want everything taken care of. and every time I come home, I just resent it I know this is what I want, but you need so much attention from me that I cannot give you And she just kept going She'd show up Free fell in the house, She fixs Navy seal of wives I don't know how to do anything I don't know who cuts my grass. I don't know who to call if a tree does fall in the house. She does. She handles it all So I got to focus on myine craft the whole time. What sucked is trying to reintegrate 'cause now it's like,y job's done. I've got a couple of weeks off. Let's all be a happy family don't know how to do it because I can't shut off. You're too hyper vigilant. I'm on a tan all day long. I'm too hand texting just checking my phone, chehecking my phone, check my phone I's go on to vacation. I can't go on to vacation No, you just came back from a Ployas cor on vacation I'm not going on a vacation. we're on a jump trip I get a better Sott sitt in the Bahamas. I don't what that does. does make it better at CQB. not doing that. We avoided that for the majority of our marage We said They can justify it That doesn't make me better work wish I would have done it. But I tell you guys, if I would have spent my first four years really focused on the craft. probably wouldn't have thought that I needed to burn all that time and all those reps later on in my career I don't know, man. I I I understand what you're saying I get the feeling that that might be a comforting myth to tell yourself If only I'd done it another way could have made it work in this manner later on H. I I get the sense that it is less like the pursuit of mastery and more like an addiction to work just need to keep it going. obviously again, I'm now in road trip the fucking back of the stadium Um, I know enough people, I know people in bands and bands are the same. You're on the road for one hundred and eighty, two hundred, two hundred and fifty days of the year. Jimmy Carr is I think he's doing four hundred and twenty five shows this year What? Because he matines the shows So he'll do a six PM show and then an eight PM show he did Howy fucking dates D do He did like one hundred and something dates just in Australia It's absurd, it'surd. but has to be obsessed. to be. You do. And the same thing goes for the interesting thing about the comedian thing is typically they're traveling on their own or traveling with one warm up, warm up and tour management And I think there's a minimum U minimum sort group size that you need in order to be able to make a microculture. And I think that's what really embeds people into it. mightight make it easier in some ways but probably makes it harder to integrate, makes it easier when' on the roads, but harder to integrate when you get back And that's where If you look at people that are in bands, people that are in sports teams, professional sports teams. That is what's particularly difficult, I think, because you have created this new light where it's you and your five bandmates. It's you and squad of fifteen That's us and this is what we do. and that reintegration is incredibly difficult, I think to bring that back across. I think that's where That's where the struggle comes Oh Yeah, man, I prospect of trying to come back and doing this thing that you know that you care about and that you know is noble and that you're doing for the right reasons and that you're trying to make the world and your country a safer place and to then come back and to have struggled to I mean, again, as you said, you've got as it sounds like as close to a gold standard partner fucking bred for this Uh, that maybe Bred more to be a seeal's wife than you were to be a seeal. by the sons of things It really does surprise me I'm not suggesting this But it does surprise me that if the military cares that much about the integration and the performance because presumably'd been if everybody had had a partner like yours, which still had shit and the difficulties The guys, there have to be many, many levels of hell below the one that you did when it comes to what's happening relationally. That can't improve their performance when they're away. So if that's the case Why why on the army trying to have some sort of X factor pop idol thing for hey, we are going to help you find a partner and we're actually going to help you and your partner to make sure that for the person that gets into a relationship with a special operator, they have the psychological accreatments that are appropriate for them to actually be able to deal with this and they're going to be able to support you, which would make you into a better person. It seems to me in very few areas, it's such an overbearing Uh, um, uh, like incursion into somebody's life, right? Likeith you mean that you're gonna try and like like scream partners so that I get that, but When you're talking about the most important military operations on the planet. I mean, if you're covering everything from what you said Eyes are dotted teas across every single bullet and bomb and tactic, and I've worked thousands and thousands and thousands of jumps and I've drilled this thing over and over again huge impact on your performance is going to be Y relationship to your kids reintegration looks like when you get off duty whoo it is that you choose as a partner all of those things. So I don't know. maybe this is two softly softly skills and you can always just like and sawdust and grit your teeth and and being in an add all your way through it and it kind of doesn't really matter that much because like, okay, whatever, there's going to be some collateral damage that occur relationsationally, but fuck it the guys will just show up anyway. That's why we select people who can compartmentalize and put that stuff to one side But it seems to me that Even the capacity for compartmentalization could be used more effectively if it wasn't being drained relationally. Does that all make sense Yeah, do you know what the divor rate in the cil team are over one hundred percent Because people get remarried and then run it back and then get out again. Brilliant first guy, first troop chief Ihead on his fifth That's impress My disappointment now on the third Ttally normal Most guys have been divorced at least once A at least once. off doing business and a lot of that is because guys come in so young. Like We did a thing where we didn't take any guys that were in the Navy prior. You had to come in basically off the street or straight out of college. We didn't want guys had any fleet time. So you think the majority of the kids that show up are between eighteen and twenty one, twenty two years old theajor of these guys do they marry their high school sweethearts, andick they met in college, and shick they met in San Diego who's there on college, whatever. and then you move her to a place she's never been, no support system. and then you leave her there for an entire year by herself You come back home, you're distant, you're not connected with her And you just keep putting her through it over and over. She has one deployment, maybe two, and she's like I need you to get out She ain't get out for you No, he didn't know your middle name for being honest G get a divor You're not worth it right now. I'm on this speeding bullet train on my fingertips right now. I'm not jumping because of you, I'm not sacrifice must be made in usually you sacrifice the ones you love the most I did Those are times I regret. I wish I would have had a better balance point But in that time I couldn't justify it. I couldn't. I didn't have it in me And I think that's kind of the excuse I come up with If I would have lived, if I would have had mentors I had later in my career when I first got in. And I would have followed their path, would have found the role models. I'm going to sit there, I'm going to ride your coattails and I'm going to live your routine I think I would have found a balance point. What would have been the biggest differences really just being a pro I'm going to live a routine from the day I show up So dad leave Not going to drink excess. And that's really the difference is there were so much eighties and nineties special operations spillover when I came in in the early two thousands drinking fighting fucking. That's what you did you traveled around like you were in the Rolling Stones. Every bar you went into, beating up college kids, stealing their girlfriends, doing that over and over and over. because you're single, it's fun, it's normal But you're not training at full capacity. L we're training hard and then we're going to burn the thing to the ground. Later on my career, the guys that were just, they set the standard for the most lethal people you have never met in your life drinks a single setting You you never saw him drunk They never were flip flops, they beat the brakes off you twenty four seven three hundred, sixty five. They could always perform on demand They truly just lived it Were they the best husbands and fathers? No I hope they are now, but it certainly appeared that a lot of them had a balanced one They had been living this professional life like a LeBron James or Kobe Bryant the whole time from the nineteen years star life. Exactly. They were a monk Like you never saw them at a bar, they were never shit faced. they never got a DUI. and they can send it You don't need to say who it is that might be active or Now Who is the person that What is the archetype of the person that's been most impressive to you, the single operator that you've seen? what are they like Probably the most clwnable Keniam Suler. Like the best guy I don't know how I don't know how they are at home. You think you know how they are at home because of how they interact as You got to think, man, the majority of those people you spend a decade together with newew guys will come in and out, but most of the guys mean you're spending seven to eight years unbroken just together. Hopefully it gets a ten year mark and then you have to rotate out best guy I have ever seen the most well rounded in amazing shape. An amazing high school wreler transitioned over to MMA, an amazing skydiver. Mazing shooter. Culturally, if you could mass produce and make a thousand him, I would press that button right now and I'd drop him on every corner of the earth best But he live that routine His routine and here's where you know the difference. Everybody You talk anybody who's ever worked with a SEL. If we get overseas, we come to a new base, veryy first thing we asked Wh where's the childell hall, where's the gy? Cho houl, Jim. I'lligure out everything else after that. Chowo hul Jim. whereere is it? Everybody shows up and everybody does a lift. Everybody. I don't care if you're a marathon runner, whatever. they all do fitness first thing in the morning and then we focus on hard skills the rest of the day. That dude and a bunch of other guys would show up, they would get that lift in. they'd go straight over a fight club. they'd do Moi Tire, BJJ for an hour They jump in a cryo chamber, they jump in a float tank, they get E stem work done, soft tissue work, theyd go eat breakfast, then go upstairs for the ten AM meeting thenen do CQB for a four hour block, eat lunch, another CQB for