Shawn Ryan Show - #10 Marcus Capone - SEAL Team Six Explosive Breacher/Pyschedelic Therapy Advocate

Episode Date: June 24, 2021

Marcus Capone founder of VETS Solutions, along with his Wife Amber Capone join us on The Shawn Ryan Show to discuss Marcus's military career as a Tier 1 explosive breacher at DEVGRU also known as SEAL Team 6. Marcus goes in depth as to the effects of explosive breaching and the effects of being combat Warfighter has on the brain. We then cover how single treatment of psychedelic assisted therapy would not only save his life, but bring his family back together after almost losing them due to mild traumatic brain damage. Donate to Marcus & Amber Capone's organization VETS INC: Website   - https://vetsolutions.org Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/marcus_amber_capone Vigilance Elite/Shawn Ryan Links: Website - https://www.shawnryanshow.com Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/VigilanceElite TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@shawnryanshow Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/shawnryan762 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Speaking of Rebling, what's kind of start there? We flip a coin and we lost. So, our platoon lost and we went to Germany. And, you know, the other platoon went to Afghanistan, you know, and the rest is kind of history there. I'm like three years out now, in 2016, you know, drinking heavily, getting behind the wheel, not giving a fuck about anything. He went down to Mexico, he got the treatment, and it sounds like it was like a light switch. Nothing has this much of an effect as psychedelic-assisted therapies. So the success rates are just off the charts.

You know, just put things in perspective this year. I believe it will be the first, the first time ever in American history where you could have been listed during wartime and left during wartime and done an entire 20-year career and retired all combat deployments. We've never sustained combat for so long and nobody knows what's going to happen. You know, and we need to get in front of it. Did you know that two out of three guys will experience some kind of male pattern baldness

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Yeah, babe. Yeah babe. Check out keeps.com slash VE. Our next guest has an amazing story. He started his military career as a Navy seal and the seal teams. He then screened for development group, also known as SEAL Team 6, where he would become an operator and a Tier 1 breacher. In this episode, our guest discusses the effects that being a breacher has on the human brain. When he left SEAL Team 6, he went to Buds to become a Navy SEAL instructor. He then retired, went on to a finance career for Merrill Lynch in Beverly Hills, California.

From there, he was a host on History Channels, the selection, and now runs a non-profit with his wife called Vets, where they give psychedelic treatment to former operators who suffer from PTSD, traumatic brain injury, and CTE. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome number 010, Mr. Marcus Capone. Marcus Capone, welcome to the show, man. Thank you. It's a real honor to have you here. We kind of heard about you a little bit from Eddie Gallagher and he was kind of talking about his experience that he had that you guys

put him through with the psychedelics. And, you know, I've just been hearing a lot about that stuff, and when he mentioned your name, I had heard about you, and I've seen you on the history channel, and we have a lot of mutual friends, so I wanted them to connect us and I'm just super happy that you're here, man. Yeah, I'm excited. You know, when you asked Amber and I to be on the show, we were, you know, we said, yeah, that'd be pretty cool.

Cause we don't, you know, we don't do these often. And I love what you do. And, you know, I'm just thankful that we're here and share my story and I hope it helps you and helps helps others. So it's definitely going to and we got a ton of stuff to cover but starting off we always start with a gift. So right by your sign there, we've got you a little gift. We'll shine a Ryan show gift. All right.

We got this. Man, I'm nervous. What is this? I'm knowing you. Just say a little something for the ride home. Yes. Look at that gummy bears. Do my wife tell you I love gummy bears and freaking

nice. Those small bikes are amazing. These are just no shit gummy bears. Yeah. No, they're not special gummy bears. There's no CBD. There's no THC. They're just good old fast going fast awesome I'm gonna eat the hell out of these. Thank you gummy bears. You're welcome Very cool I had gummy bears. Where did where did that come from? You know, we're gonna make CBD gummy bears and then There's like a lot of lawsuits. Yeah, on CBD come from. You know, we're gonna make CBD gummy bears. And then there's like a lot of lawsuits on CBD candy and stuff, especially when it comes to gummy bears. And so people started saying, Oh, they're going to get you for catering to kids or

whatever. So I said, you know what? We're just gonna make gummy bears. I love fucking gummy bears. so we're just gonna do gummy bears. Isn't it crazy? That was not sad. The first thing I said is like, are these CBD or THC gummy bears? Like, that's where we're going now. You know what I mean? Yeah, it's crazy.

We had an email. We actually had somebody email and hit eight and two bags. And they said they still don't feel anything. And I was like, you've got a stomach ache. It's like, man, how long does it take for these to kick in and how long do I need, how many do I need to eat for them to kick in, because I'm not feeling anything. Yeah.

We're just like, they're just gummy bears, man. Yeah, that's funny. But that's good. Yeah, but thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. I would like them. I will. I love candy.

So as we get older, I try to try to cut down, but those would be my midnight snack. We're sneaking in the pantry. Hey, I do that too. Yeah. But, um, well, I just wanted to give you guys a compliment. With the last three guests we've had on here, Eddie Gallagher, two lamb, and you are all still happily married and have been married for a long time, and

have obviously been through a lot of shit. But one thing that me and my wife noticed last night is the amount of respect that you guys have for each other. You don't talk over each other. There's a lot of couples out there that you don't really know who to look at because everybody's talking at the same time and you guys really respect each other and allow each other to talk without button-in or cutting each other off.

And it's just really my impression to see that. I appreciate that. We were talking about that earlier, right? We used to be that couple, though. We were that couple for a long time where the teams, it really sucks everything out of you. The women, they get so spiteful and you almost can't say anything without them barking down your throat. And I think we went through that. I mean, we went through all of the ups and downs.

It's taken us years to get to where we're at right now. And I would say at, we'll be close to 24 years together. 21 years married and we are at our strongest, like, we're, you know, we're strong, right? Man, we're good. Congratulations. That's, that's amazing. Yeah, it's, um, it still work, a lot of work, and we still have our moments, but, you

know, what you and I spoke about, you know, the about, the awareness, I can see myself now getting to that, am I talking over her? Am I interrupting her? Am I raising my voice for no reason? The more you become aware of that, the more you reset your mind to go a different path and maybe what you were doing prior. So we're strong. We still have a lot of work to do, but I appreciate that because it's awkward. It's awkward when we get around some people, like you said, and they're badgering each other or they're talking over each other or they're condescending to each other. And I remember turning to Amber and saying, when we like that, like, is that with us,

you go, are you kidding me? Like, yeah, we were like that times 10. She's like, how we stayed together is pure, you know, offer. You know, her pure hardheadedness and her faith, really? And for me, you know, I always said, man, is there something better out there? And I always got to remind myself when I look at it. I'm like, dude, you have everything you got right in front of you.

You got an amazing wife, who's just a queen. You got amazing kids, amazing friends. It's right there. Stop like searching for shit or thinking there's, you know, grass is always green or something's always better. And I, you know, I still have to remind myself, but I'm reminding myself less now because now it's just, I get it. I finally get it. It's taken a while.

You know, it really shows and one of my old business mentors, who's really into shamanism ironically, you know, he always told me, you know, happy people will just, it just happens. They just come together. And I didn't see that for the longest time. Maybe it's because I wasn't happy

but man the last a couple years like we're really attracting good happy, you know, just solid human beings here and it's just it is. It's just happening. It's it's ugly right to hang around people that are not not hang around people that are not,

not like that. People that are, I don't want to call it depressed because we obviously work with a lot of individuals that need some work. But you want to stride yourself with good people, happy people, positive people, that negativity, that negativity that just, you know, I kind of grew up like that. My household, my mom and dad were, it was always negative, you know, anybody had money, it was bad. And, you know, they, they, they were just, everything was a negative outlook, you know, nothing was, they didn't understand that, you know, having a positive mindset and positive framework and, you know, it's a beautiful day out, you know, I don't know where I'm going with this. That's all right. So hopefully we'll get that cut out. But what I'm just trying to go with is,

is yeah, we try to surround ourselves now by just good people who think like us, you know, and we've learned the way we are now when we're around other people, we feel like that energy just moves through them too, right? They want to be better people. They say, man, look at these two, like where they came from and where they're at now. And, you know, I'm still a joke about trying to figure out a purpose outside of the military. What my head's saying and what my heart's saying, I'm starting to realize that my heart we're doing it. This is making me happy. This is making other people better.

And this is what I should be doing probably full time. Yeah. So, well, we're gonna get into that real soon. But, you know, the other thing about dinner last night is, it's always, you know, I don't really hang around a lot of team guys anymore, you know, we kind of talked about that. I've just, one of the ways I got better was separating myself from the community and, you know, I'm not saying that works for everybody, but it works for me. And the farther I move away from it, the more at peace and the happier I am.

But back to dinner, it does. Every time I do meet somebody I haven't met before, it's always reminded of how small the community is and how many names that we knew, you know, that we both know or have worked together with, like, you know, first name that got brought up was Huch, second name, you know, Gabe, Gabe O'Cardi, my best friend who you know. And when I was researching you and I heard your story and I heard about, you know, that your sister Patone, you know, was in Afghanistan, was that was red wing. I know Gabe was involved in that. And then we briefly mentioned your best friend, Josh Harris.

And that was Gabe's best friend as well. And so when I was listening to some of your podcasts, I'm reading about you and Amber. I was like, shit man, he knows Gabe really well. He has to because you were just at all the bright. Yeah, no, I couldn't believe that. When I sort on your wrist, you know, I was just asking, you bright. Yeah, no, I couldn't believe that. When I saw it on your wrist, I was just asking, you know, figuring, you know,

it's, you know, one of your, when your brother's you lost in combat. Yeah. And when I looked at it, I went, wait, Gabe, a cardie, like, what, like what happened to him? Yeah. And when you said, you know,

could we talk about it? Or we don't talk about it? Yeah. Yeah. Man, I mean, when you said he... The first thing, unfortunately, the first thing my mind goes to now is like, can we have helped him? Can I have helped him? You know?

And I know the answer is yes. And I just wish I would have known. Yeah, I wish I would have known because I think I stopped talking to him probably in 2000 and maybe five or six. That's the time I saw him and that was just kind of hit me last night, a bit of a shock because we used to hang out at Team 10 together and obviously worked out together and we trained a lot together and so that was yeah, I was disturbing and I'm sorry that I didn't know you guys were good friends. Well, thank you, but it is refreshed. I didn't know him in the teams and so

kind of where I want to take this show is I want to talk about, you know, we're going to touch on your military career. And then we'll move into your transition and some of the problems and stuff that you were dealing with. And then we're going to move into the psychedelics and the science behind it and how it's working and, and, and, you know, maybe some other alternative alternative medicines. Yeah, there you go. So you wanna hear, you wanna hear Gabe a Cardi study? I would love to hear Gabe's studies. So he goes out to free fall school

and like everybody else, some people, they pick it up right away, others take some time, others never get it. I was kinda in the middle for two or three days, I couldn't get in the wind tunnel, I'd get in and like, you know, shoot into the wall. And then I went away for the weekend and came back, I jumped in and like, you couldn't even move me. Like I was still. And you know, it just shit just happens that way. Gabe goes out to, thinking went out to Yuma, or he might have been out to San Diego

when they started doing the course out there, the free fall course. Well, he comes back, we had heard some rumblings like, hey, you know, Gabe's having a hard time out there with his exits, when he puts a pack on, like he's all over the place. And then, I don't know, it was a week later

or whatever, we hear a story that like, yeah, Gabe was in like an uncontrollable spin on exit, like ridiculous. Like they said on camera it was scary and they couldn't stop him. So the instructors, you know, the instructors jump out, you know, you know, free fall as so as we're learning, you know, we jump out of the plane and then, you know, you know, freefall is. So as we're learning, you know, we jump out of the plane and then, you know, one or two instructors jump out and they're right there, right?

They're watching everything you're doing. Well, he goes into this spin with Geeron and they couldn't stop him. And the way they're taught in military freefall instructor course is like they come in and they hit them, they try to stop them but he's going so fast you're talking about you know you're flying through the sky at however 100 and something miles an hour It was just I heard it was it was scary I guess of course

He ended up okay, but he shows up back in Virginia Beach at team 10 And we're look I'm looking at him like, okay, what the fuck happened your eyes Both his eyeballs were completely bloodshot red like like scary red He's like oh, I like all you know all the you know all the blood in my eyes like all like whatever vessels broke because I was in such a Rough spin like everything just like he just he was so fucked up looking But from that day we started calling him red dragon, you know from the from the movie. Yeah So anyway, I thought you'd get a kick out that story, but it was Yeah, one of the last things I remember about game. So solid dude. Yeah

things I remember about Gabe. So solid dude. Yeah. Yeah. But to just a beast and everything who's he was a pretty serious hockey player. Yeah. Like yeah, like two state titles and. Yeah, he was he was an animal. Yeah, but a good person. He was like no ego. Very person. Yeah, give you the shirt off his back. So speaking of rubbling, what's kind of start there? You know, I know that, I know that was your system tune out there.

Yeah, as I was asking it. So let's kind of talk about, you know, where were you? You know, it's kind of interesting how you found out and I'd like to just kind of start right there. Sure. I'll go back. We were training up for two years on workup and close to deployment.

I don't know if it was a month or two months out. And again, my recollection of a lot of things, 13 years of the teams, they all went into one year. You know, so bear with me if I get some of these facts wrong, but it was a month or two before deployment. One platoon was going to deploy directly to Afghanistan and the other platoon was going to deploy directly to Afghanistan, and the other platoon was going to Germany, and then after three months we were going to switch. So the platoon that went to Germany, it goes to Afghanistan, that is in Afghanistan,

goes to Germany. Well, of course, we wanted to go to war first. And it was very busy at the time. It was 2005. There was a lot going on. And why we wanted to go first was because if we got to go to Afghanistan first and fight, then we got to go back to Germany and just drink and fuck off for three months, right? Like that was the idea.

And that would have been great. The Baton that goes to Germany knew that we had to prepare to go to Afghanistan because we couldn't get like drunk and fat and not train and then end up in the middle of the war zone, right? Yeah. So it was kind of like sucked, you know, if you were that flatoon.

So we flip a coin and we lost. So our platoon lost and we went to Germany. And, you know, the other platoon went to Afghanistan, you know, and the rest is kind of history there. You know, all of a simple coin toss. So, you know, I get some goosebumps thinking about it. That, you know, who knows, you know, who knows what would happen. I don't know how many people know about that coin toss. So they went to Afghanistan, we went to Germany. It knows shit was literally a coin toss. So fucking coin toss.

Yeah. Wow. Flip the coin to the team room. Damn. Yeah. As I went and tells you it was right. Yeah. So we went to Germany, trained and drank. Got to see the Tour de France.

That was cool. But Redwings, so, you know, middle of the night, I don't know how it happened. I think it was either I got a phone call or we found out helicopter get, you know, went down and you know, you kind of wake up and start knocking on other guys' doors, you know, we're in our barracks in Germany and nobody really knows what's going on. And you know, guys start panicking a little bit. We can't get a hold of anybody.

We don't know who's in the helicopter. We don't know anything As a night we stayed up all night as the night went on We couldn't get any intel like here. We are we're a seal platoon in Germany It's our sister platoon that we just worked up with for two years all our best friends are there. We have no idea what's going on You're only thinking the worst of course You know you think with some modern technology. We at least know what's going on. You're only thinking the worst, of course. You know, you think with some modern technology, we at least know what's going on. We start getting intel back from Virginia Beach from our freaking lives that are telling us, hey so-and-so just had a car pull up with, you know, seals in uniform to tell, you know, to tell the spouse that their husband got killed.

And so we'd find out, you know, Jeff Taylor or, you know, Jacques Fontaine or Eric Christensen, I'm like, holy fuck, holy fuck, you know. But again, we're finding this stuff back from our women in Virginia Beach. Like, just the whole system at the time was screwed up. Yeah. And to no fault of anyone's. I mean, everybody we worked with, I mean, I always looked up to, you know, there's always a few bad apples, but I think the majority team guys are there for the right reasons.

And they, they make the right calls when, when, when the time is right. And we just never lost that many people at one time. This was like, this was as new for the community since probably Vietnam era seals. And so I think there was a, it was just a bit of panic, bit of lessons learned, all types of shit. So we went through that night in the next day of trying to figure out who's alive, who's dead,

what else happened? I'm a little foggy on if we knew that Marcus was alive, if it was anybody else alive. So we stood in really no, really what was going on on and it took like a week to figure out how fast did your how fast did you get a start in until from your wives Within a couple hours that fast within a couple hours because I think If you know if I'm if I'm remembering correctly it definitely was the next day because like I said this was nighttime. Yeah it definitely was the next day, because like I said, this was nighttime. Yeah. Definitely was the next day.

And we didn't know what to do. Like, all we wanted to do is go over there and fight. We're like, we want to get on playing now and go. Like, that's what we want to do. Like, we need to go support them. Like, we need it. Like, let's go. We stayed for a little while.

So we wanted to stay in a few days and we wanted to just drink and really hard, you know, super drunk, telling stories. You know, we just, we didn't know what to do. We didn't know how to react. Some guys in the platoon were so, you know, they were so, I want to say dumbfounded, but like affected that they were just,

you know, depressed and didn't talk. And, you know, it was just, it was just confusing for everybody. Like, we never had loss before. Yeah. You know, we never had loss before. And it was, it was actually the first time where I thought,

like, we're not Superman. Like, we're really not. And I thought I was. I really thought I was at that time. I thought there's no way I can get hurt. There's no chance. Like, I'm, you know, I'm built of body armor. And it was the first time I got a little, like,

I wanna say scared, but a little anxious, is that real? This is real. This is exactly it, Sean. You said, it's the first time I got real. This is exactly it, Sean. You said it. It's the first time it got real. And that's cool. That's it.

