Latest / Broken Brains with Bruce Parkman / Matthew “Whiz” Buckley on Fighter Pilots, PTSD, Brain Trauma and Psychedelic Healing | Broken Brains Ep. 104

Transcript

Matthew “Whiz” Buckley on Fighter Pilots, PTSD, Brain Trauma and Psychedelic Healing | Broken Brains Ep. 104 · Broken Brains with Bruce Parkman

0:08
SPEAKER_01: Hey folks, welcome to another edition of Broken Brains with your host, Bruce Parkman, sponsored by the Mack Parkman Foundation.
0:15
SPEAKER_01: And on this podcast, we look at the issue of repetitive brain trauma in the form of repetitive head impacts from contact sports and repetitive blast exposure for our military veterans and for uh pilots and people banging around those uh little tiny boats as well.
0:31
SPEAKER_01: These two issues right now are the largest preventable cause of mental illness in this country.
0:36
SPEAKER_01: Yet both these issues, RHI and RBE, are poorly understood by our medical, nursing, psychiatrical, and suicide prevention communities.
0:45
SPEAKER_01: So we reach out to people that have experienced the impacts of these issues science, scientists, researchers, authors, journalists, moms and dads like me, whose kids are no longer here, to bring you the latest and updated information for you to make an informed decision because you are the only thing that can help, you're the only person that can help yourself and protect those valuable children there today.
1:08
SPEAKER_01: Today, we have another amazing guest on this show, Matthew Wiz Buckley.
1:13
SPEAKER_01: And if you haven't seen Tom Cruise, this guy's got it.
1:16
SPEAKER_01: Tom Cruise learned from this dude, man, here right now, man.
1:18
SPEAKER_01: He's the founder and president of the No Fallen Heroes Foundation.
1:22
SPEAKER_01: His call sign, Wiz, is a former decorated Navy fighter pilot and it's CEO for Top Gun Options LLC and Strike Fighter Financial LLC in Boca Ratan.
1:32
SPEAKER_01: Wiz, I'm raising money right now for my company.
1:34
SPEAKER_01: We need to talk.
1:35
SPEAKER_01: From 1991 to 2006, Wiz was a highly decorated naval aviator with the United States Navy serving at multiple duty stations worldwide.
1:43
SPEAKER_01: He was an FA-18 Hornet instructor and adversary pilot and flew combat store sorties over Iraq and was awarded two strike and flight air medals.
1:52
SPEAKER_01: He graduated from the Navy Fighter Weapons School Top Gun Adversary course and has combined his unprecedented experiences in the militaries and corporate America to write three books from Sea Level to Sea Level, A Fighter Pilot's Journey from the Front Lines to the Front Office, and COVID Crash from Panic the Prophet, and his book Strength and Gratitude as an international bestseller.
2:13
SPEAKER_01: He's on the advisory board for Healing Reality Trust and hosts the Max Afferburner Podcast, a long-form podcast covering a wide range of topics from psychedelics to veteran issues to politics and markets.
2:25
SPEAKER_01: We'll be addressing those two right here for quite a while.
2:28
SPEAKER_01: And the podcast is ranked in the top 2.5% of 3.3 million in the world, which is, man, that's a feat we hope to achieve here.
2:36
SPEAKER_01: And congratulations on your success.
2:38
SPEAKER_01: Wis, thank you so much for taking the time out to join us on the Broken Brains podcast today, sir.
2:43
SPEAKER_00: Bruce, uh, I'm gonna bring your average down, if anything.
2:46
SPEAKER_00: So don't uh so be careful.
2:48
SPEAKER_01: Hey, I'm an NCO, man.
2:50
SPEAKER_01: Well, I was educated in the Boston public school system, so we know how that's gonna happen, man.
2:55
SPEAKER_00: So you guys ran the military, so thank you.
2:57
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for running the military so us officers didn't screw it up too bad.
3:01
SPEAKER_01: Uh no, I appreciate it, sir.
3:02
SPEAKER_01: You know, it's uh I can't even imagine what it's like on your side uh of the military, working on those aircraft carriers and just uh all those days at sea and uh just being, you know, just just being alone.
3:15
SPEAKER_01: You know, and there's a lot of research coming out talking about fighter pilots and the impacts of landing those jets on those couriers and takeoffs and how that might be the equivalent of repetitive blast exposure on the brains of fighter, uh, fighter pilots.
3:31
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you call them fighter jocks or whatever.
3:33
SPEAKER_01: I've I've heard that term thrown around, but I am not tossing around without your approval here.
3:37
SPEAKER_01: So tell us about that uh before we even dive into it, because it just popped in my brain.
3:41
SPEAKER_01: And if I don't if I don't talk about it, then I lose it.
3:43
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, no, it's a great place to start, Bruce.
3:46
SPEAKER_00: We actually were featured in the New York Times uh Sunday edition a couple months ago, it was front page about uh repetitive injuries to fighter pilots.
3:55
SPEAKER_00: Um, Bruce, if you went in your driveway and sat in your car and a crane took you up to the second story and dropped you, that's the equivalent force of landing aboard an aircraft carrier every time.
4:06
SPEAKER_00: That force is never less, or else you wouldn't land.
4:10
SPEAKER_00: You you'd you'd miss.
4:11
SPEAKER_00: There has to be about an eight, nine hundred foot per minute rate of descent.
4:15
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's even greater.
4:16
SPEAKER_00: I remember uh trying to get aboard the boat in between Tasmania and Australia in the Tasman Sea.
4:24
SPEAKER_00: There was water coming over the bow of the aircraft carrier, man.
4:27
SPEAKER_00: And I remember slamming into the deck, and I thought I'd literally broke my back.
4:32
SPEAKER_00: It was it was brutal.
4:34
SPEAKER_00: So not only the the landings aboard a ship are pretty brutal, but the takeoffs.
4:39
SPEAKER_00: You go from me sitting in this chair from zero to about 150 to 200 miles an hour in a second, second and a half.
4:48
SPEAKER_00: So you know, we're we're moving the brains all over the place.
4:53
SPEAKER_00: And then not only that, we're pulling G's.
4:56
SPEAKER_00: I remember, you know, a young being a young 27-year-old kid from South Jersey flying off the kitty hawk and doing a dogfight, just you know, catapult shot, went up, pulled some G's, slammed aboard the carrier.
5:10
SPEAKER_00: I'm sweating.
5:11
SPEAKER_00: I remember walking in the ready room, and you know, every squadron has a flight surgeon.
5:15
SPEAKER_00: And I remember my flight surgeon looking at me and shaking his head, and he's like, Man, you guys, you just don't want to know what all of this does to your bodies.
5:24
SPEAKER_00: And you know, 27-year-old kid, I'm like, I don't give a shit.
5:27
SPEAKER_00: Well, guess what?
5:29
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, it it does do a lot to our bodies, but unfortunately, for decades, aviators haven't been able to speak out.
5:37
SPEAKER_00: Because if you went to that same flight surgeon and said, hey, doc, you know, something is a little wrong with me, okay, whiz, you're not flying anymore until we figure that out.
5:46
SPEAKER_00: So you actually, you know, as an aviator, you have to hide anything that's wrong with you, either to your military flight surgeon or your FAA doctor.
5:55
SPEAKER_00: Because if you are honest, you're done flying.
5:58
SPEAKER_00: So it's it's a it's a perverse system that we have.
6:01
SPEAKER_01: So the stigma that we have in special operations and in law enforcement against speaking up again for you know, if you're feeling down or you know, you're mentally ill, it's the same.
6:12
SPEAKER_01: It's still pervasive in the fighter flight, the fighters uh community as well.
6:16
SPEAKER_00: Oh god, yeah.
6:17
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
6:17
SPEAKER_00: And it's so stupid because the flight surgeon would, of course, get in front of the ready room like, hey, you know, if anything's, you know, you got a headache or anything, you can always come talk to me.
6:25
SPEAKER_00: And we'd all laugh because we're like, dude, you're the last guy we're gonna come and talk to.
6:31
SPEAKER_00: Um, which is which is, you know, it's it's sad technically because uh and of course, if you did, let's say you're you know you're feeling a little depressed and you went and talked to the flight surgeon, like, hey doc, I'm feeling a little depressed.
6:43
SPEAKER_00: What's he gonna do?
6:44
SPEAKER_00: He's gonna remove you from flight status, which is probably one of the only things keeping you happy right now, right?
6:50
SPEAKER_00: So now you're gonna be exactly even more depressed that you know he or she's taking you off what you're doing that's actually making you happy.
6:58
SPEAKER_00: So we gotta we gotta fix a a lot of stuff uh that's going on.
7:02
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, well, yeah, let's talk about those fixing in a second.
7:04
SPEAKER_01: Like I was talking to one of my Navy SEAL buddies, and you know, and and I can remember back in those days, you crack off some charges and you just like you're just eating the blast, like, yeah, you know.
7:13
SPEAKER_01: And he was telling me one day he was the range safety officer, and you know, and he's standing right next to these guys shooting these Carl Gustafs off.
7:20
SPEAKER_01: So he's eating the equivalent of every one.
7:22
SPEAKER_01: He must have there must have been like 45 shots.
7:24
SPEAKER_01: He's like, you know, he couldn't feel his fingers anymore.
7:27
SPEAKER_01: And he couldn't wait to get back the next day.
7:28
SPEAKER_01: And and I mean, so we but that's because we're kind of ignorant on this stuff.
7:32
SPEAKER_01: And and we think that, you know, as men, right, and women nowadays, that this is really cool to be taking this punishment, uh, you know.
7:42
SPEAKER_00: Bruce, the uh I I I forgot to mention something.
7:44
SPEAKER_00: So in addition to everything landing aboard the boat and being a pilot, I was what's called an LSO, a landing signal officer.
7:51
SPEAKER_00: So when I wasn't flying, I went on the back of the boat with a set of little foamies, and I would help my fellow aviators land aboard the boat.
8:00
SPEAKER_00: So if you've ever seen, you know, the movie Maverick or Top Gun, you see all the you know 18, 19-year-old kids run around on the flight deck, they have the Mickey Mouse hearing protection on, right?
8:09
SPEAKER_00: So not only do they have the Mickey Mouse ears on, but they have the foamies.
8:12
SPEAKER_00: And even they suffer hearing losses.
8:15
SPEAKER_00: But as an LSO on the back of the boat, we only wore the foamies because I had to be able to hear the engines.
8:23
SPEAKER_00: I had to be able to hear if if the pilot was taking off a little power or adding some power.
8:29
SPEAKER_00: So here I am standing on the back of the boat as an F-14 Tomcat comes by 20 feet away from me in full afterburner.
8:37
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, you get out and you tell the the VA like, hey, I have horrific tinnitus.
8:43
SPEAKER_00: I have horrible hearing loss.
8:45
SPEAKER_00: Uh it's not service related.
8:47
SPEAKER_00: What?
8:48
SPEAKER_00: What?