four hour block, eat dinner, and go home and be a husband or father They did that unbroken the entire time I've known them long before it was cold Long before you could look at guys like Michael Phelps or Steph Curry for inspiration. They live that routine unbroken becausecause you go in these pockets like you go on these trips, shooting trips, jump trips, whatever And we'll see you go to Arizona on a three week trip The guys who hate jumping might do fifty to seventy five jumps in three weeks The guys who are really into it will do two hundred and fifty They jump all weekend, ten, twelve jumps a day every single day unbroken. and they're just stacking the resume over and over and over So when you call them, you're like, hey, I need you to pull this off, there's warm up There's no mull again. I can't go back and rejock. like I can just send it all day long That's how they lived. when you look at him like, if I could just press the clone button and make a thousand of you, I could do anything.. I to you want to end the Iran the regime Right there that's good him's over. That's a good question. For most U For most conflicts, what is the number of special operators, Ti one special operators that you need to be able topple pretty much any regime in the world A big regime? Uh Let's say the size of it can't be Russia China it's going to be insane Like the size of any normal mid sized country with a like semi competent military, like Middle Eastn type stuff It's noting really operated. It's supporting assets It's a helilo pilot, it's a drone pilot. It's air coverage overhead. It's everybody in between that makes the whole mechanism roll, but When we get off game, I'll see how many guys there are. It's so very small. People knew how small it was, they wouldn't even think it's cool. They're like it can't be like that. Yeah It's somewhere between astronauts and F one There aint many dudes. I mean, there's not. If you look at the whole scope of the military zero, zero, zero zero one percent Like we're not talking hundreds of people. It's very small So when you get ' them in there, it's like You don't need a whole lot. I mean tyypical You know, I'm dating myself with Afghistan and Iraq, but I mean, your typical assault on however many people in a four story compound, twelve people. So were. do anything You don't need a lot You just need twelve really bad ass dudes. They can get it done letting movese. Who were you the day after you retired Who were you the day after you retired Lost and alone I was coming off a pretty bad injury. I had a really cool transition I got out on a Friday and on Monday morning, I was starting a contract with the Air Force Three weeks before that, I've been electrocuted went through a bunch of surgeries and got really electrocuted H you not heard that fucking? No? tell me the story I get in a bad jump accident I dislocate my shoulder, it spins, shreds the entire thing, and now I'm on a medical retirement board. So I've got to get all these surgeries In the process of that, they found out I was taking all these medications, a bunch of them you couldn't take together So this new doot com in he's like Hey, we had a serious problem then was what it He goes, You can't take these four medications together. It'll give you stroke and you'll die Wh I've been taking ose for nine years now Aint had a strokeet and he went here's deal I'm going to send you toalter Reed It's this nice program. you'll love it. It's a medical detox facility. So you're going to go there, We're going to wash you out all the meds. We'll put you on a couple of ones. you can maintain long term. We gott to get you all these meds What it really is a psych word So I show up there bright eyed bushy tailed Really just a shell of myself, but not realizing what I'm going to do and they start taking my shoestrings takeake all my stuff And I'm looking around like What is going on here And then, you know, had these nice nurses, but there were fighter pilots in there, there were green brays in there. There were all these people in there. and you could see him like one of the guys had really bad parkinsons. He had an injection ride out of a Fighter jet. I mean, jammed up. I couldn't speak non verbal And I'm looking around like, why am I in this room I'm good to I didn't realize how far I'd fallen. Like what I look like at the time Face all sunk in one hundred and eighty five pounds just like not who I used to be put me in this hospital bed, essentially strapped me down for thirty one consecutive days. And I do a full med washout By day three or four, I'm in full detox mode, I don't realize it. I think I have food poisoning I'm throwing up into bed, I piss all over myself. They're changing my sheets, blotting me with the wet napkins. I mean doing the whole thing. I just keep apologizing. I'm so sorry. I don't know what I ate, I don't know what I ate You know, day four, five, six pretty black nse and she's like, oh, honey You don't know what this is No and she's like, it's going to be okay I was washing out of all those medications I was on. Can you say what the meds were? Everything from Adobal, Smbalta, Zolov. Pident in Um with the big pain meds, trraming all toward all, peraset, fic it and everything everything and anything you could be put on, I would say. That sounds like something that might give you a stroke, Yeah. In' taking them in excess, In' chewing them up, I wasn't snoring them, but I'dake up and I'd them all day long. But I had such bad TBI After this injury, really photophobic. I wore sunglasses basically all day every day. If I looked at those things, I get a crazy headache, I'd get sick, I'd throw up going through all these different protocols They washed me out of these meds and I wanted to die when I finally felt what true sobriety was and because I was under this illusion, because I'm not drinking excess like I did when I was in my teens and twenties I'm good I didn't realize popping all these pills is the equivalent of drinking a twelve pack every three hours And that's what it is. I was stoned under the influence of a narcotic or under a prescription medication, twenty four seven three hundred sixty five from Ten until twenty two So this is This is twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen now, something like that We get washed of these meds And while I'm in there, it's probably day fifteen or twenty, the Red Cross comes in. They're bringing in dogs, I mean, dog therapy, all this stuff And she goes, Can I get you anything? And I was like No, She shes said,'re doing art therapy next door What about a skateboard? C you give me a skatebard Yeah, she brings me a change of clothes, he sneaked me out of the hospital, and there's a skateboard shop right outside of Bethda, Maryland. I can't remember name it. I think it's Siren or something We walk in there. she sees my arm banded and she's like What's going on?? We have a skateboard in here. He gave me two off the wall, I sanded them down, went back, painted them, paper mache, all this stuff And that's what started what tribe skates was. It was my transition out of the military I'm going to make My mental health version was instead of painting masks or anything else I'm going to paint skateboard G going to get skateboard team, gott to start mass prodducing these things, all this stuff. But for me, it was the creativity of doing that In that process, I found fracture burning You ever seen that You take a microwave transformer and you pop it out and you sllice jumper cables intoil it And then you hooked it to an octopus outlet and you flicked a switch So If I sanded down all the lacquer off this table and I drove a tenpenny nail in there and there, I clipped these two things on and I poured Coca Cola across this table. It would burn the wood grain and they would all connect You're making a cool pattern. Oh, a sick pattern. Right. I burnnt everything. So I'm burning these skateboards and I am I'm knocking out some of the coolest pies I've ever seen ever. Getting really good at it, I don't realize how dangerous it is though I'm not an electrician. I don't know I'm not an electrician either but it sounds dangerous It looks more dangerous than it sounds. If you see the machine I was running with, it is so sketchy. I'm not on Google, I'm not on YouTube. I'm not looking how dangerous it is. There's no chat GB. Why are you doing this where everywhere. in my garage, my backyard, everywhere. I'm just burning hundreds of skateboards at this point And I've got my retirement date supposed to be like august thirty first twenty nineteen. We're on Father's Day. so what is that July, June, July, whatever that is. June It's Father'sday Morning. I've been burning since four five thirty in the morning u til my time, Got up earurly, knockingem lie. I mean, I got stacks of these things. And around, I'll call it eight o'clock in the morning, my mind isn't the sharpest anymore I get a call from an EOD guy, a bomb tech in the Navy Explosive warden's disposal They have a retirement ceremony that's going on. and he's got these huge paddles, like these eight foot oars And they wrap them all up with this decorative string and do all this stuff. and he's like, Hey, can you burn them for me I was like,ah dude come over He comes over. onene of the critical elements on fracture burning is you can't have lacquer. No stain. It's got to be bare wood. If not, it'll melt the lacquer. It screws up the entire piece. He comes over at this eight foot orar. I'm like, Ohh, brother, you got You got to sand that off So I unplug my machine. He plugs in a sander and starts standing it down getting all off. I'm cleaning up my boards and part of that process, I've gotem on easels And I'm sprayining with the hose, I got a big wire brush and I'm knocking off the ash out of them Clean ' them all out, hose off, hose, off, hose off So you can image my backyard I've just got skateboards everywhere dry in the sun. I've already washed off. There's standing water all over it. essentially setting on a concrete pad burning these things And we get done, my wife bangs on a window and she's like, Hey, Father's day G breakfast Both my kids are in a bay window for me to that TV away watching me turn around he had finished sanding. unplugged his machine and plugged mine back in and it flicked the breaker. So they're laying on the ground live I don't know it because I never let anybody be around me when I burn. something mean you can put these things in your mouth. It's not hooked to any electricity So I grab him, I go to readjustment. W lightights me up. I got him in both hands I contracted so hard. it shattered my collarbone, it shattered my scapula. blew out of my finger, blew out of my palm, top my head, came out of my thighs, went next to my ass Right when I held it, right when it popped, I took a step back and I landed in that giant pool of water ankle deep blew me up in air and shot me across a yard, still holding ono these things him because he's an EOD guy and he's smter than me had the wherewithal to unplug the machine So when I wake up, I'm on the flat of my back He's righting my face and's like, Do you know where you are? on the ground And I remember exhaling insane smoke come out of my mouth My hair