Latest / Veteran Wellness Podcast / Why I Can't Quit | Erik Lawrence on Purpose, PTSD, and the Mission to Help Veterans Heal
Transcript
- ERIK: We're too tough, we don't tell people we're hurt, we don't ask for help, we all have breach injuries or jump injuries or something and it comes down to a T B. I issue. You know, it's gonna be the same thing across the whole sector. Mm. We have many friends that have not come out of that hole. It's I mean it sucks when you figure out you talk, I did this again. Yep. And you feel stupid. Yeah. place to be. Well there's no point to be there. But that's where we're forced to learn what we were sent here to learn. Howdy, Eric. Hi, Randy. Be gentle. So born and raised in West by God, Virginia. Yeah. Yeah, West by God, Virginia, where there's very good emotional support, no physical abuse, and high education. and and you're gonna be getting job offers from the state now to represent the state. the state used to know me. Yeah Yeah. That's funny. joined the army at what age? seventeen got thrown out because there's no delayed entry for special forces in the National Guard. So I joined in high school, but you couldn't go to basic in the summer because it was a special forces unit. So they had to discharge me, wait six months, and then re enlist me. Okay. So I'd already had a discharge before I went to basic. my gosh. But the unit made me stay with It just didn't get paid. So wonderful. Yeah, I I got to be their the guinea pig for everything. A win-win all around, huh? Yeah. So I would always always in SF. Yeah. Good at right from the jump. Basic training right to the program now for for rangers, right? But what was that called? Was that called Well we had back then. It was like one of the first Selection classes. Mm-cause they previously did all the selection in phase one. But then I think I was in selection class four or something. And it was horrible. 'Cause they would give you like a a brown bag with like ham cheese sandwich in it and stuff and hope it's not rotten. they hadn't figured the program out yet. Yeah. Yeah, it was we were the guinea pig. I think somebody actually died in the class before us in the selection course because they were just kind of working out times and distances and you know, once they kill somebody they usually slow down a little bit. W what what year was that? ninety? Eighty nine or ninety. What are the others? Yeah, it was early. but yeah, I graduated Q course in ninety one, so yeah, twenty one year old. eleven in S F. And then it was the Clinton years. Nothing was going on and you're like, Yeah, this is boring, so Okay. I'll go do something else. And that's the U ETS at that time and then made the transition to other service. Yeah, I was in Sierra Leone within three weeks. wow. Yeah. That small civil war there. it was a good time. learned a lot more than I did in eleven years in special forces. Mm. Cause there's professional soldiers there that have fought for twenty and twenty five years. So it was an incredible learning curve compared to a peacetime, you know, curriculum versus, you know, fighting rebels in Sierra Leone with no rules. Huh. How do you stay incognito in another country like that where you don't you We're the only three Americans in the country. yeah, was the three of us that were there working with the we were working with Africa's got like a a NATO. It's called Ekamog and it was like, you know, made up of the semi developed countries of Africa, you know, Nigeria and this and that and so they would send their troops to these different conflicts because somebody would pay them to go. And we were advising and helping them. You know, fight the war, fight the rebels. Mm-hmm. Doing air transportation, doing a lot of door gunning and just trying to keep them supplied with equipment and understanding of how to do a counterinsurgency. Yeah, it was it was rather sporty. Huh. Yeah, it was a great time. And how long did that service last for you? That one that was it was only a ninety day gig. But every day you could have wrote a book. It was that action packed. Wow. Every day I could write a book. No two days were the same and you you y wn one time we did a neo operation of the US Embassy in Liberia and it's like, Okay, we're gonna go do what? We're gonna evacuate the US Embassy in Liberia. So the night before in the bar we asked all the other mercenaries if they wanted to make some money the next day. So they showed up at the heliport the next morning and it looked like one of your expendable movies but real. And there's guys in every kind of camouflage there is, every kind of gun there is. There's guys from the UN that were there in Balaclavas, so people didn't know who they were, but they wanted to help. And it was it was an expendable movie. It was hilarious. You got guys with AKs, PKs, Diskas, everything. They're just bringing it out with their looted car. You know, walking down, what do need us for? And the guy got a rock and we drew the compound on the tarmac, and we're you're gonna land here and put up security here, land here and put up security there, and they're all like, Roger that. And they're all British and South African and French and Fijian. And it was just hilarious. And it and it went off great. Went off great. So how we'll cut that out. I wasn't sure if I could say that or not. No. We'll we'll bleep that or something. But no, I'd I worked for the government for years. I was doing private contracts before nine eleven and those were sporty. I mean those were were government sanctioned but not government paid for. Mm-hmm. So they're legal to do. And but when nine eleven happened, that's when I got the call and for a couple of months all of us got together and helped tune up the air marshals. So we stood up the air marshal program 'cause they had an incredibly hard pistol qualification course. So like all the gunfighters in America, all fifty showed up in Artesia and and in New Jersey to teach the air marshal program. And after that then I started going to do the Afghanistan contracts for years with different you know, advisory positions there. And then obviously the Iraq war kicked off and we switched over to that. So I'd go back and forth. And at the same time I still had my companies, Blackheart International. Yeah. So we would be supplying the projects I'm on, which was convenient for me. I'd get to see both ends of the delivery. Yeah. And you feel good about