Latest / INSPIRE STORY / #0167_ STORY INSPIRE: Pilot Survives a Crash and Two Hours in the Atlantic

Transcript

#0167_ STORY INSPIRE: Pilot Survives a Crash and Two Hours in the Atlantic · INSPIRE STORY

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Kagan, welcome to the show, man.
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: Thanks for having me on, Sean.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: It's an honor. Likewise, likewise. Dude, holy shit.
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: Dude, we got so much good stuff to talk about.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Wow. Like, wow. But let me start you off with
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: an introduction. All right. Kagan Smirth Gill. You served as
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: a US Navy F-18E Super Hornet pilot, flying high-performance combat
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: aircraft in one of the most demanding professions in the military.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: In 2014, during a dogfighting training exercise, you survived the
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: fastest ejection in naval aviation history, ejecting from your aircraft
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: at nearly 700 miles an hour. The crash left you
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: with catastrophic injuries multiple surgeries, a traumatic brain injury, and
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: a long battle with PTSD, addiction, and the unseen wounds
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: of war. Against overwhelming odds, you fought your way back,
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: returning to the cockpit and later becoming an advocate for
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: veteran mental health. In Phoenix Revival, you recount your journey
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: of survival, recovery, and finding purpose after unimaginable adversity. Once again,
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: welcome to the show, man. Thank you so much. Yeah,
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: we found, we saw a podcast you were on and
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: some reels, and we were like, holy shit, dude, we
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: gotta get this dude in here. So, thank you for coming.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: Dude, it's really exciting to be here and get to
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: share this story to such a massive audience, man, because
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: as you know, you're sharing some incredible information with the
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: world right now and waking people up, and it's much needed.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: I'm trying, I'm trying. Yeah, sounds like psychedelics is a
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: huge part of your recovery journey.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: It was. It was a transformational experience, a spiritual awakening.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: And just a connection to something greater than myself and
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: a deep love that I found within. And, dude, it's
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: changed everything in my life for the better. Right on, man.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's, uh, I did Ibogaine a little over four
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: years ago, and, uh, regardless of how much booze is
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: in the studio here, I haven't had a drop to
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: drink since right after that. Yeah. It was pretty effortless.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: Don't need to poison yourself.
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: Don't need to numb yourself or poison yourself from that
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: hole we all had before.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I keep it all up here as a reminder
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: that this shit doesn't have control over me anymore. It's
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: pretty fucking cool. But I get a lot of shit
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: for having it too.
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: It looks really cool.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: That's what I think. That's what I think. All right,
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: so a couple things to knock out real quick before
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: we get into your life story. So I have a
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: Patreon account, and they've been with us since the beginning,
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: and they're the reason that we both get to sit
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: down here today. So this is from Christian Francis. What
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: main components of TBI treatment do you feel need to
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: be changed? What parts of living with a TBI and
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: recovery from injury are currently being impeded by the medical
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: system And how can treatment of those with TBI be
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: changed to better understanding the patient?
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: That's a great question. There's almost a disregard for the TBI.
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: And through my experience, it was almost unacknowledged that I
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: could even possibly have a TBI or what that was.
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: So just acknowledging that it exists and how delicate the
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: brain actually is, is really critical. And then I think
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: there's a tendency uh, in the mainstream medical system to
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: just hit the easy button, which is the PTSD button
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: right now, which, you know, that gives you a diagnosis
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: and then it opens this whole Pandora's box of all
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: the different medications they can throw at you to try
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: to deal with that. But come to find out it's
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: a much broader issue when you do have TBI. And, uh,
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: I don't, Do you know Dr. Chris Free? Ever heard
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: of him in operator syndrome?
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: Dude, I've heard about this guy from like every single
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: one of my fucking friends and I have never met
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: the guy. Yeah. I've heard amazing things about him. He
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: really nailed it. He wrote a book, right? Operator syndrome. Yeah. Yeah.
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: He, he really nails it right on the head with
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: what he did. He basically went out, he was the
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: PTSD expert at the VA.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: They kicked him out, right?
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: I don't think he left, uh, you know, I think
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: he just was frustrated.
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: I don't know exactly, but, um, Probably misspoke on that, so...
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: I'm not certain.
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: He might have, or he might have left just because.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: He was so frustrated. I know there was at least
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: some staunch disagreements happening between him and the VA.
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they want to put everything in that PTS box
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: because that means pharmaceuticals. They can throw all the money
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: makers at it that just keep you sick and unhealthy.
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: And I mean, that's the way that whole conventional system
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: is designed is to.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: Dude, why do you think it's like that? Greed.
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: Greed.
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: Do they get paid? I never understood. You can't... You
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: can't go to another pharmacy and get any of the prescriptions.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: I mean, I've been to the VA in over probably
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: close to 10 years now.
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the way I understand it is basically, I talked
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: to an admiral level flight surgeon who's been at those
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: meetings at the top of the VA. And he said,
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: no matter how good the people are at the VA,
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: because there's a lot of really good humans there that
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: want to do good and want to serve the veterans.
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: But he said, no matter how good the people are
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: in the VA, At the end of the day, the
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: pharmaceutical industry gets to dictate the policies that are applied.
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: And all of their policies are designed to put the
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: veterans on medications and keep them there until they either
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: end their own lives or just die miserably and feed
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: in that machine the whole time. And it just comes
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: down to greed. It's just the business model of the
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: medical system is built around kind of keeping you stuck,
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: maybe alleviating some of the symptoms, but not actually curing
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: the underlying issue.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: Only the best for our veterans, right?
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: Man.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: Only the best for our veterans.
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: It's sad. It's the veterans. It's everybody. I mean, it's
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: the whole conventional medical system is feeding off of the
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: people that are sick. And you go to help, get help.
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: You trust the people with the white lab coats with
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: the doctorate degrees that are supposed to know better. And
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: I don't think most of them are malicious. I think
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: they're just indoctrinated into a system that is profit-driven and
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: controlled by the pharmaceutical industry from their medical school curriculums
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: to their medical journals that they're reading are all influenced
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: by the pharmaceutical industry. And the whole system is just
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: corrupted by that greed. Man.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: Well, I know we're going to dive into that all later.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah. Which will be an enraging segment, but everybody
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: gets a gift too.
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: So my buddy heard I was coming on. He's like, dude,
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: you got to get me some of those gummy bears.
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: I'm like, Man, I will definitely share some gummy bears
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: with you.
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: Dude, we'll load you up. Sweet. We'll load you up.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: They're made in Michigan. You're from Michigan, right?
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: They're made in Michigan.
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: Oh, cool.
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: And they're legal in all 50 states. Sweet. No funny business.
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: My kids are going to try to get them from me, too.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: All right. Like I said, we'll load you up. But
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: so I want to do.
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: I actually got you a gift.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: Oh.
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: If you want to.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: I love gifts.
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: I got you a few.
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: All right. Well, one, I got to give you this first.
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: This is a copy of my book. I've signed that
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: one for you.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: Thank you.
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: I hope you enjoy it. It's a wild story, and
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: I'm sure we'll get into a lot of it today.
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: We will.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: We will.
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: And then my friend, Bryce Hansen, who helped me design
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: that cover, actually heard I was coming on this show,
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: and he's like, I got a gift that you got
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: to give him.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: Dude. Tell me, is this a painting?
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: He digitally did that. And then the publishing company helped
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: kind of do the background on it. But he took
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: a digital photo of me and my gear, and then
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: he's able to do some cool magic to make it
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: look freaking rad.
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: Dude, you need to get this framed. That's fucking cool.
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: I did.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: He sent me the.
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: It was originally a painting that he did.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: Really?
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Bryce was a Green Beret, and now he does
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: all sorts of really kick-ass art. But he made you these....
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: Holy shit, that's awesome.
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: Heck yeah. Yeah, I thought those would look really good
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: in here.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: That is sick, dude. Thank you.
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: And then one more small thing. I don't know if
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: you remember Bill Filter and the guys at the Wisdom Dojo,
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: or it used to be the Amp Dojo.
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: The meditation guys.
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, they wanted me to give you this. It's
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: a Wisdom Dojo shirt. And a Wisdom Dojo challenge coin.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: Dude, thank you.
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: I talked to Bill Filter.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: Who said that he did some training with you.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: He was my guy.
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: And your dad.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he did.
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: He said when he was working with you, you were
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: still doing all this on your own.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: Now it's pretty incredible what this has grown into.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it all kind of changed after that Ibogaine experience, man.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: Heck yeah. So literally like right after. But, well, that's cool.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: Tell Bill I said what's up. I will. What's up, Bill?
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: But let's get into your story.
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: Where'd you grow up?
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: I was born in Oklahoma, although I don't remember a
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: whole lot from it. My mom was doing her medical
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: residency there through the National Health Service. She'd earned a
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: scholarship to pay for her med school. And then when
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: she finished her residency there, we moved to Colorado to
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: a little town called Alamosa down in the south of Valley.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: Um.
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: Some of my earliest memories are skiing at Wolf Creek,
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: being in powder that was over my head. Um, just
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: always had a love for the outdoors. My dad was
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: a big outdoorsman. He would take me out on his backpack,
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: and he'd be out backcountry skiing with me, out just in, like,
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: some of the most beautiful, blue sky days that you
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: can imagine.
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: That's awesome.
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: And then when I was about seven, we moved to
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: Northern Michigan. And I grew up in a town called
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: Traverse City. Beautiful little town right on Lake Michigan up there.
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: And I was just a kid that spent most of
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: my time outside, barefoot, climbing trees, grabbing salmon out of
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: the stream, hunting, just doing stuff little kids are supposed
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: to be doing.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: Nice. You don't hear that much anymore.
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, man. We're getting too far away from where we're
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: supposed to be. I know. And I was the kid
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: who didn't really belong in a classroom, you know, sitting
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: under a fluorescent lighting, filling out scantron bubbles was pretty
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: soul draining. And I was pretty disheartened by it and
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: became a pretty angry young kid that's getting a lot
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: of fights. I was, I was always a small kid,
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: so I'd get picked on and my dad was a
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: wrestler and was into judo. And so he started teaching
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: me how to fight and defend myself.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: And what age?
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: Um, I was probably like eight, seven or eight years old.
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: He started teaching me to fight. And the next time
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: the bullies came at me, man, I had something different
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: for them than cowering down and just letting them do
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: what they wanted.
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: What was the first lesson?
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: The first lesson for the bullies?
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Dude. From your dad. Oh.
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: Well, the first lesson was the things I'm about to
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: teach you are to defend yourself and defend others weaker
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: than you. You never use this as an aggressor. As
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: an aggressor, you use this to defend what's right and
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: stand up for yourself. And, you know, he would wrestle
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: around with me and he'd push me around and he
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: would never let me win. And that just always kind
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: of kept me pushing and, and, uh, I was really
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: grateful for that.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: He would never let you win? Never, man. Right on, dude.
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: He didn't take it easy on me, which I didn't
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: always appreciate, but yeah, he was, he's a good man. He, uh,
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: he actually auditioned for one of the earliest, uh, survivor
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: shows that they were going to do back when he
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: thought it was actually about being a survivor.
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: No shit.
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: Uh, for fun, he's the kind of guy that like
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: He'll carve his own bows, and then he'll go out
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: into the cold in the winter, make a snow cave,
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: sleep out in the woods, and then deer hunt from
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: his snow cave in the morning.
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: No way.
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he's like... What? He's from a different time.
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: I've never even heard of that.
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: He doesn't really belong in this society, and I mean
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: that as a compliment to him.
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: What did he do?
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: He, um... Originally, he was a health inspector when we
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: were in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And then when we moved to Alamosa,
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: it was so rural, he couldn't really get a job,
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: so he kind of became, uh, dad-mom. and taking care
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: of us. Later, when we moved back to Traverse City,
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: which was where both my parents were from, he became
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: a respiratory therapist. He was a teacher for a while.
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: He taught biology and then became a respiratory therapist.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: Right on. Are you a big hunter? Yeah.
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, man. Deer hunting up there is a big part
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: of how we feed ourselves. We got a little bit
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: of farmland up there. We got chickens. My wife's got bees,
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: so we do our own honey. Got some fruit trees
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: and Garden, a greenhouse.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: Are you a prepper?
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: You know, not so much, man. I'm not so much prepping.
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: We're just kind of like building our own thing on
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: the outskirts of society is what's happening right now. It's
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: just kind of eating itself alive. But definitely making ourselves
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: so we can be self-sufficient. But not so much like
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: we're not digging a bunker. Maybe we should, but.
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: It can hurt.
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, probably not, man. When you see all the billionaires
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: doing it.
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, pretty wild how many of them are
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: building fucking bunkers right now. I wonder what they're so
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: scared of.
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: I don't know. Probably us.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: I'll bet they are. But, yeah, well, I mean, self-sufficiency
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: is pretty, I mean, that's what prepping's all about, right? Yeah.
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: So I guess, yeah, I'm a prepper. If that's the case.
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: Right on. In case you haven't noticed, I take preparedness seriously.
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: And water is one of the first things I look at.
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: Not just emergency water, but the water my family is
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: drinking every single day. A federal study found Forever Chemicals
• 14:31
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• 14:36
  Speaker 1: I've tried a lot of filtration systems over the years.
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: Most of them didn't make the cut. Either they were
• 14:42
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• 14:45
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• 14:49
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• 15:05
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• 15:19
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• 15:24
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• 15:28
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• 15:31
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• 15:34
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• 15:38
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• 15:41
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• 15:49
  Speaker 1: tap into clean water today. As you guys know, once
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: upon a time, I was a Navy SEAL and then
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: I contracted for CIA. We were hunting ISIS, Taliban, terrorist organizations.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: China was there. Russia was there. The Iranians were there.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: And everybody's kind of collecting on each other. One thing
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: I learned is how important encryption and protecting your data is.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: That experience has just always made me extremely paranoid about
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: what's being sucked out of my phone. What information are
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: people getting? I wanted something that could protect everybody. And
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: so we turned it into an application. We call it
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: the Glacier app. We have secure DNS. Now what's secure DNS? Well,
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: very simply put, secure DNS keeps your phone from being
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: exploited while you're browsing the internet. Just a couple of buttons,
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: your phone's protected. You got yourself a burner number or more.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: You hit connect, done. You're protected. This is like the
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: real James Bond shit. MI6 CIA level stuff. Made in
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: the US. Theglacierapp.com or just go on the App Store
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: and look up The Glacier app. Take your privacy back.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: Download Glacier today. Why were you picked on so much?
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: I was just kind of a small nerdy kid. Um,
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: I think it was just mainly just being kind of
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: small and scrawny and easy to push around until.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: How long were you bullied before you stood up for yourself?
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: Not really that long. I was, I was picked on
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: for about one year at school and then, uh, figured
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: out a different way to handle bullies.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: How'd you handle it?
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: Usually punching them in the dick.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: Nice. That'll work.
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: Didn't matter how much bigger they were. You punch somebody
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: in the dick and, uh, Evens the playing field pretty quickly.
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: But yeah, I was just kind of like an angry kid.
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: Didn't want to be stuck in school. Moved around to
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: a variety of different schools growing up. From the public school,
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: my parents put me in a charter school. That didn't
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: really work out. Moved me to like a farm school
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: where all day, every day, we were like moving chicken
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: coops out in the field. We were feeding the animals.
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: We did some academics, but it was all outside or
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: in a greenhouse. We built a yurt. We would, like,
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: submerse ourselves in a culture, and then we would, like,
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: eat their food. We would build their buildings.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: We would.
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: It was way better than being stuck in a classroom.
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: Dude, that's awesome.
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: And, uh, I really enjoyed that. Um, my dad got
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: a job at a private school as the science teacher,
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: and so we got free tuition. And so I went
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: to this snooty private school for a year and got
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: expelled from that because I didn't fit in there at all.
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: I was getting in fights again and doing dumb shit. Um,
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: found myself back at public school, kind of, Not liking it,
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: getting in trouble, hanging out with the wrong people. And
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: then when I was 16, actually, around a campfire with
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: some buddies, we put some of these little crunchy mushrooms
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: in our mouth. And I had this experience that night
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: that connected me to something. And I was dealing with
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: depression and anger that was pretty heavy.
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: Why? Why were you so angry and so depressed? Other
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: than the bullying, it sounds like a pretty damn good childhood. Yeah.
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and a lot of it was. And actually, a
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: lot of this I discovered through Iboga later, through going
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: back into repressed childhood memories. But for most of my life,
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: I didn't understand where that anger really had come from.
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: But what I discovered through Iboga, which I don't know
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: if you want to get into this later, but I
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: can definitely get into it now with what I experienced
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: in one of those journeys was I was back in
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: my mother's womb and I could see through her stomach.
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: I could see the veins of her skin, I could
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: see this pink color. And I remember being in there
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: and just feeling her anxiety because she's a mother pretty
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: far along in her pregnancy, and she's running off Diet Coke,
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: working ridiculous hours, stressed out, meanwhile trying to be a mother.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: And.
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: actually, before I was born, my mom had, uh, um,
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: a stillborn baby, my older sister Kate. And it kind
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: of just, like, broke her soul to hold her own
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: little baby, um, that was dead on arrival. And she
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: was sort of not emotionally available to connect with me.
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: And I remember when I was born being held, but
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: very quickly she was back to work, back to the residency,
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: not seeing my mom. Um, my dad was orphaned as
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: a kid and he was also emotionally unavailable, largely. I mean,
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: they both cared a lot, but I think that they
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: were really broken at their hearts from what they had
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: been through. And so, you know, there's all these really wild,
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: childhood trauma stories. You know, I wasn't sexually abused, I
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: wasn't beaten, nothing like that, but, um, I don't know
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: if you've ever heard of Gaber Maté, he's, um.
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: Yes. He's sort of like a trauma expert. He's a
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: Canadian doctor, right?
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: I'm not sure what his.
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: I know who he is. He's big in the psychedelic community.
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: He may be. His big thing is trauma. He's like
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: a trauma expert. And one thing he talks about is
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: there's the trauma on children, which is like the abuse,
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: the physical abuse, the violence, the sexual abuse. But there's
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: also an abuse of, um, when you don't fulfill the
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: needs of the child. And the need that I didn't
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: get as that little boy, and remembering it and vividly
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: experiencing it again through Iboga was, um, I just wasn't...
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: I wasn't fully being loved as a child. And so
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: I became... I remember I was in my crib crying
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: and screaming for my parents to come get me as
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: an infant, and nobody came. And just kind of feeling
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: that disconnect, And it's not that my parents didn't care.
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: They're great parents. They really did care. But there was
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: emotional and physical detachment that I experienced as a really
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: young kid that actually created an incredible amount of self-reliance.
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: But also an anger that came from that. Like, I
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: wasn't good enough to be loved.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: You remember this? Or this.
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: Vividly. Yeah, I vividly remembered it through Iboga. I worked
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: with a trained psychotherapist, and he brought me back into
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: all these repressed childhood memories. And through that, I mean,
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: I felt like the pain of my mom was experiencing
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: of being divided and pulled away from her kid, the
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: pain from her miscarriage. And just the, you know, there's
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: this big pushback then, which was women in the workforce
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: and you can go and be a professional. And my
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: mom absolutely did that. She broke through a lot of
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: barriers to get to go and be a physician as
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: a woman. But it took a toll on her and
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: it took a toll on her children because, you know, that's,
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: that was the trade-off, you know, she got to become
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: a professional and do what she wanted, but at the
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: same time, it was really hard on her to be
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: separated from her children. And it was really hard on
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: the kids.
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: Um, how many siblings do you have?
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: I have a younger sister. She's three years younger than me.
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: Are you guys tied?
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: She lives out in Oregon. She's, um, she works for
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: the park service out there. She's like Ranger Rick, basically.
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: She wears a smoky bear hat and patrols the forest
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: and does some good stuff out there. Um, But yeah,
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: we get together on occasion. She usually comes back in
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: the summers, and we all go camping and hang out.
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: She's got an awesome little girl.
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: Right on.
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: Overall, I had a great childhood, honestly. But I definitely
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: had this thing inside me that was just burning, this
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: feeling of angst that I wasn't enough. And that drove me,
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: and it made me incredibly resilient, which came in handy
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: later in life. I understand. And I'm honestly grateful for that.
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: Like it was like it was preparing me for something
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: that was to come.
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: But something came.
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Big time. Big time.
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: How did the military pop up on your radar?
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: So when I graduated high school, I wasn't totally certain
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: what I wanted to do, but I got to go
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: on a little discovery flight. We have a, there was
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: a little community college that had a flight program where
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: I grew up in Traverse City called Northwestern Michigan College.
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: And when I was a kid, my parents enrolled me
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: in a flight program that they did. And you got
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: to do like a ground school session, and then you
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: got to go up in a little Cessna. And I
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: remembered flying this little Cessna 152 that's basically a flying
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: lawnmower and just absolutely loving it, man. It felt like
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: a rocket ship. And that kind of stuck with me.
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: And so when I graduated, I decided to go to
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: the community college and start doing flight lessons. I enrolled
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: in the program, started flying. And by the time I
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: was a junior in college, I was a certified flight
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: instructor building hours.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: No kidding.
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: I finished my degree. I got my bachelor's degree while
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: I was working at the college. And then I actually
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: got hired by one of my students who, a fascinating
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: dude named Larry Poneman. He was a forensic accountant in
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: the Navy back in the Vietnam era. He's like one
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: of these ultra intelligent dudes with a photographic memory. And
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: after the special forces or whoever would capture an underground
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: bunker of the Viet Cong, they would bring him in
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: and he could go through their accounting records. He can
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: learn a new language in like a few days. And
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: then he would read through their accounting records and he
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: could memorize it all. And then he'd go back and
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: debrief the CIA or whoever of like, here's where they're
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: getting their money. Here's where they're getting this. And he
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: was able to basically point them where they need to
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: go to shut these guys down. And when he got out,
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: he started a think tank and a privacy research and
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: consulting firm. But he came across me because he wanted
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: to learn how to fly himself to all his business meetings.
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: And so I started flying with him. And he's like, hey, man,
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: you want to come work for my company? He ended
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: up buying a brand new aircraft and ended up bringing
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: me on as his company pilot. And so I got
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: to spend the next year just flying all over the country,
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: going to really big tech companies. We were at Microsoft
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: and Yahoo and Amazon. bunch of others. And I kind
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: of got to see the inner workings of the corporate world.
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: I was getting paid really well. I was living a
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: really nice lifestyle, having fancy dinners. People were dropping 500
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: bucks on a bottle of wine like it was nothing.
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: What kind of plane were you flying?
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: I was flying a Mooney Acclaim, which is sort of
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: like a little general aviation Ferrari.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: Nice like G1000 avionics, integrated autopilot, Bose headsets, super nice
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: leather seats.
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: Nice.
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: It was a really cool job. at such a young age.
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: Damn, dude. That is pretty cool.
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: But I found myself getting bored of how easy it was.
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: And I recognized that I wanted more in my life
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: than that. And so I had a buddy named Mark,
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: who was a flight instructor at the college with me.
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: And he had been in the military already, but he
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: was putting together a package to go to officer candidate
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: school for a pilot position. And I was like, wait,
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: don't you have to go to the Naval Academy? Doesn't
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: your dad have to be an admiral like community college
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: kids don't get to just go into the Navy and
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: fly stuff. And he's like, actually you can, man, as
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: long as you have a bachelor's degree. And so I
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: kind of looked into the service and originally I thought
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: I was going to go into the coast guard. Um,
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: I had read this book called the last run and
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: it's all about the rescue missions. Those guys are doing
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: up in Alaska and it was just fucking wild shit
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: that these guys were doing. And so I looked into
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: the coast guard, but it was like a six month
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: wait to get into that board. And so while I
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: was waiting, I put together a package and submitted it
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: to the Navy and got picked up immediately. And so, uh,
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: I spent that last summer, uh, going to a CrossFit gym,
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: getting in really good shape, had a great summer with
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: my family. And then that fall went off to the
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: Navy and, uh, showed up over prepared.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: How old were you?
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: Uh, I was in my early twenties.
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: It was 2009.
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: Um, so I think it was like 23 or so.
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: Right on.
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah. 24.
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: Did you know what you wanted to fly? Did you care?
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: You know, originally, I thought I was gonna fly helicopters
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: after reading that last run book, but I always, growing up,
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: the Blue Angels would come up to Traverse City and
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: they'd fly every so often. And I remember seeing those
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: jets and being like, man, that's so cool. But I
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: also had this disconnect. I was like, there's no way
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: I could ever do that. For whatever reason, I just never,
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: I always had this imposter syndrome. Like, there's no way,
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: I'm not that cool. But as I started going through
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: the training, like, really felt at home in that environment.
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: People are getting yelled at and beaten and exhausted. And
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: I was just like, fuck, yeah.
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: You like that.
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: Bring it on.
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah. From college to OCS, you went straight to OCS?
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: Or is it OCS?
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, officer candidate school. So, yeah, it's basically a three-month program.
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: And you come out of it a butter bar. So,
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: you know, the rank that shows everybody that you know
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: absolutely fucking nothing.
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: Which I didn't.
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: I didn't know shit about the military. But then started
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: flight training after that. Went down to Pensacola, Florida, and
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: started doing all the ground school, did some water survival training,
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: and actually had our... We normally go out into the
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: ocean to do our ocean survival training when we're down
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: in Pensacola, but there was the Horizon oil spill right
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: at that time. So we couldn't go out on the
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: ocean and do our survival training. We still did a
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: bunch of stuff in the pool, but there was probably
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: some stuff that we did in that ocean evolution that
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: would have been helpful later in my career.
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I was just thinking that. I mean... Damn, dude,
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: you didn't do that?