was real long at the time. It's all standing up, hair smoking hands are all smoked out of my Jesus Christ He's like, how do you feel?'s like should'ers dislocated something shoulders like hanging down the hair the whole thing shattered pieces. I stand up I try to walk I try to walk around for a bit, I tell the old lady, goo get my keys. I'm going to drive myself the hospital, typical team guy fashioned She's like you're an idot She'slling at me. I'm telling her to shut up Kids running around everybody's scream. He' trying to break down the maches. My kids don't run out. We get around to the corner and I've probably got to walk maybe thirty, forty feet to my car, not far Date myself in a movie quote you seeen Kill Bill You know the F finger Death touch he does She takes five steps and he falls her and dies. That's what happened to me I sit up I walked on the side of my house I took one big step. She's inside, I can hear her run around with the kids trying to Tell them all like, Hey Dad got hurt, got to take him to the hospital, your your granda's gonna to come over. He's trying to break down the machine I take a step and everything goes. Jet black on a peripheral likeuckuck I take another one close and again I don't wantan to die in Virginia Beach. If you ask anybody who's ever met me, that is my number one fear. I do not want to die in Virginia Beach. no matter what Don't let me die there I take my third step. I'm in toilet paper too is going to be it Let take one more Total blindness. I can't see anything. and my eyes are as open as big as I can get them. I can't see anything to. ears start roaring I'm on the side of this house, panic at the disco. I'm not screaming. I'm just freaking out Like I'm looking up, I can't see an ounce of daylight. o my This is it. I'm blind Oh my Godd I start hyperventilating over and over and over, as loud and as deep as I can thirty, forty seconds in my mind's gota drifting off, and I see a little pinhole of light I just stare at it I keep power breathing And it opens up, opens up, opens up and then phoms Like I have superhan vision. I can see everything I can see the texture from the brick forty feet away. I mean, I can see anything and everything and I can feel everything Like I can feel my wife walking through the house. liveving in big brick house. I can feel her walking through it. Like it's As anybody's ever been electrated, did you start to feel weird stuff? He gets me up in that car Now let me drive to the hospital. We drive, it's probably three miles from me to our local hospital, like the big one. hit every single pothole in Virginia Beach. It was like he doubled back to try to get it If you ever had a collarbone broken or shouttered That's the movement You can feel it. You move wrong The whole thing is just hinging your arm' basically just swing around, it's terrible We get in get into the burn unit. And that was the time during COVID. So everybody in there has a mask on Virginia Beach has probably the most gorgeous nurses on the planet, but you can only see their eyes. Beautiful mascara, crystal blue eyes. and now I can see it all. now so I'm processing it. Fingers are inside you. I mean, they're doing all the stuff. They're moving my shoulders around. I'm screaming at them I'm tell them to stop And I'll never forget I tell you this they all laugh me This nurse swings her beautiful eyes in front me and she goays, Mr. Shhipley, I am so surprised you still have a penis Jesus Christ and she's like, Oh, honey, when guys get electrocuted, everything comes off fingers go off, your nose, your ears, if you hit it with one side, your whole opposite armor get blown off. L it opens up your rib cages. goes And what we can tell right now outside of what's blown up on you, like you're good So I make it through that three or four more hours, they've got to lift me to a different burn unit very specific. and when I get inside that one Um, This ER d. comes in he's like hated I'm probably too two hundred and thirty pounds at the time. I just rebuilt from this gnarly shoulder surgery. I've been in the best shape I've been in a very long time. So I feel like Superman, except now I'm in a hospital bed. He comes in and he goes, Hey do you know what Rabdil is? I said, ye. And he goes, when you get electrocuted, your body goes through It produce an enzyme very similar to raabdough. All your muscles liquefy, they go septic, I gott to cut them out or you'll die Okay, and he goes. So I got to come back every hour and when your blood marker, that enzyme hits a certain level, I got to start cutting you up And I'm sitting there, I'd been through so much, so many injuries, so many surgeries and all this stuff. I'm like, When you say cut me up, what does that man? he goes Tchs, lats, quads, hamstrings, delts, biceps, triceps, shoulders, everything has to go Bigger, I gott to get it out quick because once it liquifies, it's going to go fast Like how sure any he goes? As sure as I know the sent about the set in three out. L happens to everybody, Oh my god. leaves the room, I start hysterically crying, my wife is bawling and I just wanted a gun next to me so I could shoot myself. The lowest I'd ever been. I was alwaysready struggling with depression, everything I've laid in the hospital bed, comes back in an hour later, checks my blood So far so good,' be back in an hour Back in an hour, back in an hour, back in an hour, doing the whole thing and He came back in probably five, six hours later and he's like Hey, dude, for whatever reason Not only is your enzyme mark or not getting bitter Just not a trace it in your whole body He's like we schedued you for surgery next Tuesday You can put it in a plate and like fifteen screws in your collllybone. You can go I mean, I was in the hospital for or five days, but Yeah. survived that, survived the electrocution, did all that stuff and that was really premise for tribes skates tell the whole thing serves is all art therapy and that u That was the worst man. I had to rebuild my thumb My tendon got attached to the nerve bundle so my thumb got fused like this for about a year. I had to do a Z linkth open the whole thing up so I could actually move my thumb again. ught my shorts on fire Like it was um it was dicey dude That was That was my transition So when I transitioned out of the military, that's what I had to do time I actually got my Diddy two hundred fourteen, you were retired on a Friday Hs your retirement paperwork I started a job the very next Monday. I couldn't even put on body armor because I had just had surgery So I had foam playton. try to teaches guys seekQB arms and two slings just trying to pretend like it wasn't there. so I'd show up with double slings. I'd take them both off and I'd just stand there Holding my kit like this because I couldn' move my arms. That's how I had to teach That was my transition hide and injuries, A aboutout as gold standard as you could get for making it worse than it already was the worst things ever happen for me. I had the best transition, you know, working in the Air Force was an amazing experience that transition, that fall from grace was Nothing I've ever seen ever told you about it I thought it was going be the best thing ever happen to me very long hair, I'm going to smke weed, I'm do whatever I want to. military doesn't own me. Yes, yes, yes I've never craved anything more that I wanted to be back in I knew exactly what everybody did I do not want to be a civilian I need to get back into work as soon as humanly possible and it wasn't an option Now what I do What I do now I don't how to do anything else. And that's when you really realize I've been developing a skills set that is useless to everyone else. Nobody needs this think Elon Musk is going to call me like, Hey I'minking about building a Tier one assault team. want to be on it The phone call's not comminged Nodybody needs you And now if you get out and you get on social media and you ever talk about what you did, then you get bapastterardized by the community You write a book, now everybody hates you. Open up a podcast, everyverybody hateses. What am I supposed to do I don't know how to do anything I didn't go to college, didn't a realestate license. I don't have a relationship my wife, don't have a relationship with my kids I've sacrificed everything to try to be as good at this one thing as humanly possible and I was trying to do it for thirty years. And now it's seventeen, I don't have it I don't have any transferable skill set I do spiral S.ing Yeah, you didn't have any sanard check. I had no group, no reason to get out on the bed at five AM didn't have anything else So what I'm ling The rehab, I'm at my house Oh gimped up. I get him knocked the door. Antw Dorant's my strength coach, Vernon Griffith. best strength coach in the world. Oh, I love this guy. He was my guy that brought me back after the shoulder injury from Scott Ivon. He brought me all back and he shows up and he's like, Ohh God, he's still milking it We like gump into my kitchen I s down. and I am I'm really feeling sorry as myself. Like I do not want to play the game. If my hands weren't as bad as they were, I probably would have killed myself I couldn't do anything I couldn't build a trigger my I don't know how I do it And he's like If you're done making excuses, what can you do Nothing to I can do nothing Pist you walk I cl. I can barely walk in. I mean, I can walk Is that can you move your hand hands are all bandaged up and I was like, yeah, He's, can you Sure you rest? said yeah, but I'm inouble slings I can't Do a bicep cral, can't do anything. It's c pulls at this blue two pound dumbbell about that big and puts in my hand. he goes Extend it. Fl it Frange arrest, same thing It's like we do risk girl in twenty minute wal We did that every single day multiple times a day until I could pressurize my upper body and then we got back in the gym Belt squatting doing enough with belt squats and lunges for Eight weeks surgery all heal, now we do up our body and we just stayed on that exact same routine. So as low as I was, The only reason I was as low as I was is I didn't have a group I don't have a group now what I have L've got my family now I don't have my routine G get back on the routine Back in the gym living the exact same routine, I've lived my entire life, surrounding myself with people better than me. naturally started to pull me out of the Pression. Anytime I've ever hit that bottom again, it's because I've been outside of my routine where I put my individual needs, needs in my group and the guilt started to really Affect me So I don't try to over compplicate anymore. So my transition now was terrible My rebuild looked exactly like it's been every day since I was fifteen or sixteen backack on the routine, don't break it No matter what. Yeah, that's me that's me getting executed terrible What about the psychological changes I understand that physiology and psychology are very closely linked for you But I think, uh, fifty percent of pro athletes get divorced within one year of retiring from their sport I would imagine that the same thing is true for bankruptcy, I would imagine that the same thing is true for drug use, for reckless driving incidents or deaths