that because you know they're getting the right stuff. Yeah. But also I had a security company, so we had security details actually in both countries while I'm still deploying to those countries. Wow. So I I gave you other wire. yeah. Well that's how you keep Keep your craziness and at bay. Stay busy. Because you're so busy that you can't deal with any issues you have. Yeah. You know, with young kids and Yeah. No, it was it was an incredibly busy time. But total service combined all that was probably twenty two years. Twenty two years, yeah. Wow. Yeah, with different agencies, with different organizations. but your dual hatting. You know, you're you're a contractor there. So when you're between jobs or between trips, you're having to work your your day jobs, you know, your company, your family, your this and it was just I don't know, I'm sure my kids would have a none too favorable memory of it. You know, I'd be gone ninety days, back thirty, nine nine, you know, doing that for years at a time and yeah. It it I'm sure it was taxing, on the family unit. I know it was. It got expensively it it it it ex was explained to me in the divorce that it wasn't good. well, yeah. Yeah. certainly something I can relate to because you know, later after becoming a public person and and having that platform I just divorced twice. And Again, you spend a ton of time away from kids and and loved ones and that's time you're not gonna get back. Yeah. Well, I wasn't in the right frame of mind either. I mean you know, these days they understand the difference between T B I injuries and PTSD. I think it's it's totally a separate issue. But they can have the overlapping symptoms. Mm. So, you know, when Jake, my son, was probably maybe six or seven, and I was back from one of my trips, I was always miserable between trips 'cause I always wanted to be in conflict. There's less to worry about. You're with focused individuals, it's a challenge. Mm. So when I come home I was always grumpy, you know, and Jake's like, hey, can't you find a war to go to? I'm like, yeah, I'll make some calls, you know, see what see if I can find one that's got an availability. Yeah. You know, because it was just I couldn't switch gears between you know, being in charge in a conflict zone to coming back to taking the garbage out. Yeah. You know, a week later. Yeah. Yeah, I mean imagine this that's not a switch you just turn on and off. No, we'd come home too quick. Mindset to survive a and be effective in those circumstances and you can't just shut that off and come back to civil war. But isn't that the s same struggle that a lot of our guys yeah have when they ETS? Well that's the thing. When when I quit deploying, you know, with the different agencies and I quit doing the travelling, everything broke down. Because then now I'm around too much. Mm grumpy dad's home. Mm-hmm. You know? And and a lot of guys have this problem with separation. Your athletes do or soldiers do. Yep. You lose your identity, you you don't have your team, you don't have the mission, you're taking out the garbage on Wednesday and you think that's a huge accomplishment versus assaulting a compound and capturing two or three H V Ts, you know? Mm-hmm. And then it's briefed to the to the president the next day or something, depending on who they are. down to what do I do now? Who am I now? Yeah. Yeah. I walked away from that military uniform for six years and obviously I never got deployed, I never had to to fight anybody other than on a mat wrestling. and my purpose and mission was already set up. I'm going to get a college degree in wrestling in in that endeavor. What you know you've been juggling leaving that service and then and what what's your new purpose now. Well yeah, and that's where you go through many different iterations of rebuilding yourself after that. Because I had some you were there, I mean I had some emotionally and physical challenge with all of this. You know, and and there was so much that we didn't know at the time. You know, I'm not into medicine, so I don't I wouldn't take medicine. I drank it out for years. I'm sure you can remember this. but that never helped. And then you know, so many times of reinventing the wheel, you know, hitting ground hitting the bottom and then coming back out, hitting the bottom, coming back out, I'm like, what I'm doing is not working. And then, you know, we've seen some of our other friends, you know, start the different modalities, you know, and it started with, you know, like ayahuasca and and these just different ways to purge these past traumas and or stressors out of your body that your body just holds on to. I don't care what a doctor says, I don't care what your labs say. Mm-hmm. There's shit in you they don't understand. You know, the things you purge on ayahuasca or any of these different, you know, modalities i is not a medical issue, I don't think. You know, it's it's spiritual at some point. And that's been the most effective thing to help me and a lot of the guys that I've tried to help. And and that's the way we're changing the paradigm of of how do you get treated. You know, we gotta triage the people. And I think I'm wanting to try to be able to triage people. And to help them, you know, through the different books I write and trying to get the information to them in a way they can understand it and then actually execute something with it. You know, along with like your foundation or or somebody's organization. I I think there's a foundation of credibility there because you served and did all the things that you did and then now you're saying, look, this is how I'm trying to fix myself and how I'm trying to shed a bunch of these things that don't serve me anymore. These patterns I developed to survive these situations and get through this stuff and they don't serve obviously the repattern as repeated I've seen this repatterns in myself through this same modalities in shedding this programming, shedding these pattern patterns of survival that we've developed to navigate society and then our training and all these other things after that. And I feel like that's what I'm hearing you say. Yeah. Well we have to because we should get smarter as we get older, you know. But that means you have to try. You can't just be a bump on the couch and do nothing. You have to educate, you have to travel, you gotta get some experience, you gotta talk to people. And all my guys