8:48
SPEAKER_00: Really?
8:49
SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah.
8:50
SPEAKER_00: It's so it's infuriating to me, the VA, right?
8:54
SPEAKER_00: So one day I went from being an F-18 fighter pilot with a top secret SCI clearance to literally the next day being a liar.
9:03
SPEAKER_00: Right?
9:03
SPEAKER_00: How can you go from having the absolute highest trust that our nation can award you to the next day you're full of shit, we don't believe you in anything, prove it.
9:12
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, whoa.
9:14
SPEAKER_00: Yeah I thought you guys trusted me.
9:16
SPEAKER_00: Nope.
9:17
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
9:17
SPEAKER_00: It's a court case now.
9:18
SPEAKER_00: You got to prove everything that's wrong with you.
9:20
SPEAKER_00: How about you start with, we'll believe everything, and if we find out you're lying, you're going to jail.
9:25
SPEAKER_00: I would have agreed to all of that.
9:27
SPEAKER_00: It's such a it's the system's inverted.
9:29
SPEAKER_00: It's we don't believe you in anything, you got to prove everything.
9:32
SPEAKER_00: No wonder these young kids go into the parking lot and put a bullet in their head.
9:36
SPEAKER_00: It's like you don't believe me?
9:38
SPEAKER_00: You used to believe me, and you had me do a bunch of crazy shit, but now I'm a liar.
9:43
SPEAKER_00: Okay, great.
9:43
SPEAKER_00: Thanks.
9:44
SPEAKER_00: It's like Johnny Ram was like, I used to drive a fucking tank, Colonel.
9:48
SPEAKER_01: You know, that's exactly right, man.
9:51
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
9:51
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, and and it is right.
9:53
SPEAKER_01: You are you get called a liar, and that's why the education is so important because I had to go educate the VA on RBE.
10:01
SPEAKER_01: I had to come in, I brought my you know, MOS, all my years of being a Green Beret, being shot in the face, you know, hey, I was in combat, whatever, right?
10:08
SPEAKER_01: And then all they wanted to say is said, Do you got any scars?
10:11
SPEAKER_01: And I said, Yeah, come look at my eyebrows because I played all army rugby for eight years.
10:15
SPEAKER_01: And uh, and and they and he's like, I got broken orbital bones, you know.
10:19
SPEAKER_01: And they're like, wow, you are they wanted to see scars.
10:22
SPEAKER_01: So I was a liar until I could prove that I actually had trauma because it's all inside our head.
10:28
SPEAKER_01: You're right.
10:28
SPEAKER_01: We need to trust our veterans more.
10:30
SPEAKER_01: They're not there.
10:31
SPEAKER_01: If they've got a if they've got a demonstrated history like you, sir, right?
10:35
SPEAKER_01: I mean, how many times did you launch off those carriers?
10:38
SPEAKER_01: I mean, do you count them?
10:39
SPEAKER_01: Hold on.
10:40
SPEAKER_00: 357.
10:42
SPEAKER_00: I almost I should know the number to the exact landing because you probably remember almost all of them.
10:47
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
10:48
SPEAKER_00: Hundreds of times.
10:49
SPEAKER_00: All right.
10:49
SPEAKER_01: So you count those like we count parachute jumps, right?
10:52
SPEAKER_01: So yeah, yeah.
10:53
SPEAKER_01: So you walk in there and you got Especially the night ones.
10:59
SPEAKER_01: Jesus.
10:59
SPEAKER_01: You know, I'm gonna tell you one thing.
11:00
SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm a I'm a I'm a small boat Coast Guard captain.
11:04
SPEAKER_01: How big does a wave have to be to go over the bow of an aircraft carrier, bro?
11:09
SPEAKER_00: I mean I think they said they were 40 or 50 foot waves in the Tasman Sea.
11:14
SPEAKER_01: And they let you fly.
11:15
SPEAKER_00: Well, here's well, here was I mean, combat, you know, you don't have a choice, but you know.
11:19
SPEAKER_00: And you know what?
11:20
SPEAKER_00: It was it was a beautiful day.
11:22
SPEAKER_00: It was sunny, it wouldn't look like this, right?
11:25
SPEAKER_00: And I remember waking up that morning on the boat, and I think our TV had fallen in our state room and smash-I mean, walking to the ready room to brief, I'm saying to myself, I'm like, there's no way we're gonna go flying.
11:38
SPEAKER_00: Sat in the brief.
11:39
SPEAKER_00: Things are falling off the ready room walls.
11:41
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, there's no way we're gonna go flying.
11:44
SPEAKER_00: The reason, so you know, we we left the Persian Gulf and they pulled the rods in the nuke to get us down to Perth as quick as possible.
11:51
SPEAKER_00: So the jets hadn't flown for like a week or two.
11:53
SPEAKER_00: Oh and then we went from Perth over to Hobart, so the jets didn't fly.
11:58
SPEAKER_00: So this day was supposed to be a maintenance day.
12:00
SPEAKER_00: These were all broken aircraft that needed experienced pilots like me to get them up there to check out all the repairs.
12:06
SPEAKER_01: Wait, wait, those are broken aircraft that they needed expert, our best pilots to go up there and just sound a little bit.
12:13
SPEAKER_00: Process that.
12:13
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean when they get guess what?
12:16
SPEAKER_00: When they change out an engine or the flight controls, they gotta how's the only way to test it?
12:22
SPEAKER_00: Get airborne, right?
12:23
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, up in the air, yeah.
12:24
SPEAKER_00: I remember walking to the jet, right?
12:28
SPEAKER_00: I got up on the flight deck, and you just it's literally, you know, Titanic.
12:33
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, oh my god, man, there's no way we're gonna go flying.
12:38
SPEAKER_00: Next minute I am attached to the catapult, and I'm literally, so you run up to full power, you wipe the flight controls out, and everything looks good, and then you salute the catapult officer.
12:50
SPEAKER_00: That lets the catapult officer know whiz is ready to go flying.
12:54
SPEAKER_00: But I remember doing all that and saluting the catapult officer as we went down, and I'm looking at a full Tasman C in my windscreen.
13:06
SPEAKER_00: I remember looking at the catapult officer and I'm shaking my head.
13:08
SPEAKER_00: And the guy gave me a look like, dude, I got it.
13:10
SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna shoot you right now, right?
13:12
SPEAKER_00: And then the bow went up, and all I saw was sky, and he shot me, right?
13:18
SPEAKER_00: Um so I get airborne, I'm like, I gotta land now.
13:22
SPEAKER_00: I didn't care about the maintenance portion of the flight.
13:25
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I gotta land back aboard this thing.
13:28
SPEAKER_00: And bro, I'll I've never seen it in my naval career.
13:31
SPEAKER_00: When I came in to land, first of all, I was like maybe midway through the landing.
13:35
SPEAKER_00: There's about 20 of us, like the first 10, I'm in the middle.
13:39
SPEAKER_00: The first 10, it sounded like a Civil War hospital, man.
13:42
SPEAKER_00: There was screaming and power and wave off.
13:46
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, oh my god, what's happening down there?
13:50
SPEAKER_00: And then I get into the landing pattern, and I've never seen this in my naval career.
13:55
SPEAKER_00: Speaking of Titanic, as the stern went up, you could see the back two screws of the Kitty Hawk.
14:02
SPEAKER_00: No way.
14:03
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
14:04
SPEAKER_00: I think it had four.
14:05
SPEAKER_00: So the back two, you could see the tips of the screws.
14:08
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I've never seen that.
14:11
SPEAKER_00: I think I got waved off on the first pass because I was just out of cycle with the deck, and then the second one, same thing.
14:18
SPEAKER_00: But I when I landed that last one, dude, I put that thing on there, and here's the it's not funny, but here's the funny part.
14:25
SPEAKER_00: Every one of the jets that got airborne fixed the airborne problem that that made it require a maintenance flight, and every one of us, the jet was broken because of hard landings.
14:37
SPEAKER_00: So they had to put all the jets in the hangar bay, put them up on stilts, and have to inspect the landing gear.
14:44
SPEAKER_00: So we fixed one thing and we broke broke them all for landings.
14:47
SPEAKER_00: It was insane.
14:49
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I've seen that aircraft carrier in San Diego Harbor, and that deck has got to be, you know, 100-150 feet off off the off the water.
14:58
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
14:59
SPEAKER_01: So to get those screws out of the water, I mean, dude, that's one of those.
15:04
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if I really want to do those moments.
15:06
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, no, no.
15:07
SPEAKER_00: As an old guy now, I would have thrown my own mother in the cockpit to do it instead.
15:12
SPEAKER_00: But as a young kid, I'm like, dude, I'm I'm at the top of the world, man.
15:15
SPEAKER_00: I'm a maintenance pilot, and this is great.
15:17
SPEAKER_00: But man, that was that was brutal.
15:20
SPEAKER_00: That was a hard landing, and all those jets broke.
15:23
SPEAKER_00: It was yeah, that that was one of those, you know, I remember trying to taxi out, and of course, you're at the five-month point in cruise, and the deck has what's called non-skid on it.
15:34
SPEAKER_00: It's like this, you know, this material that so the it's a non-skid, so you don't skid.
15:39
SPEAKER_00: But at the five-month point in cruise, man, from landings and all sorts of stuff, that stuff's gone.
15:44
SPEAKER_00: So it's like bare steel, and you have oil and hydraulic fluid.
15:49
SPEAKER_00: So when you're taxiing, I remember I've, you know, on that day the boat does this, and I'm I'm sliding towards the edge of the boat.
15:57
SPEAKER_00: And the directors are like, I I had to come up on the power to to like climb to taxi.
16:03
SPEAKER_01: It's not like you can steer those things either, man.
16:05
SPEAKER_01: No, man.
16:06
SPEAKER_00: And I I you know, I've actually turned had the the steering input in to turn that way and just kept going that way because there's no the the tires ain't gripping any of the non-skit.
16:16
SPEAKER_00: It was brutal.
16:17
SPEAKER_00: It was some stupid shit going on, but I'm here to tell about it.
16:21
SPEAKER_01: Dude, that's all that counts, man.
16:23
SPEAKER_01: Tell you the truth.
16:23
SPEAKER_01: So tell me about this New York Times article, because that's kind of you know, that was kind of you know, creating a lot of this whole repetitive head impact, repetitive brain trauma issue is what you know we're kind of calling it now, because it encompasses so many different forms of repetitive head injuries is uh you know, causing some stink.
16:41
SPEAKER_01: I mean, just uh, you know, a little bit, you know, we know about you know the the the mental illness rates, maybe this is suicide rates.
16:47
SPEAKER_01: And I know the military's looked at, you know, the you know, for we know that artillerymen, tankers, EOD, right?
16:54
SPEAKER_01: Mortar, but yeah, our aviators, you know, helicopters, kind of a softer landing there, been in them a whole bunch of times.
17:00
SPEAKER_01: So are you do you see an like what you would say as an elevated you know, uh incidence of mental illness, you know, amongst uh fighter polis that could be related to this?