I mean, we signed up for that. There was no problem. So you wind up trying to think the timeline. I think Marcus, they flew Marcus in, you know, just kind of fast forwarding from all the, like the, you know, the gritty details was, you know, we obviously found out that, you know, the, you know, the recalemic, you know, sniper element, reconnaissance element got compromised and, you know, three didn't make it out. Mike Murphy being one of them who was my one of my blood's classmates, you know, good friend. But Marcus made it out for, you know, eventually, you know, got rescued. And then they flew him into Germany to like debrief

and like repatriate. And, you know, there's like a whole process they go through and they said, hey, like he needs to see some seals. Like he needs some team guys, like right now he's, you know, like, yeah, so I volunteered, LPO volunteered, one of the person on, we went up to Ramstein and you know and met with him. He was with the psychologist at the time and he was just good to like, you see him, you know, after that whole week of, you know, I'm sure for him was probably very, it was probably just like, humbling's

not the word, but it was just good for a soul, I think, to see some fresh faces, some team guys that he knew after that happened because I think, he obviously went through everything, he went through. And yeah, we shot the shit with him for a couple hours and he was like wounded head to toe. I joke with him now, I was like, do you look like shit? Like you had, you know, like dried blood and cuts

and just like his whole, you know, his arms and legs and face and neck and, you know, his legs were really bad. But it was good to just, you know, talk to him. Yeah. And I remember much of the conversation but I do remember sitting outside on the, we were sitting on a, like a wind table, you know, and and again, I, I didn't know how to, I don't know how to react. I didn't know what to say,

you know, what would I say to the sky, who literally just been through hell and back. Yeah, just lost all his best friends. And what can I do? What can I say to help him right now? You know, I felt so bad for him. You know, I just, I just didn't know what to do. So I was just there to be a friend, an ear that he can talk to and, you know, trying my best to figure out what am I supposed to do in this situation because I've never been here before.

I've never lost any friends. I never seen what hurt was like and I could tell that he was hurt and I know he won't get upset about me talking about this because this is real, right? This is what happened. And I hope he's good now. So I pray for. But we did that. We hung out.

I believe he was going back to the States. If I get my mind, my memory serves me correctly. We went back to Stuttgart and got our gear ready and deployed. And we had a, you know, we had a Phil half a platoon because they just lost half a platoon. And we got there. And I remember as the middle of night, and one of my best friends in the teams, Maddie Roberts, he,

we got to the camp, we got off the flight, got on the ground, humveed over to the compound, remember walking in, and again, we're getting chills talking about it. Like, again, I didn't know how to react. You know, here's a platoon that was there on the other helicopter and watching like their buddies, you know, burn into the ground and I was going to go see my best friend and I remember seeing him in his room. And we're just embraced. And again, I just didn't know how to react.

You know, I just felt like I had to be there for my brothers, you know, I had to be there for my buddies. I had to be there for my brothers. I had to be there for my buddies. And whatever it took to get through that situation, like I was prepared to do that, and I was prepared to lend a hand and help, and I was ready to fight, right? And that's all that mattered.

And so it was good to see him, kind of embrace high five. You know, all right. What are we doing here now? And then You know, then we got to work How long? So actually I didn't even tell you this last night, but we were the platoon that relieved you guys So we came in from I think we searched over to two at that point and relieved you guys. I don't I don't remember seeing

you. I think I like three people. Did you, um, you're a platoon that had the bad Humvee wreck. Yeah. I've heard the brown FBI. Yeah. Go ahead. Adam, Adam Lussis finger. I guess you would, you know, dumbass. you were dumb and Eddie. I was with Eddie Dom wasn't there on the Eddie penny Joe Joe in that group maybe not there was only a couple of guys that searched over Their double-toned mine, but um, and then we all got kicked out of Afghanistan I'm right but yeah, so we should have told Adam Brown, like he should have kept his hand on top of the

humbler when it flipped. But I love Adam. I went to the green team of Adam. So oh, man, I'm sort of solid. Yeah, I'm amazing. But I'm using dude. Well, so what was it like when you started working in Afghanistan and and what were you guys doing? Did you go in to where Redling happened? We did not. We worked.

We do, man, we worked a different part of the country that was real busy with Taliban fighters real busy with Taliban fighters. And we were working directly with the Kiwis. So the New Zealand Soft, they were awesome, older, made us feel like kids, those guys, I think those guys were shooting work fucking testosterone I've ever seen. They all look like six foot four middle linebackers, big burly beards, and they were too much gear too. It's funny, we had to teach some of those guys to strip off Some of the weight they had I mean they were they were going out in the field and we were I was carrying a saw Or more 48 excuse me more 46 with men 2 4 like 600 rounds

But my my gears really trim like I was like I was a gear nut and You know, I used to really just try to trim it down. I was already two and a quarter, two thirty, and I drank probably ten times as much water as anybody else. And so, I went out heavy, so I tried to trim where I could, but I loved that thing. These guys were going out with, we're talking about humping in valleys and up mountains with six pistol magazines on their belt. I hope so.

Yeah, just stuff that they were built more for it. It seemed like to me, like CT, right? Like counterterrorism, you know, fast rope on top of a building, blow the door in, rescue the princess. But, you know, here we are, we're, we're patrolling, you know, in, in, like real rugged terrain. Like, bro, I know you're like, you've been here maybe 10 years longer than me, but you, you need to, you need to trim your trim your shit down. Otherwise, we're going to be waiting for you. So anyway, those guys though, they were tough as nails and we did a lot of joint operations

together with the Canadians and with the New Zealand. The New Zealand guys had their mobility down really tight. They were doing long range patrols for, you know, they're doing month-long patrols out in the field not coming back. A lot of wrecky work in reconnaissance. And the Canadians were doing more stuff that we were doing, which is kind of, you know, land, set a perimeter and then go patrol out on foot.

We were staying out for, you know, maybe a couple of days at a time. On foot, on foot, yeah, we were on foot. We run for it. You know, we got in country and within the first couple of days, we actually, we had a really cool, um, DA, you know, direct action mission that, um, I don't, I don't think we, we thought we were going to do something like that, but it was, you know, it was right out of the movies that you would think about. Like, you know, two black helicopters, like, you know, came flying in right next to the target. You know, fast robs go out, we go out. You know, I'm a breacher, right?

So if anyone listening doesn't know what a breacher is, it's an explosive expert, but that takes that explosive and then surgically, you know, places on a door or a window or a car, you know, and blows that thing in to make entry for the rest of the guys to make entry. And so, you know, I was a primary breacher for that platoon and for that, that op. And so, you know, it's dark. We just got in country. It's just still trying to figure out where all my gear was, you know, fast-ropeing gloves, weapon, demo, like, I felt like I was like a complete shit show.

I'm like, you know, If anyone starts shooting at us right now, I'm just going to suck my thumb into the mud because I don't know where anything is on my body. But anyway, we figured it out and get on the ground and there was a big gate there. We threw a big charge on the gate and blew the gate in and then we assault the compound. Nobody got injured. I was relatively, I don't call it easy target, but super high speed for us. It was the first time any of us has ever seen any combat. Was that your first deployment?

That was my second deployment, my first combat deployment. Okay. And so, yeah, it was, I think we have on video, the guy we were going after, we have him on the flair. He came out on the rooftop like this, like as the faster-ups were like getting deployed. And so like he knew. Yeah.

And I think he was related to the local whoever ran that area, you course, it was like his brother or something that we're going after. Yeah. But I remember specifically on that target, I'll never forget this, who clear in rooms and now it's daytime. So it was like we weren't allowed to do nighttime raids at the time.

So first light, when you can see everything. And I remember entering a room and there was like, you know, women and children and whatever, and we round them up. And I remember I don't know if it was a turf or something and it's like, hey, there's a baby inside. I was like, okay, well, fucking, you know, what do you want me to do?

It's like tell somebody to go get them, right? To the, to the, their people. So they come out, the guy comes out like this with the baby and I'm looking at the baby, it's naked and it's got a fucking wooden dowel, like probably this thick, maybe that long, sticking out of its ass. What? No idea. No idea why.

Oh, yeah. It was like one of the most disturbing things I've ever seen. Like, I don't know if that was a medical thing. Somebody would probably laugh listening to this and say, well, it's this and this idiot. I had no idea. Yeah. But, you know, just see a baby. I mean, this was like a newborn. Yeah, maybe like within a year old, with a with a window literally shoved up its ass and hanging out probably four inches.

Damn. You know, like, I will never forget that. I tell that story because it's just so it's like haunting. You see a lot of strange. Like what the fuck are these people doing? So anyway, so I thought that was a great, you know, great op. And then from there, that was like our only, I would say, urban kind of direct action mission and then from there We went in the mountains and we started patrolling Daily and going after this this this Taliban line I was like I said I carried saw I

Was the team the valley clear in the valley while everybody else was had you know Like in long guns and oh nice. Yeah, it's great. They were like we're just gonna hang out up here and you guys You guys could you can get, you know, fucking long guns and oh nice. Yeah, it was great. They were like, we're just gonna hang out up here and you guys, you guys could just go see what you can get into. You know, but the crazy thing, how our mindsets were back then was like, no, no, dude, I want to be down the valley. Yeah. Like, fucking, I'm down there. So, we're patrolling the Valley. Canadians had the high ground, the New Zealand, Kiwis had the high ground, and our guys had the high ground. Also, there were three different three. It was big. We had like big operations going on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there was a lot. There was like, we were chasing a group of, I think it was like 40 Taliban. And we were watching them on,

like we were actually watching them bound and leave us and we moved forward. At least it's happened for a couple of days. They left all their shit. We were going through all their shit as we were walking through the valley. But I remember the first contact we had in that valley, a couple of them went to Bush.

And I remember engaging them with my saw. And once I started, like it was like the whole world just lit up in this valley. And next thing you know, like we're bounding forward. And I swear to God, this is like, I tell, I remember telling this story after. It was literally like, I was, saw this in a movie because I hear from behind me, I just hear, I'm like, the fuck is that? Like it was close. And I turn around and the valley was, it wasn't flat. Like it was, it wasn't flat, like it was super steep,

it was only big enough to say to put no shit, maybe like three or four guys in patrol and the other guys kinda had to like walk and it was like that. And there's a fucking army Apache, literally like this in a full on gun run coming straight at us. Let me straight at it straight at me because I was in the middle of this thing. And I'm looking at it and it was like slow motion.

And I mean, picture this right now, you see, like I could see the pilot, two of them. I think it was two pilots. And it's the birds like this, and all I see in the sand is this, right? Is the, like you said, like you see out of the movie, you see like the gun trail, and it was coming straight at me, and I'm going, what the fuck?

And so I'm there at my chief, and you see all this in slow motion, I'm telling it, but this all happened really quickly. Everybody dies, right? Because they're trying to kill us. There's no doubt. They were trying to kill us. And we all dive into some rocks, right? And the gun run, the actual bullets go screaming past the sand, and then the helo goes screaming past, right?

But this is how they worked. Then they were shooting with guns, and then behind it, dash two, the second helicopter that they rolled with, was falling out with rockets. Oh man. So, here's in my mind, right? Like I'm trying to like,

can find my radio and turn it to fires and tell them to cease fire. I'm just trying to like get in the middle and like cover up and I'm going, dude, this is it. Here come the rockets because guns go first so they kind of see what's going on and the second bird comes in and starts firing. I think it was a 2.5s, is that? I can't remember. Yeah, hell fires maybe. And you know, those things kill.

Yeah. Um, and the second he lo, I remember being behind this big rock, there was nowhere else to go and just like looking the same place where I just saw the other one come through. And helicopter come screaming through and I see the pilots. Like no shit, that's how fucking closely are the ground. And no guns, no guns, no rockets. Somebody thank God didn't have their head up their ass and was able to get on fires. I think it was our comms guy and tell him to cease fire. Wow. But still to this day, I am still pissed off because I don't know who cleared those guys hot with us. We were on

the offensive engaging. I know we were good. So were you guys taking fire from Taliban? In our guys US, the patches. Yes. And everybody just, yeah, my chief got hit in the face. Who did? My chief got hit in the face. He was, you know, not spitting blood out, blood was spitting out. He dove the other way.

I dove this way. He actually got frag. And yes, like I said, so somebody cleared them hot. And then God, somebody, not the same person, called a ceasefire, thank goodness, because those 2.5s would have fucked us up. Yeah, I mean, depending on how good we were covered, you know what I mean? I was trying to hunker in between these rocks, knowing that, all right, when the frag comes,

like if I can just get behind some rocks, like the frag will hit the rocks, and maybe I'll get hit with some frag, but my head's not gonna come off, right? Or, you know, so that's all I was thinking at the time. Damn. And so, yeah, and then I remember watching my chief pop up behind a rock and his whole face was like,

like squirt out blood and I'm like, wow, this, again, this is real, this is not a joke. So, yeah, I was exciting. It was fun shit, right? Sounds like it. Yeah, I mean, I tell you what, I couldn't wait to get back to the fucking, the base there, the C.J. Soda, if I think it was.

Find out, like, what motherfucker just tried to kill me, you know? And I, I like wanted to like, just choke somebody. I feel like I never found out. Like we never were able to get back there. And still to this day, it's foggy. Damn. So, so did you guys continue on mission after that? Or was that, was that, uh, that was, uh, for a We cleared a bunch of caves called in, you know, a lot of close air support to knock out some of those caves. And then I believe we went back, regrouped,

new mission, and then we went out for a couple of days. And same stuff, that's so like my group, we were clearing the Valley floor, my platoon and fire team, Kansoff, Kiwis were watching her backs. We had a lot of support there. We were working with the A&A at the time. Did you work with them at all? The initials? No, we didn't work with any A&A. Okay. Yeah, we had them, we put them on point for obvious reasons. And yeah, they have few guys to get clipped, just because we were going around these like bands,

and they were the first ones there. Did you find them to be pretty motivated back then? No, I did. Not really. We were like, we were like, and telling those people what to do and where to go. I'm probably chopping up a lot of this story. And you know, guys are out there listening.

If I'm messing up some of these like, you know, critical details, just because I don't fully remember them, you know what I mean? So I'm trying the best I can, what I remember. But I do remember, I do remember we got engaged by like a pillbox almost. Like it was like, we we came around and kind of were just hanging out in the open.

It was not a good thing to do. And there was like a PK or two PKs in this like, in a really nice bunker, elevated. And I'm like sitting out in the middle and the A&As are behind us on this rock, this huge rock and there's a bunch of them like dirty own. They engage us, we engage them, but then the the A&A starts engaging them. And this was our like our SOPs were you guys don't fucking fire when we're for you. Like you're not allowed to pull the trigger if we're anywhere near you or in front of you. Like you're allowed to pull the trigger if you're like ahead of us and pointing in that direction.

That is it. Well, these guys, they lost their mind because we're taking contact. They start shooting over our heads at this bunker and like me and like a few other guys are like caught in the middle of it. And there's like nothing for us to do. Oh, shit. We're like, fuck, you know, we're going, we got these idiots behind us that are literally, and we're watching them. And we're out in the open trying to figure out where the fire is coming from, where we, you know, where can we engage watching him and we're out in the open trying to figure out where the fire is coming from where we you know Where can we engage what can we do and these guys we're watching them behind a rocks and going like this?

Oh, man, right, so I'm screaming at him like see his fire Trying to figure out how to get the the two guys that are shooting at us at the pks You know the Afghanis are behind us shooting over our head. God knows where these bullets are going. You know, it was again, just my fucking hair was just like, just standing up, going, what was it like, an old Russian bunker or something? I don't know if it was a Russian bunker,

a makeshift bunker, but it was like, it was beautiful, right? It was like, perfect. That you come around the corner, patrolling, and they're like sitting right there, right? It was like perfect. You come around the corner patrolling, and they're like sitting right there, and you couldn't see them. All you could see is the muzzle flash and the smoke. And so, yeah, I mean, it was, wow, with a wild initial introduction to,

hate his war. Yeah, no shit. This is what it's like. It was great to talk about afterwards. Love it, right? Yeah. Because it's already done. Yeah. But at the time, like, he was a little scary.

Yeah. Yeah. Definitely a little scary. For those listening that don't know what A&A is, just going back, that's, I believe that's the sense for Afghan National Army. Yeah. So it's working with the indigenous forces in country and that's a NA, Afghan National Army. But what kind of, did you guys find anything in the

caves? Or were you finding a lot of, no, we just blew all the caves. Like, so we didn't even, if there was a cave, we just called in, you know, called in some some smart bombs to, to, to level them. We weren't like trying to really look for anything. We, we rolled up on some of their personal stuff because they were they were sleeping out. Um, you know, that was scary too, kind of walking up their stuff, you know, thinking. And you could be trapped. Like, are they, you know, are they, are they looking at us right now? Um, were they, did, were they, did they know you guys were, they were running. They were, they were, they were, they were running like that's the intel we kept, you

know, we, we just missed them. Like, you know, that literally fucking pots were boiling, you know, like shit was, you know, and, and we just kept, kept going, you know, but we had, we had a ton of support. We had a ton of, uh, ton of support overhead. I think we had some artillery 10 miles away that we're firing. And that was interesting too. Like, firing over us into where there's movement. So that was cool. I felt comfortable there. It's just stuff you don't feel comfortable but you know like just like sticking your head into a little open area where people can hide you know. Yeah. Is now the time? Am I gonna get it right here? Yeah. Yeah. And like I said that's what I really felt like we were not invincible anymore. That's when I when I knew like we got to be really smart here. We're not, this is not a game.