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: No, I mean, there was a fair amount in the pool,
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: but I don't think anything could have substituted for being
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: out in the ocean.
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: But did well through API, went to what's primary flight training,
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: which was in Corpus Christi, Texas, and flew a pretty
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: sporty little turbine prop aircraft called the T-34 Charlie Turbo Mentor.
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: They've since switched over to the T-6 Texan, which is
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: even more badass.
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: Nice.
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: But... the prior flight experience definitely helped through that primary
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: flight training. Like I already knew how to fly an airplane.
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: I already knew how to talk on the radio. But
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: the challenge was learning to do it the Navy way.
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: You know, it's in some ways it was probably more
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: challenging because I had to forget my old ways and
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: there's just a ton of memorization and and all that,
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: but did well enough through that training that I got
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: to select the tailhook pipeline coming out of that. And
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: if you're in the top 50% of your class, you
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: can select tailhook. And then the Navy says yes or no,
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: depending on whatever they need you for anyways.
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: What is a tailhook?
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: It's any carrier-based aircraft.
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: So at the time, it would have been the Prowlers,
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: the F-18 Hornets, the F-18 Super Hornets, and then the E-2C-2,
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: so the Hawkeye with the big dish on top. prop
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: plane and then the C2, which is the onboard delivery aircraft.
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: So all of those were kind of on the table
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: at that point. The other option out of primary flight
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: training is you can go fly the P3s at that time,
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: which are now all just P8s, which is basically a 737.
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: They also had a helicopter pipeline and a few people
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: would go to the E9, which is like a surveillance
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: communications aircraft. But I was kind of like, man, I'm
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: going to take my shot and see if I can
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: go fly fighter jets. was the tail hook pipeline and
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: then i headed down to kingsville texas and started flying
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: the t-45 charlie goshawk which is uh like a small
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: single engine jet but super high performance fully aerobatic and
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: did intermediate intermediate flight training and did really well at
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: that and so at the end of that intermediate training
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: you go to a board and you have a bunch
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: of the different instructors come in you do a bunch
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: of interviews and One, you have to have good grades
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: and you have to be good in the aircraft, but
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: more importantly, they're interviewing you to see if you have
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: the personality and you're gonna fit in like a fighter squadron.
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: And I saw guys who were better pilots and smarter,
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: but they would go into those interviews and they just
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: weren't like a team player or whatever. And so.
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: What are they looking for in a fighter pilot?
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: Well, one, I think they want people who know that
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: this is gonna be your life, that it's gonna be all-consuming,
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: every waking moment, you're basically going to be committed to that.
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: They want somebody who can function in a team environment.
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: And yeah, just kind of have that attitude of just
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: being a good human being too, I think. Someone who's
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: not an egomaniac and can be humble. And they do
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: a really good job with it, really.
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: What are some of the questions they were asking you?
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: Do you remember?
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: I mean, one of the big ones was like, why
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: do you want to be, why do you want to
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: fly F-18s?
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: And, um... What'd you say?
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think I just said something like, you know,
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: I think it's an incredible opportunity. I want to be
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: at the tip of the spear. I want to be
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: doing the most difficult thing that the Navy has to
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: offer for a pilot. And that's where I see myself.
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: I want the challenge. I want the hardships. And I
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: want to be the best pilot I possibly can be. Um.
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: How do you... I'm just curious, how do you display
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: that you're a team player flying a jet?
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's really personality-based, and I think the instructors
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: get a good feel for that as you go through
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: flight training. Are you the guy who's helping other guys
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: in your class learn, or are you the guy that's
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: really selfish and hoarding the information and trying to do
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: it all on your own? There are definitely people who
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: are would go into those interviews and they'd go, well,
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: why do you want to be a fighter pilot? And
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: they'd say, well, I'm better than everybody in my class.
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: This guy does this, this guy sucks at this. And
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: when someone comes in like that, they're like, all right,
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: you're not going into the fighter community. And there was
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: a dude that did that when I was there.
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: Oh, shit.
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: And I think he was pretty heartbroken because he was
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: an excellent pilot, super smart, but they want somebody who
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: can play well with others.
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: Makes sense. Why is that so important?
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: Because you operate as a team. You know, you're flying
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: with other aircraft sections, divisions, large force exercises, and it's
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: a team sport. You know, you're flying your jet, but
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: you're doing all these advanced tactics with a very large
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: group of other people. And you got to be able
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: to function in a sort of like a sports team
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: atmosphere that's in the squadron, in a fighter squadron, where
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: you're high pressure, high stress, and you got to work
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: together with everybody to survive in that environment. in your
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: day-to-day ground jobs and in the aircraft for what you're doing.
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: Because it is, it's like a very complex game of
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: football or something once you're up there. The flying is
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: just like, that's just like learning to run and jump
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: and be fast if you're going in. But then the
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: next jump is like going into the NFL and learning
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: the sport and learning the tactics, operating at that high
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: speed and working as a team as a cohesive unit
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: when chaos breaks out, you know.
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: Gotcha.
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: So it's definitely a team sport.
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: Do you remember your first time in a jet?
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I remember vividly showing up once I
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: had made it through the intermediate and advanced training and
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: earning my wings at Kingsville. I selected the F-18 and
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: I remember showing up in Virginia Beach at VFA 106
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: at Oceana and walking into the hangar and seeing all
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: of those freaking Hornets and Super Hornets. And it was
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: just like, holy shit, man, I can't believe I get
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: to go do this. And the first flight was just like, Unreal,
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: like climbing into that thing and starting it up. And
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: you do a lot in the simulator, so you kind
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: of know the basics, but it's nowhere near the real thing.
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: Once you get in, you can feel the rumble of
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: this fucking tank around you. And they're so much larger
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: than they look when you just see them flying up
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: in the sky. They're these massive contraptions. And I remember
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: like initially starting to taxi this thing and you're pushing
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: up the throttles just a little bit. You got like 44,000
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: pounds of thrust behind you. And you can feel it just,
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: it feels like a tank that you're taxiing in. especially
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: after flying all those smaller aircraft. Was it a single seat?
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: I eventually did fly the single seat, but your first
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: few flights in the Super Hornet are in a two seat.
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: The instructor's got a stick in the back. But you
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: only do like maybe three or four flights in that
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: aircraft before you're flying it on your own.
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: Damn. Which is wild.
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: But the simulator syllabus is really robust. So by the
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: time you get in the jet, you've already done every
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: single emergency procedure under the sun and you get pretty
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: comfortable with it. But the coolest part was taxiing onto
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: the runway for the very first time, getting cleared for takeoff,
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: and then just putting that thing in full afterburner with
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: both engines. And you just feel it just shove you
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: back in the seat. And it's like, everything just happened
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: so fast. You're immediately off the ground. You immediately get
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: the gear up. You're immediately thousands of feet up in
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: the air and it just, everything comes so quickly. But
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: you've been training little by little to make your mind
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: process things faster and faster. But dude, it was just
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: the coolest sensation, which was very quickly deterred because I
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: realized that my mission card hadn't loaded properly and I
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: didn't have any of my waypoints for where I was going.
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: So as I take off, rotate, put the gear up,
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: and I'm just like, whoa! The instructor in the back's like,
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: it's callsign Squeezer, who actually later ended up being in
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: my squadron. He's like, hey man, where are we going?
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: Which is not the question.
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: You want to hear the instructor say on your first flight.
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: And I looked down on the display and realized like,
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: none of my working area, none of my waypoints were
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: in there. He's like, all right, just take this heading.
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: I got you. And he's in the back punching in
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: GPS coordinates and was able to salvage the rest of
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: that flight. So I didn't fail my first flight, but
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: it was like a quick kick in the nuts. Like, dude,
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: you got some work to do. You're in the big
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: boy teams here.
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: Um, damn, that's fucking cool, dude. Yeah.
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was unreal.
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: What do we go from here?
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: You know, from here, I spent the next year training
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: in the F-18 reg, which was the most challenging thing
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: I've ever done in my life as far as professional
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: career development, man. It's very little tolerance for mistake. The
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: standards are set extremely high. It was really, really freaking hard, man.
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: You're just drinking from a fire hose, trying to learn
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: the tactics as quickly as you can. And you're moving
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: through these phases from just the transition stage where you're
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: learning how to fly the aircraft itself, navigate it, take
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: it from point A to point B, operate with emergency procedures.
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: And then very quickly you're off on a strike detachment,
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: learning how to do close air support, bombing missions. And
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: then very quickly you're into the air-to-air phase, learning how
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: to dogfight the aircraft, learning air-to-air combat. which is probably
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: the most complex thing we do, the tactics with all
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: of that. And then to kind of wrap up everything
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: after you've gone through all of this over the course
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: of the year, you go and you have to land
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: this thing on the aircraft carrier day and night, which
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: is the highest point of failure for people once they
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: make it to that phase.
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: No kidding.
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: I actually disqualified at the boat my first attempt at night.
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: Landing a fighter jet on the back of a moving
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: aircraft carrier in shitty weather is the hardest thing I've
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: ever done as far as like a skill. Um, and
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: I ended up DQ and I, I just, I was
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: coming in, everything looked great. And then within the last
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: few seconds, the aircraft, I think I was just a
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: little bit nervous to the point where I would just
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: add just a nudge too much power. And this is
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: just like a millimeter of movement too much in the
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: wrong direction. And I would miss the wires and do
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: what's called a bolter where I'd bounce off the deck.
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: My hook would miss the wires. And then I was
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: back up in the pattern, and had to fly back around.
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: And I did that a few times around, and before
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: I knew it, I was at bingo fuel, which meant
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: I had to divert back to Oceana. Kind of the
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: walk of shame. But luckily got another chance after that.
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: They do an assessment and see how you've been doing
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: throughout the syllabus and if you got the attitude to
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: go back and try again. and was very fortunate to
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: get that opportunity and pass my second attempt.
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: At the boat.
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: But the daytime carrier stuff, I always enjoyed and had
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: fun with that. But the nighttime stuff is just stupid scary.
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: You can go from being in a really good position
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: where everything looks nice and suitcase to within a few seconds,
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: you can be eating it on the back of the
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: ship and end your life really quickly. And of course,
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: they make you watch all those videos right before you
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: go and do it. I don't know if these guys
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: eating it, Um, but, uh, graduated through VFA 106 and, uh,
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: selected VFA 143, the Pukin Dogs out of Virginia Beach
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: and headed my first real flea squadron.
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: So I'll kind of show up.
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: Oh man, it was awesome. It was like what I'd
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: been working for for so long. You know, you show
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: up at the training reg for the F-18 at Oceana
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: and you got your wings on your chest already. And
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: you're like, all right, I kind of know what I'm doing.
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: Then you very quickly realize that you don't know shit,
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: that you're still a baby. And then You go through
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: all that training. It's super intense. Like a lot of
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: people don't make it through that. And then you get
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: to your fleet squadron. You're like, all right, I got
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: to kind of have a little bit of an idea
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: what I'm doing now. And you show up day one
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: and you're like, nope, I'm still a baby and I
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: don't know anything. So I took the small mouth, big
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: ears approach, just shut the fuck up and listened and
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: learned as much as I could. Busted my ass, studied
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: really hard. And over the course of the next eight
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: months or so, I was just learning to survive in
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: that environment. But started to fit in, started to... People
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: noticed that I was a hard-working dude, and I was
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: there and part of the team, and was doing pretty well.
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: From my experience level, I was doing really well.
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: What do your parents think of this?
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: You know, my parents were actually pretty anti-military.
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: Really?
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: They're kind of like peaceful hippie kind of folks. And
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: when I first told my mom I was gonna go
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: in the military and fly, she was pretty heartbroken. She
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: really came around, though, and was incredibly supportive. But I
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: could tell it kind of hurt her, because she was worried, like,
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: what's going to happen to my son? Is he going
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: to get hurt? But they became incredibly supportive. They were
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: at my winging ceremony and always checking in. But, man,
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: it was awesome to be part of that group and
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: to be flying these fighter jets and doing the shit
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: we got to do. And I'd been in my squadron
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: about eight months. Kind of starting to feel like this
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: was becoming a little bit routine and kind of knew
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: what I was doing and showed up January 15th, 2014
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: for a flight that was going to change the rest
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: of my life. And you don't know it at the time,
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: you know. It's just kind of like another day at
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: the office. I showed up to the ready room. My
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: buddy Fisty was at the squadron duty desk, which all
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: the pilots would rotate through, answering the radios, coordinating the
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: flight schedule, kind of doing all the ground bullshit. And
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: as a joke, Fisty put up on the whiteboard behind
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: him all the working airspace that we were going to
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: use that day off the coast of Virginia Beach and
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: the Whiskey 72, this massive warning area that's off the
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: coast there. And he used the shark tracker app on
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: his phone to put all these GPS positions of tagged
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: sharks that researchers had tagged. And it just so happened
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: on the day he was kind of laughing. He's like, hey, man,
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: today would be a terrible day to eject. The water
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: temperature is at 37 degrees Fahrenheit at the nearby buoy.
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: we had a really cold winter and the Chesapeake Bay
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: was just washing down really frigid water to where we
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: were training. Uh, the air temperature was below freezing with
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: some wind. And he's like, and there's a 16 foot 3,500
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: pound great white shark directly underneath your airspace. Holy shit.
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: And you know, you know how it is in the military.
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: We're always joking about the dark shit. Um, I go
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: to my brief, everything's going good and smooth. And as
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: I'm kind of walking out to go, uh, get my
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: gear on and go fly. One of the more senior squad, uh,
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: pilots in the squadron pulls me aside and he's like, man,
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: you just haven't done anything dumb enough yet to earn
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: a call sign. And on another whiteboard that was in
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: the ready room, they had, uh, all the newer guys
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: in the squadron. At this point, there was like five
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: or six newer guys under me in the squadron. And
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: they all had like a laundry list of call signs.
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: But I had just played the, the, the quiet man
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: card so well that like, they didn't have any ammunition
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: against me. And when you got to my name on
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: that board, there was just like a couple throwaway options
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: on there, just no good call signs. So as I
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: get my gear on and go out and take off
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: on this flight, we went out and did some air-to-air
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: refueling just to get proficiency in that. And then with
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: extra fuel and airspace, my flight lead and I broke
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: off to our own section of airspace and started doing
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: basically my favorite thing to do in the jet and
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: probably the epitome of what people think when they think
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: fighter pilot, which is dogfighting. We call it BFM, basic
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: fighter maneuvering, just Bend in the jet, high Gs, trying
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: to shoot down another aircraft within the visual range. And
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: while we're not actually hosing off live ammunition at each other,
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: live missiles, everything's pretty close to the real thing as far...
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: All the Gs are very real. And it's an incredibly
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: dynamic environment that I absolutely love. I know that it is.
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: You're multitasking to the extreme. You're operating a high-performance aircraft.
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: You're talking on multiple radios. You're operating weapon systems, defensive systems.
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: And you're under... you know, seven and a half Gs oftentimes.
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: So your body weighs like 1600 pounds. So it's a
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: high intensity interval training along with all that. And then
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: having your brain function at its highest capability while doing
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: all that, it was fucking awesome, but really challenging. We'd
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: done several rounds of fighting, which, you know, you're fighting
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: for a couple minutes, you get to where the other
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: guys had an advantageous position, which I was always losing
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: because I was fighting the most senior guy in my
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: squadron and he was just whooping my ass, but that's
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: how we learn, you know? Go in and get your
• 45:35
  Speaker 2: ass kicked until you figure it out. And we got
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: to the last fight of the day. We hit joker fuel,
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: which meant we had just enough fuel left for one
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: quick set of fighting as we kind of exited the airspace.
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: So we ended up setting up a bit lower and
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: faster than we typically did. And flight lead called speed
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: and angels left, speed and angels right, called fights on.
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: And we went from this abeam position, pitched our jets
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: in in this kind of turning dive. And as our
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: aircraft crossed paths, I was already about 30 degrees nose
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: low and partially inverted. So I opted to continue to
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: roll my aircraft fully inverted and pull down towards the ocean.
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: My flight lead went up and I went down. And
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: typically this maneuver would take about 5,000 feet of airspace vertically.
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: And so that was kind of, we have a saying,
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: live by the gouge, die by the gouge, which is
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: learning the little shortcuts of things to think about when
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: you have to think about stuff so quickly. But I
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: hadn't In the heat of it all, I didn't quite
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: realize how fast I had gotten. And I was well
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: above the Top Gun recommended airspeed to maneuver nose low.
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: But this all happens in a split second. I maneuver
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: the aircraft in its dive, immediate pull the stick in
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: my lap, and I'm at about 7.5 Gs, diving down
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: at the ocean. And I started this maneuver up at 10,500 feet.
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: So in my quick math, I had 5,000 feet I
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: could eat up, and I would still have 500 feet
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: above our 5,000-foot hard deck that we put there for training.
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: But as I'm pulling this thing nose low, it's accelerating
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: and it hits the transonic region, which is this basically
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: right before you break the speed of sound. And the
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: flight before me had put in a code into the
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: weapon system on the aircraft that said that there were
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: bombs on the wings that weren't actually there. And so
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: as I'm pulling this thing as hard as I could,
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: all of a sudden I hit what's called the G bucket,
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: which is designed to prevent the aircraft from overstressing itself
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: as you hit that transonic region. where the drag is
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: extremely forceful on the aircraft, and prevent a minor overstress
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: that it perceived, it basically overrode my control input. And
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: I didn't realize all this in the few seconds that
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: it took. All I knew is I was pointed straight
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: at the ocean with the stick in my lap, and
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: then all of a sudden the jet just stopped turning.
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: I could feel the Gs ease up, and very quickly
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: I heard the radar altimeter blaring, altitude, altitude, and the
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: ocean is just rushing up at me. I've got the
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: stick in my lap, and it's not doing what I'm
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: telling it. which we call how to control flight. And
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: anytime you're below 6,000 feet and the aircraft's not respying
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: how you expect, the instruction is to pull the ejection
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: handle and eject. I heard altitude, altitude, pull up, pull up.
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: The ocean was rushing up at me very quickly. I
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: could see the white caps down below. I was so close.
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: And I just knew I wasn't getting out of that thing.
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: And you could see in the HUD and in the displays,
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: it's saying pull up and you can see an arrow
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: I'm just thinking, I already am pulling up. I can't
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: pull up. I threw the throttles into idle. I put
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: out the speed brake in this desperate attempt to slow down,
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: but it was just too little, too late. And two
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: seconds before I impacted the ocean, going 0.95 indicated Mach,
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: so 95% the speed of sound at almost sea level,
• 48:46
  Speaker 2: about 695 miles per hour, I yanked that ejection handle.
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: And a normal ejection is incredibly violent. I mean, you
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: get As that rocket motor ignites, you get a 50G
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: instantaneous boost that compresses your spine. And then that eases
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: to a 12 to 14G sustained boost out of the aircraft.
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: From the time you pull the ejection handle to the
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: time you exit the aircraft takes about 0.4 seconds. Are
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: you serious? It's very quick.
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: 0.4 seconds?
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but for that to ignite and shoot you out,
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: it's very quick. The canopy blasts. away and you're out.
• 49:22
  Speaker 2: When I initiated the ejection, I was two seconds from impact.
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: So by the time I had exited the aircraft, I
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: had about a second and a half before I was
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: going to impact the ocean. The jet flew right in
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: the ocean and just vaporized into nothing. What jacked me
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: up so bad was.
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: Did you see that happen?
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: No. No, I don't remember briefly from the time I
• 49:42
  Speaker 2: pulled the ejection handle till later when I was in
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: the ocean. I think I got knocked unconscious.
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: I was wondering.
• 49:46
  Speaker 2: Just from the force of it all.
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: But what happened to my body while I was unconscious, um,
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: that did so much damage was impacting the sound barrier
• 49:55
  Speaker 2: with my body. You know, we're not terribly aerodynamic at
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: that speed. Uh, and it was like, it was an
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: explosive force, a hundred times the force of a category
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: one hurricane impacting my body instantaneously. For anybody who's ever
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: stuck your arm out a window going like 70 miles
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: per hour down the highway, you felt that parasitic drag
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: acting on you. But at 700 miles per hour, that
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: force is exponentially stronger. And it just, I mean, it
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: ripped my helmet off my head, traumatic brain injury from
• 50:22
  Speaker 2: my head just smashing. I broke my C1 in my neck,
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: my left scapula, my shoulder, bilateral humer fractures. This humerus
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: broke through and cut my brachial artery internally. So I
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: was bleeding. internally here. My radius and ulna shattered on
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: this arm and severed my nerve that controls my hand,
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: the median nerve. The compression of my spine actually damaged
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: the brachial plexus, which is the nerves that go to
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: control a lot of your upper body. It was so
• 50:52
  Speaker 2: fast that the dry suit I was wearing to protect
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: me from that 37 degree Fahrenheit ocean water shredded apart.
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: All the gear on my vest ripped off, my survival beacon,
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: My radio, all my signaling equipment, not that I could
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: have used any of it because at this point my
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: arms were just completely useless. And then the steel-toed boots
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: on my feet were flailing so violently that they became
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: like freaking wrecking balls and smashed open both my lower legs,
• 51:21
  Speaker 2: open fractures of my tib-fib, chunks of my tibia like
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: falling out of my leg. bleeding out through my lower
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: extremities and this is all in like a split second
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: you know and miraculously in that time the parachute was
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: able to deploy and slow me enough so that i
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: didn't die in impact with the ocean and then i
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: plunged into that i do.
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: Not die ejecting at 695 fucking miles an hour.
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: Dude i don't know man it was uh i'm here
• 51:46
  Speaker 2: for a reason you know i i prepared a lot
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: you know i was all through flight school and even
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: before i went in the navy i was doing a
• 51:54
  Speaker 2: lot of weight training. At that point, I had about
• 51:56
  Speaker 2: 20 more pounds on me. I was really strong, really
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: short and compact, which I think was a benefit. But
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: it fucked me up really good.
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: Sorry to cut you off. No, no, no.
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: I plummeted into the icy cold water and just pins
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: and needles of feeling that freezing cold water on your body,
• 52:18
  Speaker 2: no ability to swim. And then that parachute that had
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: just saved my life sunk underneath that churning ocean swell
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: and started to drag me under. And we have a
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: system on our vest that's supposed to disconnect you on
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: your harness. It's called the SeaWars. They're the saltwater activated
• 52:34
  Speaker 2: explosive devices. Because upper body injuries are so common in
• 52:38
  Speaker 2: high-speed ejections, you oftentimes can't reach up and manually disconnect
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: the coke fittings to get free from your parachute. But unfortunately,
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: we've got like Vietnam-era survival equipment. And one of the
• 52:50
  Speaker 2: SeaWars fired but didn't disconnect. And then the other sewers
• 52:53
  Speaker 2: didn't even fire at all. They're supposed to, when they
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: go into salt water, set off this charge. So I
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: remained connected to that parachute with no ability to disconnect
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: with my arms being destroyed. And so very quickly was
• 53:04
  Speaker 2: just getting pulled underwater. And I know you know what
• 53:07
  Speaker 2: it feels like, but for anybody who's ever been held
• 53:09
  Speaker 2: underwater when you need a breath of air, that feeling's
• 53:11
  Speaker 2: pretty awful. And it was just teabagging me over and
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: over again.
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: Holy shit. I mean, there's not... How many thousands of
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: gallons of water.
• 53:23
  Speaker 2: I mean, it was like a big bag of cinder blocks,
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: you know, just yanking me under. Fortunately, the, the LPU,
• 53:29
  Speaker 2: the life preserver unit automatically inflated around my neck, which
• 53:33
  Speaker 2: gave me enough buoyancy to occasionally get to the surface
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: where I would scream for help, take a big breath
• 53:39
  Speaker 2: of air, cough up some water. And then it was
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: immediately back down. Fortunately, my flight lead thought extremely quickly.
• 53:46
  Speaker 2: He spotted my parachute opening. and he dropped a GPS
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: mark on my location, but now I'm in the ocean,
• 53:52
  Speaker 2: which is moving very quickly. Um, in the fumes of
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: fuel that he had remaining in his tank at this point,
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: he spotted a fishing vessel about a mile away, and
• 54:02
  Speaker 2: he dialed up maritime guard and tried to get their
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: attention on that, but they weren't responding. So he got
• 54:07
  Speaker 2: down really low and really fast, and he thumped over
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: their bow. And so these guys are out there commercial fishing, like,
• 54:12
  Speaker 2: holy shit, what's going on? That got him to switch
• 54:15
  Speaker 2: over to the radio frequency. And he was able to
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: direct them over to that GPS mark that he had dropped.
• 54:20
  Speaker 2: And fortunately those guys got there and provided a visual
• 54:24
  Speaker 2: reference of my approximate location because my flight lead had
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: a bingo profile back to Oceania. He had so little fuel. Um,
• 54:31
  Speaker 2: and had he not done that in that moment, I
• 54:34
  Speaker 2: would have been a little tiny dark head bobbing around
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: out in the open Atlantic ocean. Yeah.
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: It's like largely underwater and no one would ever find
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: a rice in the middle of a huge field.
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Um, So really, you know, he saved my life
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: in that moment. Um, and then this fishing vessel got
• 54:50
  Speaker 2: over there. They ended up throwing a rope out to me,
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: but because my arms were so jacked up, I couldn't
• 54:55
  Speaker 2: grab it and ended up just getting tangled in the paracord.