U Well What were the biggest challenges that you were facing psychologically I wanted to kill myself from probably twenty thirteen up until twenty twenty, twenty twenty one very day Every day on day. And I didn't have a reason for it. I didn't know why I was always a guy. I always look down on people who committed suicide always Like what a selfish thing to do, like Cry me a river. becauseuse you see these guys, you know like You've got your dream job Your wife's a kin. ten fingers, ten toes on both your kids, like they're star athletes, there's nothing for you to be upset with How could you do that? Why would you do that? And they never leave even knows, He never knows until it happens you. It's just so hard to wrap your head around. I just woke up every day. I just didn't want to play the game. I want to hit the big reset button on Nintendo and start over in a different life. And That was both in service and out of service and during transition. the medication helped for a little bit too was like, It was that quiet noise in the back your head just kind of subsided. It was always there, I'd wake up in the morning Just override, go to the gym Override and go to the gy Go to the range do this stay active like a shhark, just keep swimm Every time I stopped things got bad Don't stop, just keep going But once everything happened, we came off all those meds, I still had to be on quite a few of them I wasn't it wasn't a full med wash out We came off the hard like painkillers, so I could feel all the pain. I was still on Sibalta, still on Adderol, still on a bunch of these things, bllood pressure medications to stop nightmares, all this stuff It's hard to quantify how bad it was Everything you loved before you didn't have anymore didn't have the group. There's no group chat. No no one ever can tell you put it on again. There's no purpose And know I don't have a j What am I supposed to do now? I never planned on getting out. I never planned on notot doing anything less than thirty years. I're just going do it forever. because there's nothing else for me to do. I don't like anything else. I don't have another hobby. I'm not a scratch golfer. I don't want to be an entrepreneur. I don't want to do a podcast, I don't want to write a book I don't want to do any of that. I just wantan to do this and now I can what I do now I don't know, circle in drain O and over. But I mean, now they're out smmoking a bunch of weed, doing a bunch of stupid shit, started cheating on my wife, started doing all the things that I shouldn't have done and all the things I didn't do in the past. I started doing during that transition. and it just it ruined everything Everything I tried to avoid my whole time in I did as soon as I got out. Every like everything that everybody does to get them divorced, they've usually been doing their whole career. I'm the opposite I didn't do any of it until I got out and I was like, ye, I have no purpose. might just burn it to the ground ood wanted to be divorced because I didn't know how to reintegrate with my family I loved her, loved the kids, D didnn't want to lose what I had, but I did't know how to integrate because I didn't have any practice And I never looked at it like obtaining a skill set. When you talk about being a good husband, being a good father, being a good friend, it's a skill set. You need repetition in order to be good at that Like how are you going gonna How do you raise kids? You've got to be there. You gott to show. I h to be a good husband, you have to be there PinPal thing doesn't work in reality. You have to live together and I didn't have any experience doing it. So when I transitioned, like What's a job I can get right now that is going to get me out of Virginia Beach and away from this? Not because I don't want to be there, but because I don't know how. in m In that version of myself in that moment, the easiest thing to do was to separate Let me get a job that's got me back in Arizona, skkydiving as much as I can, working these contracts. like let me just stay do It's safe Let me get out of here We're saying could happen. M started a spiral. She got to the point where she was gonna shit Camy She was over it all inside of a year, just like everybody else. And that's when I founded about Mexico I began five Mo DMT and all the things That was really like her last C for prayer If you love me, you go to Mexic and psychyics. She found it, are you? She found it No way. She sent over to me, it was a friend of mine Markxs and Amber Capone, amazing. We were in team together and He went off to the west cooast and preaching the gospel about I a gaining five MEO and Everybody on the east cooast said the same thing, you know, while we're cararts and flns dip in Copenhagen we were like Typical West cooast Yep. He left the east Coast. he left the motherland. He went out west and now he's crazy. No I'm so glad I went So glad I went. We sit there and we watch this little informomercial, we knew their whole story. L we knew the ugly truth and everything they had been through. and He was so open, so honest, so transparent Okay, well, he seems okay He seems like he's got a really good balanced point and you call him on the phone and he sounds amazing He was one of those dudes back in the days when I knew him, his eyes were as black as your shirt. If you wanted to topple a regime with just a single individual Like, no rules, no mercy, you just launch him. dishes. Like one of those things like You you ever walked through the SBCA and you see these pit buulls, faces all scarred up, you're not gonna to stick your hand in that cage and try to pet it. That's what he was He can't like that anymore. He can still be that guy But he has full control over it. And I think that's what everybody wanted like I don't want to lose my edge. I don't want to be a pacifist. I don't want to regret everything I've done. I can't control this version of me that I've now created. I just don't want to be at the mercy of it. Exactly He found control May if fig' down here and poisoned dart frog or whatever they're doing, mayaybe it'll work for me I went What was that experience like Um My life was Unraveling in the moment Everything that could be going wrong in my life was going wrong right then everything I was leading multiple affairs. One of the girls was pregnant. Everything that could be going wrong in my life was happening right then at that moment I went out of Mexico with no intention to coming back I don't want to I have a picture of my phone post Mexico of me standing on a cliff's edge lookingoo down about eighty feet jagged rocks underneath it I came this close to jumping. That's after Mexico. after because I knew I was going home to I was like this isn' going to work 'min a J j. There's no reason if I slleip in the fall right now, she'll get all my All my medical should get my life insurance. it would just be an accident becauseuse I am not going home to face this music But we went down there, I went down there with a bunch of heavy hitters, probably eight, ten guys. This little compound in Tijuana, they had a bunch of team guys called it holding space. They're cooking the meals, they're sitting with you, kind of walking you all through it, but it's a five day process You get down the first day they give you a drug test which is kind of ironic Go make sure you're not on at all stimulus su. you have to come off of all the meds. That was the thing that I didn't realize was going to be just like being back in that detox hospital Coming off S Balta. if you've ever been on what is that? It's an SSRI, but it's, u It's really for pain management, for everything else, but I was on that heavy dose of gabapinin So when you're on that combination of gab appndant andmbalta, they call it jolt When you come off of it your nervous system starts firing again, so you'll sit there and you'll just do this driving around you like j hpnic jokes in a way. Yeah. Yeah. ye It's super frightening because you can't control it and you don't know they're coming on. So you like go to get a cup of coffee and you'll just joolt It's like what the f's going on with you? And I was like, I don't know. I don't know. But now there's no ater all, there's no stimulants, there's no pain meds, there's no ambien, there's nothing. So now I'm a she of who I thought I was And now I know I am really truly dependent on these bads. I was probably on At the time I went down there probably forty or fifty. The overall I was taking sixty pills a day We weaned off a couple of those things, The Preston for nightmares, a couple of those things, but Cor remained a lot of pills.ince this is after you'd been washed out of them previously. Yeah, because a lot of them you have to stay on them. Like for them, like, you're never getting off at all, you' never getting off sybaly, you' never getting off this, never getting off that So we're still on them all But now I have washed off of everything completely When you're truly sober for the first time, you get to realize the life you've lived An the injuries you've taken because now there's nothing mask in it Feeling myself get up in the morning was humbling jumping around, limping just Everything hurt. fibromyileologia. I could barely hold a pencil, like hands just shaking all day. is embarrass from who I was a year and a half ago to who I am now, as sheelle I don't want to doal with this dude. I don't. I didn't want to go to Mexico I kind of went just to to shut her up, but yeah I had no intention of going back we get down there they give you the pist test getet one night as sleep, the very next day, she're going to do I game So it comes from the Eoga plant in West Africa grrant this little shrub, you take these two pills You write down some nonsense on a piece of paper, you want to burn like things you're trying to get rid of. I can't write down any of my stuff because Nobody in my group knows that I've been cheating on my wife I way They don't know I've got a girl pregant. they don't know of this stuff. It's just me now. I dropped that thing in a fire. Do you remember what you wrote Um self. Like what am I trying to get rid of myself drop in the fire and let it go We go upstairs They've got this sound booth going. It's like these disco lights are going crazy. they've got this yoga practitioner in this white linen thing. She's gorgeous, but she's playing these bowls. She reminds me of Ursuline, a littleittle mermaid. Whoa doing the whole thing. likeike it's a lot to take in in for us It's so out there. it's so foo fu like looking around the room at all the people that are in there and everybody's from your old line of work and you're like Did you ever think we'd be doing this bullshit I'm so glad nobody knows we're down here I lay back down And if you ask a guys, I probably made it fifteen minutes or to snorm dead asle that was a slate. That's when the whole thing started to happen And It's so weird Because some guys don't see anything, but the medicine goes to your body regardless. It kills All your addictions in a single shot. I don't care if it's herroin, gambling, sex, porn, women, whatever it is, all your addictions are gone in a minute Just for reference, I dip two cans of Copenhagen every single day from