You know, we got to, we got to really know our shit. We got to tighten it up and make good decisions and not be stupid. And so, you know, and you want to run so fast, right? Like you want to get in the fight. And that's when you started realizing when, I think that's when, for most of the guys, when people started getting shot at, one thing is getting hit,

but you're just getting shot at that, that's not gonna tickle if you hit you. So maybe you should slow down a little bit and do things differently. So it's a difference between training and wartime and that experience that you just, till you experience it, it's different. Yeah. Yeah. And that was a fun for what we didn't do. Anything. We did a couple of like bullshit ops there after we relieved

you guys, but not much. And then, and then I kicked everybody out. And we went to Iraq and that was a lot more exciting. But, you know, how it is, I mean, it's like luck of the, luck are the un luck of flipping a coin, right? I mean, you never know. I mean, you know, all the, you know, all the older guys always say, you know, be careful what you wish for, or people who've been in that situation,

be careful what you wish for because, you know, you know, people do, right? You join the team to go to war. Most of us. And then you get stuck in a sticky situation and you realize like, sucks. Yeah. You know, but it's luck, you know, I had a buddy of mine where I worked with when I became an instructor. I Don't never forget it and I use it now because I think it's so true

You you have to earn the right to go to war like you don't you you're not entitled to go just because you you signed up and you put the uniform on and you know you checked the box or whatever like that's a pri- he said he said that's what he said he said going to war is a privilege right it's a it's a privilege to be there you know you got to work your ass off to get there and so so, you know, some people, you know, complaining that they, you know, they weren't, you know, they were deployed to a certain area, they do a PSD work or whatever and they weren't getting a fight. But I never forget when he said that. And I, I tend to agree with him. I just, I like that. Like, yeah, it was a real privilege to go to war. I look him back now. Like, I don't, I don't ever take that for granted just because I signed up and got through BUDS and now I should go to war. But we had to earn that shit. You know,

we had to earn it. So you wrapped up that deployment, come back home. What happened? Come back home. home. You know, it was, it was a nice homecoming, you know, because it was a really rough, you know, beginning of 2005, you know, or say summer of 2005. Yeah, when we got back, Amber, my wife, through a big S party, she was happy to have us back, you know. She bought me a keggerator. It was great. You know, had everyone over and celebrated that we came back. But, you know, we're still, you know, humbled that we lost a lot of friends on that deployment. And so, but that's what we did, right? In the teams, we celebrated, celebrated loss, celebrated victory. We still, you know, we drank hard, you know, deal with everything in bond. Yeah. Yeah But, yeah, I remember those days.

But, so where did you go next? Did you continue on with team 10 or? Yeah, I, so I did two, two deployments, two pumps at team 10. I'd actually screened for, for Dev Group a year prior to that. And they just said, you know, it told me I was good to go, you know, they said, just, you know, go finish your second deployment and you come over next year. And so I came back, hung out in Ops for a while with Josh, you know, Josh Harris, him and I, and we prepared, you know, we'd, I'd say we,

prepared. You know, we'd I'd say we proper planning prevents Pistpore performance. Him and I really focused on getting ourselves ready for for selection. And so we worked out together, we shot together, we did many trips to all the all the CQC trips that other platoons were going to, like, you know,, we just wanted to be good.

I would say we were better prepared than anyone. We really focused on that for a while after we got back from the O5 deployment. Then I went to selection in 2006. I don't know how much you want to go into that or... Well, did you find out, did you have any hiccups there? What was the hardest part for you? I heard a lot of the eyes out,

a lot of problems with air and then the CQC portion. You know, it's fun. Yeah, what do I have to trouble with? One was frozen to death. Like I'm on towards the end, like we do like Winner Warfare or we're doing mobility in elevation change and I remember taking off in like a t-shirt

and like three hours later, like a t-shirt and like like three hours later like a couple of the guys like, hey make sure, make sure Marcus doesn't freeze the death because he's like talking gibberish and he can't tie his shoes like I just, I didn't have that experience of being in that environment like I just never did it before and it was kind of funny because, yeah, I was fucked. You know, I thought I had it and whether it got cold, it snowed, and thank God I had some really good people around me that took care of me. That was like the, I would say the only really tough part I had in green team or other than that. And, you know, so you were very well prepared.

I was prepared. You know, I wanted to be there. You know, and I did real well. You know, I did very well. And I, it's all I cared about. Like nothing mattered in the world ever. You know, that was it. And I tell people though, I really struggled shooting

a, like a long gun. Like, not a long gun, not long gun, but a M4, which we were going through training, or trying to think, I think we may have had 4-16s at the time, HK. I know we got them, but you get rated on your every day. It's wide open, it's very transparent, which I love. rated on your everyday, it's like wide open, it's very transparent, which I love. It's not even more about how tough you are, it's like how good you are. So you would get ranked in your shooting,

your time and stuff. And I remember initially on the HK, I think I was after the first couple of days maybe, or the first week, I was like dead last in my scoring. Oh, well. And the whole class, like, and there's some people there, like, you know, you lose 50% of the class. But I was first in the pistol.

So like the pistol, I don't, for some reason, when I can't, I never shot a weapon by the way. I grew up playing ball. I didn't even know how to turn a wrench before I got in the team. I grew up in Long Island, like, you know, lifeguarding, playing ball and whatever else. Wearing tight shirts and gold chains.

Right? Right? Jersey's sure, right? No, so I never shot. But for me, a pistol, it was completely natural. I was a very good pistol shot. Matter of fact, in my first platoon, I think, well, you learned how to shoot a pistol in buds,

but like how much, not a whole lot. But we go to our CQC block of training, and I remember like, I remember beating some of the instructors in like, in like, Metal Mania and some of the other stuff and like who the fuck is this new guy? I was the only new guy in my first platoon and two which was that's a whole another story But I remember beating some of the instructors that had been in the teams for like 10 or 12 years I'm like hey guys, I don't know this the pistol thing comes natural to me

But the right my points this the rifle. I really had a work like I had a I had to like grind and do extra hours and, and, and, you know, starting out last. I ended up, I ended up in the top 10, but it was a struggle. And, but all it was is like, I didn't really have good, I just need a little bit, I need someone to watch me, you know, and just watch what I was doing. And it just took the guy who ran that place, just gave me some tips when I was like in dead last. And it was just enough for me to, you know, once I learn, I tell people, it takes me a long time sometimes

to like figure stuff out. But once I learn, very good learner, like I shoot past a lot of people, you know, because like I got it now. But getting there sometimes takes me while. And that's how it was the rifle man. It was like, I'm like, what am I doing wrong with this thing? Like, I can't hit shit. You know, but then, you know, and then I want to be okay, you know, like an average shooter with that. But many guys have just started training with? Roughly.

80? 70, 70 or 80, yeah. How many guys have? You lost half. Great guys too, you know. Yeah. Just for whatever reasons, you know, unprepared or maybe, you know, safety issues, maybe some personality issues. But it is great. You think, you know, we're

super aggressive, but I feel like also very reserved too. You don't really have to. There's no reason to have a... And you go, even though there's a lot of you go. Oh yeah. But, but you know what I'm trying to say is, I know, you have to tell anybody that you've been to the, you scored, you know, 30 touchdowns last year. Like everybody just kind of knows that you scored 30 touchdowns. So if you tell people that, like, you think you're an asshole or just a bigger asshole. So I think a lot of people think,

you got this different personality, but I almost think it's almost the opposite, where it's more, live it more reserved. So you wrap up training, you make it, you go over to dev group. For those of you that don't know, dev group is Sil team six, which is the most elite Sil team on the planet.

I'm glad you said it because you know I still I'm comfortable saying those words but like I get it you know I get it you know the first time I started using that word more is when I separate from the teams in 2013 my first real like business mentor and You know friend he was a bro marine Investment banker for 30 years and he was cleaning up my resume and he goes Marcus He's like what the cuz a dev group? I'm like, what do you mean? Well, it's like this way worked. He's like yeah, he goes If you went to Harvard, would you put that in your resume?

I'm like, duh, he goes, okay. He's like, how am I supposed to get you a job? When you kind of went to the Harvard, what you did in your military career, but you don't put it on your resume. I'm like, that's a good point, Damien. He's okay, well, I need to clean this up for you and just like, okay, I'm like Damien. He's okay. Well, I need to clean this up for you and just like,

okay, I'm like, yeah, that's fine. So that's kind of how I kind of understood it where here I am trying to compete with everybody in the private sector now, military guys and whatever. And he said, hey, man, you gotta, you gotta like put something out there And he said, Hey, man, you gotta, you gotta like put something out there to try to separate yourself from others. Yeah, and if you didn't go to Harvard and you've never done this before, like how am I supposed to get you a job? Yeah, you know, and that's that's kind of how that started. So I get it. You know, it's it's what I did and

I you know, I don't love talking about it, but I understand you know, it's what I did. And I don't love talking about it, but I understand, you know, if I don't give tactics away, I don't talk about friends that have been there or still there. You know, really, I try to do my best job of not beating my chest and not breaking the code in a way. But I feel like, you know, if I could talk about what I did in my prior life, you know, that helps others. And what we're doing here is just telling my story.

I'm good with that. There's just humility, you know, but you do, and I, you know, the code is, code is, you don't talk about it, but you do it very tastefully. You're definitely not a chest pounder, and I know if I didn't say that, you sure as how it weren't going to. I despise those types. How do you do? But so wouldn't feel like getting over the finally. No, it was it was good. I was you know super excited. Um,

right to work with, you know, good people, not that I didn't work with good people. I worked with fucking incredible people. Amazing people. Um, it was just different. You know, it was just it was the next chapter, right? And, uh, very busy, right? From 2006 to 10, it was just, it was fucking busy. Um, and, and, uh, it was awesome. So you're there for four years. Yeah, four years. What was your opt-to-mpo like? How much were you deploying? Um, I'm sure, see what I can say. I mean, we were deploying, I'd say, multiple times throughout the year. And, you know, Stairverse sees anywhere

from, you know, three to nine months. And you go out as much as you can, if I can physically go out. Yeah. I mean, it was, yeah, it was so busy. The target deck, every night, there's someone bad that you can go after. We shared a lot of targets with other units,

you know, Rangers and any unique eyes and SF and it was just busy. But that was fun, right? Like that's 100% why we're there. I remember the first time I went out. That was on point and I called myself a new guy and I could just got out of training. And someone threw, but what I thought were fucking, you know,

someone was engaging, someone really rapidly and what I didn't realize is someone just threw like a nine-banger. Oh shit. I'm like holy shit, is this what it's like? It was like literally the very first night and went out. You know, that was again, that was another wake-up call.

Yeah, like, like dude, you signed up for this and You're getting you're getting everything you wanted. Yeah, yeah, yeah I'm going to put it in the oven. I'm going to put it in the oven. I'm going to put it in the oven. I'm going to put it in the oven. I'm going to put it in the oven. I'm going to put it in the oven. I'm going to put it in the oven. I'm going to put it in the oven. I'm going to put it in the oven.

I'm going to put it in the oven. I'm going to put it in the oven. I'm going to put it in the oven. I'm going to put it in the oven. I'm going to put it in the oven. And so, yeah, like I said, it was busy. It was busy. In, you know, seven, it lost, you know, we were talking about one of my best friends, Josh Harris. And man, he tried to cross the river and just, you know, you could Monday morning, quarter back at all day, but shit just went sideways.

And, you know, we didn't find him for 10, 10 and a half hours later. Yeah. Sun came up. And it was terrible, going out like that. Yeah, it was just, he was a shocker man. He was like our four horsemen, our crew of four.

He was one of them, you know? Yeah. And you know, always say good things happen from bad things like that. But we mean another one of our other best buddies. I won't mention his name just because he's doing some work. We, you know, we brought his body back to his parents and his family really in North Carolina. And his loss connected us to his family. And so you know we lost Josh but we became best friends with his mom, his dad, his brother, his like my brother,

his sister, his twin sister who he kept away from. Team guys. I'll be for this. Yeah. She's just amazing, beautiful, just like energetic and happy. And he was like, yeah, you're coming nowhere near these guys. And then, you know, ants and uncles and like, you know, so we lost Josh, but we became like, we grew a new family. And that was pretty awesome. So we hung out with them for a week in North Carolina. And just got to celebrate it in his life.

You know? Yeah. And I drank a lot. I drank a lot. I drank a pleasure to meet him, but you know, I've heard I just sound like, yeah, I'm a real pleasure. The dude could do nothing wrong? Even if we did something wrong, like he did it so cool,

they're like, yeah, it doesn't matter. You just, you looked really cool doing it, so. You know, it was really cool. He was, I just love this story, because we didn't know a whole lot about his history prior. It's just like a lot of guys, you know. These guys come from all different walks of life. He was an art major and he has his master's in architecture and went over to Prague.

And I just thought it was fascinating. We never saw really any of his work really until after he passed. And I can't even tell you the amount of insane work that he has all over. It's incredible. He was so creative, so creative. Was it like paintings or everything? Paintings, sculptures, he did it all. No shit. Yeah, super talented. I'm sure that's why we were friends because you're like, I really like this guy because he'd give a shit about conforming to you know Gene's

Sandals black t-shirt G-Shock watch You know what I mean, right? And so He just had a way about him when you went in his his room at his house, like he was a Renaissance man. So he had like a catcher in the rye and to kill a mockingbird. And gosh, what are all the others? Lonesome Dove.

And like he just had all the classics in his room. And like he was just that type of individual classics in his room and like he was just that, you know type of individual I thought it was just so cool It sounds like a deep thinker. It's total deep thing. Yeah Till he you know until you're walking down the hallway with your water bottle and you walk by you and you would smack it at your hand just because so When you got over to DevGroup, what would you say some of the major differences are between

you know, DevGroup and you know, the rest of the SEAL teams? Yeah. You know, one in experience, so you know, everyone over there is older, right? You can't go over there unless you've proven yourself in the teams. And so you got you have to be good in the teams, but you're young. And then if you prove yourself there, you get to go over there, and you get to learn from guys that have been around for 10 or 15 or 20 years. And so those are the guys that look like they were six foot four, and 250 pounds with pears and muscles, right? You know, because they're older and mature,

and the mission was a little bit more focused, and so got really good, really, really good at a few things. You can shoot every day. Like I remember making a stink Yeah, like I remember I Remember making a making a stink when we're at the teams that I didn't even see my I didn't even see my weapons for like over six months. Didn't even touch him

You know I don't know. I mean how do you become a good shot if you don't yeah, you know? So you got I mean, you know, you got the ranges, you use them. You can shoot every day. You shoot all different types of guns. You know, nobody told you what to do. It's more of a big, kind of a big boy program. You want to take out MP7 one night? Go ahead, you want to take out, you know, a fucking Mark 12?

Go ahead. 416, 417. It doesn't 12, go ahead. 416, 417, it didn't matter, you know. It's like, it's up to you, what you think you needed that night. So that was, you know, that was a big difference. You know, you get treated like an adult until you didn't act like an adult and then you got treated like a kid again.

Yeah. And, you know, more resources, more money and then you got treated like a kid again. And, you know, more resources, more money, and so, you know, better, I guess, access to training, if you needed it. You guys were competing, when you get over there, and you get in country on a plumber, but you're not competing for, are you still competing for air assets and drones?

And I think you're always competing, but I think it depends, I mean, things change all the time. When I work there, like, we seem to have everything we need. Right? Where's had AC 130 gunship? Always had some fast movers that we can call.

You know, always had a good supporting element, whether like, you know, Ranger blocking positions that, you know, we're just, you know, that you needed. Yeah. That kind of protected our backs when we did stuff. And so, yeah, but I still think, you know, I think you always had a compete. I don't know if I saw it at my level, but probably as you go up, some of the leadership definitely were probably in the scrum fighting for, you know, work.

And, you know, but again, times are different. So if you had, if we were, if we had an AO that we were working for a certain amount of time like that was it it was our AO we can go out whenever we want we can do whatever we want maybe if we went to another AO we'd have to de-conflict with that battle space owner however that was yeah you know we used to do stuff in Iraq maybe we have to ask the marine for permission to come into their area that they just, they've just been building a relationship for like last year. And then we'd come in and just fuck it all up.

But like, you know, blown every car up, every house, killing a bunch of people, and then saying, hey, you guys do it with it, we're out. We're gonna go hit the next target and somebody else is a, hey, you guys do it with it, we're out, we're gonna go hit the next target and somebody else is, hey, oh, shit. That's, you know, but again, like, there's a specific job and a specific mission

that we did and we did that. And so, like, we were allowed to do that because we were going after certain, really bad, you know, cell leaders, right? And so, there was no, there was no pussy foot around that stuff. Yeah. Yeah. And so then we'd say, I mean, we'd say sorry, pay some money and move on. So he's found what sounds like about four years over four years there. Yeah, four years there. And, you know, I'd say by, when Josh passed and we lost two other really fucking amazing

individuals on that deployment, it's just, I started turning at that time and I'd say personally, I think I saw my first psychologist when I got back from that deployment. I was just like, I needed somebody to talk to. Like really talk to, say to the fuck is going on. I'm not like I used to be, I used to be Superman and courageous and there's like something going on. You know, I'm depressed, I'm not. This is not the same like it used to be, like this used to be not a job, and it's becoming a job.

How long were you there before maybe you started feeling, it's just like probably, it's like, it's end of 30 year maybe. That's pretty fast. It was quick, I mean, It's end of 30 year maybe. That's pretty fast. It was quick. I envy the guys that are still there. My roommate, my budget roommate is still there. Best friend of mine. I envy the guys can keep going. I love that.

My Joker people, I was like, yeah, and I quit at 13 years. Yeah. But, you know, I don't know, man, my body was not good. I'm back as I'll fucked up. And it was just time, like I was not, my kids, the last two deployments when this tide started turning a little bit they were hysterical crying when I got out of the car to leave like bawling and so's amber you know and I just thought I said you know I don't I'm not sure I can do this much more. It's like really started weighing on me.

Like really bad mentally, you know, that my kids are now being affected too. And they know what I'm doing. Before they didn't, they were too young, but, you know, they're starting to get affected by me deploying. Yeah. So, you know, a couple of that, a couple, you know you know the job which I loved of course I was just like trying to figure out Like what's going on what's next?