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: And so these guys kind of backed off, uh, but
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: we're trying to keep an eye on me as the,
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: as the rest of the rescue mission kind of went down,
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: which there was a hazard report, a hazard rep for
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: all the rescue, because it was such a clown show, uh,
• 55:11
  Speaker 2: people on different frequencies. There was a near midair with
• 55:14
  Speaker 2: a couple of helicopters. They had a Coast Guard vessel,
• 55:17
  Speaker 2: I believe, that showed up nearby. The first helicopter that
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: showed up on scene was from HS 11. They had
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: actually just been launched from an aircraft carrier that was
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: out nearby where we were operating. And they arrived on
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: scene and there was a miscommunication that I was already
• 55:32
  Speaker 2: on the fishing vessel. So they deployed the rescue swimmer.
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: He swam over and got on that fishing vessel. Meanwhile,
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: I had like drifted away from that position. And fortunately,
• 55:42
  Speaker 2: there was another helicopter that was actually going down. They
• 55:45
  Speaker 2: were about to do some weapons training with some SEAL
• 55:47
  Speaker 2: team guys down at one of the ranges down in
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: North Carolina. And they got this call that there had
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: been a no shit ejection. They needed to turn this
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: into a search and rescue mission. And one of the
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: crew members, Joey, he's eating this meatball sub for his lunch,
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: thinking he's just going on like a chill training flight.
• 56:05
  Speaker 2: And all of a sudden they get this call. He
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: had to kind of throw his sandwich back in the
• 56:08
  Speaker 2: remnants of the bag and put it kind of in
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: the edge of the, you know, the cabin of the helicopter.
• 56:14
  Speaker 2: And so these guys finally get over to where I'm at,
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: and I think it was one of the pilots actually
• 56:19
  Speaker 2: spotted me first. And they end up getting right over,
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: hovering down, and then the rescue swimmer Cheech, who was
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: about to jump in, a dude in his 20s, it
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: just so happened the week before this rescue mission, there
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: was a Navy H-53 Sea Dragon helicopter that had gone
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: down due to an electrical fire and ditched in a
• 56:39
  Speaker 2: very nearby area to where I was that day. And
• 56:42
  Speaker 2: while everybody on that crew survived the initial crash, they
• 56:46
  Speaker 2: had to spend so long getting everybody onto a backboard
• 56:49
  Speaker 2: because the Navy policy at that time was if you're
• 56:51
  Speaker 2: in any sort of aircraft mishap into the water, you
• 56:54
  Speaker 2: have to be put onto a backboard before being lifted
• 56:56
  Speaker 2: into the helicopter. And to do that in the churning
• 56:59
  Speaker 2: waves takes a lot of time. And it took so
• 57:02
  Speaker 2: long for them to get the crew evacuated. Several members
• 57:06
  Speaker 2: of that crew perished from hypothermia before they could be rescued.
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: And so Cheech was coming off just like the worst
• 57:11
  Speaker 2: week in his career after having these people perished when
• 57:15
  Speaker 2: he was trying to save them. Didn't get any time off,
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: didn't get any counseling. He's already back, ready to jump
• 57:20
  Speaker 2: in the water again. And he jumps in with that
• 57:22
  Speaker 2: in the back of his head. And at this point
• 57:24
  Speaker 2: I'd been in the water for almost two hours, severely hypothermic.
• 57:29
  Speaker 2: That dry suit had just filled up with the icy
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: cold ocean water. And I was severely hypothermic and he
• 57:34
  Speaker 2: knew that in the back of his head. So when
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: he got down, uh, We got this titanium D-ring on
• 57:40
  Speaker 2: the harness of our parachute harness. He clipped into that
• 57:44
  Speaker 2: and he said the force of the parachute was so
• 57:46
  Speaker 2: strong that it just pulled both of us under. And
• 57:48
  Speaker 2: him being a super fit rescue swimmer, no matter how
• 57:51
  Speaker 2: hard he could swim, it didn't budge. And he had
• 57:55
  Speaker 2: done this in a pool, he had said. But when
• 57:57
  Speaker 2: you look down and you can see the bottom of
• 57:59
  Speaker 2: a lit pool is very different than when you look
• 58:00
  Speaker 2: down and you see just the dark abyss and a
• 58:03
  Speaker 2: tangle of paracord and parachute just pulling you down and
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: down and down. But he maintained his cool. He got
• 58:09
  Speaker 2: out a knife and was able to cut me free
• 58:10
  Speaker 2: of all the paracord and disentangle everything, get me back
• 58:13
  Speaker 2: to the surface. And then he opted to just lift
• 58:16
  Speaker 2: me right into the helicopter, not to fuck with a backboard.
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: I did have a spinal injury. My neck was broken.
• 58:21
  Speaker 2: But at this point, he's like, if we don't get
• 58:23
  Speaker 2: this guy out, he's going to die from hypothermia for sure.
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: It was a miracle I wasn't dead from hypothermia already.
• 58:30
  Speaker 2: They got me into the helicopter.
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: Hold on. Are you conscious during all this?
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: I was in and out of consciousness. For most of it,
• 58:36
  Speaker 2: I have retrograde amnesia. But for years, I was getting
• 58:40
  Speaker 2: back flashbacks of it through night terrors of being in
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: the water and experiencing it. But I've been able to
• 58:47
  Speaker 2: recreate all this very accurately from the investigation they did,
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: from talking to the rescue swimmer, from talking to the fishermen.
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: We've been able to kind of compile exactly what happened
• 58:56
  Speaker 2: and went down pretty accurately, despite having some big lapses
• 59:01
  Speaker 2: in my memory, personally.
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: If you spend any time off-road like I do, you
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: already know how easy it is to end up second-guessing
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: where you're at, whether you're still on a legal trail,
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: or if the route ahead is even worth taking. That's
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: why I've been using OnX Off-Road. It's an off-road navigation
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: app that shows trails, public and private land boundaries, places
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: to camp, and detailed trail info all in one place.
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: And what makes it really useful is the amount of
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: actual trail data. You can check difficulty ratings, terrain details,
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: trail photos, even recent reports from other riders before you
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: head out there. The other big thing is you can
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: download maps ahead of time, because once you lose service
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: out there, your phone is pretty much useless. But with
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: OnX Offroad, everything still works offline. And if you're riding
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: with a group, their location sharing feature lets everybody stay
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: on the same map so nobody gets lost or separated.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: What I like most about it is it gives me
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: a lot more confidence when I'm exploring somewhere new. I'm
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: not wasting time backtracking, accidentally ending up on private land,
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: or trying to figure things out once I'm already deep
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: into their trail system. I can plan ahead, know what
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: I'm getting into, and spend more time actually enjoying the
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: ride instead of worrying about navigation the whole time. Search
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: OnX Off-Road in the App Store or Google Play. Again,
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: that's OnX Off-Road in the App Store or Google Play.
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: What do you remember when you woke up in the water?
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 2: The feeling of absolute dread, of just being completely helpless.
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: You knew what happened?
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 2: I mean, I was so confused. All I knew was
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 2: I was underwater and it was dark and I couldn't breathe.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: And I remember having to hold my breath for so
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: long and it started to like get those contractions. And
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 2: I remember sucking in the water and the sting of
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: the salt water going down my chest and then wanting
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 2: to cough and then that just making it worse. And
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 2: then things being black, but then being at the surface
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 2: coughing and yelling. And then it was just that feeling
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 2: of absolute helplessness. was just replayed, you know. But from
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: the rescue team, you know, they got me into that
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: helicopter and they started resuscitating me. I was coding over
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 2: and over again, so close to death. You know, they
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 2: were doing sternum rubs and all these resuscitation techniques to
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 2: try to keep me awake and alert and alive. And
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 2: I would be alert and I'd be screaming for help,
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 2: just completely disoriented and in shock. And then I'd be
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: out again. And it was, I think, about a 40-ish
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 2: minute flight to Norfolk general, which is a level one
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 2: trauma center. And in that time, you know, I just
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 2: coded repeatedly the whole flight and these guys were doing
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 2: everything they could to keep me alive. And in that chaos,
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 2: Joey's meatball sub had broken loose from the container. And
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 2: I ended up just fricking covered in meatball and marinara.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 2: So as these guys are landing at Norfolk general, the
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: medical team's coming out and I'm obviously in bad shape. Uh,
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 2: you know, they moved me over onto the gurney to
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 2: pull me out of the helicopter, and my arm was
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 2: on the edge, and it just flopped in half, like,
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 2: right in the middle. It was just completely disconnected here. Uh,
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 2: the bone is so broken, but it's still kind of
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 2: dangling from the skin. And I'm covered in all this,
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 2: what appears to be, like, blood and gore. And so,
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 2: the rescue crew is kind of explaining, like, hey, he's
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 2: in bad shape, but that's just Joey's lunch.
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: Holy shit, dude.
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 2: But, uh, they end up rushing me into the hospital.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 2: They took my core body temperature upon arrival. I was
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 2: at 87 degrees Fahrenheit core body temperature. So I should
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 2: have been dead from hypothermia at this point. But later
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 2: they said that saved my life. That cold water actually
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 2: prevented me from bleeding out through my brachial artery and
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 2: my two open leg fractures. And they believe it helped
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 2: preserve my brain function. So it was actually a blessing
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 2: that my dry suit ripped apart. I wouldn't have lived
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 2: had my dry suit functioned properly. they gave me multiple
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 2: blood transfusions. I had lost a massive amount of blood. Uh,
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 2: they warmed me up. And then once they got me semi-stable,
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 2: they pumped water out of my lungs and then they
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 2: put me into an induced coma. And for the course
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 2: of the next week, I went through over a dozen
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 2: trauma surgeries. Um, they performed fasciotomies on all four of
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 2: my extremities to, uh, Basically because the limbs were so damaged,
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 2: they were swelling up and that muscles pushing so tight
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 2: against the fascia that it was cutting off circulations to
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 2: my arms and legs. And in the past, they would
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 2: just chop your arms and legs off, you know, once
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 2: you got compartment syndrome. But fortunately, being in a level
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 2: one trauma center, they're able to open up that fascia
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 2: tissue and relieve the pressure and get the blood circulating.
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 2: So I had that on all four of my extremities.
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: They rebuilt my skeleton with titanium rods and steel plate
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 2: in both my arms and both my legs. So now
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 2: I've got like a Wolverine x-rays. If you ever get
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 2: to see it, it's pretty sweet. Just all metal bones
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 2: on the inside, a bunch of screws, hundreds of stitches
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 2: and staples to put everything back together. And then late
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 2: one night they came in and my hand was just
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 2: like blue and cold to the touch. And they were
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 2: about to amputate my arm, but they had this like
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 2: top vascular surgeon that was able to get the blood
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 2: flow by giving me a brachial artery bypass in my arm. Um,
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 2: but a lot of stuff that was fortunately, I had
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 2: like the medical dream team on that day of these
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 2: surgeons that was able to put me back together. And
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 2: after that week, they were trying to get me out
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 2: of the induced coma and trying to get me back
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 2: to consciousness, but I just wasn't waking up. And at
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 2: this point, my mom, you know, her worst nightmare had happened. Uh,
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 2: her little boy's in a coma, maybe not gonna make it.
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 2: A bunch of my squadron mates and friends from flight
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 2: school are in the waiting room at the ICU. I'd
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 2: been transferred over to Portsmouth Naval Hospital where everybody was
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 2: just kind of waiting to hear my fate. And it
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 2: didn't look good. You know, is this guy just going
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 2: to be a vegetable the rest of his life? Is
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 2: he going to wake up whatsoever? And when you get
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 2: in a mishap like that, I'm guessing it's similar for
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 2: your community, but you have to fill out this form
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 2: of who they, who you want to contact in the
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 2: case of an emergency. And I had filled out my
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 2: friend that I had been, uh, a kiteboard instructor with
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 2: when I was in college, which was actually another good
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 2: exposure to getting drug through the water and being tangled
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 2: in cords and being comfortable with it. That probably helped.
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 2: But this is my friend Matt, who kind of became
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 2: like an older brother to me. And my nickname when
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 2: we were in that crew was Scrappy. Everybody always called
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 2: me Scrappy. And my commanding officer picked open this envelope
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 2: and saw that number and called my friend Matt. And
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 2: he's like, you mean Scrappy? You're talking about Scrappy? And
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 2: my skipper thought that was a hilarious nickname. And so
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 2: when he came back into the ICU waiting room, he
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 2: kind of told everybody the story. Uh, everybody thinks this
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 2: guy's named Scrappy. And so that same pilot that told
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 2: me before my flight that I didn't do anything to
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 2: earn a call sign yet, kind of piped up and
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 2: he's like, oh, he's a Scrappy motherfucker. He'll be all right.
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 2: And that kind of lifted the mood of the room.
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 2: And then all the guys' minds started turning and they
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 2: came up with SMURF, uh, sort of a makeshift acronym
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 2: for Scrappy motherfucker. And, uh... Being the politically correct Navy
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 2: that it has become, they had to come up with
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 2: a cover story for it. So they said it was
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 2: because I was a short guy that turned blue from hypothermia.
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: That's awesome.
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 2: That's how they got it approved anyway. So at least
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 2: I got a call sign out all this, you know?
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 2: A hard-earned one.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: Has any pilot ejected at 695 miles an hour?
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 2: It's the fastest survived ejection in the Navy. I know
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 2: of an Air Force pilot that ejected faster than that.
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 2: His call sign was Noodle. He ejected back in the
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 2: early 90s. He was an F-15 pilot. And they had
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 2: the instrumentation, I think it was like one of the
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 2: gyroscopes or something, stop functioning. So they thought they were
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 2: in straight and level flight when actually they were in
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 2: a dive straight down. And the way he noticed it
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 2: was they could hear the canopy noise. When you start
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 2: going faster in the jet, you can hear the canopy noise.
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 2: just like when you go faster in your car, it
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 2: gets louder. And just kind of getting spidey senses, like
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 2: something's not right. And he was like, they were within
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 2: a couple of seconds of impacting the ocean when they
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 2: pulled the handle. I don't think the backseater made it out.
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 2: He miraculously survived and actually went back to flying. I
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 2: think he's actually an airline pilot now or maybe retired,
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 2: but yeah, he miraculously survived that. But it doesn't happen
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 2: very often where people through that level of uh explosion
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 2: you know yeah but less than ideal there's actually a
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 2: chart in the the natops the aircraft flight manual that
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 2: shows the survivable envelope with the the martin baker ejection
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 2: seat and we looked at the angle that i was
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 2: at in the airspeed and it's not even on the
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 2: chart like uh shouldn't have lived through it for sure um.
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: How often do you think about that i mean you
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: survived an ejection that you probably should.
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 2: Have never survived I'm really grateful for it now.
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: You should have drowned. You should have died of hypothermia.
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: You should have died of blood loss. Maybe eaten by
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: a shark.
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, dude. Luckily Mary Lee wasn't interested.
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: Your equipment malfunctioned. What do you chalk this up as?
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 2: Still here for a reason. God still needed me for something.
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: And It really opened my eyes to that. And just
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 2: a deep gratitude and love and appreciation for being here
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 2: in this experience as a human. Like, got to do
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 2: some good with that. But definitely here for a reason.
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll say.
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 2: I'm really grateful for that, man.
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: How long were you on surgeries?
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 2: So that first week they completed all the initial surgeries
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 2: and then the next week, so now a total of
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 2: two weeks, I was still in a coma and Eventually,
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 2: the first thing I remembered was I could hear people talking,
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 2: familiar voices. I could smell disinfectant.
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: You remember waking up? Mm-hmm. After being out for two weeks. Yeah.
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and then I remembered being able to open my
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 2: eyes and look around and I could see familiar places, faces,
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 2: but it was confusing. Because I, at that point, I
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 2: had zero memory of the ejection. I had zero memory
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 2: of how I had gotten there. I had no idea.
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 2: It was like waking up from a dream in your
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 2: own bed, except why are there all these machines? Why
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 2: do things not look like my bedroom? In between the
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 2: brain injury and all the meds that they had me on,
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 2: I was pretty out of it. One of the first
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 2: things I thought was that my squadron mates had been
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 2: playing a prank on me because I tried to move
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 2: and I thought they had like tied me down with
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 2: the little wool blanket they had over me, but it
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 2: was because I was paralyzed. I couldn't move, but I
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 2: thought that they had like were fucking with me. for
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 2: a minute. Um, but, you know, I started seeing faces
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 2: and kind of recognizing them. And then eventually the medical
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 2: staff came in to kind of explain, like, you've been
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 2: in a high-speed ejection, you're lucky to be alive, but
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 2: you're not ever gonna be able to walk again, you're
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 2: never gonna be able to use your arms again, and
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 2: your military flying career is over. And that was a
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 2: pretty devastating moment, to just be stuck there, trapped in
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 2: my own body, confused. and be told, like, everything that
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 2: I had worked for for so long was now gone.
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 2: And it was a pretty dark... a dark time for
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 2: me internally. But also in that moment, there was this
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 2: little spark, which probably comes from, you know, the shit
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 2: I did in childhood, that self-reliance, but it was like,
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 2: fuck you. You tell me I can't do that, I'm
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 2: gonna prove you wrong. And so that became the fire
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 2: that I started to fuel. And it started as a
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 2: tiny little ember, in a deep, dark, black pit that
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 2: I was in. But I started to feed that. And
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 2: I imagined myself getting back into the cockpit, what it
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 2: was gonna feel like when I was back in my
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 2: flight suit with my wings back on my chest and
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 2: taken off in that jet again. And that became something
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 2: I looked at every day. And so my mission every
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 2: day was how am I gonna get there? You can
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 2: kind of imagine what you wanna do, but unless you
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 2: do the work consistently, you're not gonna get there. And
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 2: so I just started every day like, okay, I can't
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 2: walk today. I can't use my arms. I can't wipe
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 2: my own ass. Some poor corpsman who joined to go
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 2: do cool shit in the Navy's in here stuck with
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 2: me wiping my ass all day. But I'm going to
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 2: fucking figure something out so I can start wiping my
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 2: own ass again at least. And so those became my
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 2: little missions daily was like, what can I move? Is
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 2: there anything that does work? And little by little, like
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 2: things started to move a bit. A few weeks had
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 2: gone by in that ICU room and things were pretty dark,
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 2: but still feeding that little fire that was in there.
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 2: And one day I remember I was able to like,
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 2: I was able to use my core muscles again, even
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 2: though my arms and legs didn't work and I was
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 2: able to sit up in the bed and one of
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 2: the nurses came in and I was kind of sitting
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 2: up and she was just kind of like, whoa, this
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 2: isn't supposed to be happening. Um, once I was fairly stable,
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 2: they transferred me to Richmond, Virginia. Uh, there's a poly
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 2: trauma center there at the McGuire VA. And that's where
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 2: I started to do all my rehabilitation. And at this point,
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 2: I was completely bedridden, literally shitting on myself, had to
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 2: be fed, had to have people brush my teeth. That
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 2: was really frustrating for me, to be such a self-reliant
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 2: person who now could do nothing for myself. But I
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 2: started doing therapy all day, every day. I'd wake up,
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 2: I'd get moved via wheelchair to my appointments in the
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 2: VA there. I was doing vision therapy, From the head injury,
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 2: one of my cranial nerves had been messed up. So
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 2: my vision was all jacked up. I was doing speech
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 2: therapy because of the brain injury. I was really struggling
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 2: just with the basics of talking. And as I progressed
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 2: with that, I was doing occupational therapy to use my
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 2: upper body a little bit. Physical therapy, kinesio therapy, recreational therapy,
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 2: aqua therapy, like all the therapies. And they had a
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 2: really good staff there that really gave a shit. and
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 2: was helping me out. Um, but I also saw a
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 2: pretty dark side of the medical system while in there,
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 2: which was one, the food that they were giving us
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 2: was absolute garbage, ultra processed, shitty, full of seed oils.
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 2: Like didn't even there, there wasn't a fresh fruit or
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 2: vegetable to be found. And even if you did get
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 2: a fresh fruit or vegetable, it was pretty shit quality. Um,
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 2: you know, tons of like Frito lays and nutter butters
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 2: and garbage food, but it was like They were fueling these,
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 2: they were putting all this money into this facility and
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 2: all of these therapies in this facade that they were
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 2: doing so much so that if you came in, the
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 2: optics looked really good to be like, man, look at
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 2: the VA. And I'm grateful for how much better it
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 2: was than what the Vietnam era guys came back to
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 2: where they're shoved 12 dudes in a room, pissing and
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 2: shitting on themselves all day, getting pumped full of morphine
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 2: and then just wheeled out onto the sidewalk, like good
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 2: luck with your life. And that morphine addiction, it's definitely
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 2: improved since then. but it was still like, why are
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 2: we not feeding people good food? That's like the most
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 2: important thing. The other one was all night, every night,
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 2: they're waking you up to take your vitals and then
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 2: give you medication so that you can sleep. It's like,
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 2: just let us sleep. That's like the most important thing
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 2: we can do right now, sleep and get nutrition in
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 2: our body. Both of those things were non-existent. And then
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 2: the thing that they had an abundance of was pharmaceutical drugs. Here,
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 2: take your pills, take your pills. This one's not working
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 2: well enough. We got you on all the opioids. We
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 2: got you on Oxycontin, Oxycodone, like all this shit. Let's
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 2: try Gabapentin. This one's going to be way better. It's non-addictive.
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 2: And before long, I was on 2,400 milligrams a day
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 2: of Gabapentin, which initially helped a little bit, but ended
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 2: up becoming the hardest addiction that I had to break.
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: What is that again?
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 2: It's called Gabapentin or Neurotin. It's originally was, I think
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 2: it was for diabetic nerve pain. And they started as
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 2: opioids were kind of getting a bad rep. They'd still
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 2: give you the opioids, but now they'd give you a
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 2: bunch of the gabapentin too to help deal with the
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 2: nerve pain, which it didn't really do much, honestly. Initially,
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 2: it made me fall asleep. But once my body acclimated
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 2: to it, which was pretty quick, they just had to ramp, ramp,
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 2: ramp the dose up until I was taking like the
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 2: maximum daily dose that they would allow at that time.
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 2: But it was all just pharmaceutical based, man. When you
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 2: saw the doctor who's supposed to be your healer, it
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 2: wasn't like, Hey, let's get you better food. Let's deal
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 2: with this. It was just, what pills do you want?
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 2: What pills do you need? And also there's these cute
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 2: girls floating around, uh, the polytrauma center, which is largely, um,
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 2: special forces operators who'd been hit by RPGs or gunshots, lost,
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 2: you know, broken spines. There's Marines in there, a lot
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 2: of infantry guys, um, a bunch of young men. And, uh,
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 2: they've got these cute girls that are the pharma reps
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 2: that come in and they flirt with you and they
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 2: get you to sign up for clinical trials. And there
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 2: were still, I overheard some of the staff members at
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 2: the hospital talking about one of the trials that they
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 2: had done. It was a nerve pain medication for people
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 2: with permanent spinal injuries. And they would inject the stuff
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 2: directly into their spinal fluid. And somehow the batch of
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 2: the medicine that they received had been contaminated because they
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 2: were storing it cryogenically in liquid nitrogen in containers that
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 2: weren't designed to be frozen and so it was causing
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 2: cracks and then they were getting contaminated with some sort
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 2: of fungus or something and so the first time they
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 2: started putting in this into these Fucking legitimate heroes in
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 2: wheelchairs just trying to not feel pain all day it
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 2: immediately caused severe pain and the staff was saying you
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 2: could hear them screaming at the top of their lungs
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 2: to just end their lives and and they were paralyzed
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 2: so they couldn't kill themselves. And the only way that
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 2: they could stop these guys from being in that level
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 2: of pain was to put them into induced comas.
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: Get the fuck out of here, man. Are you serious?
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they're doing medical experimentation on American veterans, um, in
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 2: the VA hospitals. And, uh, I didn't end up signing
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 2: up for any clinical trials, but I'm guessing that still
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 2: happens today. where you just get to be a lab
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 2: rat for them. But I was pretty frustrated in that place,
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 2: seeing kind of the inner workings of it. But very
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 2: fortunate to have people that cared. And continuing to work
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 2: really hard, I progressed to the point where I could
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 2: get around on a walker. My arms weren't working for
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 2: a long time. And then one day, my left hand,
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 2: I could start to move my pinky and my ring finger.
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 2: So I eventually was able to move this arm enough
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 2: that I could brush my teeth. I could wipe my
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 2: own ass again, which was a huge victory.
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: How much time had passed before?
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 2: It was about two months before this hand started working,
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 2: and then another couple weeks. One day, this hand just,
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 2: I started to feel it tingling.
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: And you were walking before that? No. No, this is
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: before I could walk okay i thought i heard you
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: say you're on a walk.
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah sorry i jumped ahead there but um yeah i
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 2: couldn't use my arms but once i started to get
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 2: function of my arms they could get me in a
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 2: walker and start moving on that they had me in
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 2: the pool walking uh assisted they had me on this
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 2: sort of treadmill with these suspension devices on me. So
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 2: it would take my body weight and I could relearn
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 2: to walk that way. So there was a lot of
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 2: good stuff with that. But after three months, I was
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 2: good enough that I got to go back to Virginia
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 2: Beach and continue outpatient therapy. And it was a huge
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 2: relief to put that hospital in the rear view mirror.
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 2: At this point, I still couldn't drive. I was pretty
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 2: limited for my functions of daily living. I was very
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 2: reliant on others. And ended up going back to Virginia
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 2: Beach and continuing outpatient therapy at Portsmouth Naval Hospital. And
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 2: that place was an absolute shit show. But just working
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 2: really hard at my rehab, talking to the pain management docs,
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 2: I'd be like, I don't want to be on these
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 2: pain meds. I don't think they're doing anything for me.
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 2: And the answer was always, well, you don't feel you
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 2: need them because they're working. And so they didn't want
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 2: to help me get off of them. And so, you know,
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 2: I was... just kind of broken, isolated from a lot
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 2: of my squadron mates. And I found myself one day
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 2: sitting on the back patio where I lived on this
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 2: lawn chair, you know, taking all my oxy. And I
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 2: had a big thing of whiskey drinking that. And I'm
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 2: just kind of like melting into the ground. And I
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 2: remember being there just completely just melted and relaxed and thinking, man,
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 2: I could just stay here the rest of my life.