that I've started these these interviews with and will in the future, it's all the same theme that's gonna come up. We're too tough, we don't tell people we're hurt, we don't ask for help, we all have breach injuries or jump injuries or something and it comes down to a T B. I issue. You know, it's gonna be the same thing across the whole sector. Mm. You know, and you know, maybe people will believe me, maybe they'll believe you, or maybe they'll believe, you know, some of the people we interview. Mm-hmm. They have to take it on board because otherwise you're gonna come to the same bottom of the hole that everybody else bounces on and you might not come out of it. We have many friends that have not come out of that hole. It's I mean it sucks when you figure out you talk, I did this again. Yep. And you feel stupid. Yeah. place to be. Well there's no point to be there. But that's where we're forced to learn what we were sent here to learn. to go. We we have we're gonna recycle this meat suit or a different meat suit until you figure out what you're supposed to learn. There's a thing a lot of people have trouble wrapping their brain around and and this whole spiritual thing started for me a little over two years ago and it's been hard for me to wrap my brain around exactly what you just said. I chose to come here and experience this human condition. The challenges and then there's an amnesia involved in that every singing single time you do that, which may be part of this soul loop yeah that we're all stuck in. I don't know if it's supposed to be designed that way, frankly. But We'll find out one day. You go down some of these rabbit holes and it's really hard to get back out of them. But at the end of the day I feel like I'm shedding a bunch of stuff that's hampered me, that's that's kept me from being the best person or best version of me that I can be. Well and that's where you know that our fitness, our nutrition, our you know, cleaning up these past issues, whether there's emotional, physical, you know, spiritual or true trauma to the body. Mm, you know, a TBI, you're not gonna suck up. Yeah. You've got issues. You know, and we know guys that have, you know, ended ended it because of the manic ways they are because of the way their brains damage. Yeah. that's the part that a of civilians or everyday people walking around don't understand. I think, you're just trying to escape. These therapies are not escapists. They're not way too intense. way too intense. Yeah. you know. I think we all have some modicum of self preservation built into us and when you put some of these modalities on board you there's some part of you that feels like you might be dying many times. Certainly your ego is dying, which is a for a lot of us a big part of who we are. Yep. Our ego develops these programs to survive and navigate this world where you've been told, No, bad, no, no, no And and I don't think we're ever gonna get rid of our ego completely. No. 'Cause at some point it does circle. It's identity. It's part of us. But who's riding who? Who's in charge? There's where these modalities have Well but I think that's where we've both been challenged through the years to learn all this so we can pass it down. Mm-hmm. Because otherwise if we sit and we fix ourselves and we don't tell anybody and we don't help anybody else, who are we really helping? Yeah. You know? I mean trust me, I I did not think I'd be this old. There's no way. But I couldn't get hurt. I couldn't get blown up. I couldn't get shot. I couldn't I'm like, what the fuck is going on here? You know, everybody else getting hurt. I don't get a scratch. Yeah. And that then you got survivors guilt. Then you're like, this is even worse, you know? Yeah. It'd have been better to get car bombed at some point. But you don't get to pick, I guess. And then you gotta deal with what's left over. Well then you start to dig in and find your new purpose and then okay, this is w I guess why I was made this way. Yeah. So that I can develop and and try to heal myself and shed a bunch of this B S that I've been dragging around and then be that example and and help others find their way through that as well. Yeah, I that's that is what's giving me calm now, is is to do that, you know. You've seen me go through the ups and downs and and all that. Yeah. You know, but it takes so long to get back to an even keel. You've gotta do everything you can to stay there because you if you repeat the stupidity of the past, you're gonna go right back into the cycle, you know. And we live in a world that continually trying to drag us back into that mindset, back into that mode, keeping up with the Joneses, you know, especially this Iran war broke out, man. That was a huge thing for me. What are we doing? It crushed me. It's like, come on, man, you know the whole Gaza thing. I'm like, you know, through my foundations, through the Extreme Kotor GI Foundation and MVP when when the extraction from Afghanistan was such a debacle. What a kick in the nuts that was for so many guys. down for weeks. I was miserable for weeks. it's like man, what did we just do? Yeah. Why did I just see my buddies pass over there? Wasted our time. For what? Yeah. it's it's been Well that's changed my views on foreign policy too. You know, I mean I I've I've seen the insides of how a lot of that policy was you know, implemented either through, you know, overt action or covert action. You see what we're doing, but then later when you see the results, you're like, this was a total waste. You know, the WMDs in Iraq. Whatever. You know we're gonna democratize Afghanistan. We're really winning hearts and minds. It doesn't seem like it Yeah. We're still paying the Taliban like four Forty four million a week cash. Cash. And no one said, hey, let's what are we doing now? Why are we paying the the enemy that we ran away from? You know, it's just there's so much dirt and everything, and that's where we have to limit our exposure. Help who we can help. And pretty much that's about all you can do. You know, we we know the vote's a joke, we know, you know, these bigger pictures are are a joke. Everybody gets a rug pull. But we have to help each other. You know, and that's where I you know, we were harping sometime that nobody's coming to help you. That's bullshit. You know, if a a good friend will come and help you. We'll say, Stop what you're doing. You're fucked up as polio. Let's work this out. You know, what what do we gotta do? Let's triage the problem. And I I hope we can get that up across the guys, you know, through, you know, video and audio. Mm. The guys like I think the first iteration of your book. Yeah, yeah. And and now you're tuning it back up and and Yeah, I'm doing part I did part one because it's a reference book because you can't tell people how to do something if you don't know what the something is. Mm-hmm. So it turned into a four hundred page reference book. So you can look up the modality, understand what it is, and then you can see how to apply it in a triaged manner. You know, most important to least important. And I've guinea pigged a lot of guys and it's worked really well. Mm-hmm. 