Do I do this forever and Trying to think of like what the real turning point was Well, see how I asked me asked me to go to OCS. Oh, and I was just like not in a good place. I was like, I think I had seven combat deployment and I was just, or before that was B6. And then I thought, I don't know, is that a good idea? Is it not a good idea? I think if I stay in, of know, is that a good idea? Is it not a good idea? I think if I stay in, of course, it's a great idea,

but I'm not, I don't know what's going on right now. So I decided to go to the OCS. OCS is officer candidate school, which, so you're gonna be coming off. Right. And again, I just, I didn't know, you know, I didn't know what was going on at that time. I was just like, I was a bit lost.

I was starting to get lost. And I went and I remember, I remember calling my best friend up, you know, in the teams and saying, hey, like, I can't go. Like, I can't get on this flight. Like, I'm not in a good place, you know. We just got off our last deployment.

And he's like, you got to go. I said, yeah, but I said, man, I'm like, I'm not good. You know, like, it's not going to, it's not going to be good. Like, I'm not good. And I don't, I'm not sure if you understood that. And I don't know if I understood it. The so funny story. So I show up, of course, got all these fucking ribbons and metals. It was crazy shit.

And you show up to OCS with kids at a college. This is stupidest thing for team guys to go to being the same place as them. That's dumb. But there was a way around that I found out afterwards. So I show up, I don't want to be there. I had fucking pounding headaches at that time. So like really bad headaches and you couldn't have anything. It was like going to bootcamp.

So I couldn't just go take ibuprofen because the only thing that works for my headaches is 800 milligram ibuprofen. Not 200, not 400, 800. Not Tylenol. I have to take at minimum 800. Couldn't get that, right? So here I am now. It's like my first day out, I have a pounding migrate,

start getting migraine, I started getting migraines around that time, right before that. And I'm like, hey, I can't function right now. Like I'm fucking, like my head is screaming. And they're like, well, you know, you put in a, here, fill this shit out, we'll get you some, we'll get you something like next four to six hours.

I'm like, oh gosh, okay. So then we go in our rooms, we get our rooms, whatever, and they make a sit on the floor, not in a chair, on the floor and start reading the, was it the 11th general of the century? Is that serious? Yeah. And so first off, like my lower back is just crushed.

And I'm trying to sit on the floor, I'm like, hey, can I get a, kind of sit in a chair, or can I lean up against a wall? Like, nope, you know, type of thing. So here I am on the floor, I got fucking migraine headache. My back is killing me. I cannot sit still. Can't read these fucking general orders of century. And I remember literally taking the book, flinging it across the room. I'm like, okay, who's in charge here?

It was looking at me like, the fuck is this guy? Like, shh. Like, no, I need to, who's in charge here? Here, who's looking at me? Like, is this guy like, shh? Like, nah, I need to speak to who's in charge. Some lieutenant, whatever. I want to tell him, like, yeah, so I was like, I'm gonna go back to the last command I was at. And I was like, yeah, we should talk about this. So, we start talking and he goes, you know,

most people we have to keep him here for like 12 to 14 weeks. I'm like, yeah, but I was like, I don't need to do that. Like, I need to, like, that's, do that for like the college kid who is just entering the military. Like, I've been in for 10 years. I've had seven combat deployments like, I don't need to be here. Like, I just need, I need to go somewhere. So within two days they got me out of there sent me back and I remember you know sitting down Amber when I

got back to Virginia Beach and going like I need like I need a break you know like I'm not I'm not doing well and she's like well let's yeah let's go figure something out like one of the go out to California becoming instructor you know we'll figure out, what's up, we'll try to reconnect, be good for the kids, and that's what kind of started me, you know, got away from operating and I went out and, I was a first phase instructor for a year.

Which I didn't, I didn't love, I was lost there. Well, before we go into that, just going, going back, you say a joke around about quitting, but, you know, I mean, that takes just going back, you say a joke around about quitting, but, you know, I mean, that takes a lot of courage to say, Hey man, I'm not good. I don't want to go, you know, and, and, you know, and so I just want to say, you know, it's not quitting to you. That's just, yeah. I don't want to limit. And, and I think what happens with a lot of guys is, you know, a lot of people do hit their limit, I appreciate it. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. I appreciate it.

I appreciate it. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. I appreciate it.

I appreciate it. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. I appreciate it.

I appreciate it. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. Yeah, that's why I say, you know, I envy the guys that don't need a break or maybe they do and they're just, you know, but I wish I could have just kept grinding it out with no issues, you know, yeah, but that that wasn't me. That's not what you know my mind and body Decided, yeah, if you want to call it that. So, but no, I appreciate that. So you move over, you go to San Diego, you become a first phase instructor to try to get your mind right. And that sounds like that is kind of where things really started getting started.

Things started, things right away went sideways. I didn't, I didn't mix well. I don't want to say I didn't mix well with the first phase instructors, but I was just angry. I got this fucking pissed off. Why am I here? Should be back on the East Coast with my buddies. It's still be operating.

Finally, someone's like, dude, you need to go, go see the West Coast, like, diomedical officer. You should. You're having like these symptoms that, you know, you should just go see him. So I went to see him. I think he put me on for a memory, put me on the first anti-depressant. And I started seeing him once a week. He's like, hey, you're experiencing is, he goes, not there's normal, but he's like, he goes, I'm starting to see this a little bit more

than I'd like to. What year is this? This is 2011, 2010 maybe. 11, 2011. But he just said that everything I was telling him is exactly what he's experiencing the last, he's like a couple months. So this was like right when I think guys started, you know, it was very busy from say, oh, four to 10 or oh, five to 10. And so he started seeing this wave of guys come to him

for the same exact issues, right, whatever they were. Right, now we're finding out what they are. But, um, and I don't think he knew, he's called the seal syndrome. No, which is, which is true because they did that at published a study called Operator Syndrome. He was on to something, just didn't have it. But that's when all the shit started happening. I get sent to Nikko Clinic. It's the brain center.

That's connected to Bethesda. Do you know it at all? Yeah, I've not been there, but I've heard about it. Okay. And bear with me. So I'm gonna try to remember all this. Amber's gonna do a much better job of the timelines. But, you know, there, you're hoping to get better, but really,

I'd just do it a lot of testing. And it was cool because I found out, like, you know, I had arthritis both my hips and like my shoulders were torn and, you know, a bunch of other things. Found out had some, some, I don't know, you're calling, like, I'm called dead spots on the brain, but like some minor, like TBI's, something you can cut some blows, right? Parts of the brain, it didn't like blood flow and things like that. So I got put on some more drugs there. I think maybe well-buterin, I think something for nightmares, I'm have really bad nightmares. Like killing nightmares, a very violent knife and guns and fucking magazine pops out and

weapon breaks and forget my combat shoes and you're fighting 30 guys hand to hand. That was a very common dream I had, often, shitty. And Amber, you know, she said, used to wake up like, just like, like this loud like whimpering and fucking, you know, she says it was just odd. So I got put on, it was like an an eye, like like nightmare drug. I'm ever written down somewhere I'm gonna name it so that with some SSRIs anti depressants I Think I'm not sure if it was there. I think I got put on a focus medication because I was having trouble just like

Focus on anything like like yeah, it was a provigial individual And then ambient of course they were asleep. So it's just like started I started that focusing on anything. Like, yeah, it was a provigial, individual, and then Ambien, of course, he would sleep. So it was just like started, I started that whole. So you just listed off like five or six pills, just like that? Yeah, that was like, that was the SOP. That was a concoction of drugs. And so I stayed on those for seven years.

And yeah, I just, it just declined after that. It went from there over to SQT. And I was great. I got to work with some really close friends there. And I thought I was fine, but I was just mentally like just, I was checked out. What kind of stuff were you seeing other than, other than nightmares like, what was a family like?

Well, then I was just having horrible time, with my family, and here I was. Here I was, and you're trying to make time for them, but I mean, I was nightmare. I was like drinking much heavier than I ever was. I mean, hard. How many bottles a night? I mean, I probably go through at least half a bottle of night. Always, you know, bourbon, brown, brown water, but it didn't matter. I didn't drink anything.

But really just didn't have a connection with the kids. Didn't have a connection, you know, with Amber. It's a lot of fighting. Had a friend come over once late night. I got real drunk. I had like, I had my gun out and I was just like, ranting about stupid stuff, you know, stuff that happened in the past. And, you know, he was really concerned because I was drunk and it was loaded and Andy Ambiel. Yeah, I mean, Ambiel was take Ambiel and then start drinking. That was like, and you know, that wasn't good, of course. You know, so it just, just too many things that were

just happening that were, it's not normal. Was it affecting, would you say it was affecting your work performance too? Yeah, I mean, I feel like I was a ghost at work. I mean, I ran the cell, but the guys ran the cell. I was trying, I decided to go to school with that time too. I was like, why not?

I mean, it's just like, just one thing after the other, or just constantly like, just put shit in the way that didn't make sense at the time. How would just like work on you for a while? You know? I got through that, but I look back and I'm like, we're letting it through it. I barely got through it.

It was just time to leave. It was time to leave and I tried to, I went in to the doctor to separate and this psychologist, he said, Hey, man, he's like, I can't let you leave like this. I'm like, what are you talking about? He said, like, you got a lot of shit going on right now. Like your medical package is huge.

Like, my medical records were big. is huge, like your medical records were big. I was on a bunch of medications. It was clearly not in a good place. He could tell I was running, basically, just running, trying to run, and he's like, I'm not letting you get out. He's like, I want to look at this for a little while. I was like, I'm not letting you get out. He's like, I want to, I want to, you know, I want to look at this for a little while.

I was like, okay. So I stayed in for probably an extra eight months and what he did at that time was he pushed for me to get med board because he said, like, you're, you're gonna be really bad when you leave. Like, you're gonna have none of this support You know, and like you're gonna fuck in spiral and so he got me med He got me he got basically got like my my medical stuff together

Is able to get me med boarded and I got medically actually medically retired Which you know at the time I didn't give a fuck honestly, I was trying to get out as fast as I could. Yeah. I literally tried to, I was like, no, I don't wanna do that. Like, that does make any sense. Like, I'm good. You know, now I look back like, holy shit. You know, what if I just would like,

taking off without, you know, any of that. Yeah. So he really fucking had to do love. Dude, any of that. Yeah. So he really fucking hooked you love. Dude, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's good. Sometimes you should listen to the doctors. Yeah. Yeah. So I got out 2013. It's milky retired. Went to work up in LA. And you know, it just kept just from there, you know, from, you know,

the last part of the years in the team was just kind of just kept. Nothing was good. You know, sleeping was terrible. Nightmare to, yeah, your civilian life. Um, why did you move over to ask you to, I heard on, heard you talking to, uh, Marcus LaTrell and Melanie LaTrell that maybe there was an incident with a student. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Why you move. Yeah. And that's great, great point. Um, do you want to hear the incident? You want to just hear why? Yeah. I want to hear the move. Yeah, and that's a great point. Do you wanna hear the incident? You wanna just hear why. Yeah, I wanna hear the incident. Yeah, the first, you know, first, I didn't wanna be there.

First off, like I said, I didn't know what I wanted to do. So I was already angry, super angry. And there was an evolution, and I was out on the beach. I think it was the, I might have been running the evolution, like the evolution chief or safety officer or something, and kept watching the student, you know, but it was like, really, it was just like, I was just locked on to this person, like, it didn't matter.

And his name was Harris. You know, he had the name tag. And I just can't watch them. And he was like sandbag and everything. And it was just, he was just turning up the beach. And guys were running out of water all like slow, whatever. And he was like one of the slower ones. And I just kind of like walk past the instructors. And I grabbed him and I literally lifted them up off of his feet and slammed them

onto the hard sand as hard as I could. And I put my knees chest like I was going to like, you know, almost like a, you know, like knee and chest and ground a pound. And I just started screaming at him. Like a grab just collar and I was just screaming at him. Like fucking cursing at him. I didn't even know what I said. It was just like, you know, mother fucker, like spit was coming out of my mouth. You know, I was talking about how he can,

how he would, he's degrading the Harris name. Yeah. Yeah, that was tough. Yeah. And I remember some of the instructors and then one of the G.S.S., Oh, one of the, I think it was a G.S., you know, one of my good friends was kind of grabbing me. It's like, hey man, like the fuck.

Like we were right in front of the flagpole. You know, anybody could have been watching. And here I am, a slamming student. And then just getting really violent, you know, anybody could have been watching. And here I am, slamming student, and then just getting really violent. You know, I don't remember ever seeing that kid again, but it was not, like, that shit's not supposed to happen. Yeah. And it's happened, I think we've all seen it, but again, everybody we've seen it from,

like those individuals were not right. And I just wasn't right. Yeah. You know, I just wasn't And I just wasn't right. Yeah. I just wasn't, obviously I wasn't right. So I just, I didn't like being there. I didn't like being like a drill sergeant in a way. I wanted to teach tactics. I thought I was a better teaching tactics

coming from where I came from. And so finally they got me over to SQT and I ran the CQC for two years. And that was, like I said, it was great. I got to be around good guys that I really liked. And I worked with over at DevCroop, teach some tactics. But yeah, that's the, I don't think the beach incident is why I went over, you know, looking back, maybe I was so blinded that that's why I got maybe I got sent over there. No, I don't know. Could be maybe a good possibility,

you know. Yeah, it could be, it could very well be. Yeah, so one other thing I want to cover that we just kind of breeze over because your job is a breacher. And the reason I want to cover that a little bit more extensively is because the amount of explosions that you've been initiated, I'm sure plays a tremendous part in your downward spiral and getting into the alternative medicine and that kind of stuff. So, you know, you said, you were a breach or a 10 and you guys were going out all the time. You did 1D8, it sounded like, out all the time. You did 1D8, it sounded like, but then when you went over to development group, you know, it got a lot busy. Yeah, I was, you know, straining. Yeah. So, you know, like, and I know you, you have no idea, but if you had an estimate, you know, how many

explosives did you, do you think you may have detonated? I'd say we're talking thousands. Yeah, well, I'd say several hundred to a thousand. I'm trying to be conservative just because of the multiple trips, the training trips, being an RSO, range safety officer, so then being the safety officer for guys that are, you know, blown breaching charges and blown them myself, you know, it was definitely a lot. Yeah, definitely a lot. It was where learning writes subconcussive blows are actually worse than, you know,

concussions, full on concussions. So, you know, we've, I think we've all had a lot of those. And again, I always tell people, you never know who's gonna happen to. Some people can... Yeah. What did you just say? What's worse than a concussion?

Sub-concussive blows. I don't know that. So sub, yeah, and again, I hope I'm getting this right, but I'm almost positive that the sub-cussive, the repeated subconcussive blows is what are causing, you know, what is going on right now with special operations community and why guys are having this quote-unquote

operator syndrome, what I obviously was experiencing, is the constant, you know, the charge goes off, blast wave goes through you, charge goes off, blast wave goes through you, minor sub can cause some blows, maybe not fully knocked out, but your bell's wrong or you eat that charge, you feel it. Just like in football, when you get your bell wrong,

those are, does it impact? These are, you know, blast. Yeah, a little bit different, but similar what the end result is, at the end game, which you're hoping not to get, which is CTE, right? But all these mild TBI's are, you know, they're adding up. You know, the body keeps score. I think there's a book on the body keeps score.

So walk us through like a standard pit on a target as a breacher. How close are you? What are you using? Sure, sure, sure. So standard target, say I was carrying multiple breaching charges from tiny little explosives that could just blow a small lock to heavy demolition charges that you know can blow a Reinforced you know steel like door on a compound and blow the thing and like cut it in half Will how much is it C4?

I Don't know if we want to get into the, uh, or maybe a Habersack. We'll be competitive. Habersack, Habersack, you're going to go through a wall. Yeah. So, you know, if we, if we blew a Habersack, we, you know, blown through a wall. So I wish I had the numbers, or I remember the pounds, you know, the poundage, but, you know, say we thought, say we blew a pound charge or half a pound on some of these door on some of these like, you know, big steel gates. We were doing that every night.

And then again, if I go back to training, we may be doing that all week, like hundreds of times over, right? And in training, we'd always make sure we got the standoff that we needed on the minimum safe distance. In combat, we didn't, there was no, there was no rain safety officer. You know, like you are breacher, like you're in charge of making sure everybody gets back, everybody's out of the way, nobody's looking at the charge, if you look at the charge, you could eat, you know, something, bolt and nut, you know, something that'll basically go through you. But really what we cared about is not seeing the charge. So as long as we could

not see it, like we felt like a lot of times we were good. So we would be well inside, mean safe distance, as long as we're out of the blast zone, not getting hit with a piece of frag. So a lot of times we're eating that minimum safe distance, we were well inside that. Well, what would a minimum safe distance be? It's all figured off, it's math, it's math, it's easy math.

Like so whatever the charge was, again, this is, this is gonna be wrong math, but if it's a pound charge, say I need to be 17 feet. Again, those numbers are off. But so instead of 17 feet, I'm at like eight. Yeah. Right. But there's a reason for that minimum safe distance because there was, you know, really smart guys, engineers years ago that calculated all this and said, by the way, if you're in this distance, like you're probably going to brain damage. Yeah. Right.

So we won't quote you on the minimum six. Right. Yeah, I don't have, I don't know the numbers. Like I said, I've been out of the game for a while, but you know, we knew them at the time, knew them at the time, of course. And you could just see what your standoff is. But many time we were within, excuse me, inside that means safe distance. So that blast wave, it is really fucking you up.

It is jacking you up. And there are some times I've had buddies tell me that, hey man, you remember that charge you set off? Remember that multiple times that we were in enclosed area, so like corners and walls, and now that conclusive blow is just evaporated, example of light.