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 2: But there was this other part of me is like,
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 2: is this what you want to be? And in that moment,
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 2: I recognized, fuck no, I don't want to just be
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 2: this the rest of my life, a drug addict, an alcoholic.
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 2: And that moment was really powerful in that. That's when
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 2: I really started to pursue, like, I need to get
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 2: off these meds. And every doc I talked to was like, no,
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 2: you need to stay on the meds. You need to
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 2: stay on the meds. So I just started doing it myself.
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 2: And I just started titrating off. At this point, I
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 2: was on over a dozen medications. I was on oxycodone, oxycontin, gabapentin, tramadol, trazodone, amitriptyline,
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 2: plus a bunch of other shit. And so I just
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 2: started each day cutting out a little bit of each one.
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 2: I think I started with the amitriptyline, then the tramadol
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 2: and the trazodone. And then I got to the oxycodone
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 2: and I was able to cut that out. And then
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 2: the Oxycontin, which took several weeks of like just feeling
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 2: like absolute dog shit, but just kind of toughen it out.
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 2: And if I got too bad, I would take a
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 2: small dose just to kind of ease that. I didn't
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 2: just go cold turkey because I think I would have
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 2: fucking died. But then I got to the Neurotin or
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 2: the Gabapentin, which was supposed to be non-addictive. And that
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 2: became the hardest drug for me to get off of.
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 2: As soon as I started cutting back on it, I
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 2: felt extremely nauseous.
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: I was shaking.
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 2: I just felt like I'd gotten punched in the gut.
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 2: And so very gradually I cut down that dosage. And
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 2: it took about three months for me to wean myself
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 2: off that medication. But as soon as I did and
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 2: got all those meds out of my system, it was
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 2: like the life came back into me. Even just like
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 2: the way I looked, I was like kind of pasty
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 2: and pale and doughy, low energy, just didn't feel like
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 2: myself at all. But as I got those meds out,
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 2: it was like I had motivation again. And instead of
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 2: just being exhausted at the end of each day, I
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 2: was like ready to do stuff. And I was really
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 2: fortunate to have really good friends that were taking care
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 2: of me. Uh, you know, they were trying to get
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 2: me to go out and go wake surfing when I
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 2: was just barely walking, but they got me out there
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 2: in the water and hang out on the boat and
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 2: sure enough, got me up on the wake surfing board. And, um,
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 2: taking me out surfing. Like, my first experience back in
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 2: the ocean, I was pretty nervous. I could barely put
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 2: on the wetsuit, because my arms were still so weak.
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 2: But ended up getting out into the waves and just
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 2: got crushed by this wave out in the outer banks.
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 2: Held under, like, bounced along the bottom. Coming back up
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 2: for a breath of air, held down again, and then
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 2: popped back up with just a big smile on my face.
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 2: Because it was like I had faced that demon of
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 2: being held under the water, and I was okay with it.
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: How long did it take from... the crash to that,
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: to surfing?
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 2: Probably about a year and a half. I had been
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 2: rehabbing about a year and a half when I was
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 2: starting to get active with stuff like surfing. My buddy
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 2: Spicoli took me out mountain biking. And I just started
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 2: to get back in touch with the stuff I loved,
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 2: with the people I enjoyed being around. And meanwhile, I
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 2: was going through an investigation, which was pretty brutal. You know,
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 2: I had just crashed an $ 89 million Super Hornet. And
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 2: the consequences could be pretty brutal. And some of those
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 2: interviews were more like an interrogation. Very tense. Some dark
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 2: moments of them asking me, do you think you still
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 2: deserve to be a fighter pilot after this? You know,
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 2: being in tears, like just kind of broken down. Um,
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 2: but pushing through that, um, the investigation lasted months and
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 2: months and months. And it all culminated where I had
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 2: to go to Norfolk and go see the Admiral, uh,
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 2: who would determine my fate after I'd been through all
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 2: these proceedings. And I showed up for that. I think
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 2: at this point I was still using a cane to
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 2: walk around, still limping. But I put on my summer
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 2: white uniform and I walk into this room and it's
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 2: a big room about the size of this with a
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 2: table in it about the size of this platform, big
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 2: wooden table. And on either side, it's flanked by about
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 2: a dozen other naval aviators, all kind of convened to
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 2: determine my fate. And after they had done the preliminary
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 2: hearing with me, the admiral comes in and everybody stands
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 2: up and he sits on the opposite end of this
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 2: long table from me and tells us all to sit down.
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 2: And I remember sitting down and he just looks across
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 2: the table at me and goes, Lieutenant Gill, are you fearless?
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 2: And like, what do you say when an admiral asks
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 2: you that, you know? But the only thing that came
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 2: out of my mouth and I don't know where it
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 2: came from, but I said, sir, I don't remember a
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 2: lot from the ejection, but I'm certain what little seat
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 2: cushioning there is on the ejection seat was puckered up
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 2: inside me real tight And he didn't blink. He didn't laugh.
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 2: He just stood up and walked out of the room.
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 2: And I was just like, well, there goes my flying career,
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 2: you know? And everybody's just kind of like looking at
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 2: each other like, what was that? And eventually everybody kind
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 2: of clears out of this room and I walk out
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 2: into the hallway and one of the captains, 06, pulls
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 2: me into his office and he has me sit on
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 2: the other side of his table and he's got this
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 2: glass jar full of Lifesaver mints. And he takes one
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 2: and pops it in his mouth. He gives me one
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 2: and I pop it in my mouth. And we're sitting
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 2: there just enjoying these little peppermints. And he goes, Lieutenant Gill,
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 2: if you can get your body working again, we're going
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 2: to get you back in a Super Hornet. And it
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 2: was just like the biggest relief and just massive motivation
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 2: to keep going. And so I did, man. I had
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 2: to go through. I got to keep my wings. I
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 2: got the opportunity to go back and fly. But now
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 2: I had to figure out how to get medical waivers
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 2: and get back flying physically again. But that just drove
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 2: my therapy, man. I was doing two-a-day workouts. I was
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 2: doing all my therapy at Portsmouth. And I just dedicated
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 2: myself to all of that shit and started getting better
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 2: and stronger and went through a medical waiver process with
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 2: a bunch of different flight surgeons, which was a miracle
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 2: in itself. I had to get a stack of all
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 2: these waivers for all the injuries that I had.
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: If you've been listening to the show for a while,
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 1: you know this is something I care about. We've had
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: regenerative farmers and health experts on. We've talked about soil health,
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: clean water, glyphosate, food security, and how disconnected most Americans
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 1: are from where their food actually comes from. Might be
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: time to start paying some attention. We've talked about foreign
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 1: ownership of American farmland, China. We even did an episode
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 1: that called out the government for selling off public lands
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: in Utah. And when you start looking at all of
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: it together, you realize there's a lot going on between
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 1: the land, the food supply, and the people who are
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 1: actually trying to produce real food in this country. And
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: that's why I trust Moink. Moink was started by Lucinda,
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: an eighth generation family farmer to help small independent family
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 1: farms ship high quality meat directly to your door. We're
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 1: talking wild-caught salmon, grass-fed and grass-finished beef, pasture-raised pork, grass-fed lamb,
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 1: and pasture-raised chicken. And this is the kind of meat
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 1: you actually want to feed your family. It's antibiotic-free, they
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: do not use growth hormones, and they do not feed
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 1: GMO grains. And they're not adding solutions to the chicken
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 1: or sugar to the bacon. Moink connects you back to
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: the source. You're not just buying meat from some giant
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 1: supply chain and hoping for the best. You're supporting independent
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 1: family farms that care about the land, the animals, and
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 1: the quality of the food they produce. When you purchase
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: from Moink, you're not just getting better meat for your family.
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: You're making a real, meaningful impact on family farms all
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 1: across America. Please, give it a try. Join the mission
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 1: to fight for the family farm, because you know what?
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 1: They fight for us. Go to moinkbox.com slash SRS and
• 1:28:20
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• 1:28:24
  Speaker 1: as long as you're a paying customer. That's moinkbox.com slash SRS.
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 1: All right, Kagan. I know that supposedly you may have
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 1: had some UAP encounters.
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 2: I have.
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: So we have a hot question. You ready? You flew
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 1: the F-18 Super Hornet, the same jet off the same
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: Virginia Beach coast that guys like Ryan Graves and Commander
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 1: Fravor were flying when they reported objects they couldn't explain.
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 1: And the Pentagon just started releasing its declassified UAP files
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: over the past few weeks. So I have to ask you,
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 1: in all of your time up there, did you ever
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 1: see anything you could not explain or fly with somebody
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: who did? And what's your honest take? Is any of
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 1: this real?
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this is an exciting topic. So while I was
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 2: in my recovery, I lived down this road called Oyster
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 2: Point Key. It's like quiet little spot down on the
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 2: uh on rudy's inlet area of virginia beach wooded quiet
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 2: kind of outside the city a bit and i was
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 2: up on the second story of this room that i
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 2: was staying at with my buddies who kind of adopted
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 2: me while i was recovering um two of my friends
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 2: were deployed so their bedroom was open while they were
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 2: gone they let me stay there but i'm asleep one
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 2: night and this bright light comes in through the second
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 2: story room where i'm at through the window and I
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 2: thought maybe a car had pulled up in the driveway
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 2: and had their brights on or something. But I got
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 2: out of bed and I walked over to the window
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 2: and looked out the window and right at eye level,
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 2: there was this thing that looked like a massive set
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 2: of stadium lightings, a bunch of different circular lights, all
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 2: in the square kind of rectangular pattern, just blasting in
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 2: on me. And rather than being afraid, which I think
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 2: would be a natural sensation, when you witness something bizarre
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 2: like that, I just got this overwhelming sense of calm.
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 2: And I just walked back to the bed. I'd gotten
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 2: up to go to the restroom. I didn't even do that.
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 2: I just walked back to bed and fell asleep. And
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 2: the next morning I woke up and I thought, that
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 2: was just a dream. There's no way that was real.
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 2: Fast forward into my recovery, towards the end of my
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 2: recovery journey, I'm working a ground job at the Strike
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 2: Fighter Wing Atlantic. which is sort of like the administrative
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 2: command that coordinates everything between all the different fighter squadrons
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 2: at Oceana. And I was doing a number of different
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 2: ground jobs, answering emails, phone calls. And one day I
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 2: got an email that was from a bunch of the
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 2: more high-ranking individuals from various squadrons around Oceana. And they
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 2: were saying that they were getting sightings of these objects
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 2: out in the Whiskey 72 airspace where we do our training.
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 2: And You know, some of them were saying that, you know,
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 2: we don't know what these are. I think there was one,
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 2: he was either the XO or CO of one of
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 2: the squadrons. I don't know if he was joking, but
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 2: he's like, we should just strap some 9Xs on and
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 2: go shoot these things down. So shoot them down with
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 2: a heat-seeking missile. And at first I thought they were
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 2: just messing with me. Like, there's so many shenanigans. I
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 2: assumed they were just messing with me being the guy
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 2: at the wing. But they originally wanted me to kind
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 2: of coordinate these reports. And so I responded to that
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 2: first email thinking that they were messing with me. Strike
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 2: Fighter Wing Atlantic, X-Files, Fox Mulder signing off was the
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 2: end of my email, thinking that these guys are just
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 2: complete full of shit. And then I got a return
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 2: email that said, we need to move these conversations over
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 2: to SIPR. And for those that don't know, that's the
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 2: secure internet. And that's when I kind of realized this
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 2: isn't a joke.
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 1: Holy shit. What are you thinking?
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 2: Dude, I was really excited. Because I had had that
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 2: thing that I didn't know if it was a dream,
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 2: and I still don't know if that was a dream
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 2: or not, but it was so vivid. And I've always
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 2: had curiosity on this topic. But to hear that, it
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 2: was like, holy shit, this is real. There's something out there.
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 2: I don't know what it is, but there's something. I
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 2: continued my recovery. One day I'm sitting at that computer
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 2: answering emails, and the Commodore, the Strike Fighter Wing Atlantic
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 2: Commodore comes in. He goes, Lieutenant Gill, what are you
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 2: doing today? I said, just answer an email, sir. And
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 2: he goes, how about you go back and fly jets today?
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 2: And it was like, holy shit, I get to go
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 2: back to fly. And it was pretty overwhelming and exciting
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 2: all at once that I actually got to do that.
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 2: And so it kind of overcome all those odds, come
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 2: over a lot of obstacles. And then I was back flying.
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 2: And while I was back flying, going through my refresher
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 2: training to get back to the fleet, I was out
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 2: on a mission out in that same Whiskey 72 airspace.
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 2: And we were doing long range intercepts, so like long
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 2: range fighting other aircraft. And I think we took up
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 2: a division that day, so a flight of four aircraft.
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 2: And two of the aircraft would split off and go
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 2: to one side of the airspace, and then me and
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 2: my flight lead split off to the other. And we
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 2: set up for these different presentations to practice our tactics.
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 2: And as we're setting up in the airspace, people are
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 2: using their radars and their flares to kind of clear
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 2: the airspace and make sure there's no interlopers. And the
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 2: flight lead comes up over and says, we've got interlopers.
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 2: And I remember getting that contact on my radar and
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 2: then training my FLIR to it, my forward looking infrared,
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 2: it's like a long range infrared camera to look at
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 2: that thing. I know you know what all this shit is,
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 2: but for people to know.
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 1: No, it's good you're doing that for the audience.
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 2: So I locked up my FLIR on this thing and
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 2: pulled up the FLIR page to see what it was seeing.
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 2: And it was pretty far out and our FLIRs are
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 2: kind of shitty, so it's pretty grainy. But I could
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 2: see this little spherical object out in the distance was
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 2: putting off IR signature. And I'm primarily flying formation with
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 2: my flight lead as we're kind of setting up for
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 2: these presentations. So I was constantly kind of looking back
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 2: and flying the jet primarily, but occasionally glancing at this thing.
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 2: And then I remembered, it was like when I looked
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 2: back up, that thing had moved much closer to my
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 2: position and I could see it a little better. It
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 2: was still that kind of grainy circle, spherical thing. But
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 2: pretty quickly, the flight leads like, we got to return
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 2: to base. We're unable to complete this with the interlopers.
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 2: So we had to cancel that day's flight, which is
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 2: a pretty costly evolution to get four jets up in
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 2: that sky to do this. So we rejoin, we go back,
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 2: we land. And I remember in the debrief expecting that
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 2: we're going to talk about this thing that had just happened.
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 2: And nobody said anything. Nothing?
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 1: Nothing.
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 2: And so I knew like, okay, there's likely some sort
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 2: of program. that we're not briefed into yet, so we're
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 2: not allowed to talk about this. And that's when I knew, like,
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 2: there's something out there. That was my personal experience. Not
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 2: terribly exciting, but then, like, Ryan Graves, he was in
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 2: Virginia Beach the same time as I actually... I know Ryan,
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 2: and he was seeing a lot of stuff. He had, like,
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 2: close encounters with one of those things passing right by
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 2: and seeing it with his own eyes. But there was
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 2: a lot of sightings of these spherical objects with a
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 2: cube inside them, and sometimes moving... instantaneously positions and changing
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 2: directions in ways that didn't make sense. But I mean,
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 2: I totally believe that these are alien technologies that we
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 2: do re-engineering and rebuilding. I mean, there's no way we're
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 2: alone in this massive universe.
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 1: We've hidden aircraft from the public for decades. The SR-71
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 1: is an example. Do you think the military is sitting
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 1: on something further out the anti-gravitic stuff and those Navy
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 1: UFO patents? Do you think that's what this could be?
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 1: Or do you think it's aliens?
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 2: I think it's both. I think that there is alien
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 2: craft that have made contact, and some of them being recovered.
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 2: I mean, I've heard enough reputable people talking about these subjects,
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 2: some of them on your show, that have been in
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 2: these recovery efforts to recover the craft. And I think
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 2: it's all being vogarted by aliens The defense industry and
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 2: these technologies are being used and released in order to
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 2: make the most profit for the people that are in
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 2: control of things. I think the reason we don't see
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 2: a lot of it is because some of these technologies
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 2: could make so many of the things that we rely
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 2: on completely obsolete, like propulsion technologies and energy technologies that
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 2: could make the oil and gas industry crash. And we
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 2: have an entire economy built on that. And it would
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 2: completely change the game. And I think the people that
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 2: control these technologies and are running the show don't want
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 2: that to happen.
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 1: But I think it's... How high up do you think
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 1: this goes?
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know how much the presidency's in
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 2: on any of this because I don't think that they're
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 2: even the real decision makers in the world. I think
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 2: it's like a reality TV show, what we see on
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 2: TV politics to keep us divided and pissed off and
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 2: at each other's throats while the real Caesars of the
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 2: world are dividing and conquering everybody.
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 1: Do you think a lot of these politicians, people that
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 1: bring this stuff up, former government officials, do you think
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 1: this is a way for them to get their name
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 1: in the media? I mean, other than.
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 2: Maybe.
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's def... Could be a big distraction.
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 1: Tactic as well, but, I mean, if you want... If
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 1: you're a politician and you want to get on the
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 1: fucking news and you need press... I don't know if
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 1: there's anything easier than to jump on the UFO disclosure stuff.
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 1: It's immediate. It's immediate press.
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it might be, it might be that.
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 2: I think there are some politicians that were genuinely interested
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 2: in it, but. dude, all of that is such a
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 2: fucking illusion. You know, I think it's just a show
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 2: and I don't think the real decisions that are being
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 2: made are even being made by the politicians we see
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 2: on TV. I think everything's done behind closed doors and
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 2: out of the sight of the public. And we've got
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 2: this whole optic that there is this thing that is
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 2: democracy that is just.
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 1: I don't disagree with you on that at all.
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 2: So, you know, I don't watch the news anymore. I
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 2: think I've been misled and gotten my hopes up far
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 2: too many times to... and now realize that that's just...
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 2: that's not where the real decisions are being made and
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 2: that's not who's in control. But are people using it
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 2: for political gain?
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 1: Probably. Do you think they're using it as a big
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 1: distraction thing? I mean, the last time this came up
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 1: was in the middle. Well, I mean, it's still being
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 1: brought up. The... How do I say this? This is
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 1: still drawn out from the first time it was brought
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 1: up within this administration. Ironically, it was brought up right
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: in the midst of all the Epstein shit.
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it totally could be.
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 1: You would give them UAPs.
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 2: It totally could be. Let's change the subject. Like, look
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 2: over here.
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 1: Here's aliens. Don't worry about fucking little kids. Here's aliens.
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, and I think that's totally possible, but
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 2: I still think it's very real. I think there's enough
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 2: reputable people that are talking about it and putting their
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 2: careers on the line and destroying their livelihoods and even
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 2: losing their lives to get this information out.
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 1: Who's destroying their livelihood to get this information out?
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 2: I think it likely comes back to those people that
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 2: are in control, that are making the money off of
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 2: the defense industry.
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 1: No, no, no. I mean, who do you think is
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 1: throwing their career in the trash for disclosure?
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 2: You know, I forget a lot of the names of this...
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 2: but there's been a lot of high-level government officials coming
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 2: forward and saying things. There's been military members, other Navy
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 2: pilots coming forward and saying things. And just talking to
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 2: Ryan about that process and the congressional hearings, a lot
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 2: of those people are under extreme duress, having their families threatened,
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 2: losing everything in their careers. And why would they do
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 2: that if this wasn't very real? And even just- I
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 2: don't know.
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 1: I don't know who's throwing their career away. I dove
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 1: into this topic, as you know.
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you might be more knowledgeable.
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 1: I'm not. I'm not saying I'm more knowledgeable.
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 2: I am.
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 1: Very skeptical.
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 2: Very skeptical that it's real at all.
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, let me rephrase that. I mean, I think
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 1: people are seeing something, but I think that the, I
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 1: think there's a very good possibility the narrative has been
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 1: totally manufactured. I think it's spiritual. I think people are
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 1: saying spiritual things.
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 2: Perhaps. Perhaps I really don't know. I don't know 100%
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 2: what it is. Could be spiritual. Other dimensions?
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 1: I mean, you have been... I don't know how many
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 1: psychedelic journeys you've done, but, you know, that kind of
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 1: unlocks your mind to other possibilities.
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. And... I don't know. I mean, everything's spiritual, really.
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 1: I'm with you. Are you a Christian?
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 2: Not strictly a Christian, although I believe there's a lot
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 2: of really good lessons in that. I believe in God
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 2: and love and connection of all beings and things.
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 1: Um.
• 1:42:17
  Speaker 2: And I think that God is infinite. And I don't
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 2: think we can possibly comprehend what infinite is with the
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 2: human mind and the analytical mind and explain it in
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 2: English language. I don't think we can. And I think
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 2: a lot of people are trying to explain what God is.
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 2: And there's a lot of different interpretations of what it is.
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 2: And I don't think any of them are 100% accurate
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 2: because I don't know that we're supposed to know exactly
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 2: what God is. Um, that's part of this experience in
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 2: this human existence, is the mystery of it. But it's
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 2: everywhere and everything. And it is love and connection. Um,
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 2: I know that much is true.
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 1: And.
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 2: I think, I think Christianity, you know, does a really
• 1:43:09
  Speaker 2: good job of explaining how to live a good life,
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 2: knowing that we are all connected and... And God is love.
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 2: But I think we're all trying to explain the infinite
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 2: that we can't possibly comprehend how great God is. I
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 2: don't think we can explain it. I don't think we
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 2: can comprehend it. We only have five senses. We can
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 2: only see a limited spectrum of light. We can only
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 2: hear a limited number of frequencies. We can only feel, smell, taste,
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 2: touch the things that are immediately around us like There's
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 2: so much outside our spectrum of this experience as a
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 2: human of what we can even interpret and comprehend. And
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 2: I really believe God is infinite beyond our imaginations.
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 1: Kind of switching gears here, what was it like for
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 1: you jumping back in a jet after you ejected it?
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 1: 695 miles an hour, broken damn near every fucking bone
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 1: in your body, almost died multiple different ways.
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 2: You know, it felt really good.
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 1: It felt good.
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 2: Like getting back on the horse that had bucked me off.
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 2: It was like a mass... I'd been working for this
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 2: for a couple years, you know, and busting my ass
• 1:44:29
  Speaker 2: and just had so many little things line up so
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 2: I could do that. So I was really proud to
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 2: be back. But at the same time, there was a
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 2: part of me like, am I gonna freak out when
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 2: I put this thing into a dive at the ocean?
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 2: Is something gonna happen? Um, and so one of the
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 2: first things I did on my first solo back out
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 2: in the jet was I went back out to that
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 2: same airspace, and I put that jet in a dive
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 2: and pulled it down toward the ocean. Not nearly as
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 2: fast as I was, but kind of did a similar
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 2: maneuver and, uh, loved every moment of it. But then
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 2: it kind of became like, oh, shit. Now I gotta
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 2: actually do this thing again. And the pressure's back on.
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 2: And it was right back into the.
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 2: The stress of that world, man. And it was intense.
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 2: But I was really stoked to be there.
• 1:45:16
  Speaker 1: What kept you going? I mean, I've interviewed a couple
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 1: of gentlemen like yourself. I mean, one of them, Nick Lavery.
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 1: Nick Lavery's a Green Beret, lost his leg. The guy
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 1: right up there in that painting, that piece of art
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 1: up there. He's right down the road up in Cookville,
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 1: fifth group.
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 2: And....
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 1: I mean, the guy, you know, he lost his leg,
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 1: and then they told him he would have to redo everything,
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 1: pass all the PT quals, even went through dive school.
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 1: Fucking made it.
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 2: Badass.
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 1: You know, then this guy over here, that skull and
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 1: crossbones up there, that's from a guy, Ryan Hendrickson. Had
• 1:45:59
  Speaker 1: his leg blown off by a pressure plate mine in Afghanistan.
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 2: He does the landmine removal stuff, right?
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 1: Now he goes over to Ukraine, and he's like, dude,
• 1:46:08
  Speaker 1: I don't have a side on this war. I don't
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 1: give a shit. He's like, I give a shit about
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 1: saving kids because I know what it's like to have
• 1:46:14
  Speaker 1: your fucking leg blown off. And so he goes over
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 1: there and demines like soccer fields and playgrounds and all
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 1: by himself.
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I know one of his, someone who works with
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 2: them there, Roby Robishaw, who's a Green Beret that I
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 2: know was involved with his, I think it's a nonprofit
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 2: that he has to run that operation.
• 1:46:33
  Speaker 1: Oh, he's got somebody going with him to do this?
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 2: Well, I don't know if Roby went with him, but
• 1:46:37
  Speaker 2: I know he was involved with Ryan.
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 1: Oh, right on.
• 1:46:40
  Speaker 2: Helping support what he was doing.
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 1: So what, I mean, what was in your head? What
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 1: got you through? What kept the drive going? The push?
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 2: I think it was that fire that I had from
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 2: a young age, man. It was like this... this need
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 2: to prove to others that I was worthy of being loved.
• 1:47:01
  Speaker 2: After sort of having a lack of emotional attachment at
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 2: a very young age. I think I always strived to
• 1:47:08
  Speaker 2: prove that I was worthy of love. And so I
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 2: had to accomplish the impossible to do that.
• 1:47:14
  Speaker 1: Um.