17:11
SPEAKER_01: Because obviously that article, I think it even pointed at suicides, no?
17:14
SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
17:15
SPEAKER_00: Well, I I'll uh I gotta get my take my hat off to the Hilo dudes and and the Hilo ladies.
17:20
SPEAKER_00: It it ain't flying a fighter jet and pulling G's.
17:22
SPEAKER_00: Man, you've been on Helos.
17:24
SPEAKER_00: That the engine and the motors and the vibration for hours at a time.
17:29
SPEAKER_00: And they might be sitting on the cushion, but that ain't no airline seat.
17:33
SPEAKER_00: And it can't be too cushioned in case you catch a roundup you know through through your ass, type of thing.
17:38
SPEAKER_00: So the Hilo Bubas uh are also having some repetitive stress injury, just from the constant shaking.
17:45
SPEAKER_00: Your body's not designed to constantly vibrate for hours on end.
17:50
SPEAKER_00: So the Hilo folks, uh, we we've helped a lot of Blackhawk and a lot of Hilo Bubas heal too, man, because they they're in it.
17:57
SPEAKER_00: But um to your point about the New York Times article, um, you know, obviously, and of course I you know, I make fun of the Air Force, they're barely on our side, but they don't have the they don't have the landing, you know, aboard of boat issues or catapult shots, but it's also the pulling G.
18:15
SPEAKER_00: I would fight the jet on the edge of consciousness, right?
18:19
SPEAKER_00: When I come into the merge with another Hornet that or any fighter aircraft that I'm dogfighting, man, I I pull to the limit of the aircraft, and the blood is pulling out of your head, man.
18:32
SPEAKER_00: That's how people, it's called G lock, g loss of consciousness.
18:36
SPEAKER_00: So you gotta squeeze your legs and your abs, and then obviously we're wearing what we call a G suit.
18:42
SPEAKER_00: It's like the some metrosexual dude Miami.
18:45
SPEAKER_00: It's like the tightest skinny jeans, you know, and then they inflate and they squeeze your legs to give you about a half a G to maybe a full G of protection.
18:54
SPEAKER_00: So I would actually fight the jet on the edge of consciousness.
18:58
SPEAKER_00: If you've ever passed out before, the the first thing you notice to go is what?
19:02
SPEAKER_00: You start getting tunnel vision.
19:03
SPEAKER_01: It's called school, scuba school crossovers.
19:06
SPEAKER_01: I know exactly what that looks like.
19:08
SPEAKER_00: That's exactly right.
19:09
SPEAKER_00: And it's interesting because as you gray out, you can still hear the radio, you still know you're flying, but your vision is the first thing to go if you're going to pass out.
19:19
SPEAKER_00: It's like your critical bodily functions are like, let's get rid of vision first and try and keep, you know, at least a heartbeat.
19:27
SPEAKER_00: So fighting the jet on the, you know, I pulled a gray and then get an advantage.
19:32
SPEAKER_00: I'd unload a little bit to get the blood in my head so I could see again.
19:36
SPEAKER_00: Where is he?
19:36
SPEAKER_00: Okay, there's the bad guy, and get on the G again.
19:39
SPEAKER_00: So you're you're literally fighting on the edge of consciousness.
19:43
SPEAKER_00: That can't, I'm not didn't go to med school, but that's there's no way on God's green earth that's healthy.
19:49
SPEAKER_00: The human body is not designed to fight on the edge of consciousness repeatedly.
19:54
SPEAKER_00: And once a year, we had you've probably seen it in the movies, you know, once a year we go to a centrifuge training.
20:01
SPEAKER_00: You know, they put you in a capsule and they spin you, man, to do up to nine Gs.
20:06
SPEAKER_00: So if on a good day I weigh 200 pounds, that's 1,800 pounds of force.
20:12
SPEAKER_00: And after that, when I go home, my my brother, you know, Susie, my wife's like, you have old man ass.
20:18
SPEAKER_00: Because and underneath my arms, all the blood vessels, the capillaries would burst.
20:23
SPEAKER_00: We call them G measles.
20:25
SPEAKER_00: So underneath your arms and your legs and your ass, where all the blood got pulled to, all the blood vessels would burst.
20:32
SPEAKER_00: So the New York Times is was like, hey, for all the Top Gun Maverick poster recruiting poster stuff, these fighter pilots actually go, you know, it it ain't all sunshine unicorn and and lollipops.
20:45
SPEAKER_00: They're they're they're they're in it and they're putting it us through it.
20:49
SPEAKER_00: But then it's interesting the New York Times interviewed, you know, our chief medical officer.
20:53
SPEAKER_00: She flew Tomcats and she's the chief medical officer of our foundation after sitting with psychedelics.
20:59
SPEAKER_00: And then also another one of our grant recipients, who was also a Tomcat uh backseater, they didn't interview a pilot.
21:07
SPEAKER_00: Now they could have interviewed, or they did interview me.
21:09
SPEAKER_00: My my uh quote didn't make it in there, and here's why.
21:12
SPEAKER_00: The vast majority of fighter pilots, when you leave the military, where do you go?
21:18
SPEAKER_00: Go to the airlines.
21:19
SPEAKER_00: And guess what?
21:21
SPEAKER_00: When you get your FAA physical, have you ever had PTSD, depression?
21:25
SPEAKER_00: Do you have any head trauma?
21:26
SPEAKER_00: Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.
21:29
SPEAKER_00: Just like you're gonna do that.
21:30
SPEAKER_00: You answer yes to any of those.
21:32
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
21:32
SPEAKER_00: You answer yes to any of those, and you will not be an airline pilot.
21:36
SPEAKER_00: You won't have a career.
21:38
SPEAKER_00: So there there aren't too many pilots running around out there saying, hey, this happened.
21:42
SPEAKER_00: Uh I can, right?
21:44
SPEAKER_00: My my first and last day at work at American Airlines was 9 11.
21:48
SPEAKER_00: So I ended up going to Wall Street instead.
21:50
SPEAKER_00: Um, but years later I got back into flying.
21:54
SPEAKER_00: I bought my own fighter jet for our foundation to help raise money.
21:57
SPEAKER_00: So I can talk about this.
21:58
SPEAKER_00: I don't give a shit if.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: The FAA comes after me because I'm not going to lose my airline career.
22:04
SPEAKER_00: I was not designed to sit in front of pressurized aluminum for eight hours a day.
22:09
SPEAKER_00: I'm, you know, I can't say I'm glad 9-11 happened.
22:12
SPEAKER_00: That sounds weird, but everything happened for a reason.
22:14
SPEAKER_00: Uh I just I'm not designed to be an airline pilot.
22:17
SPEAKER_00: So that New York Times article really turned the lights on in the kitchen to fighter aviation and a lot of the stress involved.
22:24
SPEAKER_00: In six uh 15 years of flying fighters, I lost 16 brothers.
22:30
SPEAKER_00: Also long and in mishaps.
22:33
SPEAKER_00: Uh bad weather, stupidity, mechanical failure, all sorts of issues.
22:39
SPEAKER_00: Not one combat.
22:40
SPEAKER_00: Accidents, accidents, training, actions, combat.
22:42
SPEAKER_00: Hold on.
22:42
SPEAKER_00: We don't call them accidents, right?
22:44
SPEAKER_00: They were mishaps because there's no such thing as an aviation accident.
22:47
SPEAKER_00: None of that is by accidents.
22:49
SPEAKER_00: We we always use the term mishap.
22:51
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
22:51
SPEAKER_01: Um we have we don't have training mishaps in the army.
22:54
SPEAKER_01: We have training accidents.
22:56
SPEAKER_01: Oh, you call them accidents?
22:57
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, we call them training accidents, right?
23:00
SPEAKER_00: But uh in addition to the 16 buddies I lost in in cockpit issues, I lost three F-18 brothers to suicide, including a groomsman in my wedding.
23:10
SPEAKER_00: One of one of my best friends, he was a Marine Hornet pilot.
23:13
SPEAKER_00: Um you obviously can't go back in time and debrief, dude, why'd you kill yourself?
23:19
SPEAKER_00: But you know, a lot of the the three guys that were buddies of mine that aren't here any longer, I it all had to do with with flying, in my opinion.
23:29
SPEAKER_00: The tonight I so I can never, you know, I meditate and stuff like that, but I can never sit in silence in this interview.
23:36
SPEAKER_00: Tonight when I go to bed until my last breath, I have a horrific high-pitched squeal for the rest of my life.
23:43
SPEAKER_00: Um, and it's maddening at sometimes.
23:46
SPEAKER_00: The the medicine work that I've done helps me deal with it.
23:50
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but I could tell if I was not a healed individual individual with the psychedelics I've done, I I might not be here.
23:58
SPEAKER_00: And then debilitating back issues, man.
24:01
SPEAKER_00: Thank God, knock on wood.
24:03
SPEAKER_00: I haven't that hasn't crept up on me yet.
24:05
SPEAKER_00: But I have brothers and sisters who are just hunched over, man.
24:09
SPEAKER_00: Pulling 9 G's for decades, you know, you you lose your height.
24:14
SPEAKER_00: So that can't be healthy either.
24:17
SPEAKER_00: Um, so I'm I'm thankful that we're we're starting to turn the lights on to some of these uh other other veterans' issues.
24:24
SPEAKER_00: Because I'll be honest with you, man.
24:26
SPEAKER_00: You you're you're you're an operator.
24:28
SPEAKER_00: When I went to go heal with Marcus Luttrell and JT Jared Taylor from Black Rifle, I remember going, I'm embarrassed.
24:36
SPEAKER_00: Um I I was up at 30,000 feet, you know, in air conditioning.
24:41
SPEAKER_00: You guys are at three feet.
24:43
SPEAKER_00: Uh my trauma is a joke compared to yours.
24:46
SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, I've learned to not trauma shame or trauma grade as veterans.
24:51
SPEAKER_00: We're awful at this, right?
24:53
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
24:53
SPEAKER_00: If something's hurting you, something's hurting you.
24:57
SPEAKER_00: Trauma is trauma and you deserve to heal.
25:00
SPEAKER_00: Don't compare your trauma to anybody else's, man.
25:03
SPEAKER_00: That's we we do that as vets and we're bad about it.
25:06
SPEAKER_00: So uh I'm glad that the aviation side of the house is getting a little love too.
25:11
SPEAKER_01: And you know, and I think it's unfortunate that right now we're just starting to recognize this is an issue.
25:16
SPEAKER_01: So when I got involved with brain trauma for my son took his life and I learned about RHI, then it started, you know, I started looking at blast exposure.
25:24
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, well, who's picking this one up?
25:26
SPEAKER_01: I mean, who what are we doing?
25:27
SPEAKER_01: And it just kind of appalls me that we have studied TBI.
25:31
SPEAKER_01: We've spent hundreds of millions of dollars studying TBI.
25:34
SPEAKER_01: Well, TBI is not the problem.