Two times, three times, who knows, right? I mean, shattered your teeth, literally. Like, it's crazy, like headaches. And I mean, I did a thing recently, we shot maybe two, three years ago. I was doing like a watching some guy shoot a 50 cow for like three hours. Dude, I had such a pounding headache, like, you know, at the end, I said, well, this is obviously why I'm not doing this anymore, you know.

But yeah, I mean, like I said, as a breacher, you're taking explosive, you're putting in a spot to make entryway into somewhere. And that, when that thing goes off, it is rocking you, or it is going right through your brain. It's why we're having problems with our endocrine system. Why are hormone, you know, why are testosterone is down below 300? Now, when we get back from deployment, why guys can't sleep, why guys are gaining weight, why guys are drinking so hard, why they're depressed, why they have anxiety,

you know, doctors want to throw, you know, the military wants to throw this PTSD diagnosis, but I don't even know what PTSD is. If it's depression, anxiety, okay, yeah, I had PTSD. But it's a brain thing. This is definitely a brain thing. We, me, you, maybe you're not feeling it. We have traumatic brain injury, mild traumatic brain injury that may not be seen by other people, but it's affecting us on a regular basis.

You know, in some days we feel good, in some days we don't. But again, looking back at the history of events, it's obvious what happened. Like I most likely started seeing some of those things early. You know, and then it just slowly, slowly declined, maybe took, you know, maybe took a while. I don't know. I just want to go through that, because I want, you know, I just want people to be able to visualize exactly how close you are,

especially as a breacher who's done, you know, give or take a thousand, you know what I mean? Yeah. And again, I, you are, especially as a breacher who's done, you know, give or take a thousand, you know what I mean? Yeah. And again, I commend the ones that I did a thousand, what about the guys that are in there for 25 or 30 years that have done 2000, 3000. Yeah. What are their brains look like?

Or what are they going to look like? How fast are they going to decline? Explosives happen like, you know, when you see it, it's done, that's how fast they are, right? It's just like boom, and you see the concussion, you see the smoke, you know, you eat that whole energy. Yeah. And then just for example, like, you know,

from my own personal experience, for those of you that have never Never detonated a bomb or you know, which is awesome by the way. It's just fun as shit, right? But you can feel like Like a lot of times you'll feel like your sinuses almost feel like they're clearing out your ears at the club They feel like they've just been drained like yeah master, Breach, I felt terrible for. Again, he's like, I, you had two or three thousand charges and we do a trip and he bleed

from the nose and the mouth and cough a blood. And I'm like, I don't think that's good. You know, and again, I'm telling you, I'm right now what I'm doing is I'm seeing the bag of gold and I'm telling you it's fucking heavy And I don't want to carry it instead of saying there's a lot of money there and we're gonna be rich, right? like I Love doing everything I did like don't get me wrong every you know, but there was just some you know I loved all of it, but there was a price. Yeah. You know, there's a price at NFL players.

You know, they stopped playing at 35. If they're lucky enough to get to 35, like they're really, they're jacked up. You know, they're jacked up, but they'll never say they wish they never did that. Yeah. Right. Well, on that note, let's take a break. And when we come back, we'll talk about the living transition. Yeah.

Where did you work? Was it Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stain? I started out at Merrill Lynch. Then I got hired by Fortress Investment Group. And then, I'm sure that was interesting. Well, if I can, in Beverly Hills, are you kidding me? We'll talk about that after the break. 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc

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1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc All right, man, we're back from the break and you're in the finance industry. Yes. So we separated in 2013, San Diego, we sold our house, we moved up to Calabases, outside of LA, and I went to work for Merrill Lynch on a pretty substantial private bank team. So I started commuting from Calabassas to downtown Beverly Hills every day, which is probably 30 to 40 minutes in the morning, 5 a.m. because you have to be there before the market opens on the East Coast. What were you doing, a real stock broker? No, well, so that industry used to be stockbrokers

and all the good stockbrokers who had good clients, they transitioned into like a financial advisory role. So that stock broker wind up taking their book of business and just managing those individuals from a financial advisory perspective, meaning they'd help them. They'd still, brokerage, they made their money off of making trades, but the fees for trades went, you know, now it's at zero. And so that industry went away. And so like I said, the good ones wanted to

be coming financial advisors, private bankers, you know, you give me $10 million and I manage your life, right? I manage all your money. I put them in funds, I trade them if we need to, we help you with insurance, state planning, you want to buy things, you want to set up trust for your kids, like that's what I did. Like a CFP. CFP was part of the team, so the CFP, they were the portfolio managers, So they actually did the trades. They knew when to do the trades. They did the difficult work. My job, they called it Rainmaker.

I go out and find the money. So it was my job to go out. And so you're a networker. Yes. So you went from... Blowing yours into drinking martinis at the Beverly Woesher and trying to you know trying to Convince people that they had to move you know There are a hundred million dollars over to our private bank team. How the hell do you go from

Kick indoors and a shooting bad guys to drink and martinis and Beverly Hills at the tip of the spear of the financial sector. Yeah, it's probably why I'm not doing it anymore. No, I mean, I got lucky enough to get hired onto a good team through my network. I wish I had a little bit more mentorship there. I think they expected me to, oh, you're a Navy SEO, you can just go figure this out. And then I did to a point. If I was doing that job now, life would be easy. What I know, but I didn't know anything when I got out, right? And so it was very difficult. I mean, I didn't know anything when I got out right and so it was very difficult I mean I didn't understand that I really had a grind at that probably for a Good three years maybe three to five to like really kind of turn the engine on and

You know after eight months. I was just pulling my hair out and but you know I did set up I set up a few very good meetings, one in particular, that they were looking to bring in about $180 million from my network, my connections, and the team couldn't close it. But that's what I was there to do. I was there to open doors. And it's funny. A mentor mine now, who I work with, still says, Marcus, you're a breacher. Even in the private sector, you will always be a breacher. Unless you want to do something else, but he's like, that's what you're really good at. You're really good at networking. You're really good at building

relationships with people. You're very transparent. You're honest, and that's why people like you. You're a breacher, you open doors, right? You should continue to open doors in the private sector for that. So I would open the door and expect the team behind me to come in and finish it. Yeah. And so that was kind of the job. But I got frustrated. Like I said, I started drinking like super heavy.

I was working ridiculous hours. You know, I wasn't seeing the kids, you know, activities. I wasn't really hanging out with Amber. My time's off. I'd go surfing in Malibu. I mean, this sounds amazing, right? But like, it wasn't. Like, I was fucking, life was shitty, right? Like, I was depressed. I know, I was fucking life was shitty, right? Like I was depressed. I was anxious that I wasn't gonna succeed. And I was getting frustrated. I got a phone call from a friend, another friend business mentor, who asked me to build a startup with him on the East Coast,

and they had raised money that time at Fortress Investment Group. So I got hired into Fortress Investment Group as a vice president, got paid really well, and we built a couple portfolio companies. And I did that for a couple of years, and that was a little bit better. And granted, the things we were doing at the time

was a little bit early, so I didn't hit the market yet. So we were one of those things that we just had a we just had to keep grinding every day Keep the lights on and eventually you know, it would stick But it just got a little you know, I was commuting I was doing the the red eye from LAX to Raleigh Durham Oh, like pretty regularly, you know, weekly, monthly, and it was getting tiring. And again, you know, I wasn't getting any better, you know, from the past. And so well, not the stereotype. Yeah. But generally, when team guys leave the teams, the social skills are not, you know not quite up to par, for what people are used to.

So it's fine to really... No, it took... Interesting. It took a while working. It took a while. It definitely took a while. I think I had a natural knack for someone to say, Marcus, you don't...

Yeah, it'd be great to go take some sales classes, but people need sales classes when they don't have that kind of x-factor, that it factor, like you don't need the sales classes, but people need sales classes when they don't have that kind of X factor, that it factor, you don't need the sales classes. You can just be you in your natural sell whatever it is. But again, I didn't give things enough time to matriculate to, and I'm learning that now, you have to just get a put in your time. I feel like I was digging a lot of shallow holes, not just digging one really deep, and just keep going, and keep going, and keep going, and eventually it catches on.

And so the frustration was just through the roof. I'm like three years out now, 2016, drinking heavily, getting behind the wheel, not giving a fuck about anything, not really having any friends that I hung out with. Amber started me at that time, started looking at some brain clinics because I was just really struggling with everything. Yeah, I read your Oracle and Time magazine, which was really good, by the way, and we'll link it below in the description for everybody to check out.

But in there, it was saying that you, it sounds like you weren't even in the moment, present. Oh gosh, no, I was everywhere, I was everywhere else getting lost, taking your daughter to volleyball, getting to pick up the kids from activities. Friends would have to pick them up. I'd be too drunk. All of it. Two in simple tasks at the house, you know, putting lights on the trees or simple, like problem solving, just couldn't, couldn't figure it out. Get super frustrated, throw shit, be impulsive.

You know, we wind up moving to Dallas for a number of reasons and it didn't get any better. I, you know, I freaking, like, choked out the bartender at the country club we belong to in Dallas and got on top of him and was like slapping him like in the middle of like this, you know, it's just real stuff that, you know, most private sector folks look at you like,

where the fuck is wrong with this person, right? But we, to me, I thought that was just normal, you know. Well, it is normal to us. Right. And, man, I just wasn't functioning. You know, I just wasn't doing it. And the kids started getting real distant for me because I was just being, you know, I was being,

like you said, I wasn't present, I was angry. Nothing was right. Nothing anybody can do was good enough. You know, I was Amber and I were just not good. Like we were talking about before, you know, the badgering, the back and forth, condescending, conversations. You know, we never did anything for ourselves.

Yeah, it was, man, it was a struggle. And again, the lack of any type of network of people I want to hang out with. And some of the ones that I did hang out with was shallow, yeah, was shallow. So I think it was, it was 15 or 16, it was 15, it was 14, that started going to like other brain clinics. So I went to the one, and I went to the second one in Dallas, and I went to a third one

in Southern California, and I went back there. I was just trying to get answers, like what, you know, what's going on? Like am I supposed to live like this for rest of my life, you know? And I really wasn't to get answers. Like what's going on? Like am I supposed to live like this for rest of my life, you know? And I really wasn't getting any answers. I was just getting, like they would change my meds. Like, oh, you're on Bupropria now. Let's put you on Lexipro or, you know, Simbalta

or, you know, you're on Provigil. Let's put you on New Vigil. You know? Oh, you're taking five milligrams out or I always put you to 10. And, oh, Amiens not working, let's do the other one. And like, it was never like, let's just take you off this and figure out what's wrong. Let's just keep putting bandages on everything and try to figure out.

I don't know, just to get you. Normal. I don't even know what that means. Yeah. Right. Well, I never went to a Burnt Clinic. I had signed up for several of them. And then I always just, I don't want to know because there is no cure. Yeah, no, that's the scary part is when they tell you

like, you know, by the way, you know, here's a volume of brain and like see this part over here or over here, like it's not, you know, it's not working like it's supposed to. And these are, you got all these, you got all the biomarkers for major depressive disorder, alcoholism, bipolar 2, I got diagnosed with, you know, just, you know, scary, scary shit. Yeah. Because, like, then you start, you know, you start reading more and you

start understanding that you're 40 years old, 39 and you're having problems with your brain. Yeah. Um, what's going to happen when I'm 50? So, um, it was really frustrating. And it made, I think it even made it worse because I wasn't getting any answers. I just kept getting this is what we do. This is what we do. $30,000, $15,000. You go there for a couple of weeks. I did the, it was the magnets or the, I forgot what I think was called, Mert.

That's definitely helping some people. I think was called Mert. That's definitely helping some people. I think it made me worse. Like I walked out of there. I stayed for twice as long. I mean, I walked out of there just fuck the world. You know, it hurt every time I did it. Like I feel like they did something wrong to me. I mean, I just had rage, you know.

I don't wanna talk about some of the physical altercations I got into. Our son started to act up a little bit at that time, probably because I wasn't present. And we had so many issues with him, and I had several occasions where I had it like put in the sleep literally. Once at the house, once at the police station, just it was just fucking nightmare. Everything happened. There was like nothing was falling into place. Everything was like wrong. My relationship with my wife was wrong. Relationship with my kids were wrong. My business life was wrong.

Like nothing was right. And when I say wrong, not wrong, it was just bad. It was just not, nothing was clicking. Everything was, you know, I felt like, like, why am I doing this? Like, what the fuck is the purpose for all this? Like, you're supposed to be good now. Like, you're not. And why? You know, and I always ask that question is, you know, is it my brain?

Is it just transitioning? Am I just depressed that I don't have teams anymore? You know? But if you're just depressed, you wouldn't have all these other fucking things that are going on, right? I think there's a reason that there's different, I guess, diagnosis. And so I think the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the brain magnets,

whatever they were doing, I think that was like the straw that broke the the the merchant the the brain magnets or whatever they were doing I think that was like the straw that broke the camel's back you know and and I just say I'm wrong I'm tired like I can't I can't do the same more like I'm like I don't I don't want to be here like you know there's no hope nothing's working you know life sucks yeah and like like you guys would be so much better without me. And I remember telling her that so many times, like, you guys would be so much happier, like, you'd get over it, you know, you would, you know, you'd be sad, but like, you'd live a happy life.

You'd find somebody that's like nice to you and treats you well and Doesn't act like this and the kids would have somebody that is just not complete mess in a nightmare And it would be good and I would be gone and You know then and then everybody wins. Yeah and and and that's how I felt for a while and Amber was like Honestly, she was like fuck that. She said, you know, I've never quit on anything. And I'm gonna figure this out. She didn't tell me that, that was her mindset.

And so she just did her, she just dug in. She just started figuring out, all right, what else can we do here? And I'll let her tell her side, you know, her story, but in a nutshell, there was, there was a seal that went, spent, um, who, who was really bad, bad, like struggling bad. Went to the jungle for a couple of weeks and did multiple sessions of ayahuasca therapy. Completely changed his life, became an amazing human being, freeing love and the death. He's like the coolest person you ever want to hang out with. And you were talking about last night?

Yeah, that's insane. It's amazing to even hear that come out of your mouth. It's pretty cool. It's insane. But yeah, I don't like, you know, I didn't ask him for permission to talk about him, so I don't think I should. But he owes his life to psychedelic assisted therapy. And his introduction to it was, was I wasca ceremonies down in Peru,

like, you know, where they literally been doing these for thousands and thousands of years safely. He went from being literally probably in the worst place ever to the best place ever. And then he had to take that back with him to the States and he learned Kundalini Yoga while he was down there. And that helped him just continue on the successes he's at now. And now he's in like, now he's an amazing individual, helping everybody. And so I guess in a roundabout way, he had funded another guy to go get similar treatment, except it wasn't ayahuasca, it was ibigain, what they did the time article about.

Ibigain was initially studied and used for addiction. There's nothing else on the planet. Nothing else on the planet that can cure curb addiction overnight like I began. You know, that's why I wanna hear about Gabe. Like it upsets me because I know if we could have got him an I began treatment, he'd fucking be here today with us.

It's unbelievable. And the reason it's not here is because it's that good, right? Yeah. Little bit of risk to it, but if you do all the proper screening, like there's no risk. The ones that it's risk, you screen out and you can't do it. And this individual got better overnight. Same thing, same story, except you didn't spend time in a jungle. We went to a retreat center that, in minister Ibingen.

So Amber is working with him and a doctor at the time. And you know, behind the the scenes they basically got the money together and they were able to get me to one of the retreat centers. And I went kicking and screaming because like probably like you I grew up you know kid on Long Island went to Catholic, all boys Catholic high school, drank some beer, you know, never did, I never did drugs didn't even know what really they were. Yeah.

And so for me, all drugs were bad, psychedelics were, psychedelics, they're crazy, right? Counterculture, 60s, you know, Woodstock. So when I heard about this, I mean, I was like, this is nuts. Like most of the guys that are going through this treatment are the same way, a lot of them, that haven't done the research they hear about

and they go, this is fucking crazy. But what they do is they trust that like 10 of their other friends went and gotten better. So they say, well, I trust you. So like I'll go. So I did my research. It took me about a year. No, that was less than a year.

I think Amber was working on this for a year, but by the time it got to me, you know, there's a couple of months, like I'm not doing that, that's crazy. I wind up finally saying yes, because I was tired. Yeah. And nothing else worked.

Nothing else worked. And I remember, I remember going, you know, don't expect this to work, like nothing else has. I don't know how you expect taking some psychedelic is supposed to like free me or clean me up or save me. post to like free me or clean me up or or save me. And so, you know, I went to this retreat center. And you, the medicine is prescribed per your body weight. So what I would take is different from what you would take. You take a, they call it like a handshake dose to make sure your body doesn't react.

It's about 45 minutes. It's a light dose. It's like a microdose. It's like drinking half a beer, you didn't feel it. It's just things you want to see as your body good. My body was good. They gave me the flood dose. And within

like an hour, two hours, you start hearing some buzzing. And again, what I began is, I began as an alkaloid of the Iboga root, Iboga plant shrub, scrondled in West Africa. I think the plant has 13 alkaloids. Similar like cannabis has 200 cannabinoids, new poll THC and CBD and CBN. Ebogan, I began the same. Ebogan has 13 different like, alkaloids in there that, you know, scientists can pull and do experiments.

scientists can pull and do experiments. Well, I began is the big daddy, and it's the one that really curbs addiction. So I began is the most powerful, it's the most powerful psychedelic on the planet. Hands down. Before we go into your experience and kind of the journey through that, I want to bring your wife Amber up here

and kind of talk to her about what it was like when you were experiencing all these symptoms. Yeah. But before we break real quick, I'm just curious, and I think I know the answer, but everybody talks about the symptoms, you know, rage, anxiety, depression, insomnia, impulsivity, impulsiveness nightmares, nightmares, but do you

uh, do you, do you forget what the hell you're talking about a lot of times in mid sentence? When it happened to me, it'll happen, it happens to me all the time. It happens to me when I'm interviewing it happened to me. It happens to me all the time. It happens to me when I'm interviewing. It used to me. It used to you. On the phone. It.