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 2: And after talking to a lot of people in the
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 2: Special Forces community and in high-speed roles in the military,
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 2: high-accomplishing individuals, I think that's a common theme, is we
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 2: often had something early in our life that made us
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 2: feel like we had to prove that we deserved to
• 1:47:31
  Speaker 2: be loved. You know, the people who have done the
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 2: dives into that stuff. And I think that's what was
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 2: fueling me. I was like, I needed to prove that
• 1:47:39
  Speaker 2: I was worthy.
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 1: What advice do you have for the next guy that
• 1:47:42
  Speaker 1: goes through something like this? Whether they're a pilot or
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 1: a ground guy or whatever it is.
• 1:47:48
  Speaker 2: You know, finding that little spark of light in that
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 2: darkness and then feeding that fire is incredibly powerful. And
• 1:47:59
  Speaker 2: also really asking yourself, what do I want and why
• 1:48:02
  Speaker 2: do I want it? because you can chase a goal
• 1:48:05
  Speaker 2: because you think you want it and then get there
• 1:48:08
  Speaker 2: and realize that's maybe not what you wanted to begin with.
• 1:48:14
  Speaker 2: Why are you doing it? What's really important to you?
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 2: And if it really is something that you want to
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 2: pursue because it's so meaningful to you, just feed that
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 2: little spark, man. Keep that hope alive. And then do
• 1:48:27
  Speaker 2: the work. Be consistent with the work towards that goal.
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 2: Because things aren't going to happen just because you hope
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 2: they do. You got to hope they do, visualize it,
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 2: and then move toward that goal every day. And I
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 2: think we can overcome just about anything if we have that.
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 2: If we have a good reason for it, we can
• 1:48:48
  Speaker 2: visualize it. You know, some people say it manifests, but
• 1:48:52
  Speaker 2: then you got to actually walk the walk and do
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 2: it and discipline is what gets you there.
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 1: Good advice. How much longer did you fly for?
• 1:49:04
  Speaker 2: So I had been back flying for about 18 months
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 2: and I was starting to notice that I was struggling mentally.
• 1:49:14
  Speaker 2: I was stressed out. I was having a hard time
• 1:49:19
  Speaker 2: remembering things. My sleep was really shitty. And initially when
• 1:49:24
  Speaker 2: I got back, I was like, I felt awesome. I
• 1:49:26
  Speaker 2: was crushing it. I actually, as I went through my retraining,
• 1:49:29
  Speaker 2: I graduated at the top of my class. I was
• 1:49:32
  Speaker 2: really doing well physically, mentally, I felt awesome. And I
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 2: was just so driven. But as I got back into
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 2: that world of just constantly getting ground down, not sleeping,
• 1:49:42
  Speaker 2: working long days, pulling more Gs, causing more damage to
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 2: the brain that I didn't even know was there, things
• 1:49:50
  Speaker 2: started to kind of fall apart for me. And I
• 1:49:52
  Speaker 2: had a flight when I was down at Tyndall Air
• 1:49:56
  Speaker 2: Force Base. We were doing a live weapons exercise. So
• 1:50:00
  Speaker 2: I got to take off, fly out to the airspace
• 1:50:02
  Speaker 2: over the ocean there and fire a, an AIM-9 Mike
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 2: Sidewinder at a drone and shoot down this drone, which
• 1:50:09
  Speaker 2: is a pretty cool opportunity. We don't get to shoot
• 1:50:11
  Speaker 2: live missiles very frequently. Did that, and then I broke
• 1:50:16
  Speaker 2: off and I got to go some dissimilar air combat
• 1:50:19
  Speaker 2: training with a F-22 Raptor. So got to go dogfight
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 2: an F-22 Raptor, which was like one of the coolest
• 1:50:26
  Speaker 2: things I ever got to do. Just seeing this thing
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 2: that I had just drooled over at air shows as
• 1:50:30
  Speaker 2: a little kid and now being in the air with it.
• 1:50:33
  Speaker 2: seeing the way this thing can move like a freak
• 1:50:35
  Speaker 2: of nature. But when I got back from that flight,
• 1:50:39
  Speaker 2: I remember I was in my debrief watching my tapes
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 2: to see what had happened in the missile shoot. And
• 1:50:44
  Speaker 2: I remember being really confused by the symbology that I
• 1:50:48
  Speaker 2: was intimately familiar with. And I didn't quite feel right.
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 2: Went through the debrief and that night just could not sleep.
• 1:50:56
  Speaker 2: And I was like sitting in the hotel where I
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 2: was staying in a perfectly quiet room, nothing happening. And
• 1:51:03
  Speaker 2: yet my heart was racing, like something terrible was about
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 2: to happen. And I just kind of tried to tough
• 1:51:09
  Speaker 2: it out. I ended up, I was on duty the
• 1:51:12
  Speaker 2: next day. So just answering the radio and the phones
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 2: and just not feeling right all day, just being confused
• 1:51:18
  Speaker 2: and anxious and almost like a hypervigilant. And that second
• 1:51:23
  Speaker 2: night I got back to the hotel and I was like,
• 1:51:24
  Speaker 2: something is not right. And I remember I was going
• 1:51:27
  Speaker 2: to fly the next morning. I got my phone out
• 1:51:29
  Speaker 2: to set my alarm. and I couldn't figure out how
• 1:51:32
  Speaker 2: to set my alarm clock on my cell phone. I
• 1:51:35
  Speaker 2: was confused by the math. It was basically subtract a
• 1:51:39
  Speaker 2: couple hours to give me enough time to get up
• 1:51:41
  Speaker 2: in the morning from when I had to be at
• 1:51:42
  Speaker 2: the briefing, and I couldn't do that. And so there
• 1:51:45
  Speaker 2: had been a number of incidents in the F-18 community,
• 1:51:49
  Speaker 2: a lot in the Hornet community, but some in the
• 1:51:51
  Speaker 2: Super Hornet community and Growler community as well, that people
• 1:51:55
  Speaker 2: were getting, basically getting the bends. They were getting aircraft
• 1:51:59
  Speaker 2: fluctuations of pressure while flying. They had found a number
• 1:52:03
  Speaker 2: of these faulty environmental control systems. The ECS was basically
• 1:52:07
  Speaker 2: just pressurizing and depressurizing the cockpits randomly, and it was
• 1:52:12
  Speaker 2: causing guys to get decompression sickness. There had been a
• 1:52:15
  Speaker 2: growler crew that was actually taxiing out for takeoff, and
• 1:52:19
  Speaker 2: it happened so violently that I think one of the
• 1:52:22
  Speaker 2: guys made a partial recovery, and I think the other
• 1:52:25
  Speaker 2: guy is like a complete vegetable because that compression jacked
• 1:52:28
  Speaker 2: him up so bad. And I know you know GCS
• 1:52:31
  Speaker 2: from diving in the Navy. You come up, for those
• 1:52:33
  Speaker 2: that don't, basically, if you come up from depth too quickly,
• 1:52:37
  Speaker 2: the nitrogen can come out of solution that's in your
• 1:52:39
  Speaker 2: blood and form little bubbles. And if you get them
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 2: in your joints, it's painful. That's called the bends or
• 1:52:44
  Speaker 2: type 1 decompression sickness. But what can be far more
• 1:52:47
  Speaker 2: damaging is if you get those in your brain and
• 1:52:50
  Speaker 2: it can block blood flow to your brain and even
• 1:52:52
  Speaker 2: kill you, kind of like causing an aneurysm.
• 1:52:56
  Speaker 1: And so.
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 2: The thought was maybe I was having one of these aneurysms,
• 1:52:59
  Speaker 2: like that crew of Growlers had it. They had become
• 1:53:02
  Speaker 2: so frequent in the Hornet community, the legacy F-18s that
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 2: were the predecessor to the Super Hornet, that they started
• 1:53:09
  Speaker 2: putting hyperbaric facilities on the aircraft carriers so they could
• 1:53:12
  Speaker 2: treat the pilots when they got the bins out at sea.
• 1:53:15
  Speaker 1: Oh, shit.
• 1:53:17
  Speaker 2: So that had been an issue in our community at
• 1:53:19
  Speaker 2: that time, and that's kind of what we started to
• 1:53:21
  Speaker 2: think maybe happened. I called the... squadron safety officer officer
• 1:53:25
  Speaker 2: who is squeezer who was actually the the pilot i
• 1:53:27
  Speaker 2: had my first flight in the super hornet with and
• 1:53:30
  Speaker 2: he ended up driving me with our commanding officer to
• 1:53:34
  Speaker 2: mayport dive base and they put me in that chamber
• 1:53:37
  Speaker 2: overnight and squeezed me uh to try to get this
• 1:53:40
  Speaker 2: get the bubbles back into solution and and heal the
• 1:53:43
  Speaker 2: damage and get blood flow going normally and i felt
• 1:53:47
  Speaker 2: a little bit better after it but i still something
• 1:53:49
  Speaker 2: was not right and The doc that I saw the
• 1:53:53
  Speaker 2: next day when I came back in is like, considering
• 1:53:57
  Speaker 2: your past, I think there's something more going on here
• 1:53:59
  Speaker 2: than simply decompression sickness. And we need you to go
• 1:54:02
  Speaker 2: see the flight surgeon when you get back from this detachment.
• 1:54:06
  Speaker 2: And at this point, I was stationed out in Lemoore, California.
• 1:54:09
  Speaker 2: And that was the last thing I wanted to have
• 1:54:11
  Speaker 2: to do was go talk to medical about something that
• 1:54:14
  Speaker 2: wasn't right inside of me after going through all that
• 1:54:17
  Speaker 2: to get back. But I knew also that I was
• 1:54:20
  Speaker 2: not going to be able to function safely and fly
• 1:54:22
  Speaker 2: a jet the way I was because I couldn't concentrate.
• 1:54:25
  Speaker 2: I couldn't think clearly. My personality was shifting. I was
• 1:54:28
  Speaker 2: becoming pretty dark and angry and mean. And I'd been
• 1:54:33
  Speaker 2: such like a happy dude ever since that experience. When
• 1:54:36
  Speaker 2: I was 16, I had just become like a very
• 1:54:38
  Speaker 2: happy go-getter kind of dude. And it was like something
• 1:54:41
  Speaker 2: had shifted inside of who I was. So reluctantly went in.
• 1:54:47
  Speaker 2: To see the flight surgeon, we got back from that detachment,
• 1:54:49
  Speaker 2: still wasn't able to sleep for shit. And when I
• 1:54:54
  Speaker 2: went in to see him, pretty quickly got a delayed
• 1:54:57
  Speaker 2: onset PTSD diagnosis. They kind of hit the easy button. Oh,
• 1:55:01
  Speaker 2: this is PTSD. And so I was very quickly referred
• 1:55:05
  Speaker 2: to the psych department and they started giving me meds,
• 1:55:09
  Speaker 2: sleeping meds to try, anti-anxiety meds to try. And as
• 1:55:14
  Speaker 2: things weren't really working very well, they ended up giving
• 1:55:16
  Speaker 2: me a medication called Seroquel or quetiapine, which is a
• 1:55:20
  Speaker 2: pretty heavy duty antipsychotic medication that can be used in
• 1:55:23
  Speaker 2: low doses for insomnia. And so that's what they started
• 1:55:26
  Speaker 2: giving me. And it would knock me out, but it
• 1:55:29
  Speaker 2: was like into this drug induced coma. It wasn't restful sleep.
• 1:55:33
  Speaker 2: And I still wasn't restoring and recovering. So I just
• 1:55:36
  Speaker 2: feel like I got hit by a truck the next day.
• 1:55:38
  Speaker 2: It just felt awful. Pretty crazy. pretty quickly into it,
• 1:55:43
  Speaker 2: it became apparent that I likely wasn't going to get
• 1:55:45
  Speaker 2: the opportunity to go back and fly. As soon as
• 1:55:48
  Speaker 2: this became a mental health issue, it, uh, it shut
• 1:55:51
  Speaker 2: that down pretty quickly. And so I was losing my community.
• 1:55:56
  Speaker 2: I was losing my brotherhood and family that I had
• 1:55:58
  Speaker 2: been in there. Um, and I started feeling pretty shitty
• 1:56:03
  Speaker 2: about myself and climbing into a very dark, deep spiral
• 1:56:06
  Speaker 2: as I kind of just was losing everything, my sense
• 1:56:09
  Speaker 2: of purpose, and everything that I felt I had worked for.
• 1:56:13
  Speaker 2: My wife, uh, who I had recently married, uh, after
• 1:56:17
  Speaker 2: the accident, had just had our brand new little baby boy,
• 1:56:21
  Speaker 2: and he was just a little infant. And so, she's
• 1:56:23
  Speaker 2: busy taking care of this little boy, and now she's
• 1:56:26
  Speaker 2: dealing with me, starting to deal with heavier and heavier, uh,
• 1:56:30
  Speaker 2: paranoia and hypervigilance, getting to the point where I would
• 1:56:34
  Speaker 2: come into the house and I would hide underneath the windows.
• 1:56:37
  Speaker 2: because I thought someone from the government was trying to
• 1:56:40
  Speaker 2: kill me.
• 1:56:44
  Speaker 1: I'm always listening to something. On the road, working out,
• 1:56:48
  Speaker 1: walking around the house, traveling, or whatever it is. And
• 1:56:51
  Speaker 1: what I like about Amazon Music is it puts music, podcasts,
• 1:56:55
  Speaker 1: and audiobooks all in one app. So now with Amazon
• 1:56:59
  Speaker 1: Music Unlimited, you're not just getting music and podcasts, your
• 1:57:03
  Speaker 1: subscription also includes access to audiobooks, which makes it easy
• 1:57:07
  Speaker 1: to keep something good going no matter what you're doing.
• 1:57:10
  Speaker 1: I've been listening to Project Hail Mary, and that's the
• 1:57:13
  Speaker 1: kind of audiobook that really works in this format. Hearing
• 1:57:16
  Speaker 1: the story in the narrator's voice pulls you in differently.
• 1:57:19
  Speaker 1: You get the pacing, the tension, the personality of the characters,
• 1:57:23
  Speaker 1: and it makes it easy to stay locked in whether
• 1:57:25
  Speaker 1: you're driving, training, or knocking things out around the house.
• 1:57:29
  Speaker 1: With Amazon Music, you get music, podcasts, and audiobooks all
• 1:57:34
  Speaker 1: in one app. Try it today. Why do you think,
• 1:57:39
  Speaker 1: why did you think that? How did you manifest that?
• 1:57:41
  Speaker 2: Well, I felt I was being poisoned initially.
• 1:57:44
  Speaker 1: You felt you were being poisoned.
• 1:57:45
  Speaker 2: I felt I was being poisoned and I was, it
• 1:57:48
  Speaker 2: was just, it was in these FDA approved pills that
• 1:57:51
  Speaker 2: I was taking from a white lab coat doc that
• 1:57:54
  Speaker 2: I trusted. So I was actually being poisoned. It just
• 1:57:58
  Speaker 2: wasn't in the way that I thought. I thought that
• 1:58:00
  Speaker 2: they were poisoning my food and my water that was
• 1:58:02
  Speaker 2: making me even worse. And once you get like so sleep-deprived,
• 1:58:07
  Speaker 2: in conjunction with brain injury and everything else I was
• 1:58:10
  Speaker 2: dealing with, it was like... I was just spiraling. And
• 1:58:13
  Speaker 2: it was just... Do you know why?
• 1:58:14
  Speaker 1: I mean, did you... Did you manufacture a narrative in
• 1:58:18
  Speaker 1: your head on why they wanted to kill you? Why
• 1:58:21
  Speaker 1: they wanted to poison you?
• 1:58:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I... Dude, I was getting so delusional. And I
• 1:58:28
  Speaker 2: was starting to get to the point of borderline psychosis
• 1:58:31
  Speaker 2: where I was just disconnected from reality. And my imagination
• 1:58:36
  Speaker 2: had become so real that it didn't even have to
• 1:58:39
  Speaker 2: make sense anymore.
• 1:58:40
  Speaker 1: Holy shit.
• 1:58:41
  Speaker 2: But I felt very, very, very real. Like people are
• 1:58:46
  Speaker 2: trying to kill me. And my wife was making dinner,
• 1:58:50
  Speaker 2: managing a newborn baby boy. And I would come in
• 1:58:52
  Speaker 2: the house and I would throw all the food in
• 1:58:53
  Speaker 2: the garbage. I would dump the water out into the
• 1:58:55
  Speaker 2: sink and say, they're poisoning us. And just like freaking out.
• 1:58:58
  Speaker 1: Holy shit.
• 1:59:00
  Speaker 2: And my wife is having to deal with all this
• 1:59:02
  Speaker 2: shit on her own while managing a baby. So it
• 1:59:05
  Speaker 2: had become a complete nightmare for her. And that same
• 1:59:10
  Speaker 2: treatment continues. You just need more medication, more medication, more medication.
• 1:59:14
  Speaker 2: And I just kept getting worse and worse and worse
• 1:59:16
  Speaker 2: until we made the decision that I was going to
• 1:59:19
  Speaker 2: go through a med board to get out of the military.
• 1:59:22
  Speaker 2: And when this kind of all transpired, I was like,
• 1:59:26
  Speaker 2: So broken. And I felt I had let everybody down
• 1:59:28
  Speaker 2: that ever believed in me. I was so depressed that
• 1:59:32
  Speaker 2: I found myself late one night, laying in bed in
• 1:59:35
  Speaker 2: the middle of the night, again, unable to sleep, even
• 1:59:37
  Speaker 2: with the meds. And I kept the Glock 19 next
• 1:59:40
  Speaker 2: to my bed. And I pulled that out. And I
• 1:59:44
  Speaker 2: was wondering what the muzzle was going to feel like
• 1:59:47
  Speaker 2: on my teeth, what the gun oil was going to
• 1:59:49
  Speaker 2: taste like on my tongue. And as I go to
• 1:59:52
  Speaker 2: do this, I look and my wife and my baby
• 1:59:55
  Speaker 2: boy are asleep beside me. And I just thought I
• 1:59:58
  Speaker 2: didn't want to wake them up in that moment to that.
• 2:00:01
  Speaker 2: And I put the gun away. But had they not
• 2:00:04
  Speaker 2: been right there, I wouldn't be here to tell that story.
• 2:00:09
  Speaker 2: And then I just continued to spiral worse and worse
• 2:00:12
  Speaker 2: to where I was in a full-blown psychosis, man. Completely,
• 2:00:16
  Speaker 2: I mean, I thought my wife was Carrie Matheson from Homeland.
• 2:00:19
  Speaker 2: that she was this blonde CIA agent sent to help
• 2:00:22
  Speaker 2: save me from this dark military organization that was trying
• 2:00:25
  Speaker 2: to exterminate me.
• 2:00:27
  Speaker 1: Um, are you serious?
• 2:00:28
  Speaker 2: Like everything was so real.
• 2:00:30
  Speaker 1: Did you have conversations with your wife about that?
• 2:00:33
  Speaker 2: Um, later on I did after the fact, but at
• 2:00:36
  Speaker 2: the time I was just, dude, it was like my
• 2:00:39
  Speaker 2: eyes were just spinning in my head and, and I
• 2:00:41
  Speaker 2: would just trust. Luckily I trusted her. I didn't trust
• 2:00:44
  Speaker 2: anybody else through it, but I would do anything that
• 2:00:46
  Speaker 2: she said. Um, And dude, things just got really weird
• 2:00:51
  Speaker 2: and confusing and it would jump like the delusion and
• 2:00:55
  Speaker 2: the hallucinations would just jump from moment to moment. Like
• 2:00:58
  Speaker 2: my wife had to take me with the baby to
• 2:01:00
  Speaker 2: go into the commissary to get food on base. And
• 2:01:03
  Speaker 2: I remember walking into the commissary and every single person
• 2:01:07
  Speaker 2: I saw was like a demon ghoul. They had these
• 2:01:09
  Speaker 2: black sunken eyes and fangs and plat like just zombie skin,
• 2:01:14
  Speaker 2: like falling off the bones. And they're all just glaring
• 2:01:16
  Speaker 2: at me. And it was so real, so real as
• 2:01:19
  Speaker 2: I walked around just like cowering and afraid. And my
• 2:01:23
  Speaker 2: wife was okay, but it was because in my mind,
• 2:01:25
  Speaker 2: she's like, she's like the superhero sent to save me.
• 2:01:28
  Speaker 2: And so I would just follow her around like a
• 2:01:30
  Speaker 2: lost puppy. And as we're checking out, I remember the
• 2:01:33
  Speaker 2: checkout lady who's just like working for tips, like reaching
• 2:01:37
  Speaker 2: out for a tip. And I remember her doing that.
• 2:01:39
  Speaker 2: And it felt like she was like trying to suck
• 2:01:41
  Speaker 2: my soul out of me. Like it was just crazy
• 2:01:43
  Speaker 2: shit day in and day out. And We got out
• 2:01:47
  Speaker 2: to the car. Yeah, it was wild. We got out
• 2:01:52
  Speaker 2: to the front of the commissary and my wife had
• 2:01:55
  Speaker 2: forgotten to grab something because she was like trying to
• 2:01:58
  Speaker 2: manage me and a baby and all this shit. And
• 2:02:00
  Speaker 2: so she's like, stay right here. I want you to
• 2:02:03
  Speaker 2: stay right in front of this door so I can
• 2:02:04
  Speaker 2: see you. Stay with the baby. And she goes in.
• 2:02:08
  Speaker 2: And for whatever reason in that, I had like another
• 2:02:11
  Speaker 2: freak out and I ran the cart with the baby.
• 2:02:13
  Speaker 2: and ran back to the back of the parking lot
• 2:02:15
  Speaker 2: and was hiding behind a car. And my wife comes out,
• 2:02:19
  Speaker 2: and she's like, oh, fuck. You know, where did he go?
• 2:02:23
  Speaker 2: And she's immediately thinking, like, how long can the baby
• 2:02:25
  Speaker 2: survive without me? Who do I need to call? And, like, luckily,
• 2:02:29
  Speaker 2: she starts running through the parking lot, yelling and looking,
• 2:02:31
  Speaker 2: and I pop my head up. And she's like, oh,
• 2:02:34
  Speaker 2: thank God. But she was just like, dude, it was
• 2:02:37
  Speaker 2: putting her through hell dealing with me.
• 2:02:40
  Speaker 1: Um.
• 2:02:41
  Speaker 2: eventually started doing the medical board process, which, uh... at
• 2:02:46
  Speaker 2: Lemoore at that time, I describe as basically going through
• 2:02:50
  Speaker 2: the bureaucratic equivalent of the Indiana Jones Temple of Doom,
• 2:02:53
  Speaker 2: and it was like a complete shitshow. The woman that
• 2:02:57
  Speaker 2: they had just hired to be the Pueblo, which is
• 2:02:59
  Speaker 2: the liaison officer that helps get you through that process, uh,
• 2:03:03
  Speaker 2: had inherited like a six-month backlog of people that weren't
• 2:03:07
  Speaker 2: getting pushed through the med board on time. And she
• 2:03:10
  Speaker 2: got into this office expecting that I think she was
• 2:03:13
  Speaker 2: gonna have a really cushy, easy job. And it was
• 2:03:16
  Speaker 2: just chaos. She had such a backlog of records. And
• 2:03:20
  Speaker 2: I remember my first meeting with her, I come into
• 2:03:23
  Speaker 2: the office and there are stacks of paperwork on all
• 2:03:26
  Speaker 2: the chairs, every horizontal surface just covered in shit. And
• 2:03:29
  Speaker 2: I couldn't even sit down at the desk with her
• 2:03:31
  Speaker 2: because there's so much paperwork just thrown in chaos around.
• 2:03:34
  Speaker 2: And then we spent my allotted 15 minutes with this
• 2:03:38
  Speaker 2: woman to discuss my case and she stopped after a
• 2:03:41
  Speaker 2: couple minutes and took a phone call with her daughter
• 2:03:43
  Speaker 2: to shoot the shit about what she's doing in college
• 2:03:45
  Speaker 2: and her new boyfriend right in front of me and
• 2:03:48
  Speaker 2: it became very obviously very quickly even in my impaired
• 2:03:51
  Speaker 2: state that I was gonna have to man the helm
• 2:03:54
  Speaker 2: on this process and luckily my wife was helping but
• 2:03:57
  Speaker 2: she this woman was just a complete shit show and
• 2:04:00
  Speaker 2: it was like I needed to fill out certain paperwork
• 2:04:03
  Speaker 2: and I'd get it into her and then she'd lose
• 2:04:05
  Speaker 2: it and say I need you to do that again
• 2:04:06
  Speaker 2: and it was just this for months and months and
• 2:04:08
  Speaker 2: months and I ended up going to the VA in
• 2:04:11
  Speaker 2: Fresno to get all my assessments for the disability rating.
• 2:04:15
  Speaker 2: And my wife had to drive me. But I remember
• 2:04:18
  Speaker 2: going into that and then going into more psychoses and
• 2:04:20
  Speaker 2: the place becoming like this nightmarish fun house. And they
• 2:04:24
  Speaker 2: brought me in to assess me for how bad my
• 2:04:26
  Speaker 2: PTSD was. And I was explaining what was going on,
• 2:04:30
  Speaker 2: you know, the psychoses and how bad I had gotten,
• 2:04:32
  Speaker 2: how I'm not sleeping. I went in to see a
• 2:04:36
  Speaker 2: TBI specialist and a nervous system specialist. And I remember
• 2:04:40
  Speaker 2: he brought me into the room and he just looked
• 2:04:43
  Speaker 2: pissed off. And he had me show my arms and
• 2:04:46
  Speaker 2: he took this little thing that looked like a spiky
• 2:04:48
  Speaker 2: pizza cutter and he just zipped it up my arms
• 2:04:51
  Speaker 2: really quick. And he goes, you don't have any nerve
• 2:04:53
  Speaker 2: damage and you don't have any TBI. That was all
• 2:04:56
  Speaker 2: he did. And then I came back out. He wouldn't
• 2:04:59
  Speaker 2: let my wife in the room for that examination. And
• 2:05:01
  Speaker 2: when I came back out to my wife, my wife's like,
• 2:05:04
  Speaker 2: that was it? And he's like, yep, that's it. And
• 2:05:08
  Speaker 2: so a lot of the stuff I did there, it
• 2:05:10
  Speaker 2: was like these people were just not even acknowledging what
• 2:05:12
  Speaker 2: was going on.