25:36
SPEAKER_01: TBI, you know, is an event.
25:37
SPEAKER_01: It's like one hard landing.
25:38
SPEAKER_01: Did you get hurt?
25:39
SPEAKER_01: We can heal you as long as you don't keep hard landings and pull in jeeps, right?
25:43
SPEAKER_01: Correct.
25:43
SPEAKER_01: When that becomes a lifestyle and you've got something like a custom exposure, why the hell, as we, as the you know, we got the VA, we've got the military, we've got researchers, CDC, NIH, you name your foundation that are all researching all the stuff.
25:58
SPEAKER_01: Correct.
25:59
SPEAKER_01: How have we overlooked this issue?
26:01
SPEAKER_01: Why had why now, right?
26:02
SPEAKER_01: And we still got to go back to the hundred, you know, tens of thousands of pilots that have flown and done your job, all the operators, all the tankers, all the artillerymen.
26:10
SPEAKER_01: We have so much tragedy that has occurred as a result of this oversight.
26:14
SPEAKER_01: And for a long time, we just didn't know.
26:16
SPEAKER_01: I got that.
26:17
SPEAKER_01: I don't I don't care.
26:18
SPEAKER_01: We got now, we know.
26:20
SPEAKER_01: We know this is an issue.
26:21
SPEAKER_01: We'll talk about fixing it.
26:23
SPEAKER_01: But why do you think this just you know has there's not been a focus?
26:26
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we fought two wars, you know, we've had thousands of kids.
26:29
SPEAKER_01: We got we got old, you know, 100,000 main kids out there, we got 9,000 dead, and we lose 9,000 more, 8 to 9,000 more a year because of suicide.
26:38
SPEAKER_01: This is part of that.
26:39
SPEAKER_01: So why aren't we more on it?
26:42
SPEAKER_00: How you know, like, you know, just that just uh Bruce, you're not gonna like the answer, you know the answer since since you've been in it.
26:49
SPEAKER_00: It's the Mick, man, the military industrial complex.
26:52
SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, when I saw three, four months ago that Tom Cruise is side on side on to do Top Gun Three.
27:00
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, oh great.
27:01
SPEAKER_00: Does he get out and he has to fight the VA because they're denying all his claims?
27:06
SPEAKER_01: Hey, be careful.
27:07
SPEAKER_01: St.
27:07
SPEAKER_01: Petersburg's where all those guys live up here, man.
27:10
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
27:10
SPEAKER_00: So so Maverick faces his toughest enemy, the VA, you know, part three.
27:17
SPEAKER_00: It's the truth.
27:18
SPEAKER_00: So it is.
27:20
SPEAKER_00: You're not going to, you know, the Pentagon loves the Paramount Studios in Maverick.
27:25
SPEAKER_00: The military industrial complex loves great recruiting videos and stuff like that.
27:30
SPEAKER_00: They ain't gonna show any of this stuff.
27:33
SPEAKER_00: Period.
27:33
SPEAKER_00: They uh, you know, that the military can do an incredible job training you and I to do some awful things to another human being, but when they're done with us, they spit us out and they do a pretty shitty job of turning us back into being a human.
27:48
SPEAKER_00: So um I'd like to believe things are getting better, uh, but they're still paying lip service to it being better.
27:57
SPEAKER_00: There's still no radical changes.
27:59
SPEAKER_00: I would love to believe the you know President Trump is ain't gonna be any more foreign wars or anything like that, which would be awesome.
28:07
SPEAKER_00: Uh last time I checked, the only duty of a military is to protect the homeland, and we the border's been open for four years.
28:14
SPEAKER_00: So finally our military is being used to protect the country.
28:18
SPEAKER_00: Um so I'm I'm I'm getting there with being a little hopeful, but uh I'm I'm just not fully there yet.
28:26
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's uh it's looking back too.
28:28
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you think of all the kids that are no longer here, you know, we we're we're estimating between 130,000, 140,000 suicides since 9-11, right?
28:37
SPEAKER_01: Yep.
28:37
SPEAKER_01: Then we have all the other issues that really are suicides, but in our county you got you know death by alcohol, these uh drug overdoses, correct, all the stuff that's out there.
28:47
SPEAKER_01: And we're looking at a you know, a long line of cars that still need to be addressed.
28:51
SPEAKER_01: I mean, these kids and yourself, sir, did nothing wrong.
28:55
SPEAKER_01: We signed the line, we did our jobs, and now all we want is we're not looking even for you know uh money, right?
29:02
SPEAKER_01: It's all about look, just take care of me and take care of me properly.
29:06
SPEAKER_01: Don't give me drugs that numb me and have black box warnings and give me talk therapy that doesn't work, and that's all you're you know.
29:13
SPEAKER_01: We just had a guest on the podcast.
29:15
SPEAKER_01: She went to the VA for her process, they said, no, drugs and therapy, those are our protocols.
29:19
SPEAKER_01: Back to your military, I call it the pharmaceutical industrial combat complex when it comes to mental illness, because they are all in this box.
29:27
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
29:28
SPEAKER_00: Um I agree.
29:29
SPEAKER_00: I, you know, it's it's it was interesting because I saw yesterday that the the Pentagon has hitting hit the recruiting numbers for the first time in five years, and I wonder why.
29:40
SPEAKER_00: Because of the new commander-in-chief.
29:42
SPEAKER_00: But I gotta tell you, for the past four years, five years or so, um, I didn't know a single, I know hundreds, if not thousands, of veterans.
29:52
SPEAKER_00: I don't know a single vet who wanted their kids to serve.
29:54
SPEAKER_00: I got two boys, man.
29:56
SPEAKER_00: They grew up coming into their dad's fighter squadron in their little flight suit that their mom made them wear, and they that they wanted to uh I steered both of them away from serving.
30:07
SPEAKER_00: Now, my oldest re-boomeranged in and said, Dad, um, nope, I I want to fly fighter jets.
30:12
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I love you, son, you can do whatever you want.
30:14
SPEAKER_00: But I I tried to steer too.
30:16
SPEAKER_00: I my middle boy listened to me, and he's at the University of Colorado in Boulder.
30:20
SPEAKER_00: Um, but the number one source of recruitment for the United States military for the longest time has been you and I, veterans.
30:29
SPEAKER_00: When you lose us, when you break your promises to help us when we're done, we're gonna badmouth the hell out of you to kingdom come.
30:38
SPEAKER_00: Take good care of us, and your recruiting numbers will go through the roof.
30:43
SPEAKER_00: This ain't hard, right?
30:44
SPEAKER_00: This isn't rocket surgery.
30:46
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, absolutely.
30:48
SPEAKER_01: And and you know, a lot of the things that the veterans do is like the kids look at us like we know that most of us came from nothing.
30:54
SPEAKER_01: If it wasn't for the military, I know I personally would not be in the situation that I am.
30:58
SPEAKER_01: Without even with the unfortunate loss of my son, it was the military that allowed me to start companies and my things.
31:05
SPEAKER_01: But that's what gets into our kids.
31:07
SPEAKER_01: Like, man, dad got here, and if I don't want to go to college, you know.
31:10
SPEAKER_01: So I do have a lot of friends whose kids are serving, even under the last administration, and fortunately they weren't placed too much at risk, uh good given what happened.
31:19
SPEAKER_01: So I mean, so talk about the transition.
31:22
SPEAKER_01: You come out of the Navy, kick-ass pirate fighter pilot, you know, top gun guy, and then bam.
31:28
SPEAKER_01: You know, what what happened between retirement and you know the foundation?
31:33
SPEAKER_01: What were the next steps you took in your life?
31:35
SPEAKER_00: Well, that so there's a lot of bams, right?
31:37
SPEAKER_00: Uh to your point, you know, most people that join the military, uh they're they're not Donald Trump's kids.
31:42
SPEAKER_00: They're not, you know, George Soros' kids.
31:45
SPEAKER_00: Rich kids aren't going into the military, right?
31:48
SPEAKER_00: The affluent, if anything, steal their kids away from service above self, right?
31:53
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, I was I was born in South Jersey, South Philadelphia, uh, one of six kids, typical Irish Catholic family.
32:00
SPEAKER_00: And uh I unfortunately I was sexually abused as a child, then I lost a uh my middle sister Monica to a drunk driver when she was 19, which uh was just a it was a hand grenade in in the middle of our family.
32:15
SPEAKER_00: And technically I lost my parents that day too.
32:17
SPEAKER_00: They were just my dad was done.
32:20
SPEAKER_00: Um so I why do I bring this up?
32:22
SPEAKER_00: Because I took that, you know, when you go in the military, you don't take off your childhood trauma.
32:27
SPEAKER_00: If anything, you hide it.
32:28
SPEAKER_00: And then, as we talked about earlier, 15 you know, buddies, 16 buddies in 15 years, and then three suicides.
32:36
SPEAKER_00: So I've been I I and and in aviation, just like the folks on the ground, we're taught to compartmentalize, right?
32:43
SPEAKER_00: If you and I are flying on a mission and you get sh smoked, I can't mourn Bruce right now, man.
32:49
SPEAKER_00: I got a mission to do.
32:50
SPEAKER_00: I gotta, I gotta press, or I'm gonna get killed too.
32:53
SPEAKER_00: I'll mourn him later.
32:54
SPEAKER_00: Well, guess what happens?
32:55
SPEAKER_00: You don't get to mourn you later.
32:56
SPEAKER_00: There's another mission, then there's another loss.
32:58
SPEAKER_00: So all those compartments we're taught to compartmentalize, end up building up, building up, and then, you know, one day, like a jack in the box, all of them spring out on you.
33:09
SPEAKER_00: And it could be, you know, something really bad.
33:12
SPEAKER_00: So I left, you know, I just mentioned briefly lose my you know job in American Airlines on 9-11.
33:18
SPEAKER_00: So I went to Wall Street.
33:20
SPEAKER_00: So I was flying F-18s for the reserves out of Naval Air Station Fort Worth, and I was helping to run a trading firm up in Chicago.
33:29
SPEAKER_00: So when you go from a fighter squadron where you trust the men and women in that squadron with your life, or they're just not in that organization anymore, to Wall Street where I couldn't trust a guy to watch my wallet for five minutes when I went to take a leak.
33:51
SPEAKER_00: So talk about a culture shift, right?
33:54
SPEAKER_00: You know, the the some of these people would push their own mother in front of a bus for a buck.
33:58
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I it was disgusting.
34:00
SPEAKER_00: It is, but so that led to some booze, that led to some drugs, and that led to me just spiraling the drain, man.
34:08
SPEAKER_00: And it was just some very, very dark nights of the soul.
34:12
SPEAKER_00: Um, so in 2020, you know, God takes care of fools, drunks, and sailors, so you know, bases loaded for whiz.
34:20
SPEAKER_00: Um, I had a buddy in the White House.
34:23
SPEAKER_00: He was a military aide, and in this is December of 19.