I am in. Is it happening now? It's frustrating. Not like at this moment, but it's frustrating because I'll be talking. I'll be interviewing. I'll be talking to my parents, my friends. And I get frustrated because mid-sentence, I'll just forget what the hell I was talking about,

and then I have to verbalize why I quit talking, and it's maybe I need to get you treated. Well, that's the thing, yes. And that is the, that's the, being present, being focused, you know, like you're talking, but maybe your, your mind's going somewhere else. So now you're mid-sentence and you forget the second part of your, you know, when you're focused and you're talking and you're, you're in it, like you should be able to go.

So if, if you're not, there's, there's some kind of disconnect going on in your head, right? Like it's, that's your mind. There's some kind of disconnect going on in your head, right? Like it's that's your mind. There's nothing else, but something going on in your mind. I'm not a doctor to tell you what that is, but that's a symptom that I was curious. Absolutely. Experience. Absolutely. It's a symptom. And this guy wrote of that. Discussed rid of we're going to talk about what this does. I mean, this is But this gets rid of, we're going to talk about what this does. I mean, this is, it works on a few different levels, physiologically, meaning, and this is what they're going to do.

Switch Stanford is going to do their study on through Vets. They think that, not just I began maybe maybe all psychedelics Actually physiologically Hills the brain helps the brain repairs the brain again. I'm not gonna tell you what it does But think of the volume your brain potentially maybe Increasing yeah instead of like a degenerative brain disease, dementia, Parkinson's, you know, decreases the volume of your brain, right?

Like, basically dies. This is like helping you. So it works on the physiological level or works on psychospiritual level, meaning trauma. Like, that's where, you know, that's where psychedelics really go to work is there is no hiding from psychedelics. Yeah. When you take it in a in a hero dose they call it a flood dose, big dose where you can't walk around. You have to be in a bed monitored by a therapist, doctor. You can't hide from the medicine. Whatever you experienced, the shit that's holding you back, what may be causing your depression, what may be causing everything in your life to be full of turmoil, it could be buried in your subconscious. Maybe it's stuff that you compartmentalize and

you put away because we're really good at that. What I begin does really fucking well. And what other psyched it looks to you? Silicidin, LSD, Iowaska. It goes down there and it just fucking rips it out and it shows you. It just puts it right in front of you and says here, deal with this right now. Fucking deal with it. Are you good? Like it shoves it in your face. I begin really shoves in your face.

But I was guy, I begin to call like the grandfather, the father, masculine and then I wasca's more like the grandmother, feminine, but they both, they both do what they're supposed to do. Ayahuasca, they say is a little bit more gender, you know, I have a gains more like, and that's why it's so good for us. It's why it's so good for team guys. And more than team guys, but we need it. We're like fucked up on multiple different levels, right? Trauma, childhood trauma, wartime trauma, wartime TBI's transition trauma. What's my

purpose in life? Like just all of it, right? I began just seems to just fucking get to the root cause of all this and put you back to normal like you used to. When Amber saw me for the first time, the morning after I did my experience woke up, finally I was like after, you know, 13 hours of puking and get my ass kicked literally. She was like, dude, that's Marcus from when I met him in college. Like he's the, he's the, the, the fucking happy, go lucky, quarterback, large and in life, like cool, not angry, not judgmental, just like,

hey, hey, I'm here. Yeah. She said it literally like, rewound years before I got to the teams. That's amazing. That's amazing and that story is Hundreds of times over you know, we have funded now over 350 Special operations veterans mostly seals Because that's our network and that's who we know, but we've we've funded many Rangers

SF and Delta guys. When somebody reaches out, we can't say no. But the stories are the same. They're the same fucking stories. Wow. Like their life was put back together before they went through this mess. And so whether it's a brain thing

or a psychological thing or transition thing, like I don't think that matters. You know? I think I had a little bit of all of it. But we're getting guys that have really bad brain issues or really bad trauma and it's just fixing. It just works, you know, it just works. And, but it's rough.

Yeah. Well, before we go too far into it. And, but it's rough. Yeah. Well, before we go too far into it. Yeah, yeah. I do want to take that quick break, but with that being said, I just want to ask one more question. Yeah, shoot. So this is still illegal in the US.

In the US. It's scheduled one. And which means, you know, no, okay, it's in Arcada. You know,. People are, you know, it's illegal. You're going to get arrested if you do. It's a schedule one, meaning there's no medical benefit. Do you think that maybe it's there because big farmers run a $16 billion a year big farmers running a $16 billion a year in eye-to-pressing industry.

This would disrupt that. You mean disrupt the best drug on the planet that can curb addiction with over 50% success rate and we don't have it here in the US? I would say it has to have something to do with it. Nobody who makes money wants to give somebody a pill one time that gets better and walks away and then doesn't have to come back and buy another get another prescription for the month and then another prescription for the month. Big farm is willing to sacrifice lives, tons of lives, tons like thousands of lives, like thousands of lives, you know, for money because if we were to legalize psychedelics, which are obviously working, it would disrupt their 16 billion dollar bills.

It would completely disrupt it. I mean, the economics are incredible. We're talking about opioid crisis. We're talking about mental health issues. We're talking about, people taking up beds and psych wards, people dying. You give them a psychedelic that can clean up some of these folks, right? It's not going to do it for everybody. Everybody's different. But if it could just make a small percentage change that can save that many people, like it's a, I mean, this is like a no-brainer. This is almost too obvious. It's almost too obvious. And we just need to get the word out.

That, I mean, that's obviously why we're here today is because we are trying to educate what is actually working. What is really working? Well, we don't have time to study this for 10 years. We're gonna have, we're gonna have the next wave of not killed in action that you and I had to spend all our fucking time in those memorials and funerals.

Now we're gonna spend our time there for suicides because we can't get this shit right. We're just going to keep giving pills that on the label, right? If you read that there's a high, a chance for suicide by using this drug, two individuals that are potentially thinking about committing suicide. How the hell is that right? How does that even make sense to most people? And I think it might be just the big machine, right? I don't think it's individual.

I think if you talk to people individually, they get it. But as you know, changing laws, it takes work. It takes time. And so we're, we're trying to do best we can with that. Yeah. Well, let's take a quick break. I want to talk to your wife and then we'll get that.1個の小麦粉1個の小麦粉1個の小麦粉 1個の小麦粉 1個の小麦粉 1個の小麦粉 1個の小麦粉

1個の小麦粉 1個の小麦粉 1個の小麦粉 1個の小麦粉 1個の小麦粉 1個の小麦粉1個の小麦粉 All right, Amber, welcome. Thank you. So we're at the point where Marcus is, he just went to Buds, he said he needed to break

so he's an instructor now and we're kind of, he's starting to realize that he's in downward spiral and he's starting to notice symptoms and that there's some family issues. And so I just kind of wanted to talk to you and kind of get your perspective on on you know what was happening and how it felt as as the spouse and and and maybe some of the things that you and your children were going through at the time. I'm sure Marcus went over how we met and the fact that we've been together for so long. So I knew him before he was a seal. And then of course, I got pregnant, which is what kept us together as he entered the seal teams. And then 9-11 happened. So everything was very unexpected for us and a very short amount of time. He had gone from being

a larger than life. I mean, he was just everything to me. He was so easygoing. When I met him, I had never met anyone like him. And when he went to Buds, I think I stupidly thought, like we just have to get through this. And then 9-11 hop-end, and I was like, well, you just have to get to a seal team.

I wish I had to get through this deployment and I was losing him little by little this whole time when he went over to development group. Those deployments got really, really difficult. And he lost one of his best friends in 2008. He was actually supposed to do the swim that Josh was killed doing. And so when he came on from that deployment in particular, it was a very, very fast downward spiral. He was drinking a lot, but he was also, the Timbo was so high that we really didn't have time to get our bearings.

So after Josh's death, this really one really started a real deal. So it's very short. We were never together. and we weren't really started yet real good. So we were never together. You know, I just, he was gone for up to 300 days a year. And so I didn't really know if he was suffering or how he was suffering because we weren't together.

So when Josh died, it's just like something in him shut off. And he probably had, you know, some guilt that he wasn't dealing with because he was supposed to be on that swim. But he also started drinking very heavily. And Josh was not the only death that happened, you know, during that deployment, two others from his squadron were killed, and it seemed like those deployments, there was at least one person not coming home every deployment. And so it felt like Russian roulette. It felt like at any given point, this could be him. I know, I felt like that. I know in a lot of my girlfriends felt like that. Everyone had their funeral dress picked out. Everyone

had the photos ready to go because we had seen so many of our other girlfriends that weren't prepared. And so you learn over time, you know, 10, 20, 30 funerals, what should possibly expect. And I think we were all just like living this surreal existence of thinking, this really could be us next. And I could feel Marcus coming unhinged because it was very difficult to be at home, in a dreading a knock out the door, but I can't imagine what it was like, you know, to be on a deployment. And he was really coming unraveled. We thought that leaving Virginia Beach we thought that leaving Virginia Beach would solve the problem and it really escalated it. Was he self-medicating at all or? Only with alcohol, he was really like anti-pill his entire career. He was injured at various points, but nothing super severe. And so he refrains medication other than maybe on deployment,

you know, where he would take ambient asleep or something. He was self-medicating with alcohol. How much alcohol? Again, I really don't know because I wasn't with him, but I was very concerned but I was very concerned when I was with him at how much he would drink and how frequently he would drink. Now, I mean, so you two were basically not consistent to each other during the... not existent to each other during, during the, you know, during the time when he was deploying. No, because it always felt fun when he was coming home like it was a, he was a visitor and he would leave again. So if he was home for five days, you know, max, that seemed like a long time. So it's easy to put on a happy face for five days. It's easy to have the house looking perfect and, you know, dealing with someone who's spiraling for five days bands.

Yeah. So you guys want, well, somebody identified a problem, correct? Because you left a valve in group which he obviously loved to try to work on himself and maybe start some healing process or get a breather at least. We went through a very difficult point in our marriage

in 2008 and at that time he was halfway through the minimum commitment. I thought Marcus would do 20 years in the teams and I thought he would never ever leave the command. And I didn't give him an ultimatum but he knew that it was time to focus on the family and that if I, you know, could somehow find a way to fulfill the final two years of his minimum commitment then he would then focus on the family. So I respected his commitment to the command and he respected my willingness to fulfill it. And the intention was always as soon as he was done with that commitment, then our family would come first. So we left Virginia Beach and we went

to San Diego and he was an instructor. That's when the wheels really started to come off, because he loved what he was doing. He loved the command, he loved his teammates. And even though it was very unhealthy, just the tempo and his mindset at the time, I think we knew how to live in that dysfunction and we did not know how to be normal people. Yeah. What are some of the things you started saying

when you say the game really started coming unhinged? What was the light? What was going on in the home front? Because we heard about some of the stuff that was happening at work. We didn't talk a lot about what was happening on the home front. He was drinking a lot. He was very disconnected. I didn't, he'd tell you about the OCS Stint that he did.

He did. So he was, you know, on the heels of that, it was, he was very ashamed of that, and he was not in a headspace to ever go there. That was the worst idea ever. And so it added to the shame, it added to the confusion, it added to his feeling of being a failure. And so by the time we got to San Diego, he was just lost.

He didn't want to be deploying any more in some ways, but in other ways, he did. He didn't want to be a family man, but in some ways he did. So he was just really conflicted during that time. He was drinking a lot and It was also very difficult for him to fit back into the family because he had been gone for so long Yeah, and the family dynamic was really difficult. It was hard to co-parent and You live under the same roof with someone 24-7 that you're used to seeing for five

days bands. You had mentioned another podcast that I believe was your daughter that came to you and said you know how much longer we gonna live like this? Well, that was, that was several years later actually. So, he, there were two events that happened in NSW, Naval Special Warfare, that kind of piggybacked on one another. The first was the killing of Osama bin Laden, which he was not at the command for. And there was this, this, um, real regret. Like, oh, I, I want to go back there. And then on the heels of that, there was, um,

the helicopter crash extortion, which killed 31. Many, many of those were friends of his friends of ours. And so then it was like, okay, all of the hype from May was replaced with sorrow and reality in August. And we decided not to do that, not to go back to Virginia Beach. At that point, I was just longing for some sort of At that point, I was just longing for some sort of normalcy. And normalcy, to me, was being a single parent, living away from my husband who was deploying to war, training for war, drinking his face off, and I didn't have to see it. Yeah. When we were living under the same roof, I just, I became very concerned about, is the sustainable.

This isn't a good example to set for our kids, for him or for me, to stay in a situation like this. And I think that we ignorantly just tried to run from it, time and time again, first by leaving Virginia Beach, then by getting out of the military completely, then by moving to Texas, which a year after he got out of the SEAL teams, we ended up in Texas, and he may have told you the beach is a huge part of his life. He was raised across the street from it. So being landlocked for the first time, more or less, really, it was really difficult for him. And the wheels really started to come off in Texas.

So he tried to replace surfing and going to the beach with golfing. We joined a country club and We joined a country club and of course, you know, so many regular civilian guys are just like mesmerized with team guys. And so he started hanging out with a few guys that supported his drinking habits, unfortunately. I think there's probably some stuff that you don't want to talk about when it comes to the drinking because you know, along with that obviously comes a lot of you know other stuff, but I'm curious and you guys want to bud or he wantructed Buds basically to work on a family life and then when you got there, were you and when you got there and you realized, oh shit, like this isn't really kind of what I was thinking was going to happen. And it seemed like that was a start of the downward spiral.

And then, you know then when he was having regrets of leaving the command over a development group, by the time that he kind of felt conflicted where you starting to think, were you conflicted? Was it so bad that you were conflicted that maybe you thought maybe the best thing to do would be him going back into an operational role

of applying again. Oh yeah. Yeah, but of course, I knew in St. Delay that I was kicking the can down the road. It felt like a gang. It felt like at the time, you know, it's so bad for you. But you know that it's a belonging and a community and a purpose that It's a belonging and a community and a purpose that It's really fulfilling in many ways and so We were just very conflicted and I definitely thought he's either got to go back into an operational role Or he's got to get out. You know this middle ground wasn't working for him. Getting out was, I mean, on hindsight, I really can't say getting out was not the right choice because it put us on this path that is now helping so many others.

So he's kind of like, he needed to go first, but the years following him deciding to get out were hell. Share hell. Yeah. Is that when you started looking into the psychedelic therapy? No, this was when he was a buds instructor. It was that early. Yeah.

And it got worse. Yeah. So I think my initial conversations with him were like, you really have a drinking problem, um, which when you compare yourself to others in the community, you really don't. Yeah. But when you compare yourself to typical people or you go through an alcohol assessment, I think one time I did an alcohol assessment for him. It was some sort of an online tool and like I answered yes to 20 out of 22 questions or something.

It was crazy. Yet he didn't see it. He didn't believe it. So then that caused a lot of conflicts between the two of us because I was pointing out something that was clearly his numbing coping mechanism and he wasn't willing to see it. So he moved to LA, he transitioned out of the teams, but before he got out, he went to Niko Clinic in Bethesda and he came back, I think, on seven or eight new prescription medications. So he'd gone his entire career with no prescriptions and as he's leaving the military, he's you know got like this bag

of new medicines. And I was hoping that that was the answer. I wasn't a fan of medication, but also I wasn't a fan of living like I was living. So he gave it a shot and processed out, he was medically retired. We went to LA and he was in a completely new environment. He wanted to just forget about the Steel Teams. He wanted to pretend like that never happened, didn't want to deal with any of the residual fallout and just start a completely new life with a completely new career path. And with a wrong completely new, a new type of people, it was a disaster.

Yeah. The drinking was escalating and I just thought, I'm not doing this for the rest of my life. He was gone. The person I met and the larger than life person that I met was gone and he had been replaced by like a monster. And so I just thought I can't live my life like this. I can't be a single parent in California. I wouldn't want to meet and marry someone probably from California. I need to get to Texas. I needed to get to Texas. And so I was able to convince him to give Texas a try, live on a golf course, at least just get out of the state,

get out of California. Yeah. There was just stability in Texas for me. I felt, it was closer to my family. My dad had just taken a coaching job down in Texas or out Texas. And I just felt like I need to get there. So you guys went to Texas. It doesn't sound like things got any better. So no, it's not worse. Believe it or not, they got worse. Wow. How long after you moved to Texas to just start a look in alternative medicines?

We got to Texas and things are actually pretty good for about a year. He was golfing, we joined this country club. He started drinking more and he started hanging out with a group of people that, you know, drank as much as he did. And so I was, I just didn't want to be in that sort of environment, you know, around, around this. I wanted to be there for my kids. And that caused a lot of division between

the two of us. So he was out, you know, drinking several nights a week, whether it was bloody marries with golf in the morning or happy hour after golf in the afternoon or just out and told 2am. And I just thought, you know, he's either going to drink himself to death or he's going to wrap his truck around a tree because he would be driving. Yeah. Damn. So you found the psychedelic treatment. And...

So Marcus is primarily diagnosed with PTSD, but that really never fully resonated with me because he absolutely loved his job and he wanted to deploy. He always was happy to come home, but he couldn't wait to get back. And I just felt like he's really not that caught up in what happened overseas. Yeah, that was his leading diagnosis and all of the medications that the military had put him on. The NICO clinic had Potomon, as he was exiting, that were picked up then by VA healthcare.

They were causing so many other symptoms that there was a medication for this symptom and a medication for that symptom and he was forgetting everything. So he was not able to take his medications correctly and that would cause a symptom. not able to take his medications correctly and that would cause a symptom. I just felt instinctively like this is not just PTSD because I was seeing his cognitive functioning decline to a point of it was terrifying.