• 2:05:13
  Speaker 1: Where is this again?
• 2:05:14
  Speaker 2: Fresno VA, California. And I had a stack of medical
• 2:05:19
  Speaker 2: records and I'd gotten it all put on the disc
• 2:05:21
  Speaker 2: that they needed. And like, they had so much medical
• 2:05:23
  Speaker 2: information on me and yet they were just completely ignoring it. Fortunately,
• 2:05:28
  Speaker 2: I found one guy there who was assessing me for
• 2:05:31
  Speaker 2: the musculoskeletal injuries, uh, And he actually read through the
• 2:05:36
  Speaker 2: medical stuff and he's like, holy shit, man. He's like, listen, that,
• 2:05:40
  Speaker 2: that neurologist that you saw won't give a rating to anybody.
• 2:05:44
  Speaker 2: He's got a chip on his shoulder. He's pissed off.
• 2:05:47
  Speaker 2: He doesn't want to be here. Uh, and it doesn't
• 2:05:49
  Speaker 2: matter what you have going on. He's not going to
• 2:05:50
  Speaker 2: look at it. He was like, I see what's going
• 2:05:52
  Speaker 2: on with you and I'm going to help you the
• 2:05:54
  Speaker 2: best I can. And so he helped me get a
• 2:05:56
  Speaker 2: very robust, uh, package together for all my, uh, the
• 2:06:00
  Speaker 2: muscle injuries related to the nervous system damage. Um, And
• 2:06:05
  Speaker 2: then everything was submitted. And this process took about a year. Meanwhile,
• 2:06:09
  Speaker 2: my wife is having to manage this shit show that
• 2:06:11
  Speaker 2: is me in and out of psychoses day to day. Again,
• 2:06:15
  Speaker 2: seeing the psychiatrist and the psychologist who are trying to
• 2:06:18
  Speaker 2: manage this shit show, recommending to my wife that I
• 2:06:21
  Speaker 2: be put into an inpatient program. But my wife is
• 2:06:24
  Speaker 2: a trauma ER nurse. And so she had dealt with
• 2:06:26
  Speaker 2: psychotic patients and she knew how bad those inpatient facilities were.
• 2:06:30
  Speaker 2: And so she was doing everything she could to keep
• 2:06:32
  Speaker 2: me out of it. My parents ended up flying out
• 2:06:35
  Speaker 2: to try to help her out. But it was just
• 2:06:38
  Speaker 2: fucking chaos. And then the rating finally come back after
• 2:06:42
  Speaker 2: months of waiting. And they gave me a 50% disability
• 2:06:46
  Speaker 2: rating for PTSD. And that was it.
• 2:06:49
  Speaker 1: And my wife is like, what are you fucking kidding?
• 2:06:52
  Speaker 2: You're in active psychosis. You have all this other stuff
• 2:06:54
  Speaker 2: and they completely disregarded it. So my only course of
• 2:06:59
  Speaker 2: action was I had to fly out to Washington, D.C.,
• 2:07:02
  Speaker 2: still in and out of psychosis, still fucked up. Meanwhile,
• 2:07:06
  Speaker 2: I was going to Stanford Hospital and I was getting
• 2:07:08
  Speaker 2: more surgeries on my leg that was really jacked up
• 2:07:12
  Speaker 2: that ended up just making my leg way worse in
• 2:07:14
  Speaker 2: the long run because they actually, they use their medical
• 2:07:17
  Speaker 2: students and they give a good discount or whatever it
• 2:07:20
  Speaker 2: is to the military guys. But you get to go
• 2:07:22
  Speaker 2: in and you get to be, you know, basically a
• 2:07:24
  Speaker 2: lab rat for dissection for the medical students at Stanford.
• 2:07:28
  Speaker 2: And they fucked it up on me. I remember I
• 2:07:31
  Speaker 2: got out of the surgery there and my throat hurt
• 2:07:33
  Speaker 2: like a motherfucker. And I had been intubated before by others.
• 2:07:36
  Speaker 2: And normally it doesn't hurt that much, but dude, they
• 2:07:38
  Speaker 2: must've had like, I remember that one of the, the
• 2:07:41
  Speaker 2: residents that was going through, uh, training coming in to
• 2:07:45
  Speaker 2: get ready for that surgery. And he was like fumbling
• 2:07:48
  Speaker 2: with the IV and he missed the IV and then
• 2:07:51
  Speaker 2: actually he turned it on. And so I was just
• 2:07:52
  Speaker 2: getting like doused in IV fluid. This dude was so nervous.
• 2:07:57
  Speaker 2: And I'm pretty sure that they just fucked me up
• 2:07:59
  Speaker 2: in that surgery. But anyways, I get my summer white
• 2:08:04
  Speaker 2: uniform together. And this is like, this becomes like a
• 2:08:07
  Speaker 2: very formal, almost like disciplinary action. You feel like there's
• 2:08:13
  Speaker 2: a lot of scrutiny against you, like you're lying is
• 2:08:15
  Speaker 2: kind of how you're treated as you go into this
• 2:08:17
  Speaker 2: process to do an appeal. Um, but my wife and
• 2:08:21
  Speaker 2: I fly out to DC with our baby boy. Uh,
• 2:08:24
  Speaker 2: it's a shit show because again, I'm in and out
• 2:08:26
  Speaker 2: of psychosis. And I remember we go into this, uh,
• 2:08:29
  Speaker 2: panel and you're in this little waiting room, waiting to
• 2:08:32
  Speaker 2: see these three high ranking military individuals. I think they
• 2:08:35
  Speaker 2: were all either 05 or 06 rank. And one was
• 2:08:38
  Speaker 2: a flight surgeon. One was another Naval aviator and one
• 2:08:42
  Speaker 2: was a Marine. And so you walk into this room
• 2:08:45
  Speaker 2: and you have to stand at attention. They're up on
• 2:08:47
  Speaker 2: an elevated platform. behind these big, big podiums. And they
• 2:08:52
  Speaker 2: just kind of like look down at you and you
• 2:08:54
  Speaker 2: have to state your name. And it's very like, you
• 2:08:56
  Speaker 2: have to do this and this and this. So it's
• 2:08:58
  Speaker 2: awkward and uncomfortable. And then they start grilling me. And
• 2:09:01
  Speaker 2: the pilot that was on the panel thought I was
• 2:09:04
  Speaker 2: just trying to get out of the military so I
• 2:09:05
  Speaker 2: could go fly for the airlines. It was very obvious.
• 2:09:09
  Speaker 2: None of them had really even looked at my medical
• 2:09:11
  Speaker 2: records or had any idea what was going on, except
• 2:09:15
  Speaker 2: I think that Marine had. And so those two like
• 2:09:18
  Speaker 2: kind of reamed questions at me for probably about 10 minutes.
• 2:09:22
  Speaker 2: And then the Marine finally just kind of cut them off.
• 2:09:24
  Speaker 2: And he's like, listen, you served your nation honorably and
• 2:09:28
  Speaker 2: we're going to help you out. You and your family
• 2:09:30
  Speaker 2: have a wonderful day. And so in that moment, they
• 2:09:33
  Speaker 2: awarded me a hundred percent disability, but had that Marine
• 2:09:36
  Speaker 2: not been on that board and the panel is always rotating, uh,
• 2:09:40
  Speaker 2: that the outcome could have come very differently. Luckily, at
• 2:09:43
  Speaker 2: least one of these guys actually open the folder in
• 2:09:47
  Speaker 2: front of his face to see what was actually going on.
• 2:09:51
  Speaker 2: Then I was out, man. It took several more months
• 2:09:56
  Speaker 2: of waiting for the paperwork to go through and then
• 2:10:00
  Speaker 2: moved back to Northern Michigan with my family. We bought
• 2:10:03
  Speaker 2: a small piece of property out in the middle of
• 2:10:05
  Speaker 2: nowhere and continued that same treatment at the VA, which
• 2:10:09
  Speaker 2: was just more problems, more pills, more pills, more problems.
• 2:10:12
  Speaker 2: And that was the only solution. And when I said
• 2:10:15
  Speaker 2: the Seroquel is not helping, it's making me worse. It's
• 2:10:18
  Speaker 2: making me feel shitty. It's not even helping my sleep anymore.
• 2:10:21
  Speaker 2: The only answer is, well, that's because we need to
• 2:10:22
  Speaker 2: give you a higher dose. And within three days of
• 2:10:26
  Speaker 2: going in with that issue, they boosted me from 300
• 2:10:30
  Speaker 2: milligrams a night up to 450 milligrams a night of
• 2:10:33
  Speaker 2: this medication. And within just a few days of that
• 2:10:36
  Speaker 2: increase in the medication, my wife came home from an interview.
• 2:10:40
  Speaker 2: She was getting a different job as a nurse. And
• 2:10:43
  Speaker 2: so she left me at home with my mom and
• 2:10:45
  Speaker 2: my son so my mom could keep an eye on
• 2:10:47
  Speaker 2: me because I was still in a bad spot. And
• 2:10:51
  Speaker 2: when she got home, she kind of wondered where I
• 2:10:53
  Speaker 2: was at and she heard me rustling around in one
• 2:10:55
  Speaker 2: of the rooms of the house. And when she came in,
• 2:10:58
  Speaker 2: she found me I was completely bare-ass naked. At this point,
• 2:11:01
  Speaker 2: I had, like, shriveled up. Like, I had lost so
• 2:11:03
  Speaker 2: much weight. I didn't even look like the same person.
• 2:11:06
  Speaker 2: My skin was pale and placid. I had my body
• 2:11:08
  Speaker 2: covered in all these scars. Uh, I had shaved off
• 2:11:12
  Speaker 2: my hair in chunks for some reason. My eyebrows were missing.
• 2:11:16
  Speaker 2: I had shaved off what facial hair I had. And
• 2:11:18
  Speaker 2: the only thing I was wearing is I had a
• 2:11:19
  Speaker 2: black garbage bag tied around my neck like a cape
• 2:11:22
  Speaker 2: because I thought I was gonna go out into the
• 2:11:24
  Speaker 2: northern Michigan snowy weather and fight crime like a superhero. Um,
• 2:11:29
  Speaker 2: I was naked Batman. And so my wife, you know,
• 2:11:33
  Speaker 2: being an ER doc and having dealt with psychotic patients
• 2:11:36
  Speaker 2: was very calm. She called the VA and said what
• 2:11:39
  Speaker 2: was happening. And they said, we're hanging up and we're
• 2:11:41
  Speaker 2: calling the police. And very shortly thereafter, uh, this squad
• 2:11:46
  Speaker 2: car pulls up in our driveway, this doughy looking police
• 2:11:51
  Speaker 2: officer who looked like he had no idea what the
• 2:11:53
  Speaker 2: fuck was going on, comes up to our house. and
• 2:11:55
  Speaker 2: tells my wife he has to put me in the
• 2:11:57
  Speaker 2: back of the squad car to take me to the hospital.
• 2:11:59
  Speaker 2: And my wife's like, there's no way you're going to
• 2:12:01
  Speaker 2: put him in the back of that car with what
• 2:12:02
  Speaker 2: he has going on. So she loaded up our baby boy,
• 2:12:05
  Speaker 2: my mom jumped in the back seat, and then we
• 2:12:07
  Speaker 2: drove towards the emergency room, which was about an hour
• 2:12:10
  Speaker 2: drive from where we live. And on that ride, I
• 2:12:14
  Speaker 2: hallucinated that a nuclear warhead had gone off at our home,
• 2:12:18
  Speaker 2: and there was this plume of that nuclear blast like
• 2:12:20
  Speaker 2: chasing us down. I hallucinated that there were trees and
• 2:12:25
  Speaker 2: animals and vehicles flying through the sky that the trees
• 2:12:29
  Speaker 2: were like flopping over from the explosive force. Like the
• 2:12:33
  Speaker 2: sky was just like lightning. It was like fucking wildly vivid.
• 2:12:38
  Speaker 2: And eventually my wife gets me to the hospital. Apparently
• 2:12:43
  Speaker 2: I got out of the vehicle and just started taking
• 2:12:46
  Speaker 2: a leak on a bush in the front and the
• 2:12:47
  Speaker 2: security guard was right there and he was trying to
• 2:12:51
  Speaker 2: arrest me. And my wife's like, no, he's in a
• 2:12:53
  Speaker 2: psychosis and we need to get him in there now.
• 2:12:55
  Speaker 2: And he's like, I've seen worse. And luckily, between my
• 2:12:59
  Speaker 2: mom and my wife, they were able to talk this
• 2:13:00
  Speaker 2: guy out of sending me to jail. And they got
• 2:13:03
  Speaker 2: me in, checked me in, and then I got put
• 2:13:06
  Speaker 2: in this plexiglass room where I had, over the course
• 2:13:09
  Speaker 2: of the next two days, I had a completely out
• 2:13:12
  Speaker 2: of body, almost like a psychedelic experience, except it was
• 2:13:16
  Speaker 2: very dark and very disconnected. I think my soul had
• 2:13:20
  Speaker 2: left my body And I was stuck in purgatory. I
• 2:13:23
  Speaker 2: was traveling through space and time from the age of
• 2:13:26
  Speaker 2: the dinosaurs to like all this different shit, traveling through
• 2:13:29
  Speaker 2: space to the outer reaches of the galaxy. And I
• 2:13:32
  Speaker 2: remember myself being trapped in this capsule, just spinning out
• 2:13:36
  Speaker 2: into deep space all alone and being so disconnected. Eventually,
• 2:13:41
  Speaker 2: I came back to out of that. I had been
• 2:13:44
  Speaker 2: driven by ambulance down to the VA inpatient psychiatric facility
• 2:13:50
  Speaker 2: at Battle Creek. My family tried to get me in
• 2:13:52
  Speaker 2: somewhere local, but the entire mental health facility, all the
• 2:13:55
  Speaker 2: facilities are overrun right now because there's so many people
• 2:13:58
  Speaker 2: dealing with psychological issues that there was nothing available. And
• 2:14:03
  Speaker 2: then they heard I was a veteran. They're like, well,
• 2:14:04
  Speaker 2: we can send them to the VA. And so I
• 2:14:07
  Speaker 2: was transferred by ambulance down to this facility. And when
• 2:14:11
  Speaker 2: I came to on the floor of that cold room,
• 2:14:13
  Speaker 2: I thought I was in a prison cell. And I
• 2:14:17
  Speaker 2: also thought someone had chopped off my dick. Like I
• 2:14:19
  Speaker 2: hallucinated that When I reached down there, it was just
• 2:14:22
  Speaker 2: like mush and blood and gore. And I had a
• 2:14:26
  Speaker 2: diaper on that you could see the blood, which all
• 2:14:29
  Speaker 2: was a hallucination, obviously, but it was like I was
• 2:14:31
  Speaker 2: still in and out of these hallucinations. But eventually, I
• 2:14:36
  Speaker 2: remember people kept walking up to what I thought was
• 2:14:38
  Speaker 2: a locked prison door and looking through at me, and
• 2:14:40
  Speaker 2: I could see these eyeballs looking in. But eventually, I
• 2:14:44
  Speaker 2: kind of stood up and was able to open the
• 2:14:47
  Speaker 2: door and walk out into this hallway and And it
• 2:14:49
  Speaker 2: was just bright white fluorescent lighting and tile flooring. There's
• 2:14:53
  Speaker 2: other veterans like moaning and murmuring, like basically human zombies
• 2:14:57
  Speaker 2: walking around. And I walked down into like the little
• 2:15:01
  Speaker 2: waiting area and started having more moments of lucidity where
• 2:15:04
  Speaker 2: I was actually realizing what was really going on. But
• 2:15:08
  Speaker 2: what I, you know, there's a ton of stuff I
• 2:15:10
  Speaker 2: hallucinated that wasn't real. But as I started to see
• 2:15:13
  Speaker 2: the real things that were going on, I was pretty
• 2:15:15
  Speaker 2: disheartened by how bad it was. The food, again, was
• 2:15:20
  Speaker 2: absolutely abysmal quality. There were guys there that had been
• 2:15:23
  Speaker 2: in and out of the prison system as they had
• 2:15:25
  Speaker 2: been homeless and dealing with drug addiction. And they all
• 2:15:28
  Speaker 2: agreed that they would rather be in federal prison than
• 2:15:31
  Speaker 2: in this facility because the food's better, you get to
• 2:15:33
  Speaker 2: go outside every day at prison, and there's more structure
• 2:15:37
  Speaker 2: and care for prisoners than there are of people in
• 2:15:40
  Speaker 2: this inpatient psychiatric facility. The water that you could drink
• 2:15:43
  Speaker 2: that came out of the tap tasted like it came
• 2:15:45
  Speaker 2: out of a broken hot tub. In order to make
• 2:15:47
  Speaker 2: it tolerable, people would mix it with this artificially flavored
• 2:15:51
  Speaker 2: and colored. You could either have the lemonade or raspberry
• 2:15:55
  Speaker 2: lemonade flavor. And so that's what you did to make
• 2:15:58
  Speaker 2: it tolerable, which was just more shit in your system.
• 2:16:01
  Speaker 2: The only thing that they had an abundance of, again,
• 2:16:03
  Speaker 2: was they were just throwing all sorts of different pills
• 2:16:05
  Speaker 2: at you. And I remember becoming very frustrated because you
• 2:16:09
  Speaker 2: only very rarely got to meet with the psychiatrist who
• 2:16:11
  Speaker 2: would explain what medications they were going to put you on.
• 2:16:15
  Speaker 2: but then very quickly they would just be giving you
• 2:16:17
  Speaker 2: a bunch of other shit. And I didn't know what
• 2:16:18
  Speaker 2: it was and I didn't like that. And every 15
• 2:16:23
  Speaker 2: minutes at night, because I was on one-to-one care, they
• 2:16:26
  Speaker 2: were required to come into my room with the flashlight
• 2:16:29
  Speaker 2: and shine the flashlight in my face. So probably, again,
• 2:16:31
  Speaker 2: the most important thing that I could do would just
• 2:16:33
  Speaker 2: get some sleep. Yet every 15 minutes I was being
• 2:16:37
  Speaker 2: awoken to make sure I was safe.
• 2:16:40
  Speaker 1: That'll drive a motherfucker crazy in itself. Yeah. It's literally
• 2:16:44
  Speaker 1: a technique. Yeah.
• 2:16:45
  Speaker 2: So seer school, you get a little taste of that.
• 2:16:48
  Speaker 2: You get sleep deprived, you get malnourished, you get treated
• 2:16:51
  Speaker 2: less than human. And perfectly healthy, robust humans, you know, SEALs, Marines, pilots,
• 2:16:58
  Speaker 2: air crew, at the peak of their fitness and mental capabilities,
• 2:17:02
  Speaker 2: go through that. And within, you know, a week of
• 2:17:04
  Speaker 2: that experience, a few days of that experience, perfectly healthy
• 2:17:07
  Speaker 2: people will have visual and auditory hallucinations. Now you take
• 2:17:11
  Speaker 2: guys who are already in a really bad spot and
• 2:17:14
  Speaker 2: you do the exact same shit to them. What the
• 2:17:17
  Speaker 2: fuck do we think is going to happen? And my
• 2:17:20
  Speaker 2: only thought is that it's intentional. It's intentionally designed to
• 2:17:24
  Speaker 2: drive you into a hole to where you have to
• 2:17:26
  Speaker 2: be overmedicated, which feeds that pharmaceutical machine that has control
• 2:17:30
  Speaker 2: of the VA system. And it's just a cash cow
• 2:17:33
  Speaker 2: for them. Drive people onto their meds, get you on
• 2:17:36
  Speaker 2: the meds and keep you on your meds. That is
• 2:17:39
  Speaker 2: their business model. And that's why things can't change at
• 2:17:42
  Speaker 2: the moment. It is just that tentacle of fucking greed
• 2:17:46
  Speaker 2: that is the pharmaceutical industry.
• 2:17:51
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• 2:17:53
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• 2:17:56
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  Speaker 1: year is this?
• 2:19:40
  Speaker 2: This would have been early 2019.
• 2:19:43
  Speaker 1: Very recent.
• 2:19:46
  Speaker 2: But as I became more lucid and more frustrated seeing
• 2:19:49
  Speaker 2: this treatment, I made a plan to escape. You know,
• 2:19:52
  Speaker 2: I was making weapons with wet socks inside of other
• 2:19:56
  Speaker 2: tube socks, tying them off, showing other, I call them prisoners, honestly,
• 2:20:01
  Speaker 2: how to get out and how to make weapons. And
• 2:20:04
  Speaker 2: my plan was late at night, I was going to
• 2:20:05
  Speaker 2: run out and pull this fire alarm And when they
• 2:20:08
  Speaker 2: took us outside for the fire, those of us that
• 2:20:10
  Speaker 2: wanted to could run. So I had slowly been stockpiling
• 2:20:14
  Speaker 2: like snacks and stuff and some warmer clothing because it's
• 2:20:17
  Speaker 2: still like late winter in Michigan. So there's still snow
• 2:20:21
  Speaker 2: on the ground. So I kind of planned it all out.
• 2:20:24
  Speaker 2: And late at night, I snuck out and pulled the
• 2:20:27
  Speaker 2: fire alarm thinking that they're going to take us outside.
• 2:20:30
  Speaker 2: But apparently somebody had already tried this trick. Uh, they
• 2:20:34
  Speaker 2: immediately had the base security, their arm security, and they
• 2:20:39
  Speaker 2: forced me into a room. And then Mike, who was
• 2:20:42
  Speaker 2: a really good nurse that worked there is like, he
• 2:20:44
  Speaker 2: had a syringe and he goes, listen, man, we can
• 2:20:46
  Speaker 2: either do this the easy way or the hard way.
• 2:20:48
  Speaker 2: And I trusted him. I didn't trust much of the
• 2:20:50
  Speaker 2: other staff. It was like, all right, Mike, stick it
• 2:20:53
  Speaker 2: in my ass. And he takes this thing and he
• 2:20:54
  Speaker 2: shoves it in my butt cheek and injects me with
• 2:20:57
  Speaker 2: what's called held all. And it should just be called hell.
• 2:21:00
  Speaker 2: Because as this stuff entered my bloodstream, I felt like
• 2:21:02
  Speaker 2: there were insects trying to crawl their way through my skin.
• 2:21:06
  Speaker 2: I felt extremely restless, like all I wanted to do
• 2:21:08
  Speaker 2: was tear my own skin off and run and scream.
• 2:21:11
  Speaker 2: And Mike would pace up and down the hallways with
• 2:21:14
  Speaker 2: me as I'm just like screaming and yelling and just
• 2:21:16
  Speaker 2: trying to get this shit out of my system. And
• 2:21:19
  Speaker 2: eventually I collapsed.
• 2:21:21
  Speaker 1: What the fuck is it?
• 2:21:23
  Speaker 2: It's an antipsychotic medication that just basically... It's a fucking nightmare.
• 2:21:29
  Speaker 2: It's a torturous experience, but it's what they use to
• 2:21:33
  Speaker 2: like shut you down if you're being unruly. And I
• 2:21:39
  Speaker 2: came to in just like a drug induced stupor, like
• 2:21:42
  Speaker 2: literally drooling on myself. And I had been voluntarily admitted
• 2:21:46
  Speaker 2: to this facility. I had gone there on my own will.
• 2:21:50
  Speaker 2: I wanted to be there to get help. And when
• 2:21:52
  Speaker 2: I saw that this was the opposite of help, it
• 2:21:54
  Speaker 2: was not a healing environment. I wanted to get the
• 2:21:57
  Speaker 2: fuck out. And even though I was voluntary and they
• 2:22:00
  Speaker 2: should have released me when I wanted to be released,
• 2:22:02
  Speaker 2: they refused. And now that this incident had happened, they
• 2:22:06
  Speaker 2: used it as an opportunity to commit me to the facility.
• 2:22:09
  Speaker 2: And while I'm literally drooling on myself, I go in
• 2:22:12
  Speaker 2: to see this female attorney who's supposed to be my
• 2:22:14
  Speaker 2: legal representation. And she puts a pen in my hand.
• 2:22:17
  Speaker 2: She moves my hand on the paper and says, just
• 2:22:19
  Speaker 2: sign here. And I just kind of scribbled my hand.
• 2:22:22
  Speaker 2: And then she moved the documents and I scribbled. Unknowingly
• 2:22:26
  Speaker 2: what I was doing was I had just committed myself
• 2:22:28
  Speaker 2: to the facility without any trial without any any process
• 2:22:33
  Speaker 2: really other than this lady putting a pin in my
• 2:22:35
  Speaker 2: Impaired hand and having me somehow legally sign these documents
• 2:22:39
  Speaker 2: and by doing that I was now Committed to this facility.