34:27
SPEAKER_00: He gave me a heads up.
34:28
SPEAKER_00: He's like, bro, Pentagon is going ape shit.
34:32
SPEAKER_00: There's a level four weapons, the only level four weapons facility in the whole country of China is in a city called Wuhan.
34:41
SPEAKER_00: They are digging up the highways.
34:43
SPEAKER_00: They're they're building mobile crematoriums.
34:46
SPEAKER_00: Something got out of a lab and they're going ape shit, and it's it's going to spread around the world.
34:52
SPEAKER_00: So I didn't do insider trading, I did outsider trading.
34:57
SPEAKER_00: I told everybody who would listen.
35:01
SPEAKER_00: I bring that up because that's that's one of the books I wrote was called COVID Crash from Panic to Profit.
35:06
SPEAKER_00: So there was a couple senators who heard the same things I did.
35:09
SPEAKER_00: And what did they do?
35:11
SPEAKER_00: They went out to microphones and said, Everybody relax, remain calm, it's not coming here.
35:16
SPEAKER_00: And then got on their phone and called their broker and told them to get out and told their friends, right?
35:22
SPEAKER_00: And but of course, the government investigated that and said, Well, no, we won't charge them with insider trading.
35:28
SPEAKER_00: Like that's the definition of it.
35:30
SPEAKER_00: But anyway, I did outsider trading.
35:32
SPEAKER_00: Why am I bringing this up?
35:34
SPEAKER_00: Because you know, remember the smart money?
35:37
SPEAKER_00: Like, oh, this is the bottom.
35:38
SPEAKER_00: I'd be a buyer of stocks here.
35:40
SPEAKER_00: Donald Trump, like a week into it, I have a screenshot of the tweet.
35:44
SPEAKER_00: He deleted it.
35:45
SPEAKER_00: Stocks are looking good here.
35:47
SPEAKER_00: I'd be a buyer of stocks.
35:48
SPEAKER_00: The next day, the next day the Dow went down 3,000 points.
35:54
SPEAKER_00: I made 75 grand on a couple puts in like minutes.
35:58
SPEAKER_00: I bring this up because I think we made like two and a half million bucks in like a week of trading.
36:05
SPEAKER_00: And I bring that up because, you know, my old man was like, you know, Matthew, you can't take it with you, right?
36:12
SPEAKER_00: You know, you're not a pharaoh.
36:14
SPEAKER_00: They're not putting this stuff in in your casket, right?
36:17
SPEAKER_00: Um pharaoh.
36:19
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
36:20
SPEAKER_00: So, and you know, and I'm not one to quote scripture too often, clearly, but you know, it's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.
36:30
SPEAKER_00: And that was right around the time that my buddy Swede uh checked out.
36:34
SPEAKER_00: So I looked at my bride and I said, you know what, Susie, let's take this money and start a foundation to try and end veteran suicide.
36:42
SPEAKER_00: Because I, you know, I don't want to lose any more buddies.
36:46
SPEAKER_00: But what how do you, you know, at the time we looked at each other, we're like, how do you keep a veteran from killing themselves?
36:53
SPEAKER_00: I mean, help them pay the rent, buy a suit, write a resume.
36:58
SPEAKER_00: I, you know, we're throwing stuff at the wall.
37:01
SPEAKER_00: And then that's when a buddy of mine reached out to me and he said, Hey, here's a group of Navy SEALs and and specs, you know, special forces guys who go down to Mexico and they do psychedelic-assisted therapy to heal their traumas.
37:16
SPEAKER_00: And there's a really cool group going in a couple weeks.
37:19
SPEAKER_00: Would you want to go?
37:21
SPEAKER_00: And I said, Man, go to Mexico and do drugs with Navy SEALs.
37:26
SPEAKER_00: Sign me up.
37:27
SPEAKER_00: Sign me up, man.
37:28
SPEAKER_00: Let's fucking go.
37:30
SPEAKER_00: Um, I had no idea what I was in for or what was uh about to unfold, but thank God that it did.
37:42
SPEAKER_00: And I love you talking about the so here was my group, man.
37:46
SPEAKER_00: Marcus Luttrell, obviously, the lone survivor, one of his team guys, his name's JJ, Jared Taylor, he was a JTAC, you know, uh runs Black Rifle Coffee now.
37:57
SPEAKER_00: And then the last guy in our group, his name's Robert Gallery, all American from Iowa, just got into the uh College Football Hall of Fame uh last year, and then played for the uh Raiders for six, seven years.
38:14
SPEAKER_00: And this guy, and I know you they they only know if you had CTE after you die, and they open your head up.
38:21
SPEAKER_00: This guy.
38:22
SPEAKER_00: We so y'all meet you you meet in San Diego and then you kind of convoy down to the clinic.
38:28
SPEAKER_00: Why?
38:29
SPEAKER_00: Because if you do what I'm about to tell you in San Diego, you're a criminal, you're a felon.
38:34
SPEAKER_00: If you do it an hour south, it'll save and change your life.
38:38
SPEAKER_00: Now let that sink in.
38:39
SPEAKER_00: But I I was in the car with Robert.
38:42
SPEAKER_00: I remember sitting in the backseat next to this six foot five 350-pound dead human being.
38:51
SPEAKER_00: He looked like a gray iceberg.
38:54
SPEAKER_00: Let me fast forward.
38:56
SPEAKER_00: A year later, I'm at a fundraiser in in San Diego, and this massive thing bumps into me.
39:03
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, oh my god, I'm gonna get my ass kicked.
39:05
SPEAKER_00: What's going on?
39:06
SPEAKER_00: It was Robert.
39:07
SPEAKER_00: He he's a different human being.
39:10
SPEAKER_00: A completely different human being.
39:13
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and he's actually starting or has started his own foundation to get ibogain and psychedelic assisted therapy to his NFL brothers and uh brothers and and other athletes in other sports.
39:25
SPEAKER_00: Um because he he was in a bad place.
39:28
SPEAKER_00: And then obviously the SEAL guys I was were with had the concussion and the uh and the and the TBI.
39:36
SPEAKER_00: Um but man, it was without a doubt uh the most profound and transformational experience of my 52 years at the time.
39:47
SPEAKER_00: Uh it was not fun, it was not recreational.
39:52
SPEAKER_00: Uh it was, you know, I've landed in the middle of the Pacific at night on a boat low on fuel in bad weather.
40:00
SPEAKER_00: That was enjoyable.
40:02
SPEAKER_00: That was a cake walk compared to this experience.
40:06
SPEAKER_00: 12 to 14 hours uh in it.
40:10
SPEAKER_00: But man, it literally it it saved and changed my life.
40:14
SPEAKER_00: I got to experience my sister again.
40:16
SPEAKER_00: I reconnected with I lost my faith for decades.
40:19
SPEAKER_00: What type of God has lets me be molested, kills my sister, kills my buddies.
40:25
SPEAKER_00: There ain't no God.
40:26
unknown: Woo-hoo.
40:27
SPEAKER_01: Man, I was wrong.
40:30
SPEAKER_01: Give him a chance to talk to you, man.
40:32
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
40:33
SPEAKER_00: I was on my knees in tears, and and he lifted me up and said, Matthew, get up.
40:38
SPEAKER_00: I I don't make imperfect things.
40:39
SPEAKER_00: Let me take all this Trump.
40:41
SPEAKER_00: Let me take all the shame and regret and drugs and alcohol.
40:45
SPEAKER_00: That's gone.
40:46
SPEAKER_00: And literally it was with a wave of a hand.
40:49
SPEAKER_00: And he said, Let me show you the good you can do.
40:52
SPEAKER_00: And I I've just, I've never looked back.
40:55
SPEAKER_00: We got home.
40:56
SPEAKER_00: I got home and I said, Susie, this is how we're gonna end veteran suicide.
41:01
SPEAKER_00: So the the No Fallen Heroes Foundation is we give grants to veterans, first responders, and their families to sit with the medicine.
41:09
SPEAKER_00: So why first responders?
41:10
SPEAKER_00: Well, as you know, a lot of guys and gals leave the military, and when they take off that uniform, they don't take off the trauma, and they go home and they throw on a police officer, a firefighter, they become a first responder.
41:23
SPEAKER_00: And they add to their trauma, right?
41:25
SPEAKER_00: I had a marine buddy, 20-year marine, he's like, dude, my my marine trauma is a joke compared to fire rescue.
41:32
SPEAKER_00: He was a fire rescue guy in Miami.
41:34
SPEAKER_00: He's like, the things that people do to a child, and he's like, Man, so we help first responders as well.
41:43
SPEAKER_00: And then family members, gold star wives, spouses, moms and dads.
41:49
SPEAKER_00: Uh they serve too, and they deserve to heal.
41:52
SPEAKER_00: My wife uh is a saint.
41:55
SPEAKER_00: She had to put up with my shit.
41:57
SPEAKER_00: I I I don't know how you know.
41:59
SPEAKER_00: Um clearly she truly loves me because I I don't know how she dealt with me for this long.
42:03
SPEAKER_00: But she, after I got home, you know, and she's like, whoa.
42:08
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, get up, let's go.
42:10
SPEAKER_00: Life is great, everything's great.
42:12
SPEAKER_00: And she's like, Well, yay for you.
42:16
SPEAKER_00: So a couple months later, she went with some veteran wives, a a gold star wife and some other team wives, and she came home and we've never been better parents, humans, uh, or just, you know, it it it's been incredible.
42:32
SPEAKER_00: Um knock on wood, I think our number I'm working on my 2024 annual debrief.
42:39
SPEAKER_00: I think we're close to about, let's just round up, a hundred folks, you know, veterans, first responders, and family members that we've helped heal.
42:46
SPEAKER_00: Knock on wood, man.
42:48
SPEAKER_00: Not a single person has come home and said, complete waste of time.
42:52
SPEAKER_00: Or I'm worse.
42:54
SPEAKER_00: Or sucked.
42:56
SPEAKER_00: Every one people have gotten home and had challenges, right?
42:59
SPEAKER_00: Because you're gonna get home with a clean piece of paper.
43:04
SPEAKER_00: You are it's a control alt-delete.
43:06
SPEAKER_00: God literally scrubs your your shit and hands it back to you like now go.
43:13
SPEAKER_00: If you get home and you go back to old habits and and stupid stuff, you're gonna have a challenge.
43:21
SPEAKER_00: But this is I'm not one to use this term too lightly, but I I was born again.
43:25
SPEAKER_00: I literally, this is the second half of my life.
43:29
SPEAKER_00: The first half uh is in the rear view mirror with all its pain and trauma, and now I am a uh a different human being.
43:37
SPEAKER_00: Still have my shitty days, but you know, I'm not walking around sunshine unicorns and lollipops all the time.
43:44
SPEAKER_00: But my my old whiz in a bad day, man, I was in it.
43:48
SPEAKER_00: And if I was in it, everybody else was gonna be in it.
43:51
SPEAKER_00: And everybody else was gonna watch me drink a you know a bottle of vodka tonight and get out of my way.