I remember watching him try to wrap a Christmas tree with lights and he couldn't figure out where the ends plugged in. Where you start and where you stop, it was pitiful and it was 40. He got lost striving our daughter to a volleyball carpool that we did two, three times a week. He couldn't remember people's names. I found a write-up that he did, as he was exiting the military, and it said, frequently forgetting my teammates' names. It just wasn't clicking neurologically as something just not right. He was not making connections. And during the height of our struggles, another one of his teammates took his life,

and luckily the brain autopsy was released to the community. And it was the first time that I had heard about Blast injury, and I also heard about another degenerative brain disease called chronic traumatic in South of Lopathy or CTE. It's what professional athletes, NFL players, MMA fighters are frequently diagnosed with post mortem. So you can't find out if you have it until after you're dead. But in my mind, suddenly everything made sense

because Marcus had a history of 15 years of tackle football, 13 years working as a breacher, multiple combat deployments, multiple losses of consciousness, and years working as a breacher, multiple combat deployments, multiple losses of consciousness, and all of the symptoms fit. So, we had the history and we had the symptoms. And I just realized pretty quickly that this could be a death sentence and times of essence, there's not a whole lot of information about it. There's still in a very, very new of information about it, there's still in a very, very new. But I started getting into brain clinics and I just thought, if there's a brain issue, surely brain clinics will know what to do.

And he went to several of the top brain clinics, but he was getting worse. And he was getting worse because he was investing all this time and really wasn't making any sort of significant progress. And he was very frustrated. He was like a loose cannon. I was calling charitable organizations to arrange for him to go away to do a brain center that was in California. But I didn't just want to stop there. I wanted to hit it as many angles as I possibly could. So a couple of other charitable organizations were able to get him into hyperbaric oxygen,

magnetic brain stimulation. And so he was doing like three things at once. And I went to visit him. And the first five days were pretty good but I was there for a week. The last two days, unbelievable. I left thinking I just was hopeless. I went home and that was in July. He had gone in June. In September, I went back. It was my birthday. So I went to visit him. My mom came and watched the kids and I went to visit him in California. And we were in his truck on the five. And I said to him, something like,

oh, baby, you're better than that. And he lost his mind. And he started barreling down a five, like 100 miles an hour. And I thought if I live through this I am going I this is it and so I didn't say anything else the whole ride we got back to where he was staying went to sleep the next morning I called a new bird. I went to the airport and I just flew back without even telling him. Yeah And my mom was there with our daughter and our son and I conference called my dad who was his football coach and

Just you know my dad's influence in my life of just never quitting and really just being super brave no matter what. I told my dad that I had decided to quit. I like, I just couldn't do this anymore. And I said to my parents, I'm pretty sure Marcus will be dead in two years. Like he just needs, he needs me. I know he needs me. I know he needs his family. But I started putting, you know, the plans in place to leave him.

Yeah. I feel like a lot of civilians will like, almost instigate an incident with guys like us because they want to see what happens. And then I see it. But I've certainly noticed in that a lot. Have you ever noticed that? Oh yeah, I've absolutely noticed that. I've noticed the instigation. I've also noticed, you know, just how much guys want to hang out with guys like you guys and, know like beat their chests or feel like a man and if that a lot of times that looks like round after round after round after round

of drinks and I think everyone thought like oh this is Marcus he's this big you know Navy Seal they didn't realize that the hell that that was causing on his family back at home. And I tried to tell this particular group, like, listen, this is a real problem here. Yeah. If you're his friend, please take me seriously. Yeah. Did they? take me seriously. Yeah. Did they? Yeah, for a little bit. Yeah, yeah, but it was just the bad deal all around.

Well, how did you find out about the psychedelics? So when I had decided to weave, I was really grappling with the weight of that. I reached out to a couple of the other women who had were widows of suicide in the community, fairly recent widows. And it was textbook. The struggles were textbook. And it was textbook. The struggles were textbook. The behavior was textbook. And I was just preparing myself for what my life would be like as a widow of suicide. Because I felt like it was inevitable. He was a ticking time bomb and I reached out to

the highest levels of support within the seal community and said I'm going to lose him. And there is nothing. There is no help. Not meaningful. I mean, I think everyone's doing the best they can. But for me at that time, there was really not a lot. And so, I'm just a fighter by nature. I didn't want to quit.

I never really wanted to quit. But I felt like I had to do that from my kids. And then it hit me. My kids will live with this for the rest of their lives and their kids. And we had this friend, the same one who I mentioned earlier, who had also been in the situation that, you know, this therapy was beneficial. And so he and his wife had reached out to me because they knew Marcus was struggling and that's just how the community is like just you know You know someone needs help just help and they told me about Psychedelic therapy, which was completely foreign to me. I

Try to talk to Marcus about it a year prior To him actually receiving it, but he didn't want to hear anything about it. He was like, that's weird, that's crazy. I'm not doing drugs like that. No, I'm not going to Mexico. No. And that guy was telling me consistently and he was right, he's got to want this. He's got to be ready for it.

He's got to choose this. You can't make him do it. He's got to choose this. You can't make him do it. And so he was running out of funding at the Brain Clinic. I knew that we couldn't afford to live in two separate households. And that that meant he really, I mean, financially we needed him to come back. We couldn't afford anything else. But I, there was peace in my house for the first time in years. And I thought, I just cannot have him back at this house. Yeah.

I had also really been on my own journey at that time, where I was just, I had nothing at that point it felt. Marcus was I had well let me let me refresh this. It sounds like you're just surviving. Oh is that 100% just surviving? Like just straight survival mode. Yeah, because our teenage son who during these years, 15, 16, 17, he was chronically ill, but he was also chronically pissed.

And he was causing a lot of, he was acting out a lot, which was causing a lot of stress and conflict between Marcus and me and a lot of division in our household on top of what was already, you know, so, so challenging. So between Marcus spiraling and our son spiraling, I just felt so pulled between the two of them. And then Marcus was taking so much time away from work. There wasn't work. So financially we were devastated. Our son was chronically ill, so I had to step away from my very successful career as a real estate agent to take care of him. Not much else could have gone wrong during those years, and I just thoroughly surrendered to whatever was to come.

Whatever I surrendered to my faith, I really dug in, I sat, I sat, I cried, I screamed, I journaled, I prayed, I spoke, I declared, I just completely submitted to what was happening because I really, even though I love solving problems, this was way too big for me. No. And the more I submitted, the more things spiraled out of control with the more peace I had internally. And I came to just all of these amazing realizations during this time.

I wouldn't trade that time. Like sitting here today, I wouldn't trade that time like sitting here today. I wouldn't trade that time It has given me so much perspective wisdom so much strength and purpose During that time, you know, I'm sitting with

All right, God if this is where we're going, like, this is the end of the road, then I completely trust that. And I just felt like, no, there's more, there's more. And I remember the therapy that our friend had told us about. And I thought, what if I just approach him in a completely different way? I felt like my heart was super naturally changed and I was able to see him through eyes of grace. I would have never been able to do on my own. I just, I saw him for the struggles that he was facing and I realized that no one

wanted to be different more than him. And I was, I would, I became so full of compassion for him, whether his struggles were psychological, physiological, spiritual, and manifesting in the form of, you know, alcohol abuse. I just approached him completely different. So he came home. He said, you know, what do you want me to do? I don't I can't stay here. And I said, you can come home. But when you get home, like I want to have a serious talk. And so he got home and I sat him down and I just said, listen, I will fight for you every day for the rest of your life. But you've got to fight with me. And I will never leave your side.

I just stopped shaming him, gilting him, threatening him, all of these things that I had done for so many years that weren't working. It was just perpetuating bad behavior. Um, I just came alongside him and met him where he was at, not where I wanted him to be. I was just standing in the middle of the road saying, get to me, you know, get to me. And I'm going to shame you and threaten you the whole way here. And he was stuck. You're the coming. So I just met him where he was at. And he agreed to go. He agreed to go to Mexico. And I had no idea if this would be, if anything, it was for me to know that I had tried everything. So you were pretty skeptical. I was probably less skeptical because I just trusted this one other seal.

And yeah, I thought we have nothing to lose. So even if it buys us a little bit more time, because I was way more comfortable with a Western approach. Where's the lab coat, where's the status scope, where's the prescription pad? If you can't, you know, bring my husband into your office and he sits in a waiting room and then gets better, then it can't work. So I trusted this one other then it can't work. So I trusted this one other seal and I trusted God and I just went for it. So we went down there.

Yeah, so we agreed to go. The date kept getting pushed back. So he got home, you ran out of funding September, October, he got home on October. It was pretty much like a not really an ultimatum, the so wrong word, but it was like an immediate thing. It wasn't like, I want you to, you know, come alongside you, but you know, if you want to do this in six months, no, it was like, we got to do this. Yeah. And so the date kept getting pushed back

and he was getting more and more just despondent. He was just practically fetal position on the couch. And every time the date would get pushed, he would lose hope. And he's like, I said I'd do this, this is not happening. And I was just begging him at that point to hold on. No.

I think our entire everyone felt it in our household. I remember one time our son called and said, Mom, are you home? And I said, no, I'm not at Y. He goes, I need a borrowers shirt from dad, but your bedroom door's closed, your bathroom door's closed, and even your closet door's closed. He goes, I'm afraid to open it.

I don't want to find him hanging. Oh, shit. Yeah. But we could feel it. It was palpable. Wow. Yeah. And there are a lot of kids living like that. You know, the seal community does a lot for the children, But we could definitely do more because there are a lot of kids who have lost dads,

but they live with them. They see them every day. They still have a heartbeat. And, you know, they've lost their doubts too. Because they're living with a shell of a human. Yeah. Well, let's move to some good stuff. How about that? Okay. So he did. He went down to Mexico.

He got the treatment. And it sounds like there was like a light switch. So what was it like? How long was he down there? It's quick. You flew out on a Friday morning, got down on a Friday afternoon evening. the treatment started on that night into the following Saturday. And so that other team that I was there with them the whole time, and his wife was counseling me the whole time. And then I went to the clinic on Saturday evening, and I had a complete freak out moment where my heart rate was just like through the roof

and I was like, what have we done? This is nuts. It is so outside of my comfort zone. I am a conservative Christian. I'm like, what am I doing here? Yeah. So you were down there too. The day after.

Oh, good. The day after. And I just thought, I mean, I tried to convince her like, I don't want to go. No, no, I'm like, I do not want to see him right now. I was scared. I was scared. To be disappointed. I was scared that he would be completely normal. And that would freak me out. I was scared that he would be completely different. And so she was like, he's asking for you, you have to go. And I'm very grateful that she made me go. Because when I saw him for the first time, it was like, I saw him for the first time. I saw him for the first time I ever met him. His entire countenance and demeanor

was 100% the guy that I met. It was like all of the darkness, all of the anger, the rage, the despondent, despondent, it was gone. Damn, it was literally just like that. It was just like that and it wasn't like I was freaked out. I thought maybe this would make him like super zen You know really weird hippie. It was not that it was very It was like being reunited with someone That you haven't seen and all very long time. Damn Yeah, but they're just the way you remember them. His eyes look different.

His eyes were lighter. His spirit was lighter. He was like free of everything that had been weighing him down. Wow. And that just continued on. I mean, was yeah, I mean, I would say, you know, I don't want to get the wrong impression like this miracle cure or a silver bullet of any kind. It's about as close as you can get.

Yeah. But, um, yeah, it's like a stock market ticker. Like it's just like this. But if you're generally trending upward, then like those downs are actually serving a purpose because you're learning how to pull yourself out instead of like going on the complete decent. So he was, He was, he went from like 80-20 bad good to 80-20 good bad days. And if he had a bad day, he was learning something. He was present again. He would look out the window and remark about how, look at the beautiful clouds in the sky. Like just things that he wasn't even present.

He was in his own head so bad. There was a whole world going on around him, then he didn't even know existed. Yeah. And all of a sudden, like he was like, he was paying attention to everything. Well, how long after that did you guys organize and start that? So I left the clinic on Saturday night. I went back on Sunday when I saw him on Sunday. He hugged me and he said, babe, this is exactly what all the guys need.

And that was ironically on Veterans Day. His treatment had been pushed, pushed, pushed all through October, in November. He was treated on Veterans Day. And the following month, in December, we were contacted by what would become our first donor. She said, could you recommend a charitable organization that supports Veterans? I want to do end of your giving. And Marcus said, I actually have a friend. I just had a treatment and saved my life.

And I have a friend who's struggling. We can't give you a tax write off, but you could actually save someone's life. And I can tell you a little bit about him. And she was like, yes. So that's all this got started. She was the first donor, her donation was big enough to help several.

And so at that point, we were just telling our story, raising money, giving it to the treating physician. And at that point, I didn't really want to have too much to do with this. I felt good about helping for sure. But I really, I had a very successful career in real estate. I was not looking to pivot. And then I thought, this is really,

this is what it seems to be working. So I wanted to help set some goals for our involvement because your reputation is all you have in the community. And if it's gone, it's gone. And Marcus is always just very, I had so much respect for him and his reputation. I never wanted to jeopardize that. He was always like, you are a direct reflection of me.

And all we have in this community is our reputation. And so we just never really did anything to extreme and this seemed extreme. Yeah. So before we put our names on anything, we wanted to make sure that it worked. So the first goal that I said was 12 individuals in a 12 month period because we didn't know, is this a temporary fix? Is this a long term thing?

It seemed too good to be true. And I was actually going through a very difficult phase myself after this because I didn't know what did we just get into this we were so desperate like when you're desperate you will do anything and when we had done it the deed was done it was like what just happened so I was going through my own whole you know come to Jesus like with this thing what is this and so we're like, all right, let's just very cautiously go about this. And so 12 guys, 12 month period, the 11 and a half month mark. One of my best friends, husband, took his life. And it was, he was truly the last person anyone ever would have thought would do something like this.

It was devastating. We flew back to Virginia Beach to his funeral, which was at the chapel at Little Creek, and it was the first suicide funeral that I had been to. And I had a visceral reaction on the pew of the chapel you know, chapel that I was in and the whole pew started shaking. I was just overcome. Like I couldn't control it. It was like, there's a whole thing about releasing trauma, trembling, like, it happened to me at his funeral. And I just had this, like, download of, this is going to be the next wave to hit this chapel. If you don't do something about it, like I'm sitting next to Marcus who you know I'm feeling like we just averted this sort of crisis and I can't believe I'm sitting in Chad's funeral. I just looked around and I just saw all the

faces of so many of the guys and their spouses that I had seen it of countless other war funerals. And I was just like, you know what, we haven't wanted to put our names on this, we haven't wanted to share about this, we haven't wanted to. Come out and stand on a stage because of the stigma, because of the these therapies are so misunderstood, especially almost four years ago. Yeah. And I just was super convicted. None of that matters. This community matters more than my pride.

Yeah. And these lives matter and these children matter and these women matter more than our comfort level. Yeah. Well, you've said a hell of a lot of lives so far. Sounds like so. Thank you. I cannot take any credit, honestly. Well, you may not want to take credit for, you know, all these people that have gone through the treatment, but all but it feels pretty damn good to see the results when your organization is, you know, you guys funded it. You led the way, you sent them down, you know, and they're coming back and it's working. That's, I mean, it's got to feel amazing. It does feel good. It is very humbling.

I, this is going to sound crazy. I was on a run in 2016. Things were about as bad as they could get things were about as bad as they could get. In a Marcus's Tremos 2017, 2016 to 2017, indescribable. And I had headphones in and I heard a literally heard of voice, this is gonna sound nuts. And it said, I'm going to ask big things of you. And I stopped and I looked around and there was nobody. And so I just put my hands on my knees and I just put my head down. And I just said like, if I can be of service, use me. If this pain can be of service, use it. And that's exactly what I've tried to do. And so I've literally just been in the passenger seat.

I have got to give all of the credit to God I do because he created me a certain way to have the, I guess, ability to be the driver, a driver behind this on the funding side, but this has just happened. It's just happened. And we've just been willing participants. And we are just one spoke on the wheel at this point. There are a lot of people making this happen. It might have started with us, but there are a lot of people get credit for this. So after Chad's death, it was just like, we're doing this.

And the next goal I set was 100 special operators beyond the Seattle community, along with IRB backed research. So if all that looks good, then we would really get serious about founding an organization to take this mainstream. So of course that happened. And in 2019, we founded Vets. We provide funding for veterans that are leaving the United States to see psychedelic therapies, just like Marcus did.

Many of them are truly on the brink. They have tried several things that have it worked, and they're really suffering. So we don't want to have, there are a lot of barriers to access. First of all, these therapies are scheduled in the United States, so they're illegal. And furthermore, veterans in many cases are struggling financially, so we exist to pay for the treatments. But we also realize that this is a very unique opportunity

to collect research so that we can advocate for change to veteran health care to the scheduling, drug law, whatever. These therapies got a really bad rap in the 60s and of course Nixon with the Control Subcensis Act in 1970 shut down all research and banned all of these substances in the US. So, you know, you have guys with an endgouse with 10, 20 combat deployments, 30, 35 years in the military that can't get access to meaningful care in the United States. The average number of medications that most of our grandparents have been on are on,

are like between seven and nine. So we just give them an opportunity to have an experience with a medicine that actually works and is working across four key areas of suffering in the veteran community. Psychological dealing with past traumas, whether it's childhood trauma, war trauma, physiological, there's a real brain connectivity element

that needs to be for research for psychedelics. Addiction, many of the substances, especially the one marketed, are very anti-addictive, and then spiritual. So there's a lot of darkness that has infiltrated, I think, just the military community, special operations community, seal community. So there's a real spiritual cleansing happening as well. And nothing has this much of an effect in these four key areas, as psychedelic assisted therapies. So the success rates are just off the charts,

and everyone that gets funding from us knows two to five others that need help immediately. So we've funded to date over 350 special operations veterans and some of their spouses in seeking these therapies. 350? And like less than four years. Wow. Yeah. That's amazing. Thank you.

