Latest / Broken Brains with Bruce Parkman / Remembering Brandt McCartney: Why We Have to Reach Out Before It’s Too Late | Bruce Parkman

Transcript

Remembering Brandt McCartney: Why We Have to Reach Out Before It’s Too Late | Bruce Parkman · Broken Brains with Bruce Parkman

• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: Hey folks, Bruce Parkman here from Broken Brains, the official podcast of the Mac Parkman Foundation, where we look at the issue of repetitive brain trauma from two aspects: repetitive impacts from contact sports and repetitive blast exposure from our veterans, and what these conditions are doing to the health, welfare, well-being, and futures of our kids, athletes, and veterans.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's very important because this is not trained to our nursing, medical, and psychological communities, meaning that the people we trust the most don't have all the information they really need.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: So you need the information.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why we have this podcast to go ahead and inform you, educate you, make you aware of the risks that face our children and our military veterans so that we can make better decisions and eventually, you know, change.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: Change everything.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: Today, I'm going to do a podcast as kind of a tribute and not a lot of fun when people leave.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: We met.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: His name is Brant McCarthy.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: And Brant was one of those kids that you would think had everything.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Just like my son.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: Just like your children.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of the times, the children that we think have it all together are the ones that are hurting the most.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: And they don't know how to tell us.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: They don't want to tell us.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: And after, you know, years of analysis and self-reflection and therapy, it's because they love us and they don't want to hurt us.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: They don't tell us.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: And they suffer in silence, like so many men and women do, and veterans, athletes, and children.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: So they just don't want to be here anymore.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: And for those of you that have struggled with mental illness, and I am one of us, I've never gotten to that point.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I mean, the day my son died, yeah, I was there.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: But when we get into these holes, despite all the love that's out there, despite all the knowledge, the awareness, and Brandt actually run a f he ran a foundation.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: We're going to talk about this, focused on this exact subject, vulnerability.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: That when you're hurting, there are people that care.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: There are people that love you, but they need to know.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: And when I found out that Brand took his life, when you hear Brand's story, you will understand why I was so angry.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, he was supposed to come to this house.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: One of the few places he felt safe.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: He was loved here.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: He could find peace here.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: He slept in this room.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: This is like his favorite room, my son's room, right on that futon over there.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: He watched TV with me, he hung out.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: But I could tell he was relaxed.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: I could tell he felt safe.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: And that was good.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: Because he needed it.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: What I did not know was, you know, where he was at after he left.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: Or, you know, even maybe why he was here.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't, I didn't see it.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: But it was testimony to me, just like my son, that these children are so strong.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: They are so resilient.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: They can take so much.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: They don't act out.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: They're just, they just eat it.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, they're stronger than I could ever think of being.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, when I had my mental health problems, man, my wife knew about it.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: I was sucking my thumb in my bed, crying.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: You know, she's like, what's wrong with this big old badass green beret?
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: Like, no, I don't feel right.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: I am hurting and I don't know why, and I'm scared, and I don't want to go on drugs, but I have something wrong with me.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: I wasn't like my son.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I wasn't like Brant.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: Let's talk about Brand for a bit.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: I met Brandt at the Concussion Legacy Foundation annual meeting, or every by-in, I think buy-in.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: So we have a very, very small, deeply connected group of tragedy survivors that have lost their children, that have lost their husbands, that have lost their wives, that have lost their parents.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: And the Concussion Legacy Foundation is gracious enough to invite us to an event.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I didn't get invited last time, might have been because of this podcast, but I'm sorry.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: And we network.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: And there's some speeches on what's going on in the brain space, and there's, you know, this and that, right?
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so I was there the first year.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: And this kid comes walking by me, and I'm like, who's that?
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: Like, and he's not a parent, you know, must be a brother or sister, whatever.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: He's got, he's all dressed, this European stuff.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: You know, he's got the turtleneck.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: He's got this necklace, I mean, that he left, this 38 in the memory of his brother right here.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: Let's go ahead and pull it out.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: So I got some bling going on, man.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: I got some brand bling going on, right?
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: He's wearing this necklace, which he left at my house while he was here, and I was trying to get it back to him, and I don't know whether he was telling me to keep it.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: You know, his mom gave me permission to hold on to it.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: But it was here, and I kept trying to send it back.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: So now I work.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: See, he's all blinked out.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: He's got, you know, pants on, no socks, like all that cool guy stuff.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, who this guy's hair slicked back?