• 2:22:44
  Speaker 2: They could tell me when I could leave which they
• 2:22:46
  Speaker 2: already were doing Illegally prior and then it also stripped
• 2:22:52
  Speaker 2: me of my constitutional right to bear arms and Uh,
• 2:22:55
  Speaker 2: immediately I was put onto a list, uh, the lean
• 2:22:58
  Speaker 2: network as if I had committed a crime. So if
• 2:23:01
  Speaker 2: I'm ever pulled over by the police, I pop up
• 2:23:03
  Speaker 2: in their network. Um, and this is, this is an
• 2:23:07
  Speaker 2: American veteran just trying to get fucking help for severe
• 2:23:10
  Speaker 2: psychological issues induced by the medication that I had been given. Um,
• 2:23:16
  Speaker 2: but I was broken, man. I was just a drooly
• 2:23:18
  Speaker 2: zombie at that point. I became just another one of
• 2:23:20
  Speaker 2: these dudes. walking around the hallways, drooling on myself, murmuring
• 2:23:24
  Speaker 2: to myself. And eventually with the advocacy of my family, uh,
• 2:23:29
  Speaker 2: my mom being in healthcare, my dad having been in healthcare,
• 2:23:31
  Speaker 2: my wife being an ER nurse, they were able to
• 2:23:34
  Speaker 2: advocate to get me out of the facility and bring
• 2:23:37
  Speaker 2: me back to Northern Michigan, back to my little piece
• 2:23:39
  Speaker 2: of property and reconnect with my family. But now the
• 2:23:43
  Speaker 2: burden of taking care of me all comes back onto
• 2:23:46
  Speaker 2: my family.
• 2:23:46
  Speaker 1: How long were you in there?
• 2:23:47
  Speaker 2: I was in there for 40 days. Um, Which, dude,
• 2:23:52
  Speaker 2: it was a fucking nightmare, man.
• 2:23:54
  Speaker 1: Sounds like it.
• 2:23:55
  Speaker 2: And I was so broken after that, man. I couldn't
• 2:23:58
  Speaker 2: really read anymore. I don't even know what all they
• 2:24:01
  Speaker 2: had me on at this point. I was just confused.
• 2:24:04
  Speaker 2: And the only thing that would give me any relief
• 2:24:07
  Speaker 2: was eating ice cream, drinking booze, and smoking cannabis would
• 2:24:12
  Speaker 2: give me a little relief from just the fucking misery
• 2:24:15
  Speaker 2: I was feeling inside. I could barely do the dishes.
• 2:24:20
  Speaker 2: it was miserable for my wife. Like, the only reason
• 2:24:23
  Speaker 2: that we didn't get divorced was because she was afraid
• 2:24:26
  Speaker 2: that I was pretty good at... I was good at
• 2:24:29
  Speaker 2: masking and acting like I was okay, uh, when I wasn't.
• 2:24:33
  Speaker 2: And she was afraid that if it went to a
• 2:24:35
  Speaker 2: custody hearing, I might earn custody of our children, and
• 2:24:38
  Speaker 2: then I would harm them in another unpredictable psychosis. So
• 2:24:41
  Speaker 2: she was stuck in this fucking nightmare with me, afraid
• 2:24:45
  Speaker 2: that I would harm her children. Um... And it went
• 2:24:49
  Speaker 2: on like that for years, man. It was dark. All
• 2:24:52
  Speaker 2: I wanted to do was just wander off into the
• 2:24:54
  Speaker 2: woods and in my own life. My little boy and
• 2:24:58
  Speaker 2: little girl would come up to ask me to play
• 2:25:00
  Speaker 2: and I would push them away and tell them to
• 2:25:01
  Speaker 2: leave me alone. And I was just a fucking miserable,
• 2:25:05
  Speaker 2: broken shell of a human being. All I could feel
• 2:25:07
  Speaker 2: was betrayal for the government that I had served. Anger
• 2:25:11
  Speaker 2: and pain, man. And I had a friend who knew
• 2:25:16
  Speaker 2: I was getting really bad. That same friend, Matt, that
• 2:25:18
  Speaker 2: had been like an older brother to me. And he
• 2:25:21
  Speaker 2: reached out and he goes, hey, man, we're going to
• 2:25:22
  Speaker 2: go on a mountain bike trip up to Marquette, Michigan,
• 2:25:24
  Speaker 2: which is phenomenal mountain biking because he knew I was
• 2:25:27
  Speaker 2: in a bad spot. And he planned it all out.
• 2:25:30
  Speaker 2: He pulled up out front and he helped me load
• 2:25:31
  Speaker 2: up my bike and he took me up to Marquette.
• 2:25:33
  Speaker 2: And we spent a few days up there just riding
• 2:25:35
  Speaker 2: bikes and being in nature. And when that trip was done,
• 2:25:39
  Speaker 2: he gave me a book by Rich Roll. It's called
• 2:25:44
  Speaker 2: Finding Ultra. It was basically his story of being basically
• 2:25:47
  Speaker 2: struggling with alcohol and being a corporate lawyer, like hating
• 2:25:51
  Speaker 2: his life and finding his way back to health through
• 2:25:55
  Speaker 2: endurance sports. And so I read that book and kind
• 2:25:58
  Speaker 2: of like a little bit of flicker of hope came on.
• 2:26:01
  Speaker 2: And so I started like mountain biking again. I couldn't
• 2:26:03
  Speaker 2: really run at that time because my leg was still
• 2:26:05
  Speaker 2: so jacked up from that botched surgery, but I could
• 2:26:08
  Speaker 2: ride a mountain bike. And so I started riding and
• 2:26:11
  Speaker 2: then I opened my eyes to some books by Michael Pollan.
• 2:26:14
  Speaker 2: There's one called In Defense of Food. And I started
• 2:26:16
  Speaker 2: reading how broken and corrupt the food system is And
• 2:26:19
  Speaker 2: so really cleaned up my diet. I already ate pretty healthy,
• 2:26:22
  Speaker 2: but I didn't realize how much of the food that
• 2:26:24
  Speaker 2: I was eating was still poisoning me. And then I
• 2:26:28
  Speaker 2: read the book by Michael Pollan, which I was really
• 2:26:30
  Speaker 2: struggling to read, but I could read like a paragraph
• 2:26:34
  Speaker 2: or so at a time and listen to the audio
• 2:26:36
  Speaker 2: book at the same time and retain enough of information
• 2:26:39
  Speaker 2: from it that I started to see like there was
• 2:26:41
  Speaker 2: another way forward. And the book that really changed it
• 2:26:43
  Speaker 2: was uh, in defense of food or not in defense
• 2:26:46
  Speaker 2: of food, how to change your mind by Michael Pollan,
• 2:26:49
  Speaker 2: which is now a Netflix documentary on the use of
• 2:26:52
  Speaker 2: psychedelic assisted therapy to treat, uh, mental health issues. And
• 2:26:56
  Speaker 2: so it opened my eyes to that. The VA was
• 2:26:58
  Speaker 2: still the same. You just got to keep taking your meds.
• 2:27:01
  Speaker 2: That's the only option. And they didn't understand how miserable
• 2:27:04
  Speaker 2: I was, or maybe they did. They just didn't know
• 2:27:06
  Speaker 2: what to do. Um, but I started seeking out psychedelic
• 2:27:10
  Speaker 2: assisted therapy, um, I reached out to Vet Solutions and
• 2:27:16
  Speaker 2: I didn't really qualify for their program because I didn't
• 2:27:18
  Speaker 2: have the combat experience and I wasn't from the special forces.
• 2:27:22
  Speaker 2: And they were, I mean, as they've described it before,
• 2:27:24
  Speaker 2: it's like Schindler's List for them. Marcus and Amber Capone
• 2:27:27
  Speaker 2: are trying to serve everybody they possibly can. And there's
• 2:27:29
  Speaker 2: so many people that need this, but I didn't really qualify.
• 2:27:32
  Speaker 2: So I didn't get in originally, but they referred me
• 2:27:35
  Speaker 2: to another nonprofit organization called Warrior Angels Foundation. And those
• 2:27:42
  Speaker 2: guys were doing, it was called the 4x4x48 Challenge, which
• 2:27:46
  Speaker 2: is from David Goggins. It's basically you run four miles
• 2:27:50
  Speaker 2: every four hours for 48 hours straight. So you end
• 2:27:52
  Speaker 2: up running 48 miles over two days. And they were
• 2:27:56
  Speaker 2: putting together a fundraiser for this thing that I'd gotten
• 2:27:58
  Speaker 2: an email about. And I was like, I don't think
• 2:28:01
  Speaker 2: I can run that. Like, why would I even get
• 2:28:02
  Speaker 2: involved in this? But it was something in me that
• 2:28:04
  Speaker 2: was like, why don't you engage with it? And they
• 2:28:06
  Speaker 2: were doing a fundraiser. And for the first time I
• 2:28:10
  Speaker 2: went onto their site where they were doing this fundraiser
• 2:28:12
  Speaker 2: and I put a little bit about my story. It
• 2:28:14
  Speaker 2: was the first time I had ever shared anything about
• 2:28:16
  Speaker 2: what I was going through publicly. I felt internally that
• 2:28:19
  Speaker 2: I was like a piece of shit, a letdown to
• 2:28:21
  Speaker 2: everybody in my community. And I isolated myself from everything
• 2:28:25
  Speaker 2: and everybody. Um, but for something called that I needed
• 2:28:29
  Speaker 2: to share a little of my story. And within a
• 2:28:31
  Speaker 2: week of putting that up, I'd raised almost $ 10, 000 on
• 2:28:34
  Speaker 2: my fundraiser page. And so Adam Marr and Andrew Marr,
• 2:28:38
  Speaker 2: who were running that foundation, reached out to me and said,
• 2:28:40
  Speaker 2: hey man, what are you doing this week? Do you
• 2:28:42
  Speaker 2: want to come down to Texas? We'll fly you down,
• 2:28:44
  Speaker 2: put you up, and you can be part of the event.
• 2:28:46
  Speaker 2: And I was like, all right, I'll come. So they
• 2:28:48
  Speaker 2: flew me down to Texas where they put on this event.
• 2:28:50
  Speaker 2: And dude, it was like finding a community of so
• 2:28:54
  Speaker 2: many other individuals who had been through the same shit
• 2:28:57
  Speaker 2: There were Marine Raiders, there were SEALs, Rangers, Green Berets.
• 2:29:02
  Speaker 2: Marcus and Amber Capone were there. Lieutenant General Christopher Miller
• 2:29:06
  Speaker 2: was there who had served as Secretary of Defense under
• 2:29:10
  Speaker 2: Trump's first term. But a lot of really incredible people
• 2:29:14
  Speaker 2: in this space. And every veteran that I talked to
• 2:29:17
  Speaker 2: had such a similar story. They had been a high-performing,
• 2:29:20
  Speaker 2: hard-charging individual in the military. things started to, the wheels
• 2:29:24
  Speaker 2: started to fall off the bus from that operator syndromes
• 2:29:27
  Speaker 2: that people are experiencing and the combination of mental health issues,
• 2:29:32
  Speaker 2: the PTSD, the TBI, all these things compounding to where
• 2:29:35
  Speaker 2: your life starts falling apart. And when we reached out
• 2:29:38
  Speaker 2: for help, the answer was take these meds. And we
• 2:29:41
  Speaker 2: all got sucked down into the same fucking dark hole
• 2:29:44
  Speaker 2: where our fucking lives fell apart, we lost our minds,
• 2:29:47
  Speaker 2: and a lot of people fucking.
• 2:29:50
  Speaker 2: Almost didn't make it. And there was every single guy
• 2:29:53
  Speaker 2: I talked to as we were doing this run phase
• 2:29:55
  Speaker 2: by phase had a similar story. And I realized like,
• 2:29:59
  Speaker 2: this isn't just me that's suffering through this. This is
• 2:30:01
  Speaker 2: happening to all of these other veterans. And that's just
• 2:30:04
  Speaker 2: the recipe that they're using to pump people on these meds.
• 2:30:07
  Speaker 2: And it's so fucked and it's poisoning these people. But dude,
• 2:30:10
  Speaker 2: it was like being welcomed into a community where I
• 2:30:13
  Speaker 2: finally fit in and gave me some hope. And in
• 2:30:16
  Speaker 2: that In that 48 hours, we had a peyote ceremony
• 2:30:19
  Speaker 2: with a Native American group. And for the first time,
• 2:30:22
  Speaker 2: I felt really connected to something again after being disconnected
• 2:30:25
  Speaker 2: for all those years. And it was something told me
• 2:30:28
  Speaker 2: that I had a sense of purpose still, like I
• 2:30:30
  Speaker 2: needed to keep moving forward, that I was still here
• 2:30:32
  Speaker 2: for a reason. And that gave me hope. At that
• 2:30:36
  Speaker 2: same event, I met Jesse Gould, who runs Heroic Hearts Project.
• 2:30:40
  Speaker 2: And he hooked me up and sent me on a
• 2:30:42
  Speaker 2: trip down to Peru where I experienced ayahuasca. And through
• 2:30:45
  Speaker 2: that experience, I had this massive heart opening, massive connection
• 2:30:49
  Speaker 2: to the divine that was beyond anything I had experienced
• 2:30:52
  Speaker 2: to that point and came back just feeling like a
• 2:30:56
  Speaker 2: whole human again. I became able to get off all
• 2:31:00
  Speaker 2: of my medications before going on that trip. Again, I
• 2:31:03
  Speaker 2: had to wean myself off and I had replaced it
• 2:31:06
  Speaker 2: by good nutrition, exercise, sunlight, connection to nature, And then
• 2:31:12
  Speaker 2: the ayahuasca just opened me right back up. So I
• 2:31:15
  Speaker 2: felt like a fucking human being again. And I came
• 2:31:18
  Speaker 2: back to my family, and I remember telling my wife
• 2:31:21
  Speaker 2: how good I felt, and she just thought I was
• 2:31:23
  Speaker 2: being manic. She didn't believe that this was genuine or
• 2:31:26
  Speaker 2: gonna last. And it took years for her to start
• 2:31:30
  Speaker 2: to see that I was actually getting better. Years of integration.
• 2:31:35
  Speaker 2: I got involved with the Wisdom Dojo, which was the
• 2:31:38
  Speaker 2: AMP Dojo originally, and started doing meditation through them. I
• 2:31:42
  Speaker 2: was originally hooked up with a dude named Moose, who
• 2:31:45
  Speaker 2: was my integration coach from the World Carcass Project. I
• 2:31:47
  Speaker 2: don't know if you know Moose.
• 2:31:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he was mine. He was my integration coach too.
• 2:31:52
  Speaker 2: And he was showing me this breathwork. He was showing
• 2:31:55
  Speaker 2: me Wim Hof breathing. At that point, I was like,
• 2:31:57
  Speaker 2: this is some woo-woo bullshit. But here's a Navy SEAL
• 2:32:00
  Speaker 2: who says he can hold his breath for four minutes
• 2:32:02
  Speaker 2: after he blows all his air out. So I want
• 2:32:05
  Speaker 2: to see what this is about. And that's kind of
• 2:32:07
  Speaker 2: what pulled me into it. And then I did the
• 2:32:09
  Speaker 2: breath work and I felt good. And soon enough, after
• 2:32:11
  Speaker 2: I had practiced with Moose a few times, like I
• 2:32:12
  Speaker 2: was holding my breath for a really long time with
• 2:32:15
  Speaker 2: the air blown out of my lungs. And I was like,
• 2:32:17
  Speaker 2: holy shit, I feel really peaceful too. Uh, and then
• 2:32:21
  Speaker 2: he introduced me to the wisdom dojo and I went
• 2:32:23
  Speaker 2: through their meditation program, eventually becoming an instructor for them
• 2:32:27
  Speaker 2: and still am.
• 2:32:28
  Speaker 1: Oh, right on, man.
• 2:32:29
  Speaker 2: And then that kind of gave me a sense of
• 2:32:30
  Speaker 2: purpose that gave me like a daily connection to the
• 2:32:33
  Speaker 2: divine within, like without the need of medicine. Um, I
• 2:32:37
  Speaker 2: experienced a number of other psychedelic experiences over the course
• 2:32:41
  Speaker 2: of those years. Iboga, which was incredibly powerful, the ultimate
• 2:32:45
  Speaker 2: healing tool that I've ever experienced, healing my nervous system,
• 2:32:48
  Speaker 2: healing my brain. A network of nonprofit organizations basically gave
• 2:32:53
  Speaker 2: me access to all the things to get me better.
• 2:32:56
  Speaker 2: Defenders of Freedom brought me down to Texas for a
• 2:32:59
  Speaker 2: TBI treatment. A generous couple in Austin, Clay and Eleanor Womack,
• 2:33:04
  Speaker 2: invited me into their facility. where I received like state
• 2:33:08
  Speaker 2: of the art lab work, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, stem cell
• 2:33:12
  Speaker 2: therapy with that. And I came out of that month
• 2:33:15
  Speaker 2: long program with them just like feeling like a fucking
• 2:33:18
  Speaker 2: superhuman again. All these things were being healed piece by
• 2:33:21
  Speaker 2: piece physically. And I started to gain a better understanding
• 2:33:24
  Speaker 2: of what had been off all the time, which the
• 2:33:27
  Speaker 2: physiology of my brain had been destroyed from that ejection.
• 2:33:30
  Speaker 2: And then when I went back trying to charge at
• 2:33:32
  Speaker 2: it hard again, it started to unravel even more. from
• 2:33:36
  Speaker 2: the G-forces, from the drinking culture, all these things, the
• 2:33:39
  Speaker 2: not sleeping well, eroded the physiology of my brain. And
• 2:33:44
  Speaker 2: it was a physical issue with my brain that led
• 2:33:47
  Speaker 2: to all this detriment, but it's treated like it's purely psychology,
• 2:33:51
  Speaker 2: purely just a PTSD rating. And it's actually, the physiology
• 2:33:55
  Speaker 2: is off. The hormones are out of whack. The brain
• 2:33:59
  Speaker 2: is not firing the way it's supposed to, and it
• 2:34:01
  Speaker 2: causes all this chaos that gets labeled as PTSD. But
• 2:34:07
  Speaker 2: kind of came to understand that it was a much
• 2:34:09
  Speaker 2: bigger whole human part. You know, it was physical, it
• 2:34:12
  Speaker 2: was spiritual, emotional. And when I started to address those issues,
• 2:34:19
  Speaker 2: I just fucking got my life back, man. I went
• 2:34:22
  Speaker 2: from barely able to do the dishes, being told that
• 2:34:24
  Speaker 2: I just had to take my pills for the rest
• 2:34:27
  Speaker 2: of my life, to becoming a loving husband, a loving
• 2:34:32
  Speaker 2: father and my two children who I'm so lucky still
• 2:34:34
  Speaker 2: to have after the hell that they went through. To
• 2:34:38
  Speaker 2: writing my book, getting my story out to share what's
• 2:34:41
  Speaker 2: going on underneath the medical system and behind the doors
• 2:34:45
  Speaker 2: of the VA, because I know this is something that's
• 2:34:48
  Speaker 2: affecting people in the military and the VA and in
• 2:34:51
  Speaker 2: the entire healthcare community, man. Our medical system is so
• 2:34:55
  Speaker 2: fucking broken. If you need to get surgery and you
• 2:34:58
  Speaker 2: need to get put back together, Our medical system is
• 2:35:01
  Speaker 2: awesome for that. But when it comes to chronic health
• 2:35:04
  Speaker 2: conditions and long-term health, it is very broken. Very broken.
• 2:35:10
  Speaker 1: Your wife stuck with you through all that. She did.
• 2:35:15
  Speaker 1: That's a saint. Yeah.
• 2:35:17
  Speaker 2: She's an angel, man. She's an angel, and she fucking
• 2:35:20
  Speaker 2: went down into the depths of hell to pull me
• 2:35:22
  Speaker 2: out of that, and it fucking burned her wings off, man.
• 2:35:25
  Speaker 2: And it scarred her.
• 2:35:26
  Speaker 1: How are you guys doing today?
• 2:35:28
  Speaker 2: Dude, she fortunately got picked up by the Hope Project,
• 2:35:32
  Speaker 2: which is a spinoff from Heroic Hearts Project that serves
• 2:35:35
  Speaker 2: the spouses. And she recently got to go down to
• 2:35:40
  Speaker 2: Mexico and experience medicine and is starting to get to
• 2:35:43
  Speaker 2: do her own healing. She's in the Vajra Ocean, which
• 2:35:47
  Speaker 2: is part of the Wisdom, well, separate from the Wisdom Dojo,
• 2:35:50
  Speaker 2: but a similar meditation program with the same folks that
• 2:35:53
  Speaker 2: helps give the wives access to mindfulness, breathwork, and meditation.
• 2:35:58
  Speaker 2: to start to heal. And she's, I mean, she's a saint.
• 2:36:03
  Speaker 2: She went through hell and she's, but it hurt her, man.
• 2:36:06
  Speaker 2: It put her through a lot of hell. And for
• 2:36:08
  Speaker 2: a while, I think there was a lot of resentment
• 2:36:10
  Speaker 2: that I was getting help and she wasn't. And she
• 2:36:13
  Speaker 2: was seeing me starting to get better. And she was
• 2:36:15
  Speaker 2: almost maybe a little angry about that, which is pretty
• 2:36:18
  Speaker 2: common I hear, which is why they started the Hope
• 2:36:20
  Speaker 2: Project was like to give the women that had been
• 2:36:23
  Speaker 2: through hell some healing as well. But We're doing so
• 2:36:28
  Speaker 2: much better, man. Our relationship, I mean, not to say
• 2:36:31
  Speaker 2: there's not still struggles, man, but from where it was,
• 2:36:35
  Speaker 2: it's a miracle that it's gotten to where we are now.
• 2:36:40
  Speaker 2: To have love in our home, love with our children, dude,
• 2:36:42
  Speaker 2: we got just two incredible little kids that are so bright, man.
• 2:36:48
  Speaker 2: Really a gift. And now after being through all that,
• 2:36:52
  Speaker 2: you know, I see that it's all been a gift.
• 2:36:55
  Speaker 2: It's all been to put me where I am today,
• 2:36:58
  Speaker 2: where I have so much love in my heart, such
• 2:37:00
  Speaker 2: a purpose of service to so many people. It's all
• 2:37:06
  Speaker 2: been a gift, man. Now I get to be a coach.
• 2:37:10
  Speaker 2: I do integration coaching with people. I work for Sharp
• 2:37:14
  Speaker 2: Performance with Steve Bunting, who he had- You.
• 2:37:17
  Speaker 1: Work with Sharp too?
• 2:37:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 2:37:19
  Speaker 1: What a great organization.
• 2:37:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they're kick-ass, man. And it's helping a lot. It's
• 2:37:23
  Speaker 2: helping a lot of people. In the firefighter community, law enforcement, military.
• 2:37:27
  Speaker 1: I love what they're doing.
• 2:37:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's been a gift to get to be there
• 2:37:32
  Speaker 2: and help them with that. I've been doing public speaking.
• 2:37:37
  Speaker 2: I just got picked up by Jason Redman and their
• 2:37:40
  Speaker 2: team over at Eagle Rise. So I got to join
• 2:37:43
  Speaker 2: their speaking bureau. If anybody's looking for a professional speaker,
• 2:37:47
  Speaker 2: I do motivational speaking and kind of help inspire a
• 2:37:50
  Speaker 2: culture of health and nutrition. I work for a number
• 2:37:54
  Speaker 2: of other nonprofits. Dude, I wear like a million hats
• 2:37:57
  Speaker 2: right now. And then I started my own online coaching
• 2:38:01
  Speaker 2: platform that I'm just launching because I see a lot
• 2:38:05
  Speaker 2: of the veterans that come to me and reach out
• 2:38:08
  Speaker 2: after they see me on a podcast or something. They
• 2:38:10
  Speaker 2: just don't have the financial ability to pay for coaching.
• 2:38:14
  Speaker 2: So I've created this online platform so they can still
• 2:38:16
  Speaker 2: access videos forum a ton of resources and still have
• 2:38:21
  Speaker 2: monthly meetings with me in a group setting that's way
• 2:38:24
  Speaker 2: more affordable for people uh in those tough situations because
• 2:38:28
  Speaker 2: what i found with this coaching is there's so many
• 2:38:30
  Speaker 2: people that need it that need this guidance and getting
• 2:38:32
  Speaker 2: their lives back through holistic health but dude it's so
• 2:38:36
  Speaker 2: hard for people in those struggle moments to afford it
• 2:38:39
  Speaker 2: um so i wanted to create something to serve those
• 2:38:42
  Speaker 2: folks um but dude just uh Yeah, doing a little
• 2:38:46
  Speaker 2: bit of everything to try to help, man.
• 2:38:48
  Speaker 1: When's the last time you went to the VA?
• 2:38:52
  Speaker 2: Years ago, man. I won't go back into that system.
• 2:38:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I don't blame you. I do. You know,
• 2:39:01
  Speaker 1: I had Doug Collins on. He's the director of the
• 2:39:03
  Speaker 1: VA right now.
• 2:39:04
  Speaker 2: I think I listened to that episode.
• 2:39:07
  Speaker 1: I know he's trying like hell to make some changes.
• 2:39:09
  Speaker 1: I don't know what all changes he's made, but he
• 2:39:12
  Speaker 1: definitely gives a shit.
• 2:39:14
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
• 2:39:14
  Speaker 1: I will say that.
• 2:39:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think those guys are just handcuffed, man. The
• 2:39:19
  Speaker 2: fucking tentacles of the pharmaceutical industry get to control the show.
• 2:39:22
  Speaker 1: Well, that and just the bureaucracy itself, I mean, it's horrible.
• 2:39:27
  Speaker 1: Have you heard of Envy Mind Health? I'm just curious.
• 2:39:30
  Speaker 2: No, I don't think I've heard of that one.
• 2:39:32
  Speaker 1: This is a friend of mine, CEO Johnny Wilson. Oh, yeah.
• 2:39:37
  Speaker 1: He started this company. Do you know Johnny?
• 2:39:39
  Speaker 2: I've met Johnny before, yeah.
• 2:39:41
  Speaker 1: Great guy.