the time I was eightighteen U until that morning Every single day I didit two cans of Copenhigen When I woke up from I again, I've touched it again. I love I would put in Copenhagen right now. I can't even get it to form in my mouth. It's like my body is auto rejected I can't do it I miss it. I didn't drink coffee for six month I want to drink coffee Id get it right to my mouth This one dra it weird So I'm laner, this whole experience starts to happen. You hear these bees buzzing, all this stuff in I remember parts of the drain and it'll flash back every now and then But it was like I was free falling through a vertical wind tunnel and these dresser drawers were opening up and they were just distant memories. you could shift your body over and fly and fall into it. And now you're inside like Is realist as studio is I could feel the temperature, the humidity, the weight of the t shirt, everything so bizarre. And you could just sit there and relive it. Like whatever's happening right now I just sit here being third person just watch it I could drop into who I am and watch the interaction. I could drop into the other point of view and live it through their eyes, even if they're yelling at me or whatever. I could be them and feel the rage understand why they were that mad and agree with them. like You deserve that I'd be doing the exact same thing And it bu builds a lot of empathy.' like, I totally get them now I get why you were so mad. I get why I did this. I get why I did that. And it made you come to terms of a lot of mistakes That last for sixteen hours I mean, like you were in you were in the medicine. I woke up the very next day And I have never wanted to teleport home so bad in my whole life. I've never been homesick. I've said I'm homesick I't get homsick Now I get homesick because they've a good relationship but back then, never And that was the weirdest say thing because I knew how much chaos was waiting for me back at home. All this stuff is going to uncork She's going to find out about all this stuff. There's no other way around it. and that was really the realization is I'm going to have to go home and if she doesn't know, I'm going to have to tell her That's just not going to be met well. They give you a full period. It's called a gray day where you're kind of navigating the medicine, you do group circles and all this stuff And we s around this big group. I woke up like eight AM the next morning like fired up, ready to go. I'm Chatty Kathy now Like I don't want to talk before, now I want to talk. I want to know what happened to you inside of that medicine because the shit that happened to me I got to let out We sit around that room and all the guys started talking, and I'd known most of these guys for my entire career Like my best friend was in there, my business partners were in there. I mean, like we really know each other And only a couple dudes know how bad it was Like I mean, I had episodes while I was still active where I was sitting in my guestroom with trash bag sitting next me, I was going gonna put her my head and shoot myself in the head to not make a mess that she could resell the house told that in confidence to several people They were all in that room And they were like, Oh man, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry. I can't believe that's happening to you. Ma That next morning Me too, me too, me too. and I was pissed was like, you werere gonna let me shoot myself my guestroom and you were never going to sayve me to What's going on with you? when they start to open up and they start to talk about past trauma, childhood stuff, sexual abuse, everything You've been carrying that for forty years It's like my wife doesn't know, my kids don't know, my parents don't know. You start to see the correlation, the comppartmentalization to ultra extreme. Like a certain point, you have to be able to share something and we got so used to just not doing it held it inside Then you do five MO DMT You you ever done F five emo or DMT? You should. It's not like anything on this planet It is it's super fast. It takes no time to build up But they sit you down and it's supposed to be a purge and Knowing everything I know now and I've been down quite a few times now and I've taken guys down and hosted a medicine form. Everything that conjured up from Ib began, if I would not have done five Eo and I would have went home in that state. probablyably wouldn't be here. I had not come to terms and accepted everything that I did. I wanted to go home and confess and do all this stuff I was disgusted over myself everyvery vile thing I had ever said to my wife or my kids or relationships I had sacrificed and compartmentalization, I felt so guilty for it And it was like that yard of beer, just trauma was coming out of my mouth. It was like those moments you're sitting there brushing your teeth looking yourself in air and you're De I can't believe you've done this I can't believe this is your reality. like you've actually done this. You have to live with this shit now How did you get so far off track from where you were to this point now in you sin there literally star in the mirror just like this in disbelief like, I can't believe you fucking did this. This is you're really going to have to live through this I can't do it I don't want to go home. I don't want to look at her. I don't want to break her heart. I don't want to lose the things I have right now I don't to face reality And it kind of gets you worked up in a five imOo DM We laid back there and You smoke out this crack pipe and it looks so intimidating. L it's in a little glass vial. I mean, you're heating up, like you' smoking a crack rock And as soon as you lay your head back when you exhale It's like your whole body consolidates into a single spark and then it explodes. It feels and it looks like You know when Star Trek is taken off those trails, it's like that. and then you end up in Statosphere just surrounded by whatever. It is the craziest thing But the guy told me When you go, he's like he, Whatever happens, let it happen If you think you're going to die If you think you're going to explode, explode. If you think you're going drown, just drown Just one big exhale and let it take you In the moment you don't do that. in the moment You're trying to hold on to it, hold ono it So I would throw my arms out, I would scream and then I'd balll up and I'd cry ten, fifteen minutes of like the ugliest crying you've ever seen. Uncontrollable, like throwing up crying Try so hard you throw up I woke up and I sat up and he looked at me and he went wouldn't it? That what you mean that wasn't it? Like that was everything I had. He's like, Hit him again. You want me to do that again. you's like, hit him again I did six rounds of that dude over and over. And on the sixth one This nurse came over. Little Mexican mirrorors super cool And there was a team guy sitting off to my left to right and he's like, You want to die, right? I said Yeah, he goes then kill yourself Do it right now with medicine Stop stop messing around, stop the level theatrics, stop crying, Just do it Kick yourself right now It is true. I don't want to go home. I don't want to confess this. I am I'll do it right now. I'm gonna smoke this with the intention to kill myself and I'm going hold my breath until it kills me 'cause I'm not going home. Give me a thing again And now I went through with the intention I'm going to close this whole chapter out So I envisioned the smoke was purple. And as I'm smoking this thing, I can feel it going through my whole body. I'm trying to push it down to my tippy toes. I amm trying to coat my whole self I held back and I held that thing as long as I could. I could feel my eyes starting to flutter. It like it's really coming on. It feels like there's a It feels like there's a cell phone this big behind your stern and the whole thing starts to vibrating You can't take it anymore. As soon as you exhale, the whole blast off happens and when that one happen, killed my ego. It reset the whole baseline And when I open up from that one, she looks at me and goes Cs it How do you feel now and I was like gott to get I got to get home right now, I gotta see my lady. Gotta see my lady, got some girls right now. Ive gott get home. gota get home right now And then everything else kind of fell apart from there and we brought it all back together. He was rough men. It was so rough. It was so worth it though If I wouldn't have gone down there I wouldn't be here one hundred percent is not chance Not a chance. G to go G got go You need up selling it to me.ro Okay, let's say somebody' somebody's listening and they go I'm on sixty meds a today.use me I'm not ex war veteran with a ton of PTSD from being shot out and shooting at people and st like. I don't have PTSD from that role Not an ounce of my experience, not a single piece of it anythingy in the military It went from my childhood zero to sixteen picked me up when I transitioned up got the entire experience. I've been down I've done I beame four or five times and V Vio DMT. I've never had a military experience Trum was Trum the lest, I went down down with coD, males, females, civilians, women, everybody Everybody's on the exact same path You got trauma, that's how you get through it That is fifteen, twenty years of therapy. In five days Unreal We've recently seen Trump sign that bill too fast track research and you's got literally seals stood around him Why not watch her film I should So Marks and Amber They're all part of that thing. They're really whening that kicked off that whole initiative. We did a documentary it's on Netflix called in Wazays and War That's really where the whole thing soed from Everybody got hooked up on there and We got a bunch of green Brets and a bunch of regular military fighter pilots They're all in there and we just keep success, after success, after success. And you see it and you're like Why are we not doing this? They've been doing it for thousands of years. likeike why are we not letting us go and Often a bunch of spill overver stuff in the fifties, sixties and seventies, but psychedelics are bad and they'll rot your brain and don't know, man I but I know it works and I know that I'm not on a single medication pain pill, not an SSRI, notot an ambient, nothing What do you think happened killed everything I had inside me that was bad. All my addictions, everything. I'm not addicted to anything. Anything I do now it's because I want to. isn't necessarily a good thing ' I like to do some bad shit too. but It resets the whole baseline. Like everything that I was struggling with swipe it all the way That becomes an issue if you try to reintegrate. and that's why I tell the guys now The version of me that came back from Mexico was so far out from the person my wife had become accustomed to for the last ten years She didn't believe it If you watch the film, you could see in real time. When I was going through the IBain, my wife hacked my phone and found out about all the affairs simultaneous, so I don't have my cell phone for five days So the whole time I'm going through She's getting lawyers in divorcing me, boxed all my stuff, took it to the shop, dropped it off, drow up