43:57
SPEAKER_00: Me, now, bad day, I guess.
44:00
SPEAKER_00: Out of me, and I look at me and go, dude, sucks.
44:03
SPEAKER_00: Wake up, wake up.
44:04
SPEAKER_00: Embrace the suck.
44:06
SPEAKER_00: It ain't forever.
44:07
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna pass through it.
44:08
SPEAKER_00: Just you know.
44:10
SPEAKER_00: So it's it's a completely different uh life before the medicine and after the medicine.
44:16
SPEAKER_01: So before we go to that, because uh when I go on your show, I will definitely embrace the suck with you on a similar experience.
44:25
SPEAKER_01: But the um the um, you know, you think of a hundred veterans, and then you think of all the family members, inner circle, outer circle, the network of people that they're gonna impact with their new self.
44:37
SPEAKER_01: A month ago, I was uh this will probably never happen again, but they put 900 Green Berets on a cruise ship.
44:43
SPEAKER_01: And I got Did everybody live?
44:45
SPEAKER_01: Everybody lived, and this boat sailed, it did it, made it back to port, we're all good.
44:49
SPEAKER_00: During I thought you guys would have turned into like pirates or something and taken over the the Red Sea.
44:55
SPEAKER_01: If if we were if I was still drinking, that might have happened, but we were we were good.
44:59
SPEAKER_01: Well, we left it, we let it go.
45:00
SPEAKER_01: But anyways, I I get this guy, he used to work for me, and I did not know um how bad it got for him.
45:06
SPEAKER_01: Is um and he's uh his name's uh Pat Flatley's been on podcasts, very very open about this.
45:12
SPEAKER_01: And he comes up to me, goes, he goes, Pac-Man, that's my nickname.
45:16
SPEAKER_01: Most people don't even know my name.
45:18
SPEAKER_01: He's like, We need some help.
45:19
SPEAKER_01: I said, What's up?
45:20
SPEAKER_01: Because he knows I've I've had some companies, I got an SF captain with a nine mil in his mouth, and I gotta get him to Mexico.
45:26
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, what do you need?
45:27
SPEAKER_01: He says, I need so much.
45:28
SPEAKER_01: I said, All right, put me in touch.
45:29
SPEAKER_01: So he put me in touch with you know the Vets organization who you're probably familiar with.
45:33
SPEAKER_01: And we got this guy down there, and I looked at him, I go, dude, what's up with you?
45:37
SPEAKER_01: He goes, Bro, same story.
45:40
SPEAKER_01: I am back.
45:41
SPEAKER_01: I am back.
45:42
SPEAKER_01: And I want our audience to understand this this psychedelic movement, when we are looking at a you know, a loss of 8,000, 9,000 veterans a year, because the VA still gives them drugs and therapy.
45:55
SPEAKER_01: They will not alter that.
45:56
SPEAKER_01: And we have not only this medicine, we have ayahuasca, we have psilocybin, we have MDMA, we have uh NEO5 DT, Bufo, whatever you want to call it.
46:07
SPEAKER_01: You know, these drugs, you call them drugs because they're not legal.
46:10
SPEAKER_01: I don't care.
46:11
SPEAKER_01: These medicines are saving lives.
46:13
SPEAKER_01: And I'm not saying just saving lives, they are reforming, transforming lives.
46:17
SPEAKER_01: And Wiz's story, I have heard this over and over and over again.
46:22
SPEAKER_01: Yet, like he says, you go to America and do this, um, then then you're uh you're a criminal, but you got to go to Mexico.
46:29
SPEAKER_01: Now, there is a new Iboga church that just started in America with the loophole now.
46:33
SPEAKER_01: And I don't know, um, I guess somebody attending that um to see how that might affect.
46:37
SPEAKER_01: But the transformation of individuals and like Wiz, you're not, you're not, it's not like you're a criminal, right?
46:43
SPEAKER_01: You haven't, you know, molested kids.
46:46
SPEAKER_01: You're not a bad human being.
46:48
SPEAKER_01: You're imperfect like we all are.
46:50
SPEAKER_01: And and it just shows you how much we have to grow.
46:53
SPEAKER_01: That even though we're good people, like you said, you're a good provider, you're a good leader, you're a good pilot, you're a good mofo, right?
47:02
SPEAKER_01: Like that we still, when we get in these medicines, under need to understand, you know, talk to the guys about you know the transformation, if you if you want to discuss it.
47:11
SPEAKER_01: Like, you know, it's um, you know, I I just want them to understand the reach of these medicines and how they take people, even though if you you know had alcohol, sleep, you know, whatever problems you did have, and you come back and your wife's looking at you like, my wife calls me Bruce 2.0, right?
47:25
SPEAKER_01: And it's so so I mean, uh just tell the audience about you know, just the experience, if you go a little bit deeper into it, if you could, just so they understand how profound these medicines are and why they're impacting these vets the way they are.
47:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and you know, uh let me share this with you.
47:41
SPEAKER_00: I I try and go on every retreat that we do, but uh, you know, now we're starting to just send people individually so we don't have to do like our own retreat type of thing.
47:49
SPEAKER_00: I bring that up because if I don't go on a retreat or we're sending people in onesies and twosies, almost every time when I'm not there, I get a text from these people that say, Wiz, I don't want to kill myself anymore.
48:05
SPEAKER_00: You can't put a a dollar amount, you can't, you can't put a anything amount on I I screenshot those.
48:13
SPEAKER_00: I have a folder.
48:14
SPEAKER_00: I have a shitty day folder.
48:16
SPEAKER_00: When I'm having one of those shitty days, I read all those texts and emails that I get from people that says, You saved my life, or I don't want to kill myself anymore.
48:26
SPEAKER_00: So um there, it's that transformational.
48:29
SPEAKER_00: And trust me, uh, if I were sitting here listening to this, uh, I'd I'd be calling bullshit on it.
48:34
SPEAKER_00: But you know, veterans, we're not gonna listen.
48:38
SPEAKER_00: God's pretty smart, obviously.
48:40
SPEAKER_00: God's like veterans ain't gonna listen to some dude wearing a drug rug and mollybedes, right?
48:46
SPEAKER_01: Um you're out of there, bro.
48:48
SPEAKER_00: You know, smelling like weed.
48:50
SPEAKER_00: We're not gonna listen to that.
48:51
SPEAKER_00: We are gonna listen to a Navy fighter pilot veteran, a Navy SEAL, or a spec ops operator, a gold star wife.
48:59
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, the first psychedelic revolution, Timothy O'Leary, hey, let's put it in the water, probably freaked a lot of people out.
49:08
SPEAKER_00: And that that that was the wrong approach, right?
49:10
SPEAKER_00: They were fishing with hand grenades.
49:12
SPEAKER_00: This psychedelic revolution is being led by veterans.
49:17
SPEAKER_00: So if mom and pop walking down the street look up to us for whatever reason, maybe that's when they start listening.
49:24
SPEAKER_00: Like, wait a minute, these guys are, you know, anti-crime, anti-drug, pro-America wrap themselves in a flag and they're doing this stuff.
49:31
SPEAKER_00: Maybe I should listen.
49:33
SPEAKER_00: Maybe I should should sit up straight.
49:35
SPEAKER_00: But um, you know, like I like we talked about a little bit earlier, I was a drinker.
49:39
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you can be a good drinker.
49:41
SPEAKER_00: I wasn't.
49:42
SPEAKER_00: I was a bad drinker.
49:44
SPEAKER_00: And up to eight months, I'll say a year.
49:47
SPEAKER_00: Let's just round up.
49:48
SPEAKER_00: Up to a year after sitting with ibogaine once, if I looked at alcohol, god forbid I smelled it, I would dry heat.
49:56
SPEAKER_00: It made me physically ill.
49:59
SPEAKER_00: So ibogaine is an addiction interrupter.
50:03
SPEAKER_00: Heroin, alcohol, porn, caffeine, you name the addiction, it will break it.
50:10
SPEAKER_00: I didn't say cure it, I said it'll give you a reprieve.
50:15
SPEAKER_00: That's why I say when you get home, you got to put in the work.
50:18
SPEAKER_00: If you do if you fall back into all the shit that was making you sick, you're gonna be in a dogfight now and it's gonna suck.
50:24
SPEAKER_00: But if you come home and you don't do that stuff, I mean there was a study, people can look it up, but 85% of heroin addicts who sat with ibogaine once up to three years, never looked at this stuff again.
50:40
SPEAKER_00: Why up to three years?
50:41
SPEAKER_00: Because they stopped the study.
50:43
SPEAKER_00: They're like, okay, if you do heroin after three years, it wasn't the ibogain.
50:47
SPEAKER_00: You know, you were cured.
50:48
SPEAKER_00: Something that that ain't something else is going on.
50:52
SPEAKER_00: And these people in this study, I mean, as you're probably well aware, one of the worst things about heroin addiction is what?
50:58
SPEAKER_00: The breaking it.
50:59
SPEAKER_00: They the shakes, the vomit, the the it's just the side effects, right?
51:05
SPEAKER_00: These people after Ibogame came downstairs and had breakfast type of thing.
51:09
SPEAKER_00: They're like, wait a minute, I haven't eaten breakfast in a decade, and I'm not shaking and vomiting and needing a fix.
51:16
SPEAKER_00: It destroyed it.
51:18
SPEAKER_00: So it is literally that transformative that a guy like me.
51:22
SPEAKER_00: Now, uh full transparency, guess what I can do now?
51:26
SPEAKER_00: I can have a glass of wine with my steak or a or my pasta, but it's a glass.
51:32
SPEAKER_00: Old whiz, a glass, man, a bottle, probably two, maybe even three.
51:38
SPEAKER_00: So I control it now.
51:40
SPEAKER_00: The old days, man, it controlled me.
51:43
SPEAKER_00: Um, and then like I said, it it just literally going to the airport when I got home from Mexico, or you know, we got into San Diego from Mexico, just the airport.
51:54
SPEAKER_00: I was friendly.
51:55
SPEAKER_00: I said hi to people.
51:57
SPEAKER_00: I the flight was delayed.
51:59
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, yay! I'm like, wait a minute, I'm happy.
52:01
SPEAKER_00: You know, it was it was literally just a a different.
52:05
SPEAKER_00: I remember talking to myself, like, dude, because people were yelling at the gate agent and stuff.
52:10
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I was nice to the gate agent.
52:12
SPEAKER_00: I got upgraded to first class.
52:14
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, oh my God.
52:15
SPEAKER_00: He's like, you were the first, yeah.
52:17
SPEAKER_00: He's like, you're the first, you were the only nice person to me today.
52:21
SPEAKER_00: Do you want to sit in first?
52:22
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, oh my God.
52:23
SPEAKER_00: I probably would have been one of the guys yelling at that poor guy, right?
52:26
SPEAKER_00: So it literally transformed everything in my life.
52:30
SPEAKER_00: Now, if people are sitting here watching this going, is it mad?