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: He's a movie star.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: And we talked a little bit, and I didn't think too much about it.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: Well, then I can't remember if he reached out to me or I reached out to him.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: Probably he reached out to me because he was an animal.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: He said, we need to talk.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: All right, what do we need to talk about?
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: Turns out that Brand was running a foundation called 38 Challenge.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: It was all in the name of his brother, Matthew Brewer, who's a captain of the Marine Corps.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: Matt had done everything wrong, like my son did.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: You know, he was a boxer at a young age.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: He played football.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: Then he went to the Naval Academy, and this was his number 38.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: He was a linebacker, and he was known for hitting people so hard.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: He'd break their helmets.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: He's Captain America.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: You see pictures of, man, just big, big boy, man.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: Well, after you got to the academy, he picked, again, the wrong job.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: He was an artillery guy for the Ma for the Marines.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: More trauma, right?
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: Now he went from RHI to repetitive blast exposure.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: He got out of the Marine Corps and he was, I think, training to be a firefighter, and him and Brandt were very close.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: They were lifting together, they were doing everything together.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: And then one day, without telling Brand, he took his life.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: And Brand was severely traumatized by that because he was his, like my son, his soulmate.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: He was a bro.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: And so he started a foundation at 22.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: He just said, nope, I'm going to change the world.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: And he went for it, man.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: He started that foundation.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: He started a workout called the 38 Challenge, kind of like the Murph for the Navy SEALs and all that.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: And it's a 38 minutes, you're a tired guy, man.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you know, run a quarter mile of 380 yards and 38 push-ups and 38 sit-ups and 38 squats.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: And you do that as many times as you can in 38 minutes.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: Try it.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's a great workout.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: I do it once or twice a week, man.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: And then 38 minutes, man, you can burn some calories, man.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's pretty cool.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: So, anyways, we started working together.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: And uh he was, you know, he told me about his mission.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, well, that's, you know, at that time our foundation was moving into repetitive blast exposure because I was hurting.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I started understanding that the years of, you know, getting shot in the face in a training accident and jumping out of planes and coming in on blasts on doors and just shooting just thousands, hundreds of thousands of bullets, man.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it it had and then playing all army rugby and then semi-pro, I was hurt.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: I was hurt.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I had to put myself back together.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: And Brant was part of my journey.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: And like so many times since my son left, God has thrown me some of the most amazing young men to work with, to mentor, sometimes to save, sometimes they save me.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: And um and Brand was one of them.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: So I was like, dude, I like this boy.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: He's a Christian, you know, he's a good kid.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: He's got a mission, he's got a purpose.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: He's unlike, you know, almost unlike a lot of 20, unlike a lot of 22-year-olds right now.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: I said I want to help him because he cares.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: And he was all over the place, man.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: He went to work for the Concussion Legacy Foundation and ran their military branch, their military programs.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: The kid had never been in the military.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yet that was how, I mean, that's how, I don't know, social he was, just how cool he was, right?
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: He could build rapport with anybody.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean anyone.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: This was a young man whose mom had a friend who came home and she had a severely disabled daughter.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I think she I think she was in a wheelchair.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: And she saw Brant and she's like, ooh, you know, he was really cute.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: Brand took her on a date because he felt the calling to help her.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: So not only took her on a date, kept calling her, kept in touch with her.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: That's the kind of guy that Brant McCarthy was.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, so he's got this foundation.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: He's working for the with the Concussion Legacy Foundation.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: He's got his own podcast.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: I went on it.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: We started talking about ketamine and some of the psychedelics that we both were using to get ourselves back together in a way that was, you know, you know, it was transformative.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the the the the healing that can be done, the the the uh the compression of healing that is done with some of these medicines, um, much faster than pharmaceutical intervention therapy, getting a dog, you know, not that these things aren't necessary sometimes.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: But there was not only, you know, that that connection there that we we made through our own healing journey, because even back then he was suffering hard.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I and I talked him through some very, very bad moments and got him exposed to some of these other modalities that ended up helping him.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: And he helped him a lot.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: So he he does the Concussion Legacy Foundation, he goes back to his his brother's foundation.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: Then I he calls me up one day, and somehow he becomes like the even though he did it, man, he becomes the MC at the National Guard Convention on brain stuff, right?
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: And he he gets a panel going, it's got eyeball gain, Dr.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: Ann McKeek comes up, he's the panel, you know, he's doing the questions.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: The kid, he's not a scientist, he's not a researcher.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: It was his passion.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: And he had a level of passion for anything that we just don't see in a lot of our kids right now.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: And they find it later on, right?