'Cause you can you kinda gotta figure out, you know, what's the most important thing, you know, are they getting ready to get their house repossessed, you know, is that more important than you know, checking their blood levels? Yeah. You know, you you gotta do that. And So w w where's the second version going? Well the second version is is taking the info from the first one and going, This is how you do a liver cleanse. This is how you do your blood work, this is how You know, the actual pieces of it that now you apply to you. So you take your blood work and be able to read it instead of a doctor read it for you. Uhhuh, okay. You know. Going, Hey, how do I lose weight? What what what nutrition plan should I pick and why? You know, it's just more of the how to. I like a how to and to build guys an SOP that they don't have to look through thirty books to get one book's worth of information. Yeah. Crap that the big pharma puts out there and means when you start really examining the whole system it's pretty damn broken. Yeah, it's crooked. Well they want you fat, dumb and lazy, on meds. You know, you're you're not gonna resist at that point. You're you're gonna be a a you know, a ward, a surf. Yeah, you're gonna be very compliant when you're you you're broken, you need your meds. Mm. So yeah, it's it's you know, and with any book, you have to read it. Once you read it, you have to do it. So you can't do that, who's gonna help you? You know, you gotta But I guess that's the part that people miss about the psychedelic journeys and all of that. It's not just about going and putting some substance in you and escaping. Yeah. For a moment. Going into that w with with guidance from a shaman or or a doctor, coming up with the intentions, the things you're hoping to fix and hoping to get answers to, yeah, and going into that process. And then Being brave enough basically to let go, yeah, free enough to do it, actually put that on board. You can resist it. And people fight it, for sure. You've had some experience in that for sure. I fought it. and then integrating it after the fact, yeah. Wow. But how do you apply it? And there, how do I integrate this to to actually shed the things I went into this intending to shed or get the answers I was actually trying to to seek. yeah, I've seen some of the guys just go to the modality and I'd be there with and you would kinda do some follow up with them and they've done nothing since then. It's like, dude, you don't get to do that. That's not like knocking out ten push ups today and you're good the rest of your life. Mm. You've got to continue doing push ups. And you know, and I got drinking drug into holes to work. I've done the ayahuasca, it fixed certain things. I've done the ibogain, it fixed other things. I've done, you know, the DMT long trips. They definitely fix other things. I mean that's the most regenerative I think. And then the mushrooms have been the best for my nervous system. You know, for the brain issues and the coordination issues and my speech used to be slurred and all kinds of stuff. Probably just slurred to say that. But but you could tell I had those, you know, and and my one client in Montana, I was I used to teach shooting up there and she she's very in tune. With everything, and she goes, You're not okay, Eric. I'm ma'am, I'm fine. She goes, Eric, you're not. Go see my doctor in San Francisco. And it's Sergio Azzalino of the Azzalino Clinic, neurological and chiropractor and everything, you know, the whole gamba, the whole work. Yeah, it does the ebo and all that and filters your blood. Went through that. I did like a a week a month for a year. And she's Very benevolent. She took care of it, which I could never have afforded that. Mm-hmm. But I had Lyme disease. I had T BIs. I had Heavy metals in my blood. It was he he goes I was like the best experiment he ever had walked in. Because he'd never worked on vets. He's always worked on, you know other you know, civilians and professional athletes. A lot of professional athletes for reflexes and stuff. So my blood work was like the worst he'd ever seen, you know, but that means you can see the most improvement. Yeah. Well, I mean, what was coming out of you and coming out the other side of that machine was like, holy hell. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, I mean it's and it's incredible. that everything we did in the military was unhealthy. Shooting mortars, RPGs, the dust in these countries, the toxic waste dumps that we would be sleeping next next to were the burn pits. I wasn't ever around a burn pit, but imagine the guys that were, you know, lithium batteries on fire. What could go wrong neurologically? Yeah. we had guys up in K two and in Uzbekistan for the staging base, it was an old Soviet base, and when they left they just poured their chemical weapons out. So the ground was all contaminated. There's loads of guys with massive nerve issues from that friends of mine that just lay on their couch and drool all day because they can't walk anymore. Yeah, yeah, it's horrible. But with that, all these different mental modalities And and getting a true doctor that can look at your whole thing and triage that, hey, we gotta get rid of the heavy metals. We gotta start killing this Lyme disease off. These things took a year. You know, you're not getting rid of Lyme disease in a couple of days. And I'd had it forever. And How you can't do this by yourself, you know? Well you gotta have somebody help you. There's the broken system that most of these doctors aren't trained for a whole bunch of this stuff. And big pharma I mean they just end up being pushers for big pharma. And they don't want to heal you. No. They