52:34
SPEAKER_00: It's not a magic pill, right?
52:35
SPEAKER_00: You as we've talked about, you got to get home and you got to put in the work.
52:39
SPEAKER_00: But I will, you know, one of the questions I get asked the most is, can it be one and done?
52:45
SPEAKER_00: The answer is yeah.
52:46
SPEAKER_00: I know guys and gals that have done the medicine once and are are great and never go back.
52:52
SPEAKER_00: We do, you me and my original medicine brothers, and if if we can't all make it together, we at least do it on our own.
52:59
SPEAKER_00: I do an annual knock the rust off my my you know my vehicle.
53:03
SPEAKER_00: Or, you know, my as an aviator, I'll give you an aviation allergy.
53:07
SPEAKER_00: I get about an annual or a year's worth of ice built up on my wings.
53:12
SPEAKER_00: I need to go de-ice or I'm gonna stall.
53:15
SPEAKER_00: And it's so cool, uh, Pac-Man, because every every year I go for an annual uh knock the rust off, I just learn more and more.
53:25
SPEAKER_00: And it's interesting because the more medicine work I do, the less medicine I actually do.
53:32
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, five years ago, Wiz, if I heard me talk like this, I would have kicked my own ass.
53:36
SPEAKER_00: But my guide reminds me, she's like, you are the medicine.
53:40
SPEAKER_00: Technically, you don't need this stuff, but radical trauma might need radical healing.
53:46
SPEAKER_00: So the more medicine work I do, I actually really don't even need that much, and I'm and I'm in it and healing.
53:53
SPEAKER_00: Let me share this with you.
53:54
SPEAKER_00: The the second time I, about a year later, I sat with the medicine, it was tough.
54:00
SPEAKER_00: The first time was flowing robes, God healing me, and stuff like that.
54:05
SPEAKER_00: The second time was pretty challenging.
54:07
SPEAKER_00: And I will I'm as thankful, if not more, than my first time, and here's why.
54:13
SPEAKER_00: First of all, my guide said, you know, the next day, I'm like, man, that was uh that was a little bit more challenging.
54:18
SPEAKER_00: And she's like, Oh, I probably should have told you.
54:20
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, Told me what?
54:21
SPEAKER_00: She's like, she said, and I've been doing this for decades.
54:26
SPEAKER_00: Anyone I've helped who does the medicine again with the intention of helping people, the medicine shows you everything.
54:35
SPEAKER_00: She's like, the first one, you got your wings.
54:38
SPEAKER_00: The second one, this time you went to Top Gun, didn't you?
54:41
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, that's a great analogy.
54:42
SPEAKER_00: I get this because it was God was still loving and everything like that.
54:47
SPEAKER_00: And this was a really cool part because that year the ice buildup was my ego, meaning this.
54:54
SPEAKER_00: I thought I was failing.
54:56
SPEAKER_00: I was helping vets and first responders and family members going retreats.
55:00
SPEAKER_00: I was going on these retreats, and people weren't healing, right?
55:05
SPEAKER_00: At least I thought that, because this is how I healed.
55:08
SPEAKER_00: And so I remember feeling kind of shitty going into the medicine the second time.
55:13
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, man, I'm a failure.
55:15
SPEAKER_00: Let me go hit the medicine again to see why I'm a failure.
55:20
SPEAKER_00: Man, God came to me, and he was God clearly is always loving and gentle.
55:26
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and he was, but it was kind of like a you know, son, what what are you doing here?
55:30
SPEAKER_00: You you know all of this stuff.
55:33
SPEAKER_00: What what can I help you with?
55:34
SPEAKER_00: I said, God, I'm failing.
55:37
SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to help these people heal, and I'm just I'm letting you down.
55:41
SPEAKER_00: Very loving and very full of light and energy.
55:45
SPEAKER_00: He said, Matthew, you can't heal anybody, son.
55:50
SPEAKER_00: They have to heal themselves with me.
55:55
SPEAKER_00: And that's my job, buddy.
55:57
SPEAKER_00: Keep doing what you're doing, keep walk them to the door, carrying them to the door, drag them to the door.
56:05
SPEAKER_00: They gotta walk through, son.
56:07
SPEAKER_00: And I was healed.
56:09
SPEAKER_00: I felt it it that hundred-pound backpack I carried for 12 months.
56:14
SPEAKER_00: He it just dropped to the ground.
56:15
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, oh my God.
56:17
SPEAKER_00: What it's so funny because after you, you know, when you come out of the medicine, it it's this type of transformational, and then you're like, well, duh, why didn't I know that?
56:25
SPEAKER_00: Right?
56:26
SPEAKER_00: But I I I clearly didn't, right?
56:29
SPEAKER_00: So the medicine can kind of do what we call moto, master of the obvious sometimes.
56:34
SPEAKER_00: But sometimes the obvious is not so obvious because of our ego.
56:38
SPEAKER_00: I'm a fighter pilot, I'm this, I'm that, and I'm helping people heal.
56:41
SPEAKER_00: Dude, you can't help anybody healing.
56:44
SPEAKER_00: You have to do it themselves, which was very transformational.
56:49
SPEAKER_00: So even though I know that now, still working in this space is tough, man.
56:54
SPEAKER_00: I I haven't, I was about to say I don't want to wake up in the morning.
56:58
SPEAKER_00: Of course I do.
56:59
SPEAKER_00: But when I wake up in the morning, man, sometimes I don't even want to look at my phone because every grant request that comes into the No Fallen Heroes, I haven't read one that's full of shit, right?
57:10
SPEAKER_00: I haven't read one that doesn't make me tear up or cry.
57:13
SPEAKER_00: These people are hurting.
57:16
SPEAKER_00: They need help.
57:18
SPEAKER_00: And I just feel so, so futile sometimes, man.
57:22
SPEAKER_00: You know, the the past week watching the bullshit in DC,$1.5 million for trans opera in Serbia.
57:30
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, what the fuck is going on?
57:33
SPEAKER_00: If our foundation had$1.5 million bucks, I could clear half my list, if not the entire list.
57:39
SPEAKER_01: We're getting ready to talk to that because it infuriates me.
57:42
SPEAKER_01: I just wrote the con the legislation for Congress.
57:45
SPEAKER_01: Uh uh Congressman Derek Brand Orden has it right now.
57:48
SPEAKER_01: That's great America.
57:49
SPEAKER_01: He puts together, it puts together a full packet.
57:52
SPEAKER_01: I'm talking to Morgan Luttrell, Marcus's brother, who's the head of the brain caucus.
57:57
SPEAKER_01: I have put together our foundation or me.
57:59
SPEAKER_01: We wrote the entire plan for awareness and education advocacy, diagnosis, and treatment to include billing options and insurance coverage.
58:08
SPEAKER_01: Good.
58:09
SPEAKER_01: And and we're going to get this funding.
58:10
SPEAKER_01: And your foundation is going to be part, because you know, it's going to be, you know, we have to the the the country, the veterans, not me, but the VA needs to get out of its box and they need to start trusting folks like you with a demonstrated history.
58:25
SPEAKER_01: So let me ask you one question.
58:27
SPEAKER_01: Out of all the veterans that you've helped, first response all, what is the rate of people that have been through your experience that said this has positively impacted uh my life?
58:38
SPEAKER_01: Not even completely transformational, but this has helped me get on the path.
58:43
SPEAKER_00: I hate saying this, bro, but I'm going to say 100.
58:47
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but you know, maybe I'll say 99.9 because 100%'s never fully statistically accurate.
58:53
SPEAKER_00: I uh again, nobody has said, dude, I'm worse, this failed, this sucked, what a waste of time.
58:59
SPEAKER_00: Not a single person.
59:01
SPEAKER_00: So when I look at something like, what is it, uh, sketamine or sprobato, 12% effective rate?
59:08
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, okay, 12% versus 100.
59:12
SPEAKER_00: But as you know, man, it's a revolving door between the VA and big pharma.
59:17
SPEAKER_00: You just alluded to it, man.
59:19
SPEAKER_00: If you get an appointment 10 months down the road and you get in there and they say, What's your symptoms?
59:24
SPEAKER_00: These things.
59:24
SPEAKER_00: Here's a script.
59:25
SPEAKER_00: Next, whoa.
59:27
SPEAKER_00: What about what with what's inside?
59:29
SPEAKER_00: Like the what's on the script, dude?
59:31
SPEAKER_01: What does this do to me, man?
59:32
SPEAKER_01: You know, it's exactly right.
59:34
SPEAKER_00: So we helped a uh a SEAL, uh, a team guy who was on 15 meds.
59:41
SPEAKER_01: Dude, hear it all the time, bro.
59:43
SPEAKER_00: Five to wake up, five for lunch, five to go to bed.
59:46
SPEAKER_00: He hasn't taken a med in four years.
59:48
SPEAKER_00: So if you're sitting in uh you know Pfizer headquarters listening to this podcast, you're like, oh shit.
59:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
59:55
SPEAKER_00: So clearly and you know, to your point, the new VA secretary seems like a good dude.
1:00:01
SPEAKER_00: Get out of your office.
1:00:04
SPEAKER_00: Get these people out of their cubicles, throw some hiking boots on, and join me at a retreat in Colorado.
1:00:10
SPEAKER_00: Hold space.
1:00:11
SPEAKER_00: Don't believe me.
1:00:13
SPEAKER_00: I'm full of shit.
1:00:14
SPEAKER_00: Assume I'm a liar.
1:00:15
SPEAKER_00: Go on these retreats, hold space, sit in ceremony, and you see it for yourself.
1:00:22
SPEAKER_00: I can't damn this.
1:00:26
SPEAKER_00: I'd love that to happen too, but if if anything, just hold space.
1:00:30
SPEAKER_00: Oh, bro.
1:00:31
SPEAKER_00: If if I tell people, if I could kidnap Putin and Zelensky and throw them in a room with Iboga for a week, we there would be no more war.
1:00:41
SPEAKER_00: And people think I'm full of shit, and I'm not.
1:00:44
SPEAKER_00: It's the truth.
1:00:45
SPEAKER_00: There would be, you know, that that's one of the reasons these medicines are still illegal at a federal level, is because they can turn warriors into peacemakers.
1:00:53
SPEAKER_00: I've seen it.
1:00:54
SPEAKER_00: I've seen it knuckle dragging.
1:00:56
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:00:57
SPEAKER_01: Uh no, I just got a I had a uh meeting this uh we uh god damn it.
1:01:02
SPEAKER_01: I hate Microsoft Office.
1:01:03
SPEAKER_01: So anyway, no, so I mean, and here's the point.
1:01:06
SPEAKER_01: We're talking about VA that's giving out drugs that have a 25% possibility of impacting somebody's life.
1:01:13
SPEAKER_01: And we're talking to you saying we've got 99.9% people coming back.
1:01:19
SPEAKER_01: And these, you know, the people like I've been helped with ketamine, I've been helped with stellate ganglion blocks, I've I've done the journey with ayahuasca several times, you know.