• 2:39:42
  Speaker 2: Johnny Wilson, yeah, he's... He was in a motorcycle accident
• 2:39:45
  Speaker 2: not too long ago, right?
• 2:39:48
  Speaker 1: What? I think you're thinking of somebody else.
• 2:39:50
  Speaker 2: He runs Coast to Coast?
• 2:39:52
  Speaker 1: No.
• 2:39:53
  Speaker 2: This is a different Johnny. No. Okay.
• 2:39:56
  Speaker 1: He started a couple of nonprofits in the SEAL community.
• 2:40:01
  Speaker 1: I can't remember the... I think I know, but I
• 2:40:03
  Speaker 1: don't want to say the wrong name. But then kind
• 2:40:07
  Speaker 1: of turned that over. Like he was up and running,
• 2:40:10
  Speaker 1: turned it over. He... I'm curious to hear what you
• 2:40:16
  Speaker 1: think about this, because I think this is a pivotal moment.
• 2:40:21
  Speaker 1: And I think it could be just as impactful as
• 2:40:26
  Speaker 1: kind of the rediscovery of psychedelics within the veteran community.
• 2:40:31
  Speaker 1: And so he has come up with this company called
• 2:40:40
  Speaker 1: where you wear the wearable devices like a WHOOP or
• 2:40:42
  Speaker 1: the Oura Ring, or do you wear any of those?
• 2:40:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, I actually just got an Oura Ring
• 2:40:48
  Speaker 2: from a nonprofit that's tracking my biometrics, but that's been
• 2:40:52
  Speaker 2: really helpful just to see sleep quality and HRV.
• 2:40:54
  Speaker 1: Okay, so that's what this is.
• 2:40:56
  Speaker 2: Okay, cool.
• 2:40:57
  Speaker 1: This basically takes your health data and you kind of
• 2:41:03
  Speaker 1: build your own network. So maybe, you know, whoever, for
• 2:41:09
  Speaker 1: me it might be guys that I was in a
• 2:41:11
  Speaker 1: sniper hide with or just friends of mine that were
• 2:41:13
  Speaker 1: in service with me. And it puts you in a
• 2:41:16
  Speaker 1: little network. And so it monitors, I mean, obviously it
• 2:41:21
  Speaker 1: monitors your sleep, all your vitals, all that kind of stuff, right?
• 2:41:29
  Speaker 1: And so what happens is they get a baseline and
• 2:41:34
  Speaker 1: then as things start to deteriorate, your network is alerted.
• 2:41:40
  Speaker 1: You know, and they don't, they're alerted like, hey.
• 2:41:44
  Speaker 2: That's clever.
• 2:41:45
  Speaker 1: Sean's health is, Sean's vitals is starting to, you know,
• 2:41:48
  Speaker 1: he's losing sleep. His heart rate's a little elevated. Whatever.
• 2:41:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:41:52
  Speaker 1: You know, and it doesn't tell, it doesn't tell everybody
• 2:41:56
  Speaker 1: in the network like, hey, this is everything that's happening.
• 2:41:58
  Speaker 1: It's just a little, hey, vitals are deteriorating a little bit.
• 2:42:03
  Speaker 1: Maybe you want to check on Kagan. Yeah. And then
• 2:42:07
  Speaker 1: a phone call, you know what I mean? And then
• 2:42:08
  Speaker 1: your buddies call up, hey, what's going on? I see,
• 2:42:10
  Speaker 1: you know, we got the alert. Everything good? Is everything okay?
• 2:42:16
  Speaker 1: What do you think of that?
• 2:42:18
  Speaker 2: I think that's a great idea.
• 2:42:20
  Speaker 1: I think that's a fucking really good idea, too, because
• 2:42:22
  Speaker 1: it's not anybody having to ask for help, having to
• 2:42:26
  Speaker 1: be weak. It is triggered by biometrics, by vitals. And
• 2:42:32
  Speaker 1: then your buddies, your buddies that you want to check
• 2:42:36
  Speaker 1: on you are the ones checking on you.
• 2:42:37
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah. I think that can prevent a lot of issues.
• 2:42:40
  Speaker 1: I do too, man. I need to, I want to
• 2:42:42
  Speaker 1: talk to Doug about this because I think this, I
• 2:42:45
  Speaker 1: think this could be really big. Oh yeah. And you're
• 2:42:48
  Speaker 1: not going to have to jump through the legal hoops
• 2:42:50
  Speaker 1: to get that thing going like you are with psychedelics.
• 2:42:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure.
• 2:42:54
  Speaker 1: Not discarding psychedelics by any means. Right. I mean, I
• 2:42:57
  Speaker 1: think the push.
• 2:42:58
  Speaker 2: We need quicker solutions though. Exactly.
• 2:43:00
  Speaker 1: Exactly. And the push for psychedelics is, I mean, it's
• 2:43:05
  Speaker 1: just growing and growing, that executive order. We just did
• 2:43:09
  Speaker 1: a thing here in Tennessee where we all went up
• 2:43:11
  Speaker 1: to the House and the Senate. I went with this woman,
• 2:43:14
  Speaker 1: Rikki Harris, guy Alex West, who was the youngest SEAL
• 2:43:19
  Speaker 1: to ever get into development group. And we actually got
• 2:43:22
  Speaker 1: the shit passed in the House and the Tennessee Senate.
• 2:43:25
  Speaker 1: So they're going to reschedule again so that we can
• 2:43:28
  Speaker 1: do research. Now we've got to find funding, but.
• 2:43:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's exciting what's happened in Texas too.
• 2:43:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, right. So that's the same initiative. There's like Texans
• 2:43:38
  Speaker 1: for Ibogaine. This was Tennesseans for Ibogaine. And then there's
• 2:43:42
  Speaker 1: just Americans for Ibogaine. But I think every state has
• 2:43:45
  Speaker 1: one of these organizations.
• 2:43:50
  Speaker 2: Is that through the Veteran Mental Health Leadership Coalition that
• 2:43:53
  Speaker 2: you guys are doing the advocacy for? I worked with
• 2:43:56
  Speaker 2: them going out to D.C. when we were advocating for
• 2:43:58
  Speaker 2: MDMA-assisted therapy, which unfortunately got shut down at that one.
• 2:44:05
  Speaker 2: But they've been doing a lot of good work.
• 2:44:07
  Speaker 1: I actually have not heard of that organization.
• 2:44:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's Adam Marr, who used to run the Warrior
• 2:44:14
  Speaker 2: Angel Foundation that I did that run with and first
• 2:44:17
  Speaker 2: got me in the door into the world, the nutraceuticals
• 2:44:20
  Speaker 2: and lab work and all of that. he now runs
• 2:44:24
  Speaker 2: this Veteran Mental Health Leadership Coalition, which is people from
• 2:44:28
  Speaker 2: all over the veteran communities that have an interest in
• 2:44:31
  Speaker 2: help and support. Helps put people together to go when
• 2:44:34
  Speaker 2: there is stuff on a ballot or something legal going down,
• 2:44:37
  Speaker 2: that we can get people there, you know, talking to
• 2:44:41
  Speaker 2: the legislators to try to get things moving in the
• 2:44:43
  Speaker 2: right direction.
• 2:44:44
  Speaker 1: Right on, man. Right on. Yeah.
• 2:44:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:44:50
  Speaker 1: You got any ideas? Anything else? Have you done MDMA-assisted therapy?
• 2:44:55
  Speaker 1: I have. Have you done it with your wife?
• 2:44:57
  Speaker 2: I did.
• 2:44:58
  Speaker 1: How was that?
• 2:44:59
  Speaker 2: It was really helpful.
• 2:45:00
  Speaker 1: I'll bet you learned a lot.
• 2:45:02
  Speaker 2: It was a resentment inoculator.
• 2:45:04
  Speaker 1: That's a good way to put it.
• 2:45:06
  Speaker 2: That was a big help.
• 2:45:08
  Speaker 1: Do you guys continue to do that?
• 2:45:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I think we're coming up on due for another
• 2:45:14
  Speaker 2: session with it. We did it this winter.
• 2:45:19
  Speaker 1: How do you guys do it? Do you do it
• 2:45:22
  Speaker 1: with a therapist? Do you do it by yourself?
• 2:45:24
  Speaker 2: The first time I did it was with a friend
• 2:45:27
  Speaker 2: that I know through the Wisdom Dojo that offered to
• 2:45:30
  Speaker 2: help her and I. But I think next time we'll
• 2:45:35
  Speaker 2: probably try to do it just together. It was nice
• 2:45:37
  Speaker 2: to kind of have his guidance on the dosage and
• 2:45:41
  Speaker 2: a little bit of guidance, but I think it would
• 2:45:43
  Speaker 2: be better for us to do it where it's just
• 2:45:45
  Speaker 2: her and I connecting for the whole duration of it.
• 2:45:48
  Speaker 1: Man, I've done it. like that with my wife and.
• 2:45:56
  Speaker 2: That's the way to do it?
• 2:45:56
  Speaker 1: Dude. So much stuff to go through. Stuff I didn't even,
• 2:46:02
  Speaker 1: just like any psychedelic thing, right? All kinds of stuff
• 2:46:05
  Speaker 1: comes up that you're not expecting, but it's, I always say,
• 2:46:09
  Speaker 1: you know, it's, it seems to be the perfect way
• 2:46:15
  Speaker 1: to receive and transmit information to each other. Oh yeah.
• 2:46:23
  Speaker 1: it all comes from a good place you know it's
• 2:46:25
  Speaker 1: from a good place you're able to receive you're able
• 2:46:29
  Speaker 1: to send and there is no resentment no anger some
• 2:46:36
  Speaker 1: of the can be kind of hard to hear but
• 2:46:39
  Speaker 1: yeah but you're messing like embraced by it but you
• 2:46:42
  Speaker 1: know like it makes all those you know it all
• 2:46:45
  Speaker 1: comes from a place of love and so you're able
• 2:46:48
  Speaker 1: to stomach it without without being defensive. Yeah.
• 2:46:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it makes those impossible conversations possible. Yeah. All the
• 2:46:58
  Speaker 2: stuff that just builds up and festers and turns into
• 2:47:01
  Speaker 2: resentment and bad shit that comes from it and it
• 2:47:05
  Speaker 2: just clears that slate, man.
• 2:47:07
  Speaker 1: It just.
• 2:47:10
  Speaker 2: That was, yeah, that was really impactful for our, you know,
• 2:47:13
  Speaker 2: because she's been caring a lot with having seen me
• 2:47:16
  Speaker 2: like that and like trying to fall back in love
• 2:47:18
  Speaker 2: with somebody who was a fucking different person for years.
• 2:47:23
  Speaker 2: It's been really challenging, as it would be for anybody.
• 2:47:28
  Speaker 2: But allowing her to see who I am now, not
• 2:47:32
  Speaker 2: the person that I was in that drug-induced stupor for
• 2:47:36
  Speaker 2: all those years. and allowing her to feel safe again
• 2:47:40
  Speaker 2: with me, to open her heart back to me so
• 2:47:43
  Speaker 2: she can see that guy that she married years ago,
• 2:47:46
  Speaker 2: that I'm still here and I'm better than I've ever
• 2:47:47
  Speaker 2: been in my life. Like, just so full of life
• 2:47:52
  Speaker 2: and content. And, you know, she sees me with our kids.
• 2:47:56
  Speaker 2: She sees me the way I love them and take
• 2:47:58
  Speaker 2: care of them. But sometimes, like, I try to reach
• 2:48:01
  Speaker 2: out to her and it's hard for her. Sometimes it's
• 2:48:04
  Speaker 2: hard for her to want to reach back.
• 2:48:06
  Speaker 1: I can imagine.
• 2:48:08
  Speaker 2: The MDMA-assisted therapy, and then her trip through the HOPE
• 2:48:11
  Speaker 2: Project helped a lot. The HOPE Project are actually giving
• 2:48:15
  Speaker 2: them those aura rings too. And they had an extra
• 2:48:18
  Speaker 2: one they let me use too. So they'll track their
• 2:48:20
  Speaker 2: biometrics after they go through the program to see how
• 2:48:23
  Speaker 2: things shift, but pretty exciting information. Interesting information they're getting
• 2:48:28
  Speaker 2: out of all of that.
• 2:48:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:48:29
  Speaker 2: But yeah, it's been transformational for her. And now we
• 2:48:33
  Speaker 2: speak like the same language spiritually, which has been really helpful.
• 2:48:38
  Speaker 2: Cause I think for a while it was a lot
• 2:48:40
  Speaker 2: of kind of skepticism on her end and how genuine
• 2:48:44
  Speaker 2: I was with all of this and her kind of
• 2:48:47
  Speaker 2: wondering like, what's this meditation all about? But now she
• 2:48:51
  Speaker 2: sees me go to these meditation retreats. I'll go do
• 2:48:53
  Speaker 2: like a silent meditation retreat with the wisdom dojo and
• 2:48:56
  Speaker 2: I'll come back and dude, it's like better than a
• 2:48:59
  Speaker 2: psychedelic journey. Just sitting with yourself in silence for a
• 2:49:03
  Speaker 2: week straight. It's like a slow motion psychedelic experience with
• 2:49:06
  Speaker 2: no medicine.
• 2:49:07
  Speaker 1: What is that like? Do you literally just sit there
• 2:49:11
  Speaker 1: for a week straight without any communication, no talking? What
• 2:49:15
  Speaker 1: is it?
• 2:49:15
  Speaker 2: No talking, no eye contact, and just.
• 2:49:19
  Speaker 1: No eye contact?
• 2:49:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and at this point, to go on those retreats,
• 2:49:22
  Speaker 2: you've progressed through a lot of the training, so you're
• 2:49:26
  Speaker 2: pretty decent at meditating. But man, when you sit for
• 2:49:29
  Speaker 2: that duration, you're sitting for 12 hours a day just meditating,
• 2:49:32
  Speaker 2: doing nothing else. And you can get up and go
• 2:49:34
  Speaker 2: to the bathroom. There's still meals, but you don't interact
• 2:49:37
  Speaker 2: with anybody else the whole time. So you're just kind
• 2:49:40
  Speaker 2: of in your own head with your own thoughts. And
• 2:49:43
  Speaker 2: the first few days can be kind of abrupt and harsh,
• 2:49:46
  Speaker 2: like a lot of shit coming up, a lot of emotion,
• 2:49:49
  Speaker 2: a lot of past stuff that can be really heavy
• 2:49:52
  Speaker 2: when you're just sitting there. But what I have found
• 2:49:56
  Speaker 2: for myself, at least, and everybody's a little different, but
• 2:49:58
  Speaker 2: by the end of it, it's like the hard drive
• 2:50:01
  Speaker 2: gets defragged. And then you're just there. And instead of
• 2:50:05
  Speaker 2: having your mind chattering, like the dude who just won't
• 2:50:09
  Speaker 2: shut up in the room and can never hear anybody
• 2:50:11
  Speaker 2: else talking, that mind finally like peters out and there's
• 2:50:15
  Speaker 2: just stillness. And in that stillness, you can hear the
• 2:50:19
  Speaker 2: divine whispers of God, man. You can hear just something
• 2:50:23
  Speaker 2: beautiful that's underneath that when you're able to get the
• 2:50:25
  Speaker 2: ego to shut the fuck up for a little bit,
• 2:50:28
  Speaker 2: when you shut the analytical mind up for a little bit.
• 2:50:30
  Speaker 2: There's something so beautiful inside of us. This presence of
• 2:50:34
  Speaker 2: God that is behind our eyes. And when we can
• 2:50:38
  Speaker 2: just shut the fucking ego down by doing that, you know,
• 2:50:42
  Speaker 2: a retreat like that or meditating. In the medicine, you
• 2:50:44
  Speaker 2: get to experience that too. But it brings you to
• 2:50:47
  Speaker 2: that same place completely naturally. It's sort of this, it's
• 2:50:51
  Speaker 2: the path of like the monk or you have the
• 2:50:55
  Speaker 2: shamanic path to experiencing this awakening through medicine. Like we
• 2:50:59
  Speaker 2: get to experience with, ibogaine or iboga or ayahuasca where
• 2:51:02
  Speaker 2: you get this you get this glimpse of the divine
• 2:51:07
  Speaker 2: and feeling connected to something greater than yourself that's so
• 2:51:10
  Speaker 2: deep and pure and true and that's always there and
• 2:51:14
  Speaker 2: by meditating you can get to that same exact place
• 2:51:18
  Speaker 2: it's just a different route a different path up that
• 2:51:20
  Speaker 2: mountain and you can get to that path through the
• 2:51:23
  Speaker 2: bible you can there's so many different paths to bring
• 2:51:25
  Speaker 2: you to connection with god but um Dude, it is
• 2:51:30
  Speaker 2: absolutely incredible to be able to just sit without any
• 2:51:34
  Speaker 2: medicine and get to that place and check in with
• 2:51:36
  Speaker 2: it daily if you want.
• 2:51:37
  Speaker 1: Do you see other people? What would be the difference
• 2:51:42
  Speaker 1: to go into this retreat versus just going out in
• 2:51:45
  Speaker 1: the woods for a week?
• 2:51:46
  Speaker 2: I mean, you certainly could do it in the woods
• 2:51:48
  Speaker 2: for a week. It's kind of nice to see how
• 2:51:50
  Speaker 2: they do it.
• 2:51:51
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 2:51:51
  Speaker 2: And it's also kind of nice sometimes to be in
• 2:51:54
  Speaker 2: community while you're meditating. You can feel the energy of
• 2:51:58
  Speaker 2: the others in that room. but you absolutely could just
• 2:52:01
  Speaker 2: go out into the woods and bring a tent and
• 2:52:04
  Speaker 2: live out in the woods and do it yourself. It's
• 2:52:10
  Speaker 2: a really healthy experience, man. We have a society that
• 2:52:13
  Speaker 2: is so fast and we're so driven to get the
• 2:52:17
  Speaker 2: next thing, to get the next accomplishment, to make this
• 2:52:20
  Speaker 2: much money. And it's like, we're always just reaching and
• 2:52:22
  Speaker 2: grasping and going and And to even feel that we
• 2:52:25
  Speaker 2: have a sense of worth, we feel we have to
• 2:52:27
  Speaker 2: do so much to prove that we're worthy. At least
• 2:52:29
  Speaker 2: I know I did for so much of my life,
• 2:52:31
  Speaker 2: feel I had to prove that I deserved. But in
• 2:52:34
  Speaker 2: that stillness, you get to feel that you've always been
• 2:52:37
  Speaker 2: exactly where you need to be, that you're already good enough,
• 2:52:41
  Speaker 2: that you are love and light, and that you don't
• 2:52:45
  Speaker 2: have to strive anymore. You don't have to be grasping.
• 2:52:49
  Speaker 2: And it's so healthy to just sit in that stillness, man.
• 2:52:52
  Speaker 2: it's something that is so undervalued in our civilization. But
• 2:52:57
  Speaker 2: when you can learn to calm the body, to settle
• 2:53:00
  Speaker 2: the nervous system, to allow the mind to settle, so
• 2:53:02
  Speaker 2: there's not just that constant chatter or the ego, there
• 2:53:05
  Speaker 2: is just so much peace. And you hear people talk
• 2:53:11
  Speaker 2: about enlightenment as it's like this destination that you have
• 2:53:14
  Speaker 2: to go, this mountain that you have to climb, that's
• 2:53:16
  Speaker 2: this impossible journey to get there. when really the secret
• 2:53:20
  Speaker 2: is that's always been inside of us. That is like
• 2:53:23
  Speaker 2: our baseline state, is that peace and love. And you
• 2:53:27
  Speaker 2: get a glimpse of it through psychedelics, but you don't
• 2:53:30
  Speaker 2: even need the psychedelics once you've refined these techniques with meditation.
• 2:53:35
  Speaker 2: And it helped me get there because I don't think
• 2:53:37
  Speaker 2: I would have even started meditating until I had my
• 2:53:40
  Speaker 2: eyes open and the neuroplasticity. So I think they can
• 2:53:42
  Speaker 2: really work very well in conjunction, which is what the
• 2:53:45
  Speaker 2: Wisdom Dojo does. It takes people coming off of, a
• 2:53:49
  Speaker 2: retreat with that solutions or the mission within or heroic
• 2:53:53
  Speaker 2: hearts projects. And then it helps them integrate and learn
• 2:53:56
  Speaker 2: these techniques, which sounds like you, you did yourself. Um,
• 2:54:00
  Speaker 2: and man, like, man, it's the ultimate technology for finding
• 2:54:04
  Speaker 2: peace and love within oneself.
• 2:54:06
  Speaker 1: I have not meditated in years.
• 2:54:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:54:09
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 2:54:10
  Speaker 2: It's easy to fall away from. I'm guilty of it too, man.
• 2:54:13
  Speaker 2: I'll have times in my life where I stop and then, um,
• 2:54:16
  Speaker 2: like life starts turning into a shit show again. And
• 2:54:18
  Speaker 2: if I can reset and get back into it, it's like,
• 2:54:22
  Speaker 2: it's just like living the day-to-day moments from a state
• 2:54:24
  Speaker 2: of peace. And it completely transforms everything that happens around me.
• 2:54:30
  Speaker 2: All my interactions with people, all the things that would
• 2:54:33
  Speaker 2: have been an argument are stressful or turn into just
• 2:54:36
  Speaker 2: so much more peaceful when you can bring that presence
• 2:54:39
  Speaker 2: into any situation. And I'm no pro. I still fuck
• 2:54:43
  Speaker 2: it up. I still have bad days. I still sometimes
• 2:54:45
  Speaker 2: want to murder people when I'm driving in my car,
• 2:54:47
  Speaker 2: you know, but, but the more I can do that,
• 2:54:50
  Speaker 2: you know, it really, it really helps a lot. It's
• 2:54:56
  Speaker 2: really beautiful.
• 2:54:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, man. Well, we're wrapping up the interview here. So
• 2:55:01
  Speaker 1: I got one question left for you.
• 2:55:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, fire away.
• 2:55:05
  Speaker 1: If your wife were sitting here right now, what would
• 2:55:07
  Speaker 1: you say to her?
• 2:55:09
  Speaker 2: And I'd tell her how much I love her, that
• 2:55:12
  Speaker 2: she's this angel that saved me from hell. And now
• 2:55:16
  Speaker 2: that we've been through that hell, we get to thrive together.
• 2:55:20
  Speaker 2: We have the two most beautiful little children.
• 2:55:23
  Speaker 1: We have everything.
• 2:55:25
  Speaker 2: And now it's her turn to get to enjoy what
• 2:55:27
  Speaker 2: she earned by pulling me through that darkness. And I would, dude,
• 2:55:33
  Speaker 2: just hold her, man. I love her so much.
• 2:55:37
  Speaker 1: Good for you, man. Okay, again, it was an honor, brother. Likewise.
• 2:55:42
  Speaker 1: It was an honor to interview you.
• 2:55:43
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me on this and
• 2:55:45
  Speaker 2: letting me share the story with the world, Sean. It's
• 2:55:48
  Speaker 2: incredible what you built and shining a lot of light
• 2:55:52
  Speaker 2: on some dark fucking corners of the world, man, but
• 2:55:54
  Speaker 2: it needs to come out. The only way to heal
• 2:55:57
  Speaker 2: is to acknowledge that the wound is festering, man, and
• 2:56:00
  Speaker 2: to clean it out. And yeah, it's a wild time
• 2:56:03
  Speaker 2: to be alive, but I'm so glad the truth is
• 2:56:06
  Speaker 2: coming out, man.
• 2:56:07
  Speaker 1: Me too. And I'm Just huge props to what you're doing,
• 2:56:11
  Speaker 1: especially the stuff with Sharp. Those guys are fucking awesome.
• 2:56:15
  Speaker 1: So it's cool to know that you're a part of that.
• 2:56:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I wish I had access to that coaching when
• 2:56:20
  Speaker 2: I was having my struggles, man. Because had they coached
• 2:56:23
  Speaker 2: me in the direction of holistic healing right off the bat,
• 2:56:25
  Speaker 2: I'd still be flying fighter jets. Man, the amount of
• 2:56:29
  Speaker 2: money that the military is probably losing by losing the
• 2:56:33
  Speaker 2: experience and all these trained people as they burn out
• 2:56:36
  Speaker 2: at such rapid rates in the CO communities and the
• 2:56:38
  Speaker 2: fighter communities. if they would give guys access to that
• 2:56:42
  Speaker 2: coaching and it could keep people so healthy and so
• 2:56:45
  Speaker 2: strong for so much longer, man.
• 2:56:49
  Speaker 1: Maybe one day.
• 2:56:51
  Speaker 2: Maybe.
• 2:56:51
  Speaker 1: They got to give a shit first though. Yeah. Yeah.
• 2:56:55
  Speaker 2: The Navy, I don't think even wants to acknowledge that
• 2:56:57
  Speaker 2: TBI is a thing.
• 2:56:58
  Speaker 1: They don't want to acknowledge it.
• 2:56:58
  Speaker 2: Just opens a can of worms.
• 2:57:00
  Speaker 1: And there's a problem. Mm-hmm. But it talks for another day.
• 2:57:06
  Speaker 1: All right, brother.
• 2:57:07
  Speaker 2: Thank you, Sean.
• 2:57:07
  Speaker 1: That's the one. No matter where you're watching The Sean
• 2:57:24
  Speaker 1: Ryan Show from, if you get anything out of this
• 2:57:27
  Speaker 1: at all, anything, please like, comment, and subscribe. And most importantly,
• 2:57:35
  Speaker 1: share this everywhere you possibly can. And if you're feeling
• 2:57:40
  Speaker 1: extra generous, head to Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave
• 2:57:44
  Speaker 1: us a review.