want a lifelong customer. Yes, sir. They wanna keep you limping along as long as you can, as long as you buy that pill. Yeah, but most of them are sick too. You know, you're gonna go to a dietitian that weighs four hundred pounds. I'm sure they're out there. You know, like do what I say, don't what I do, you know? And no. I mean these there's some of these and that's where if we gotta get somebody in with a specialist, the VA's not gonna front it. Cameron. yeah. I don't know when that happened. It's on ye. I'm not sure where our AI took over and moved the camera but I like this better anyhow. It's a better I look better. Somewhat. No, I think we were talking about the Azzolino Clinic. Yes. And blood filtration and Yeah, so many of these doctors do one thing, but he has a suite of different doctors in his clinic. Mm-hmm. So that you talk to the nature path over here, the the IV chelation over here, and you know, there's different specialists. Yeah, hyperbic chamber The gyrostim, you know, because most of us with blast injuries and and concussion injuries are off-centered. You can't You're up you're you're off kilter. So he's got different modalities that recenters your balance. Mm. Big difference. Because he's getting professional athletes that are, you know, wanting to get better contrasts. Yeah, making their living. So you're doing the hand eye coordination, you're doing the equalization of your muscles with these different machines that they're twitch muscle exercisers, but you can't use a big muscle to fix it. So to keep in alignment you've got to equalize all these different, you know, push and pull muscles. Mm-hmm and I mean he's got you know, tons of professional athletes and you name it, who's who in the zoo goes there? They fly from around the world to go there. And then like, you know, with people that's vaccinated or or have a blood issue, you know, Ebo, I don't I forget what it stands for, but it's it's a filtration system where they plug you into both arms, run it through a filter system, through ozone and back into you. And you can see the dart coming out and the fresh coming in. Holy crap, look at the difference. And there was sludge in the bottom of the filter. Wow. It's like that can't be good. Now with the Ebo they can only do I think a third of your blood at a time. It's about an hour. So you kinda gotta space it a week apart if you wanna do all of it. But I think I did it twice. And you I don't know, maybe it's psychosomatic, but you feel lighter and fresher and maybe, you know, blood transfer is a little better. But with the heavy metals I had, that's easily tracked, you know, from your blood test. Mm-hmm. but he'll check your gut, making sure, you know, the the microbes in your your gut biomes correct 'cause that has a huge amount to do with your day to day. Yeah. Well he gets all kinds of, you know, issues that you can fix but you gotta rebalance all the stuff. And Joe Schmo doctors they they don't know how to do it, you know. So and that's where if we gotta get a foundation to send a guy to a specialist like that, that's what you gotta do. You know, the VA's not gonna nut up and do it. And the guy can't afford that out of pocket. Yeah. You know, but I I've seen it be life changing. You know, my one buddy Mike got blown up, lost his eye and this and that, and he he went to that clinic for a week. And the phone calls we had, he just couldn't believe the results he was seeing others getting and himself and finding out where he really stood in the injury. Mm and it had been twenty years ago. He got blown up. Wow, that's amazing. You know, so you don't know until you meet a specialist what you can fix. Well, I know that we both used several of the psychedelic modalities for that exact day. Now I yeah no drastic trauma in my life. I didn't get deployed. I didn't get blown up by none of those things as a soldier the six years. The Cold War. It wasn't any of that. Obviously you've seen and know a lot of people, including yourself, that have been through a lot of all that. And just the little bit of stuff and the programming and the trauma and and the the wounds that I've dragged around and Yeah. Through the world in those filters, right? Those are the eyes you're looking through. That's what the psychedelic modalities do is they help you rewire your brain. Dis disconnects the hemispheres of your brain so that those anxiety loops and that fear that you get stuck in and that trauma though that allows those hemispheres to heal and create new neural pathways for what you're experiencing now. Yeah. Well, yeah. But it's memorable. So therapeutic, it's so amazing. You come out the other side. Side of those experiences and you feel like a different human. Well you are. Yeah. I mean your perspective, my perspective has changed so much on actually seeing what consciousness is. And I mean, we're just the the brain's just a radio receiver. You know, everything's there. You can get to it if you know how. I don't know how yet. But you know, your brain's just receiving it. So the in our physical body, the more we damage it. it's gonna be harder to make that interface, you know, with that data. So we have to work on these TBIs, we have to work on these, you know, chronic inflammation, chronic Lyme disease, these things that your body never gets a rest from. And and then how can it truly heal? You know, my mind muscle connection is better now than ever. And I think it's because of the mushrooms re reconnecting the neural pathways. So microdosing, yeah. For mood, yeah, I I I'm thankfully, knock on wood, yeah. Never struggled with anxiety or depression. you've been in some dark spots through through divorces and certain things in my life, but you know, I I I never struggled on a regular basis. I see my symptoms. sister struggles with that. Yeah. You know, one of my best friends, Jay Glazer, who wrote a book about it, Unbreakable. An amazing book, which gave me a lot of insight and perspective into what these friends and people I knew were struggling with. Yeah. And and a way to address them and understand and have some empathy for what they're struggling with. Yeah, but before we knew that, Randy, you saw how I dealt with it. Mm-hmm. Poorly. We'll just say portal. We numb ourselves, we sit back eight, yep. Egg ignore it. After three divorces and I'd rather not again. You know. I don't miss drinking at all, actually. I'm good. cut way back. I haven't