divorce papers, however reintegration Got an ultrasound photo. She's got it all She saw everything I had done Now action. So When I come out of the medicine they give your cell phone right before you cross the border. they give you a little script to say like, hey, I' I'm so happy to be on the other side of medicine I can't wait to come home and see you and explain everything everything. It's just too much to put into a text or into a phone call. so I'd rather just not talk until I see you live. That's what you're supposed to say. So everybody goes out, they all call their wives. Hey, hey, hey raight to vo tyypical My wifes never answers her phone anyway. Text her doesn't go through Card, notothing, nothing, nothing, like three, four hours, nothing I'm getting ready to fly home. We're going from San Diego to Atlanta, Atlanta to Norfolk We leave, we land in Atlanta. As soon as I power my phone at Atlanta I get a notification, the password your Instagram has been changed. And I flick it over and it's my ghost account. The password emails been changed, I was like, Oh. I'm not even gonna have a chance to tell her now Like now there's no integration. Now I've lost everything. I went out to Mexico, I've got this new version of myself, but I'll never be able to show it to her She's not taking me back after this then Everything kind of went from there I said it Dicy. you want hair b better We land in Norfolk. We drive into the shop I get out, my other two business parters this time. All their families are out there, all the employees are out there, hugs and kisses, and I can feel the tension. The other wives know a couple of the employees they know because they've seen my wife bringing in boxes for the last three days stacked in my office still haven't got hold of her, but I'm still not totally sure like there's a chance that by some freak mystery Th then I get into the building and I walk upstairs and I open up my office and I mean floor two ceiling. There must have been twenty five, thirty boxes. Everyone was perfectly folded socks, underwear, black t shirts, normal t shirts, jeans, this, this milit everything I own was in those boxes over and the other two wives who are standing there with my two business partners and like, what's going on? They have no idea I' select the most like Dame a hug, Kiss myo ch goes like see on Monday. this month, know one I was never going to see him on Monday went straight downstairs, we've got a big armory grab my pist, shve in my waistemand jumped my truck andro gotot in my car and I was driving out to' a private beach on the backside of this military base. We used have a house. we lived out there. It's a one shot road and it's probably about a twenty minute drive And I was probably ten minutes into this drive and it terminates it's a dead end. and She was tracking my cell phone We had shherare myihone. so she knew where I was going. and I got about ten minutes down and she called my phone I do my heart rates is at one hundred ninety is like, I can't pick it And I almost didn't like pick it up and I'll say like, Hell Where are you? and what are you doing And they said, Paty, I Honey it don't have strength to I don't have the strength to see right now She's like, whereere you going said I don't talk about it I'm just so fucking sorry. And I hung up the phone made it down there and backed into a parking spot. put on a song And I told myself at the end of the song, as soon as it was done, I was going to get out I was going to walk down the beach to the water's edge w st deep water, and I was going shoot my in head C close the whole thing I' to be done No goodbye, no sad story, no nothing. Just let me close this thing out and be done And as soon as I backed in, she had already told two or three of the wives that lived on that road that I was driving down there. They had jumped out with their husbands and had flanked me and were staged all around the vehicle because they didn't know what I was going to do I guess you werere going to try to Apprehend me or something. What was the song he chose E experperienceced by Ludubico heard Dave H G guaranteed we'll probably one more about. U That song had probably thirty seconds left, maybe. Maybe thirty seconds left And she called again And I looked up and she was right there D driving on road.' sitting on the back my truck. you got pist right next me you just wait for the sun Here we go. She pulls right up, walks over I've never seen anybody as strong as her. N And she walked right up opened my legs up and walked up essentially cotched the cotch and lean over and pulled my sunglasses off and then it exploded in hysteria My eyes were crystal clear. They were green for the first time in a decade and she saw it She knew that something had happened then We just lay her. stood there, held each other and just balwled and she backed up and she goes, how the fuck could you do this to me? don't know. I don't know. I don't have any exc I went to the whole thing and You, I to her I was I know there's no way we're gonna work to this out I know there's no way you're ever to let me see my kids again. I know this, I know this, I know this U I just want an opportunity to say goodbye to them then She said, DJ, we've come so far right now L We've been through so much together and we've been together since I was twenty two We've been through so much right now We don't have to stay married You can't close this out right now Soll it tomorrow Get in the car, let's go home. Lets see the girls. Let's pretend like this hasn't happened and'll deal with it tomorr It's notuin this for them. They're excited to see you will shelf it. She put all that shit on the back burner. Right after that, she goes, But before we do going here I would hear everything Everything what Every detail, every eunce of it. E single person, every single date, tell me everything right now No way I never have to ask you again I did We sat down and we went through everything I had done, all the affairs, everything And we got through it written We went back home that night, re integrated with the kids and we sat down on the edge of my bed And I scrolled to my phone and every person who was of conflict or potential conflict, I blocked and deleted their contact Everybody, familyam members, anybody Anybody who had been toxic in my life that I'd been trying to foster that relationship or anything else They're different than Sal teams. I need to control the controllables And right now, all of this is a bandwid suck And I'm not doing it ever again That one guy that every time he calls, my heart kind of drops a littlell be like, what does this guy want? block and delete, block and delete probably a one hundred and fifty people And then I told her, I was like, we don't have to stay married we get divorceced, we do whver we want to. I'm just asking you for one singular day too show you that I've changed. And then the day I don't I want you shick at me. As soon as it happens, we went and sign paperwork signigned a post up, all this stuffm As soon as I do anything She's got the house, she's got this, all my assets, giving her. takeake it all I don't want a single thing I just want one day and I take it I take it one day at a time every single day. It's been the greatest thing to ever happen to us. We Our relationship is so badass. Now If you sit in a room with me and her together We' be your two favorite people. She is a fucking unicorn man She is. She is truly my best friend now. And I feel so guilty because I put her on the back burner for so long because I knew that I could She never left, never straight awayay She is the ultimate team wife. And I just I refuseed to see it for the longest time That is the thing that haunts me now. I don't have any PTSD. People, thank of for your service. Like, don't than me for my service. Like I would have paid to do that job.ike like oh, you must be so torn up on the things you had to do. L, no No, not a bit. I loved every ounce of it, even the bad self I loved it I love the people I sacrificed to be able to do the selfish things I wanted to do. her most of all Hord men But I'll tell you what, that medicine That is that's the only reason You don't get to navigate through that with marriage counseling and talk therapy and Date nights every Tuesday, that ain't going to get you through that And that was our big conflict. is I had changed so much over those five days that she thought it was bullshit. She's like, there's no way you went from that guy to this guy in five days I don't know Howouse to show you except You got to go do a journey I got her to go down and do piloc cyb and in five neo DMT Why the whyy not the IBy game She thought IBA Gain would be too strong for her. I'm going to get her to go do IBAGain with me. We're gonna do a coupleess journey together at some point, but I got her to do esssentially the same people. Sil cyb and five MMEO, and then we did it one together with Sil cyb and MDMA in five EMEo. By the time we finish those She she knew exact what was. She's like He's changed for sure. She's like you can I just did Sil Syon and she is so different from the person she was. Everything made s star Why continuing to go back to do more Ibe again if you think that you've already made the realizations that you needed The second time I went down there is because I was taking somebody else One of my buddiess really on a struggle buss about to end it all And I was like, Hey man I'll go with you I had no intention of doing the medicine with him. And I got down, he wass like, do you mean, you're not going do it I'll do it give it to me. I threw it right down, no prep, no warm up and just sent this. like, He man, I told you like' not to be afraid of. I'm like,old b,. I gone on. twoo or three times the host like you'll cook meals, you'll do dishes it And then this last time we did it for the film I had a buddy mine that got shot up really bad on my second deployment. He was like an idol to me And he was just struggling really, really hard, man. And I convinced him to go down there and I told him, I was like, I'll stop whatever I am doing. It's in the film And I was like anything. I don't care what I'm doing. If I'm on this fucking rogan and you call me I'll get up in midd of the interview, I'll fly to San Diego and'll go together he did. I couldn't believe you did. he called me. He goes Whenever you're ready, I'm ready to go. Saturday And he's like If'll fly out here I'll go I was on a plane in twenty four hours I flew out there took me down to Mexic did a whole thing It's funny you're a triggerert to go and kill people around world for quite a while and you're on a that triggerert to go and save people. and I begin now. Amen. L I get so much more benefit out of saving people through mental health than I ever did killing people and I' love killing people best job you'll ever have. But now, you know, he got through that whole experience and then we made it probably another year and a half and he was ready to go again It's same. he's like, I don't know if I could do it again 'll send it right, we went down again. I fw up to San Diego and I called him and I was like, Hey man Do you remember when you said you needed me to go to Mexico with you? He' was like, Yeahah I'm in Saniego bus lees from Mexico in thirty minutes D't let me down girlfriend dropped him off, game to me, None got a backpack, we went down to Mexico and he's never been better don't know, man But I do know that It's magic When you take that medicine, you cannot believe It grows in the earth You can't believe it I can't believe that people've been using that for thousands of years and it has not been more mainstream. You can't quantify it There's nothing on this planet. I' taking every drug there is. everything. I' taking aun of weird stuff too during the transition. There's nothing like that Every ounce of your addion is gone instantly raising Or what about the people who don't have addictions everyvery has dictions Sometes it's your own ego whatever you have going on deression, suicide ideation, substance abuse Wen, whatever it is, whatever your thing is, you just don't feel right anymore I'd go do that. What's the case for not doing it? If you're not healthy enough to do it, you got some preree existing heart condition, you weigh five hundred pounds, can't go do it because it drops your heart rate really, really low. I got a low heart rate anyay like in the low forties and mine drops in High thirties M drops low But man, I'm telling you How many people come out and have had an experience that's so difficult that they're not themselves anymore in a bad way? 