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, come on, it's a crazy world out there.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: And Brand was part of it.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: He fought through that crazy world.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: So then Brandt decides to start a company that like 24.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: The Brain Optimization Lab.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: Look it up.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: He was partnered, he is still partnered, because he's not, he's still here, man.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: He's still here.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: With Jordan Reed, very, very successful wide receiver for the Washington Commanders and a concussion survivor.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: And they went and formed a company.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: And he was out there rolling with NFL players, raising money.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: The guy could pitch like nobody's business, man.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: He was just amazing.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: And through all this, you know, I've I've got a daytime job running this analytics company, and my nighttime job's the foundation, and uh gotta do I gotta do a better job getting back to it.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: Although I love these podcasts.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and and Brant's just out there running hard, man, running hard.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: And every now and then we'd get together.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: You know, one time, two years ago, I showed up at Soft Week.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: Brant McCarthy's got a booth.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: Guess who doesn't have a booth?
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: Me.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: All right, I've got a company in the in this massive convention, right?
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: Special, this is the largest special operations convention in the world ever.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: 25,000 green berets, seals, international soft guys, like it's just testosterone everywhere, you know, big dudes with all their Gucci kit and glasses walking around, branched right in the middle of it.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: I don't have a foundation.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: I called up my founder, how the hell does Brant McCarthy have a booth at a foundation run by a foundation at a conference run by a foundation that I'm the chairman of the board and we don't have a booth?
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: What is going on?
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: So I chewed a little butt and I had to go to Brant and said, hey man, can we put some stuff out at your booth?
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, hell yeah, Bruce Maggie, put it out.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, oh, thank you so much.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: We don't have any representation at my conference.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, and then, you know, a day later, he comes up to me, hey man, you want to see a picture?
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: I go, Yeah.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: He's got a picture with him and the Secretary of Defense.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, where did that come from?
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, Well, you know, I mean, he was here, he was walking around a nonprofit area, and he talked to me about what was working on, and I told him, he goes, I want to know more about this.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: And Brant gets dragged into a room, and him and the Sec Def have a one-on-one conversation about brains, right?
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: The kid could get anything done.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, here I am, 63 at the time, 62, old.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm thinking, that boy, I'm like, dude, he needs to come work for me.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: But I couldn't take him off his mission, man.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: You know, he was off, he was on a mission.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: But every now and then I'd grab him and I'd say, hey, why don't, you know, because he would get in these spots where he's raising money, he's trying to start a company.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: You know, he's 20-something.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: These are hard things to do, man.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: And every and it doesn't always go right, man.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: We're all on God's calendar.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's not, it's not our calendar, right?
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: When God's ready and the universe is aligned, then things are gonna happen.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: Until then, do your best, right?
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: Keep doing your best.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: And Brant was out there swinging every day.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: But he'd get in these holes, and sometimes I'd look at him and go, man, why don't you just go be a young dude?
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: Why don't you just go be a 26-year-old kid, get a girlfriend, and have some fun, right?
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: Not Brand McCarthy.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: He's gonna dial it in, man.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: He swings, he's got he's a visionary, and he is.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: He swings big, man.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: He does, you know, nothing that wasn't uh too small for that kid, too big for that kid.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I I admire him.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I admired him a lot.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: Because when I was at 26 years old, I was an absolute unmitigated disaster.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the only thing I knew how to do was jump out of plane, shoot guns, and drink, and chase girls.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: I was and I was pretty good at all of them, you know.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: That's all I wanted to do.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't want to grow up, I didn't want to mature.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_01: I had a bed, I had a paycheck, I had a clothes called a uniform.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: I was happy.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: I could never, ever, ever even have remotely considered can you know accomplishing half the stuff that he was doing at my age.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: Third, the kid was nuts, but there was a side of Brandt that that was deep.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: You know, Brandt had a hard time being, you know, light, right?
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: He thought about a lot of things.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: He thought about, he thought too damn much sometimes.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: He was a biblical scholar.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_01: You could not take him on.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, he actually could have been a pastor.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, he studied the Bible religiously, and we had some really in-depth conversations.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: And then in our conversations, I can't even have most of these conversations with men my age, let alone a 20-something-year-old kid.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: We would talk about everything, man.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: He was well thought.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: He could present, he was, you know, he's just a good boy.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: But he was struggling.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, and part of that was uh was uh a product called Kratom.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: And this Kratom stuff, I'm gonna tell you right now, if you know anybody that's playing with it, you tell them get the hell off it.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: And it's gonna be hard.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: Right now, theoretically, Kratom's about as hard to get off of, if not harder, than heroin.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: And you can buy it in gas stations.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: Your kids can buy it in gas stations.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: And you really, really need to watch it.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: And Brandt got hold of it, made him feel good, made him feel, you know, with his schedule, right?