cut it out completely, but I see the example that you set and I see the person that you are sitting here today versus the guy I met. Yeah. Twelve or fourteen years ago. A long time ago. you know, and and I know it's not doing me any favors. Yeah. It's a social thing. Take the edge off. Well, maybe you're supposed to be feeling those things so you're not supposed to be numb to that stuff. Yeah, but if we do our other modalities then along with some meditation, some walking, some exercising, I think that takes the edge off. I think I agree a hundred percent. I mean it's when we get out of those healthy cycles. We we'll shortcut. Yeah, we've been lied to about something. True. Yeah, we're rediscovering things we should already know. the system has lied to keep us Keep the man down, obviously. Cholesterol thing, blood pressure thing, red meat, eggs. I mean, so much of this stuff that we now know is good for us. Well, remember in the eighties they said eggs will kill you. it's like an egg is the most difficult thing ever. What healthy blood pressure was twenty, thirty years ago versus what it is now. What healthy cholesterol levels are, you know, thirty years ago versus what they are now. What's that all about? How is that just keep getting lowered? Yeah. Because they're trying to sell you something. It's not rocket science. If you're unhealthy you're a good customer. Yeah. And everybody wants a quick fix versus walking every morning. Yeah, that's human that's human nature. Eating properly versus what tastes good. You know. I I remember Jessica used to say if it tastes good, spit it out. You know, you just exercise physiologist, she says if if the food tastes good, there's sugar in it. You know, I mean, sorry. The sugar lobby. yeah. Yeah, we fought wars for the sugar companies. I mean the the banana wars back in the day were all over you know, sugar and and fruits actually, which is crazy. Thank you, Marine Corps. Weird. Yeah, but I don't know, we've gotten weird as we've gotten older, Randy. It feels that way, right? You start talking about any of these modalities or this kind of awakening or I don't know what you did get punched in the head. Yeah, exactly. That's what I'm saying. yeah, too many breaches on Eric. Thank God. It but it makes so much more sense, so much calmer, so more more collected. But you have to fight and do it. You know, and that's the pisser. You gotta set up your environment so that your lifestyle matches what you your output needs to be. Mm. You know, y you can't get one without the other, I don't think. Yeah, it's crazy dichotomy and ferreting out the truth, figuring out what's real, what's not, and it's getting more and more complicated with AI and all this other stuff as well. Yeah. Yeah. The digital world. It it's double edged sword because I've been able to get a lot more done on research, but you have to check that research. You can't just believe them make sure that skewed it for their agenda. Yeah, y I I would love to build my own AI actually where you put your own data in. That's why I'm buying so many books, sorry. I can't pass up a legitimate standard book with real information. Well, you see my shelves are full of all real encyclopedias and a bunch of stuff that yeah. One day that'll be gold. I have no doubt in my mind. And that's where you know I've wrote a bunch of books. And most of them are reference books that you'll never need once you've read But they're there to stay on the shelf in case you do. I mean I saw a video yesterday of this scary thing, but obviously we know they're building these huge data centers and they're plugging in just about every book ever made and written into these data centers and destroying the book they just exact put in there. They have to get the Which means they give Gab the power to then change all that information to fit the narrative that they want to spew out there. Yes sir. Or or regulate it back. To where I mean there's classified maths. It's like how can you classify math? there you can. There there's math that the general public is not allowed to know how to do. Which is stunning to me. But i they will go to no ends to maintain control. I have no doubt about that. Well I mean Price tag on the water, price tight on the land. They're always you know, they're seeding the clouds all the time. You know, they're doing their geoengineering. You know, our air is not as clean as we would wish. I mean here we're kinda lucky, but if you're in a more populated area, yeah. Those aren't clouds typically. Those are yeah those are chemical attacks. Here you know, we're out in the bush here and you can see a real cloud and you're like, Wow, that's like nineteen seventy. A cumulonimous cloud, look at that. It's beautiful actually. Yeah. It is. I take pictures of them out here. I don't know who I'll show to, but one day you won't know what a cloud looks like. they're just a bunch of conspiracy theorists. Bullshit. It just means that the agency correct that phrase to discredit people that were dissenting what was going on. Yeah, no, I don't mind. They can call me anything they want now. Just not late for dinner. You know. I don't care anyhow. I call a lot of things too, but not that. Yeah. Yeah, but I mean we we have to be able to discern what's good to put out and what is good to ignore. You know, and that's where I think, you know, we have to help the younger guys and the guys that don't have time to focus on it to do that and go, Hey, we vetted this. Yeah. Try this. You know what I mean? And if you don't, don't say I didn't tell ya. Yeah. You know? Because you you can't lead a horse to water and make drink. Yeah. You know. Well we can I guess you could hold down there but they're not gonna drink. They're drowned. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. I know but if this is the only way we can reach a number of people, who cares? We'll do it this way. You know, books, people don't read a lot of books anymore, but I still think you need hard books. I think you need to be able to pull it off the shelf, go, I don't remember this, look at it, get your standard back, shut it and put it back on the shelf. The truth is we've gotten lazy. We've we've we've substituted doing the work for comfort and ease. That's why this digital world and these phones and all this is so effective is because it's so much easier just to pull that up and Google it or or duck duck go it or whatever. Do all the time. I like doing that quickly and then going, Hey, I gotta check this out, make sure it's real. How do I implement it or how do I ignore it or how do I poo poo it? Mm because the disinformation's just gonna be off the hook here soon, especially with health and wellness. Yeah. You know. And as I said, if you don't have the right doctor that understands how to check for these things, you're just gonna get a prescription and nothing's gonna get fixed. Yeah. So how do you get healthy? How do you do all that? I mean, you kinda go go full Monty into this and go, I'm gonna change a lot of things and this is the order of which I'm gonna change. I in the first book I did annex number one was like a detox Annex. What do you do daily? What do you do weekly? What do you do monthly? What do you do twice a year? What do you do once a year? And it breaks it down into systems. You know, when do you parasite cleanse? Well, not every day. You know, maybe once a month, maybe every three months, something. But it's it's a way to build your own system and go, This is logical. I'm going to do this and then I'll see what my results are. And then you can tune it. Okay. Instead of going, Well, I have to research I Arsonus. I have to research colonics. I have to research this. It's already researched and and footnoted to you can go, yeah, these five make sense. The other ones are stupid. I'm not doing them. That's on you. But it's already been figured out. You know. I mean, we're doing most of these things, but not in a I I need to get back on it myself to where what do I do? What's my daily detox? I get up, I go walk. When people don't pour out my coffee, my butt coffee for my enema. The fact that you put butt coffee in the same sentence. Well, it's in the refrigerator, you know, but I I pre-make. You know, so you do your coffee coffee. Eric's butt coffee. I don't know. I thought it was a leftover coffee, old coffee, so I poured it out. Yeah, this morning I go, wait a minute. Now I pick up a jar or something and it was Moscow Mule Mix. I'm like, that's not gonna be good in the Keaster. Yeah, the special song. I remember that. That was good. Yeah. I'll drink that minus the meal. Yeah. It's pure. Pure sugar. Yeah. But no, you you figure out these things and when you do them, you notice your day's a better day. And then when you don't do them and you're out of cycle, you you're like something just doesn't feel right. Yeah. And then it rolls downhill. Well, I had a regimen. I fought for 14 years as a professional fighter. didn't start 'til I was thirty three, almost thirty four. So I knew I was running an older vehicle in a sport that was full of young young vehicles, new vehicles. And so I started implementing a a supplement regime. We weren't allowed to take a shot and do T R T or any of those things. But you start smoking your adrenals, your body's under that stress of that training starts shutting down in a lot of areas and testosterone is one of those and and so finding those modalities and this regime That I was doing on a regular basis. And once you see and feel success, then you start replicating that, and that's exactly what your book is cutting to the chase for a lot of people. A lot of already vetted a bunch of it and tried these regimes. I I it took years to write the book. So why would somebody spend that much time researching all that just to do what I already fleshed out? You know, yeah, it was great when I was fighting and walking those four steps up in the cage, and then I stopped doing it. Yeah. And I got these. Love handles and eventually had a heart attack. there weren't, you know, lifestyle issues there. There were some other things, you know. I had a I guess comorbidity is the wrong word, but yeah, but I I was I had polycythemia, I had thick blood already, and I knew that from doing the blood test to get licensed as a fighter. So then at 55 when my testosterone is at 170 and I start taking a needle in my butt to raise my testosterone, what's the side effect of that? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then there's that other side effect. So I've gone back to the natural supplementation and the natural regime that I was using when I was fighting and had that success. Do you remember the first six months of COVID we did nothing but drink and watch ancient aliens? Yeah, we did some NAD. We we went to the I V clinic a few times. yeah, we did do that a couple of times. That's NAD. Got her N A D and her glutathione. Yeah, that was really good. Yeah. And probably I'm one of few people because your son was in the house. Yeah. But lost weight during COVID. Well, yeah, you guys were dragging have keys to the gym. So drag his ass to the gym even though it was closed every day. Yeah. I feel bad I wasted those six months. We could at least walked or biked or but we we were you know well unless you were in Australia. You couldn't even come outside without getting arrested. Yeah, but we were in Nevada. We could have done anything we wanted. Yeah, that was silly of us. But you know, you you kind of make up for that now. Yeah. What's the end game? You gonna eventually form a brick and mortar spot or Yeah actually I wanna I have that concept written up, you know, like a full detox center. Mm and So you and I've seen a couple. There's a nice one in San Diego I would go to when I was out there for brain treatments and it was pretty close, you know, to where you could go from one booth to the next booth and it that was a great part of your day. Yeah, you know. Well I didn't realize you you were f friends with Dale McCallan. Yeah, yeah. And obviously I I just got to go spend a weekend with him and a retreat in Virginia Beach and and the modalities and things that he's trying to build there on his his talking about the has no there's gonna be a lot of guys with the same idea yeah I think it's critical because you know and and we're talking about the guys but their families need it too you know I mean if you fix him there's still there no one's paying any attention to the kids and the spouse you know I I think it's a unit issue you gotta work on the whole unit in different ways they all get triaged differently yeah to fit one they're included to you know that he caused all that you know But we can't just look at the guy. They're all interconnected, yeah. Because I mean SOCOM's got the most divorces of any unit in the military. Well the military in general, that