'Cuse I've heard about this psychic fracturing why people take LSD or psilocybin. THC can do this for some people I've never seen that happen unless people reintegrate back into the same toxic situation. So that's what I really try to encourage guys now, like If you think you can go down and take these four pills I of again and smoke around a DMT and go back to that same toxic marriage and go back to drinking a twelve pack a day, and it's going to on out it won't That's what a lot of guys don't realize is You' get a lot of guys come back from there and they they get divorced be realist like I've beenarried to this toxic chick who hasn't been my partner for twenty years They get back and they're like It has been you. I've been misured this whole time not because of me, but because of you. And they get divorced and they flourish or they come back and they realize that Their addictions got there, alcohol got there. mostost the guys quit drinking completely Rob Qid drink completely Like I was profional my alcoholic for a long time It doesn't serve you. It's not a super food. It's not gonna make you better. I' about social drinking. I enjoy consuming alcohol. I just don't do it right now for Variety of different reasons, h But if you do the work, especially the work going up to it, talking to the therapist, really getting your mind right, really Really thinking about your intention and what you're trying to get accomplished and really lean in heavy. Like they're different going to a yoga retreat, like really, really live it. Like be a method actor. Like if Dano D Lewis was gonna take Ibeain, Lve it like that benef far out awayighs the risk It those, I could not imagine not having it could imine You got to 'll go with it You me youan. Come on baby. I was doing the same thing I was like, you want to go down there I'll sn my fingers.'ll get you on there. I've been talking to him. I mean, he He know he's been conong Gregor just went. is a really interesting one. So I knew I knew first h second hand thirird hand that Conrad gone and then I had it in the back of my mind. I was like, Hmm Hud. the way that he was convinced to get across there wasn't that he was going to go and do Iber gain I also heard that he didn't have a particularly good wash out period in advance of it. Uh, no What was interesting was that video, a bunch of videos were on Twitter one prettyt viral of Kanic coming back I have been saved. The Lord has spoken to me and a da da And I was like That's a I beain king Everybody's liked that when they get back. Everybody wants to become a psychic healer, like they want to do all this weird they just do it on fififty percent of the people that leave IBigain, they get their coaching license to integrate people, either pre integration or post integration. Well, you've done it and I mean, you're front end of the funnel for it now, right? Yeah, I mean I didn't go to any I don't want to go down the rabb ho whole thing. I don't do the whole coaching thing, but I mean, I've coached dozens of people to go down there now. I know it works I mean I've tried everything I've done stelli ganglion blocks, mean, fourteen inch needles. I've done I've done two SUBs. I've done I've done everything. I've done everything that you could possibly do. It fucking nolly. Yeah, right That one actually work It's still g being blocked into do anything, except give me a droPI for eight hours. It is kind of funny Dropp ey' funn Yeah, it Doid you get both sides Do one after the other or you just get one You would have done it on separate days. You wouldn't have done them together. I did three total. You must have got both sides. There's no way that they would have done three on that same No three on the same side. Yeah I didn't feel much benefit But I was also heavy doped up into That might have managed to counteract it a little bit. Yeah. It's an interesting one for me with the satellite. One thing that I wish that I hadn't done, I was using laughing gas, I was using Nox while it was happening And I wish that I hadn't because I wish I was able to U like feel the onset more that transition, I think would have been interesting Um, I mean, you're not able to think about much when you're like , Sing a hooka that' filled with fucking nost. You remember the needle going in Dy That'll like you up. Dicey. When He came in and he broke that needle out and showed it to me, I was like, you're gonna to shove that through my throat and He's like, oh yeah, it's why I get up on the TV screen. Yeah, you can watch it. was I was turned faced ultrasound. watching homeboy slotted in between two vertebrae Yeah that's fun. thing One thing that I did get from that which was interesting, my HIV went up by about forty percent overnight and it held for months. Wow. That was pretty interesting May also explain just how tuned up some bits of my nervous system were It's interesting. it's interesting, man, you know I I'm in Austin which is kind of the home of the Psychedelic spiritual tourist and It's given me an interesting relationship, I think to using psychedelics for healing Uh, in some ways it has made it more normalized, but in other ways, it's made it feel a little bit more like a fashion accessory and it too anyone else that's ever been in a communal sauna here in Austin. They know exactly what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the fucking ancestral trauma that they felt through their animus. I like ah I saw you in here two months ago and you're the same asshole that you were. from back then. and that's the integration side, but I don't think I've ever heard anybody talking about IBgain. There may be a dose or a compound or a plant that you can take which is inescapable From a that one is from an integration perspective U But what what made me think about the SGB was the integration window that you have for the SGB is real important, right? Six weeks after that. within six weeks after that, that's sort of re imprinting Um Yeah, I It's interesting to me to think about this sort of stuff, especially as someone who cares an awful lot about mental health, who thinks about it a lot, who is a proponent of people going and doing therapy, of doing CBT or act u of people doing talk therapy and getting in touch with their emotions I wonder whether part of it is almost certainly part of it is fear Fuck Like that sounds scary. That sounds really scary And what if something bad happens which is exactly what you're going to try and work through which is the ambient fear of what if something bad happens, which is exactly how you're existing through the rest of your life Balls no blue chip Anthing worth doing it's got to have a risk component to it. It's not were doing at . mean, are you afraid of you keep being the same depressed version of you that has been for the last decade You' got to be willing to make a change. And that's what a lot of people won't do. They won't interrupt their ego They get to the medicine and they come back and they're like, there's nothing wrong with I can drink I can drink, I'm totally in control You probably should't know. He's like I'm only gonna to have two or three every now and then T to three turns to six really, really fast. Ask me how I know I't do it If you're not really, really going to lean in hard, don't waste your time. Don't take up somebody's slot. It already costs a lot of money. There's thousands of veterans and first responders that are on a list to try to go down there right now and you because you have an AX car are going to jump the line and you're not going to take it serious and you're going to give IBigain a bad name If you really want to do it, do it like a can professional and go the whole way really, really do it I've never seen anybody who is really focused on All of them All the training going up into it and really focused on post treatment integration who hasn't had a phenomenal outcome. What's the percentage of success and what's the amount of change? Oo u They have the numbers for sure. I would say impression is up on ChadGBT. I'd say I'd say as far as depression, PTSD symptoms They're reduced by eighty per or ninety percent instantly like people that They can't even get out of bed. They couldn't even sit in his room because they're sitting behind him. I mean, just so hyperv you can't even be around him. to baseline normal, you'd never even tell who they are Never. I mean guys who They break out in hyster crying all day. They don't know why. they won't tell you why. baseline normal. twelve hours How long does it feel It feels I mean, how long does the high last? like when you're done? The trip Um, depending on how you are, your body weight twelve to eighteen hours, some guys go longer. What's the felt sense of that manyany years or does it feel like you're there for sixteen hours You lose track of time pretty quick, but for me it feels like it's by quick. But it also feels like you've been here for a lifime But man You can stand up like you know where you are But here's the interesting thing, and everybody who's going down there will probably tell you the same thing. you wear eyes shades. You can sit up lift up the ice shees, look around the room. know that's you, know that's him. I can see the nervous I can wave like, hey, under take a piss. They'll unplug your leads, you're hooked to our EKG machine, all this stuff. They'll hope you go to the bathroom But you can go back in So to speak.. So so you there's a little bit of a pause. Well, some guys will have in experience ear they' trying to take a piss. And now they're like swirling or their screaming like they're in the thing. Yeah The the weirdest thing is guys will talk about it you'll be sitting there and all of a sudden you'll hear your neighbor. He'll say something and you'll look over at him.' like You have a full conversation and then you realize you had