1:01:28
SPEAKER_01: And I haven't, I'm going out for uh uh, you know, a little bit of your medicine as well because I want to, I want to walk the walk.
1:01:35
SPEAKER_01: Okay, when I talk and say this stuff works, it's worked for me.
1:01:38
SPEAKER_01: All right, yes, and and and what I you know it's just that this whole issue, like you said, can be addressed in ibogain and iboga addresses, I mean, ketamine, everything, you know, ketamine stuff, you know, PTSD anxiety.
1:01:53
SPEAKER_01: You're talking, and I've seen this with other plant medicines like ayahuasca, people that are snorting heroin with guns in their mouth, multiple suicide attempts.
1:02:01
SPEAKER_01: I was with a marine who has from uh TBI rice krispies in his head, you know, at like you know, a level eight, like your tinnitus.
1:02:10
SPEAKER_01: And the only thing that helps him is plant medicine.
1:02:11
SPEAKER_01: And he's got to fly himself, pay money to get this re relief that he incurred at at the cost of serving his country.
1:02:20
SPEAKER_01: So it's infuriating, man.
1:02:22
SPEAKER_01: It is absolutely infuriating, and it must change.
1:02:25
SPEAKER_01: And that's why having you on this podcast and talk about what you're doing is so unbelievable, man.
1:02:32
SPEAKER_01: I mean, this is uh, you know, it it's what you're doing right now, sir, is you're saving lives.
1:02:36
SPEAKER_01: And yeah, you might you might feel like you're not saving nothing.
1:02:39
SPEAKER_01: We all feel like that.
1:02:41
SPEAKER_01: Every life that you have saved is a blessing from our Lord.
1:02:44
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
1:02:45
SPEAKER_01: And it's a blessing to your foundation.
1:02:46
SPEAKER_01: It's a blessing on you personally, sir.
1:02:49
SPEAKER_01: You are delivering God's work, you are doing God's work.
1:02:52
SPEAKER_01: And I absolutely want to help you as much as I can.
1:02:56
SPEAKER_01: I know it's all about money, right?
1:02:57
SPEAKER_01: When you do what we do in this business, which is help people, it's all about cash grow.
1:03:02
SPEAKER_00: You know, doesn't that suck, man?
1:03:03
SPEAKER_00: I I joke, I joke with my wife because you know, I can't.
1:03:07
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I'm fucking awesome at everything except raising money.
1:03:14
SPEAKER_00: It's the worst thing I've ever had.
1:03:16
SPEAKER_00: I can't.
1:03:17
SPEAKER_00: That's why I'm glad, you know, I went out and bought my own fighter jet.
1:03:19
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, maybe I'll fly donors in the backseat because I can't, it's a skill set that I simply don't have.
1:03:26
SPEAKER_00: I assumed that if people heard this story, they'd be throwing money out the windows to the foundation.
1:03:33
SPEAKER_00: Bro, I I got it's it's insane.
1:03:36
SPEAKER_00: I I I don't know how you do it.
1:03:37
SPEAKER_00: I don't know how you crack the code.
1:03:38
SPEAKER_00: Well, we're we just alluded to it.
1:03:40
SPEAKER_00: Clearly, you and I needed to live in the Northern Virginia or DC and and and and make up some bullshit, help, you know, build clogs in Ireland uh foundation, and we would have been, you know, politico.
1:03:53
SPEAKER_00: Politico gets eight million dollars.
1:03:55
SPEAKER_00: Are you insane?
1:03:56
SPEAKER_00: So you and I are clearly doing it wrong.
1:03:58
SPEAKER_00: We don't know the right people, but yeah.
1:04:01
SPEAKER_01: I'm working on now.
1:04:02
SPEAKER_01: We're working on now.
1:04:03
SPEAKER_01: And and I think between who you know and I know, and then all the other people we're working with in this space, this psychedelic space is revolutionizing.
1:04:11
SPEAKER_01: It is the only thing, and I'll tell everybody in this podcast there since 9-11, this is the only area, and whether you include ketamine or not, or in stelic ganglion blocks, this is the only thing helping our veterans.
1:04:23
SPEAKER_01: That's it.
1:04:24
SPEAKER_01: Correct.
1:04:24
SPEAKER_01: That's in those electronic therapy, you know, the electronic therapies, the stimulation and expods, stuff like that.
1:04:30
SPEAKER_01: But when you start talking about end-of-life scenarios where men and women are at the brink of extinction and it's gonna cause all the suffering for their families, then this is it.
1:04:49
SPEAKER_01: We have to address it.
1:04:50
SPEAKER_01: And whiz, you are all over this space.
1:04:53
SPEAKER_01: And I am counting you as a friend, and I am counting you as, you know, and I am supporting you 100% on this mission, man.
1:04:59
SPEAKER_01: I can't no more.
1:05:01
SPEAKER_01: And uh, and we'll get that um absolutely knocked out, man.
1:05:05
SPEAKER_01: I I cannot thank you for coming on the show, sharing your story with our audience, and I think it's gonna be an amazing journey.
1:05:12
SPEAKER_01: I know it's an amazing journey that you're on, and I I cannot wait to help you and see you succeed more, sir.
1:05:18
SPEAKER_01: This is amazing.
1:05:19
SPEAKER_00: Pac-Man, thank you for having me, my brother.
1:05:21
SPEAKER_00: Your your son is living through you, and uh, he's a good wingman for all of us to to what do we say, lead, follow, or get out of the way.
1:05:28
SPEAKER_00: So thank you for leading.
1:05:30
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for leading.
1:05:31
SPEAKER_00: I'll follow you anywhere, man.
1:05:32
SPEAKER_00: I got you from the air, and you got my my air support.
1:05:36
SPEAKER_01: We're on it, man.
1:05:37
SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much.
1:05:37
SPEAKER_01: And uh, and uh we're gonna have you back on the show.
1:05:40
SPEAKER_01: And I guess I'm coming on yours here in a little bit.
1:05:41
SPEAKER_01: Can't wait, man.
1:05:42
SPEAKER_01: Can't wait to talk.
1:05:44
SPEAKER_01: We are definitely gonna share, and uh, I'll be in Miami soon, so I'll make you a link up.
1:05:48
SPEAKER_01: Folks, awesome.
1:05:49
SPEAKER_01: Again, another awesome podcast.
1:05:51
SPEAKER_01: Please do not oh, oh, whiz.
1:05:52
SPEAKER_01: When again, how do people find you?
1:05:54
SPEAKER_01: All right, so we always close the show.
1:05:56
SPEAKER_01: Sorry, I almost forgot.
1:05:57
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
1:05:58
SPEAKER_01: You know, how do people find your foundation?
1:06:00
SPEAKER_01: Where do they find your books?
1:06:01
SPEAKER_01: Uh tell us all about you know websites, URLs, whatever they know to find the Wiz, even especially if they're looking for help, and uh and and we can we can help you give them some help too, sir.
1:06:12
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, man.
1:06:13
SPEAKER_00: Uh nofallenheroes.com.
1:06:14
SPEAKER_00: That's step one.
1:06:15
SPEAKER_00: Just go to nofallenheroes.com.
1:06:17
SPEAKER_00: On the top right, on the drop down, if you're a veteran first responder family member interested in healing, it says grant request uh form or application or intake form.
1:06:26
SPEAKER_00: That's how you can get the uh the the ball rolling.
1:06:29
SPEAKER_00: Um so nofallenheroes.com.
1:06:31
SPEAKER_00: You can follow me on Instagram, official whizbuckley, and we're also no fallen heroes on Instagram.
1:06:37
SPEAKER_00: Go to YouTube.
1:06:38
SPEAKER_00: Uh you're gonna be on my Max Afterburner podcast.
1:06:41
SPEAKER_00: We have some great content on there.
1:06:44
SPEAKER_00: Ibogain, ayahuasca, ketamine, people debriefing uh their medicine experiences, females uh debriefing their medicine experiences.
1:06:53
SPEAKER_00: We didn't we didn't talk about it, we were talking about you know kind of getting shot at.
1:06:56
SPEAKER_00: Bro, I gotta tell you that uh um we've helped a lot of females and unfortunately males who experience they weren't shot at by their enemy.
1:07:05
SPEAKER_00: You know what?
1:07:06
SPEAKER_00: MST.
1:07:07
SPEAKER_00: Military sexual trauma.
1:07:09
SPEAKER_00: You expect the enemy to shoot and try and hurt you.
1:07:13
SPEAKER_00: You don't expect your squadron mate to do it.
1:07:15
SPEAKER_00: So we're we're helping veterans that didn't even see the enemy, except the enemy that was in their in their own unit.
1:07:22
SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, so go to YouTube, uh our our uh YouTube channel, and if you or somebody you know wants to go flying in the backseat of a fighter jet man, just make a nice donation and we can go bend the jet around the the skies of uh Florida.
1:07:35
SPEAKER_00: My only suggestion is you eat a banana for breakfast because it's the only food that's gonna taste the same coming up as it does going down.
1:07:44
SPEAKER_01: And you gotta clean up your own.
1:07:45
SPEAKER_01: You gotta clean up your body.
1:07:46
SPEAKER_01: You gotta clean up your own.
1:07:47
SPEAKER_01: That's exactly right.
1:07:49
SPEAKER_01: Well, you're talking to a guy that's done a lot in his life.
1:07:51
SPEAKER_01: That's something I've never done.
1:07:52
SPEAKER_01: So I'm I'm diving in on that one, man.
1:07:54
SPEAKER_01: You gotta get it.
1:07:55
SPEAKER_01: So yeah.
1:07:56
SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much.
1:07:57
SPEAKER_01: And we'll we'll definitely talk about uh the sexual trauma piece and uh when we come back.
1:08:02
SPEAKER_01: All right, back, man.
1:08:03
SPEAKER_01: Thank you, thank you, Wiz.
1:08:04
SPEAKER_01: Can't thank you enough.
1:08:05
SPEAKER_01: Uh, folks, just to close, don't remember, get your free book on the website.
1:08:09
SPEAKER_01: It's the only thing out there for you parents to make informed decisions for your kids.
1:08:13
SPEAKER_01: 130 reference papers in there, endorsed by everybody in the CT community.
1:08:17
SPEAKER_01: Go get it.
1:08:18
SPEAKER_01: Download our free app on the Google store, Head Smart, to understand concussions, subcussive trauma, and how to take care of your kids.
1:08:26
SPEAKER_01: So, for all of you, Wiz, once again, thank you so much.
1:08:29
SPEAKER_01: Take care of yourselves.
1:08:30
SPEAKER_01: Take care of your children, but more importantly, take care of yourself so you can take care of your children.
1:08:34
SPEAKER_01: God bless you all and have a great day.
1:08:36
SPEAKER_01: See you in the next time, uh next episode of Broken Brains with Bruce Parker.
1:08:41
SPEAKER_01: Take care.