that that percentage is very, very high. Yeah. I mean it's it's getting better about it. But ten points higher I think than the than the national average for sure. Well I would think easily, yeah. And way more on the suicide. Well, unfortunately, the national average I think is around sixty percent. And I think we're at seventy or seventy five percent. Yeah, well that's not a real good bet. Well, well that that lends itself to a bigger question and a bigger problem. There's this the the societal thing that's going on and the agenda the powers that be not to get too far off track, but yeah. Well yeah, but if we do if you're working on family units, you know, or like your gym, you've got a set number of people, or a you know, an actual military unit, I think th they can develop things, you know, at the foundational level that the smart ones will keep doing. A knucklehead's gonna do knucklehead stuff. You you're not stopping that. But you know, if it's my one of my studies, I did a lot of fasting there for a while to try to clean up. 'Cause i if you fast, I mean seriously fasting, you know, a week, two weeks, three weeks Your body eats up everything it doesn't need. Autophagy. Yeah. So if you have brain damage that's scarring from breaches or or concussions, that's not needed. So if you can trim down the normal fat on you and it get to the points where it's eating up those other non usable parts, it has to help the system. Doesn't that autophagy kick in at about forty eight hours, I think, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, and that's where I was thinking, you know, active operators, you know, if you're doing a lot of breaching if Maybe if they fast, you know, three days a month, I don't care, in thirty years they won't have the T VI issues we have that we never did any of that because it's culmative, you know, with the the Alzheimer's or the dementia or this or that. I think that's all cumulative. Because you've never detoxed anything. If you flush those systems I think it's gotta be less chance of those kind of issues. And then that brings back the big pharma thing and trying to sell satins because what? Our brain's made up of cholesterol. Yes it is. Any doctor ever check the particle size of that cholesterol they told you was too high? Yeah. Big difference between the shit that comes in from our food and spraying and the saturated fats and all that, and that's all small particles. And that's bad for you. But your brain needs big particle cholesterol. That's where it runs. So they keep lowering these levels so that they can keep selling you and you know those those products. It's a it's a a vicious cycle. Yeah but I all I think we can do is harp on it's we can put out videos, we can put out books. Your foundation, you know it's the only way we can do what we can affect. You know, we're we're not we're one person each. Our sphere of influence. Yeah. And I know everybody, you know, on my side You know, I I'm gonna bring some guys on that's never been on a podcast, wouldn't never think to be on a podcast, but they're gonna be talking about these same things 'cause they breached for thirty years. Yeah. And now they slur their words, they anger issues. Fighters that get you know get punched in the head for fourteen years. That's how I made a living. Thankfully I've I've weathered that fairly well. knew through becoming a professional fighter about the polycythemia, the thick blood that was already I was made to be a warrior evidently. Yeah yeah. It's made to coagulate. Yeah, that coagulates quickly. But in in opportune moments. You know, th it also causes other issues and things you have to address. It's interesting. Well I I this is what I wanna do to if it if it helps, it helps, if it doesn't. Makes me feel a little better. But yeah, I think it's forward. You're you're Yeah. One of those smart guys that learned from your experience, saw the patterns that kept repeating themselves and you want to break those patterns, you wanna shed that shit. And I've been in that same boat for a couple of years now too. Well when you see your consciousness and you know you have to be here for a while longer Better make it a good time. Yeah. You know, why make it more miserable? Or why make it a re you know, repeat of the past that doesn't didn't work? It just doesn't make sense to me. It's illogical. And and I I can be too logical. I hear this often too. I was at one of the agencies one day in a big briefing, they're like, Eric, you think too much. I'm like Isn't that what we're here to fucking do? you know, you want a bunch of fucking idiots, you know. There's a fine line there between being pragmatic and thinking forward and and and being a pessimist, I say 'cause you know you've got to entertain the what ifs. Yeah. And and some of that's all about presentation too. Well I remembered one of the the we were gonna SEALs were gonna augment us for something and I'm like, Hey, we're gonna plan at this time. They're Why aren't we planning? We're going anyhow. I'm like That that's that's actually why we're planning. You know like it's a war, you know. I'm gonna go in with a little bit of information, you know. Yeah. Why why plan? We're going anyhow. I'm like, righty then. I I think we're gonna have a problem with this. Can you with this pairing? Can you overthink? Can you over plan? Of course. Yeah. But they were just gonna go to dinner. Like, no, we're we're gonna look at a map. We'll see how we get there. Then how we get back. Yeah. Then who we arrest or shoot when we're there, you know. Then we'll go to dinner. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Well, I admire the journey that you've been on. And and I've seen the progress I feel like I'm sitting next to a different human than I met twelve or fourteen years ago. That's the truth. And I feel like you're sitting next to a different one too. I've shed so much stuff in the last two years it's been overwhelming at times and I feel like I see the world and people in a whole different way. I know we do. Yeah. I think that's good. I think it's all part of why we came here in the first place and entered these meat bodies. So Yep, the meat soup. Just it's been a curse being one that's so good looking, you know. And you've had to deal with this. what are we gonna do, you know? Trials and tribulations. Appreciate you. You too. Yeah. Thanks. I like that view better. Really? A much better view. It