the eyes shades on You look at me you can see him You lift him up and he is in the position. you can see with the eye shades and you'll watch everybody do this So lifting back comm like. I can see right through. I swear to God, you can have a full conversation. That guy wake up and he's like, what are you saying I don't know. Put the eyes shades back on you like How where they on where they off you can't tell. You can see right through. It's a difference between a Bogger and I begin A bogus the root planet it comes from essentially the same. I don't know if it's a the chemical makeup, whatever But it's the root of the Boga plant And it's two capsules. If you want to take a boost, you can take two or three Right, but it's it's just literally two pills You go in and you take 'em, like fifteen minutes, you burn your little paper. By the time you walk upstairs, you're like , I don't feel anything. And and you watch every re do this You s down, give you like a moroce, start banging this thing. you're staring in a mirror, and you can watch your whole face start to move around Typically staring in a mirror is bad advice when you're on psychedelics. You think it would be, but that's how you reconnect with yourself. That's how you know the experience is happening. But you'll see everybody they're sitting there beating this maraca and they'll come by and like, you feel anythinget I'm not sure You've been here for an hour and a half. you're definitely in. Bter lay down, you better lay down for the eyesades on, lay down, funny. But for me, I don't move. Most guys purge quite a bit I had a guy just went down He threw up so hard he threw his back out They couldn't walk They're not throwing anything up though. it's all their trauma anyybody in that room, they'll give you It's like a big bronze bowl and you'll throw up and you'll hear him U King. You hear it bounce, you know, There's nothing in there All the practitioners will tell you bud it's like, that's your trauma hitting the ball It feels like you're throwing up buckets of vomit. There's nothing in there. You've been fasting the entire day. There's nothing in your system. You're not throwing up at all It's all your trauma, purging it over and over Same thing with f and meal You got to be just purging this bucket, notothing's coming out, but it feels like it is. Like you feel like I'm filling up this five gallon bucket, like you better dump it. What's the relationship between the I begin in the Fight MO twenty four hours of separation. I don't know if they have any correlation. They've just paired these two together at this one particular clinic amazing What's the you mentioned, if I'd just done the first one, the second one, what is it that the five MEO does that you didn't get from the IbB game? Th about Think about everything you've compressed, everything you've compacted down, your trauma. You just buried it way down deep. likeike stuff to happen you were five or six. that you don't even remember you've buried And I'm againain, it all comes to surface. It gives you The photographic memory from the past, like you relive it all. Like it's on the forefront of you. Things you never thought you'd remember You relive them right then, right there and now it's fliippped. So all the present trauma is now at the bottom, all the stuff in the past is up top and now you can't get away from it I would just go home with that I don't want to go home withide. M The fiveive Mo lets you strip it all away. So when you smoke that, it empties your cup. It dumps it all in one shot and it's like You feel fifteen pounds lighter, you wake up next morning like I feel amazing. I'm not on any drugs. I'm stone cold sober. I got no nicotine, no caffeine, no drugs, no alcohol. I've never felt better in my entire life Even though my life's in chaos. I feel like that means. everythingverything's just on fire. I'm fine. I'm fine I'm good Devin It is so wilded It is I'm really happy, Fen. I'm really really happy that you' found something that's a new mission as well, notot only something that seems to have improved your life, but that you've been able to dedicate yourself to making other people's lives better as well I just came back from Moody Air Force Base down in Georgia, talking to those guys the whole base, talk about mental health and all those guys and It's cool because they expect you to be a certain thing And you get out there and you're like, we're just gonna to talk about mental health. L noody wants to talk about it. sameame thing when you're in teams. Like I asked them all. How many guys in this room are restuggle mental health Over a thousand people in the audience, nobody raised their hand I'm used to some's the only Navy Sal with PTSD or trauma or depression or anything. So this would overwhel But we talk But I mean, the amount of DMs I've gotten even from the Sean Ryan thing and now All the other ones, it's only mental health And it's some of the craziest stories But I'm glad because when I was on my island alone when I was in that guestroom with that trash bag and that pistol about to do that thing No one came for it No one ever said me to. No one ever stood up. got in front of the microphone with a braid lights on and said it's okay not to be okay No one ever said it to meight And we talked about everything Not that You think we've talked and done everything together except talk about that shit. And I wish you would have. It would have made us so much better would have made us Tuly a dynasty I just I want everybody else to be better than me. I want you to understand that is perfectly normal and that is part of the game you play. If you're in the military you're first responder, and this is are the guys I really get see the most now with GBS we probably train fifteen hundred two thousand comps a year. that I do speaking engagements for firemen, the stuff those guys deal with day to day Feel guilty inside the military I always love firemen, I always love cops. I love people of service. I love doctors I love nurses. I love all those I never knew what they dealt with Not cops, especially not firemen Thank you of your service. I appreciate you guys. If if anything happens, I'll call nine hundred eleven. I never thought about the horrible things they would see and then they're going to be home within twenty five minutes firemen ishing kids out of aboutath th because the mom ran out of her pain meds and drowned all the kids the bathtub forty five minutes later, he's given his own daughter a b Apartmentalizing that, not telling his wife, not talking about with anybody the boys at the station ain't talking about it. They just Same thing we did That's when I go and I reintegrate with those guys This is your super team, this is your dynasty. You could potentially be in the same department for twenty years. Why are you not having open dialogue conversations? Why am I not able to tell you every one of my deepest darkest secrets? You're not leaving tomorrow. it's just us It'll make you super team You could build a dynasty right here, but you got to do through open communication. You have to be able to say the shit and nobody else is going to say. And it only takes one of you That's why I push twenty minute walks, I push the routine, I push mental health, the importance of it It's totally normal. This is part of the game. You can't run in the burning buildings for twenty years and not be scarred by something good. can't walk around the gun in your h. reing bag guys and seeing the terrible things that people do and it not affects you. It's supposed to. For you to think that you're just going to override that because you're such an alpha male That's not going to work, dude. Ask me how I know I thought I could override anything. I've seen zero. atient zer, I've seen some terrible things And Iing. tellell me that when you're going through A journey on plant medicine the classic sort of overachiever, I will be able to hold this down mentality. And he was talking about this when he came through who's saying, uh he'd created an identity of never being the guy who quit I don't quit. That's not what I do And that caused him to stay in a marriage for like a decade that he shouldn't have done. But it's interesting that when you get to a situation like you're in Ibergain Oh. that you've spent an entire career and a life putting together, which is Clenching at tightness No That didn't come in or It wasn't able to hold on I tell the guys now That's why I recommend Ibig gain for The Alpha M types, the guys with a super strong ego because that's because I've tried them all. That's the only thing stronger than the ego you can usually try to wrangle it when using something else I mean, I can power through anything else NDMA, weed, whatever I Ketam meine, I can power through all that you are not going to be able power to that whatever it's going to show you, it's going to show you can't steer it, you can't navigate it. You can't go, okay, cool, I'm going to set in this black box and I'm gonna to think about nothing for eighteen hours You can't think about the things you want to think of I try to put myself in a black helicopter with all my friends and try to relive all this stuff and see dead friends. zero Zero, That's all I wanted to see because I thought that is where my trauma lies I wass like more clearly, it' It was my love of the job, It was because I was so professional and I was such a patriot and now the loss of that, that's why it's caus us all lessly Not a bit Nothing was traumatic about my service. nothing I think the majority of the guys, it's not the service. It's the fact you left it You lost your number one love. That's what is you're suffering from a heartbreak from PTSA, I didn't do anything that I'm ashamed of that ever really mess me up? I mean, I've seen a lot of terrible stuff. D't keep me up night not a b That medicine Not saying it's a cure all, but if you've tried everything else and you haven't tried plant based medicine, I g every sh Wherey should people go? if they want to find out more about plant based medicine. If you're a veteran I would go to Veteran Solutions Um or ammbio life sciences St straight eye again five a meal. Trevor and Jonathan best clinic I've ever been to. It's on a private compound right over the border. They've got shuttles running back and forth. It's super safe, best food you're ever going to eat. I mean, Michelin quality food, amazing in ground pools, overlooking the ocean. It's an amazing facility, but it's probably a twenty five person staff They've got multiple houses that are running consecutive And they do it all week year old man They do the sweat lodge, they do everything If I had to give anybody a gift it be the power of a twenty minute walk and if you have tried everything. Cing embiial life scien Ch change my lifeim that Merry unicorn Beautiful story, man, I'm glad youre still here Me too Why should people go to keep up to todayate with everything you're doing as well You can check out GBS Group on all the social channels, YouTube, Instagram, all that. if you're trying to find me personally, it' J Sipley. I am only on Instagram. I don't do anything else. C in I really appreciate you I appreciate you See you next time, everyone Dude.