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: It made him feel like his game was on, man.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_01: I got this, whatever, right?
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: And he was just, you know, just going, right?
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, in the end, you know, he was struggling with that.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: So he he took himself to Ibogaine.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I don't know what you know about psychedelics, but Ibogaine is the Mount Everest of psychedelics.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I've been through it.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: I did it because I was called through my research to walk the walk.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think I need it in the end.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I needed it.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: Because Ibogaine is a whole nother side of spiritual growth when you get faced with something like I.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: And Brandt was the kind of guy that solves problems.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: And he wanted to face himself, and he had an addiction issue.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: Most grown adults will not face themselves.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: They have an addiction issue, you know, they wait till they hit the bottom.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: Brandt was not going to hit the bottom.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: He wanted out now.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: He wanted to get it done.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: So he got a spot.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: He called me up, said, Hey man, I'm going to Ibergame.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, you're doing what?
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, Yep.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: I said, um, you know, I just I'm I'm not happy, and I need to fix this.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_01: So he went, came back, and uh, and then was doing okay.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: He came here, was hanging out, and then I guess he, you know, he got back on to that kratom and was trying to get back and uh ended up going through some really hard times.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: And like most of our young people, he didn't want to talk about it.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: And he didn't.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I know people that he knows better that know him better than me, his business partners, never said a word.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: And one day, I guess he got to the end and uh he couldn't be here no more.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: And so here we have a young man that runs a foundation, and the foundation was based on the death of his brother, and that was all about being vulnerable, reaching out.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: People love you, people care about you.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: And this young man was in such a deep dark place that he could not even get to the point to remember, you know, the message of his own foundation.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: And it's hard to know that he did not think he had a chance.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_01: And it's hard to know that he didn't feel like he might have been loved or cared about, even though he knew God was in his corner.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: He knew that all day long.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: And it's it's a shame that he he couldn't reach out because I could have done more.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of us could have done more.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: We talk a lot, and because we loved this kid, and he's not here anymore.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: So we're gonna do the best we can to keep him alive.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: Because nobody's truly dead as long as they're remembered.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: And and I that goes for my son, that goes for Brant, and that goes for the folks that you know that's no longer here.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: You remember them, you pray for them, you think about them, they're still here.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: And whether you know it or not, they are here.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, little secret, okay, that I've had to learn over the years.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: They're right here.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: They're right wherever you want them to be.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: But in the end, what we need to be aware of is that the people that we know, the people that we love in their deepest, darkest moments, are not gonna talk to us unless we reach out and let them know it's okay.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_01: And that has to be the message.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: That people can reach out, that people are not gonna be judged, they're not gonna be condemned, they're not gonna be manipulated or disrespected because they're suffering.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: And now, with this being the largest pandemic, really, we have in the country, you know, that needs to change.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: And we'll talk about the treatments we do all the time, and and Brandt's company, the Brain Optimization Lab, is still up and function, is still going forward, doing amazing things.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: We plan on working with them as well.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: And we wish them all the best because it's Brandt's legacy.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: And we're gonna make sure that Brandt has a legacy.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: And we want you to be part of that.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: But in the end, I want you all to know, please, that you do have a spot in this world.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: That no matter where you're at, no matter how deep and how dark and how you know just bad it seems, there is light, there is hope, and there is peace.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: But you have to reach out, you have to let people know.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the biggest gift that we have from God is love.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: The second greatest gift is free will.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_01: And most yeah, yep, I got, yep, yep.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_01: And most people want the help and they do love you.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: So please, you know, don't be like my son.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: Don't be like Brant.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_01: Please reach out.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_01: Because we can't have no more Mac Parkman's and Brant McCarthy's.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: These are good kids that are not here.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: And they're all good kids.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_01: I don't care who they are.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_01: Just the ones I've mentioned are special to me.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_01: So, anyways, I want to do a tribute to Brant because I felt when necessary not to let you know about a great young man, but there is a message behind it.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_01: So please pay attention to that.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: You like this show, please like us, subscribe us, pass us around, because we are doing our best to let people know that, you know, there is hope out there.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: And until I see you next time on Broken Brains with me, your host, Bruce Parkman, the official podcast of the Mac Parkman Foundation.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: I wish you well on God's journey, and we'll talk to you soon.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: Take care.