Are there, are you aware of any negative side effects from this? Everything so far sounds extremely positive. So more research needs to be done on IBegin, which is the therapy that Marcus did. Preliminary data shows that there are contraindications with, it can cause a cardiac event in people who are not properly screened. I've had one of the world's leading, maybe the world's leading IBegin provider tell me that if properly screened, it's as safe as getting a colonoscopy, but it all comes down to the screening process.

So no, I mean, other psychedelics, as far as research shows, and we know are very physiologically safe. Wow. So that's the only thing, and that's the only thing and that's only if you happen to go through, not go through the screening and maybe you have a heart condition. Right.

Right. Yeah, I mean, many of these things grow from the earth. So this was part of my whole like,-conditioning of my belief system was When did I believe that something manufactured by an industry That caused the opioid epidemic is a cure But something that God put on earth that gross freely in the ground is a drug You know, I had to completely flip flop that.

Yeah. Well, I mean, big pharma, you know, yeah. Big pharma, they can't, I mean, when I was looking the stuff up, they were in a $16 billion a year business just and antidepressant. And the antidepressant market. That's just antidepressants. That's insane. Yeah. And so, of course, I don't want something natural, you know, that's right, or something that you need one or two times. Yeah. So it's not in their best interest. And what a shame, you know, it really is a shame. It is a shame because I feel like, you know, you, Marcus, so many others that were the prime

fighting age when 9-11 happened. You have the rest of your life before you, half your life before you. Yeah. You have the rest of your life before you have half your life before you. Most likely. So, I didn't want Marcus to be beholden to a bunch of prescription medications for the rest of his life. Because you just keep adding. You know, there's just every year that goes by. There's another, another, another.

He's not on anything now. And that's the case with most of our grant recipients. They have to tie trade off all their medications to have you know the the experience and then they don't get back on and they're going back to psychedelic therapy as needed which might look like once a year, twice a year, quarterly at most, and they're doing great. That's awesome. Some are even risking a rest to microdose, psilocybin, because it completely replaces antidepressants and creates all sorts of brain connectivity. So for TBI, super effective.

Yeah. effective. Yeah, yeah, we're researching at sounds amazing. It's I mean, the fact that it's it's disrupting the where they call it the default mode network. Yeah, the default mode network with what is the front part of your brain and the back part of your brain and it's only what like 10% of your brain is like a neuron highway and the fact that you know it's disrupting that and then forcing the neurons to make connections and pass information through the other 90% of your brain that we don't use is um I'm just fascinating. It is fascinating. There are a lot of key themes that are coming out of the treatment weekends, which range of everything from, you know, I feel free to my brain works again, to I want to live again.

I've had all that I want right in front of me this whole time. I'm so grateful to, there a God, to we're all connected. It's all about love. I want to pay it forward and it's just been the most amazing thing to be part of. And so at the most core fundamental level, when I had that freak out, where is like what have we done? I asked myself, were your prayers answered? Yes. Did it save Marcus's life? Yes. Did it save my marriage?

Yes. Did it save my family? Yes. How is that bad? Yeah. So you guys are a funding Stanford to do a ton of research on this. What does that look like? What are they starting?

So we're in a partnership with Stanford. The Stanford portion has an angel funder and then we are going to be funding the treatments of 30 veterans who are receiving I began and the hypothesis is that we are going to be funding the treatments of 30 veterans who are receiving eye-be-gain. And the hypothesis is that eye-be-gain may create some sort of a benefit for blast injury or CTE, any sort of degenerative brain disease.

Eye-be-gain is known to be the only substance that promotes glial cell growth in the brain. So in a degenerative brain disease, glial cells are slowly dying off and the brain's atrofying. In this study, Dr. Nolan Williams will be assessing whether the brain could actually, I guess, I don't even know how to properly increase in volume maybe for after I regain. Pile itself? Yeah. Yeah. So I'm clearly not a scientist but the idea would be to see if I became could be a potential treatment for TBI or blast injury, CTE and possibly other diseases like ALS, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, where the brain is slowly dying. And I began creating, having the ability to create nucleicill growth. Could that stop it? Could it slow it down? Could it reverse it? You know,

I don't know. So it's very exciting. And the study has been postponed due to COVID, but hoping that we can get that started June, July of this year. Man, that'll be interesting. I know. That'll be really interesting. That was my biggest takeaway with Marcus when he came out of treatment. Yes, he was completely psychologically cleansed and he didn't have a drink for like nine months. Now he can have a glass of ABR and it's not a problem. He also had a spiritual, you know, he was like very spiritually connected after the treatment and then the return of his cognitive functioning was remarkable.

So, I don't know, there's something to it. A lot of guys report the same thing. Right on, man. Yeah. 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc

1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc So now we're going to get into the actual process of doing the psychedelic down in Mexico and kind of what that looked like, but Mexico, Costa Rica, all both. True. Canada. Yeah, it's really anywhere these drugs are either unscheduled or legal.

And so we have, you know, we have vetted partners, yeah, really now around the globe that are dying to help our guys. So, how are you, if you don't mind me asking, and you don't have my answer, but how are you making these connections in all these different countries? Not sleeping much at night. Okay. Working through the weekends. A lot of research. You know, just everything. So, research and network,

the initial success we had of helping guys, funding, finding them opportunities to go get these treatments, word of mouth spread pretty quickly because these industries are, well, I'd say the psychedelic space is not huge. Everybody knows kind of everybody in a way. Word gets around pretty quickly that there's a group out there that is, is funding treatments

for special operation veterans. And then when you hear seals, they're like, well, what's, those guys are getting better from this stuff. And then, then somebody calls and says, hey, by the way, I have a retreat here, I treat this or I can help you. Or there's donors that are connected to some of these retreat centers. And so we've just, in two and a half short years, we've built a pretty robust network of providers. We've raised over $2 million.

Like I said, we've funded now over 350 individuals, guys, and girls, spouses, we're starting to fund now. And we have a waiting list of over 100. Wow, that's amazing. Before we took the break, you were talking about the next wave is coming and just put things in perspective this year. I believe it will be the first, the first time ever in American history where you could have been listed during wartime and left during wartime and done an entire 20 year career and retired all combat deployments. And I think you're right, it's going to be a big problem coming.

I wish I could take the credit of saying that Amber's the one who really harps on that, we've never sustained combat for so long. And nobody knows what's going to happen. You know, and we need to get in front of it. Like, why would we wait? Why are we going to wait for like this shit to hit the fan? Like, like, we need to get in front of it right now. Like, we need to, we can't continue sending guys continue sending guys anti-suicide suicide pills. You know what I mean? It doesn't work or it's centers that are just collecting shit ton of money and guys are just walking away,

scratching their head. We can't do that anymore. A lot of that stuff does work, but we need a tool, we need more tools at work. This works. There's no doubt. I will go ahead to head with anybody that doesn't believe in this. Anybody in the world and show them the proof. There's nothing on the planet that is working better for mental health problems than psychedelic therapies.

That's amazing. Which is psychedelics, right? You got to throw the therapy piece in there. You have to integrate prior post-integration. It's 90% of the healing. Can't just give the person the drug and expect them to heal. It's kind of like a holistic approach to this whole thing. But it works. Fucking works. Yeah.

Well, let's go under your experiences, but just real quick, before we do that, I kind of want to just educate the audience on how this works, how I understand the score. I do a lot of research on this before I, you guys got here because I want to know. Perfect. Maybe you can tell us. You can tell us. But so basically, some of the problem here is the default mode network. And the default, the way I understand it, the default mode network is two small portions

of your brain, one in the front, one in the back, and it is basically a highway of neurons, which is passing information back and forth to those two specific locations in the brain. The rest of the brain is actually pretty dormant from what I understand. I can't remember the percentage, but I think we only use maybe 10 percent. Yes, very small percentage of our brain, which is the default mode network. Now the default mode network is Internal thinking it's your ego. It's it's it's Self-critical. It's protects you judging others. It's basically the if you're thinking about the past if you're thinking about the future if you're judging somebody if you're Self-critical, you know, all that's ego, that is the default mode network.

It's what we've been taught. Yeah. And when you're growing up and you go to do something, your parents say, don't touch that. Yeah. So, so apparently when you're born, So, apparently when you're born, you use a lot more of your brain than we do, you know, when we're R-H. Chris, we're free. We haven't been institutionalized yet. Yeah. We haven't been told no. It's amazing.

Like, reading this stuff is just fascinating. institutionalized yet. Yeah. We haven't been told no. It's amazing. Like reading this stuff is just fascinating. And that's why as you get older, Ryan, I mean, it's just, you get more and more institutionalized because you're not, you're not resetting that. Yeah. You just, that default mode is just going. So it's on, it's on autopilot.

It's on repeat. Yeah. It just keeps repeating. And so you have to figure out a way to disrupt that. So apparently what happens from the sources of research, mom, is basically when you take one of these psychedelics, it disrupts that neuron highway on the default mode network. And so there is no more information being passed in between. And if you take antidepressants, bends, you know, those kind of the volumes, an X, whatever it is, it's basically slowing the neurons going back and forth in the default mode network.

Now when you take the psychedelic, it disrupts the default mode network or or maybe even shuts it down, which forces your brain and the neurons in your brain to communicate with other sections of your brain, making the neurons more efficient. So, I would very skeptical of this stuff too. And until I started hearing more and more guys talk about it, now you've 100% sold me, but I used to think, oh, this shit is for hippies.

I don't do that. And now I'm like, shit, maybe these hippies were, make me think they were onto something. And when they say it unlocks your brain, they actually mean exactly what they're saying. It unlocks the other 90% of your brain and makes it more efficient. Make sure you're creative. Makes you be able to make sure it's smarter, right? Like if you're using 10% of, but it makes you smarter, right?

Like if you're using 10% of your brain and now using, I'm going to make up a number, even 11%, 12%. Yeah. Like you just, right now using more of your brain power. What a doctor explained to me is what you're talking about. The brain is really good at talking like linear psychedelics. It like opens up the highway. If you have a two-lane highway, it just turned it into a 12-lane highway. It allows different parts of rain to interact with

each other that we're not talking to each other before. It's like a baby. know, or kids have such incredible creative minds, right? They're like, hey, you know, what if, you know, what if I, you know, took this and, you know, right, kids are like coming up with these great stories and ideas, you know, like, that's nuts. And that's because they're not, they're not brainwashed, they're not institutionalized to think of this way that that doesn't work. They're just thinking, right? Like, of course, a lot of it is, you know, is babble, but they're able to creatively think outside the box. We've been put inside the box by constantly being told,

no, don't touch that. You know, Take your shoes off when you go to the house, make sure to eat all your vegetables. Some of that stuff is good, but you're seeing where I'm going where a lot of that stuff is not good, Bill. We can get into all types of things that have institutionalized us to think a certain way. All this is doing is,

it's, you know, it's the matrix for your mind, like, think outside the box, right? Uncomventional thinking is what we try to do in the teams. Think outside of this institution of the military that you know keeps thousands and thousands of soldiers doing things a certain way But we need to think a little bit outside of that box otherwise we're just like everybody else So just think of you being able to be more creative Well more ways that you could potentially pursue something

better and more efficiently than what you were maybe told from somebody. Yeah. And I don't know if I did a good job of trying to explain that, but it's, that's what you're talking about with the default mode network. It's disrupted and it just allows your brain to interact in different ways that it hasn't or that it hadn't since it was a child. Bob. Who has such an imaginative mind, right?

Like we could all think like children in terms of creativity and imagination, not in terms of like you know lifetime of lessons and that type of education. I mean, thinking about, you know, thinking about the science behind this and what it does, I mean, it makes, it makes a hell of a lot of sense because the default mode network is past, you know, its future, its ego, its, its, its, all the trauma that you've experienced. It's all forming who you are as a person. And if you only have that one highway when you take the hallucinogenic or psychedelic, it's like somebody just flipped the power grid on in your head and it's amazing.

So that's why people call it, in a lot of people experience what they call an ego death. Yeah, depending on each person's different, but high dose, a lot of people see themself just like they call it, this would death is like it just died. Their ego just died. That whole self that protecting mechanism just went away and they're able to look at life now is like, holy shit, I'd never even looked at this stuff before. You know, I was so drilled into what I I was so drilled into what I only learned over and over again.

Now, I'd actually see a tree. Yeah. And it was green. You know, we get some individuals who come out and say, you know, I've been eating, I forgot what it was. It was like apples or something for like my whole life. And I looked at it and didn't even realize the damn color of it. Until I took a psychedelic, it rewired my way of thinking. Like maybe think a little bit, be more aware of actually what's going on.

That's why people say a lot of times, like now I can see stuff, you know, as it's happening or before it's happening or when two people are acting a certain way, like when two spouses interact, I mean, it's so obvious now. I could tell that's a good relationship, that's a bad relationship, off of what I personally got off of medicine. Yeah. It's, well, man, I could go on about this all day, but it's great. And I want to it's great. You know, I do want to say like everything else, it can be abused. Yeah, abused like it was in the past, but the great thing about psychedelics is they're not habit forming, they're not addicting. And that's good because that's why I think some people get scared of like,

oh no, you're addicted to drugs or addicted to drugs. They don't have addictive qualities. Ketamine, ketamine does, it's a bit of a different psychedelic. Ketamine's really amazing for depression, major depressive disorder. Again, probably one of the best things they can do immediately for suicidality. So, someone's really struggling. You can get them, you can kind of get them out of that mindset pretty quickly with a ketamine protocol. That's the only one that has the potential for abuse. The other ones, I mean, yeah, you can abuse it like, you can abuse alcohol.

Alcohol is highly addictive. Hope you're always highly addictive. Psychedelic, you're not highly addictive. I mean, it sounds like, and I think I heard you say it. And I was reading it too, is that I began, it's just, it's so powerful that you're not going to want to do it every day or Every week or if you like I begin you have other you have other issues to work through It's no, I mean this is again. This is going to hell him back

Yeah, you're you're seeing you're visiting the demons right and that's not fun But you have to do that to get better, right? You have to, you need some pain to get better. You work out hard so you can be stronger. Nothing in life is easy, right? Like it doesn't work like that. Well, I began as like that. It kicks your ass so you can be better. So you can lift the rocks out.

You know, one of the doctors we work with told me work is this is like, this is pulling all those heavy bricks out of your backpack. If you have a thousand pounds of brick, bricks, when you're done with your treatment, as you're going through your experience, the bricks are just falling out. It's just you're just getting lighter, you lighter now, you know. Um, it's such a good feeling when you're done, you're

like, wow, like I get it. I get it. Let's go into your experience on. So what you fly flying to wherever and what happens. Where I wanna go. Well, how long is the, how long is the experience? How long is the experience? We'll go to the experience. You do a few weeks of therapy prior to going, and this is the way it's supposed to go, and this is the way that the model needs to work for this

to work. You need to do, you know, at the minimum days, but more like weeks of integration prep, because again, you're doing, you're going somewhere that is tough and you should prepare to go there. They always say, it's like a deluxe set and setting. You have, that has to be right to go in there because if it's not, you can have a really rough time. So you want to go in there with the right mindset, you want to be in the right setting, you want to understand what you're getting into. That's what the therapist is for. They've been doing this for, you know, they've been doing it for hundreds of treatments or thousands of treatments. They know how to prep you to go into your experience.

So is this, is the couple of weeks with the therapists? We cover the states or is that? Yes, we're coaches and therapists. Yep, we have a whole coaching team. There's some of the best in the world. We pair up the individuals with those coaches and those coaches prepare them for their treatment. We cover that, it's all part of like, you know, veterans exploring treatment solutions. It has to be. We can't just throw

somebody in there with the drug. It doesn't work like that. So how what kind of stuff are you doing in the two weeks of therapy before you go? How are they preparing? It's a lot of talk therapy, but it's a lot of talk therapy around what the medicine's going to do, what it's going to open up, what are the issues you may be having, what do you think you may be having, what was your childhood like, what's your time right now, what do you think you're going to experience in there, what kind of traumas did you have, like it's kind of like an intake with the

coach though, so the coach could understand and help guide you And prepare use for when you go in there if you did have childhood trauma or you did have wartime trauma Like that's what you're going in there to get better like to go in that mindset of you know, I want to Forget or I want to deal with I should say forget I I can't get past seeing my buddy killed. It's affecting my whole life. I want to deal with that during this experience. And so you prepare yourself to deal with that specifically. And there's other stuff that's just gonna,

it's just gonna, like I said, the medicine finds the things that are wrong with you. So there's stuff that we will just pop up in there. I mean, I had, I talked to my dad, you know, my dad had passed that year and, you know, it's like the experience is an awakened dream state. So you put eye shades on, put like noise canceling headphones on, nice music.

The music, as it runs through your body, it brings out emotion. So as the music may get more intense, you may get more darker, you know, deeper images, disturbing, you know, and then if it gets lighter, I would see visions of like happy amber and happy cadence and maggy, you know, our kids and like we're in a good place, we're in an open field, and we're happy, and we're singing, and whatever. You know, and then the music would get intense again, and the intensity, you know, brings out emotion,

and it brings out like dark, you know, demonic. For me, my first experience, the therapist said, Mark, as I've been doing this for 20 years, I've never seen anybody struggle like you did. Like, I've never seen anybody puke for as many hours as you did and just have such a tough time through it. But because of that, like I said,

fucking just, you know, it changed my life. Yeah, so you go down there, you did a couple weeks with a therapist. You go, you do a couple weeks with therapists and then you have to get off meds, alcohol, you can't take, you know, you have to get off all your antidepressants of your anum, like there's a weaning off period. Yeah. For some that's really difficult as you know, but you can't, you know, there's some contraindications, you know, with some pharmaceuticals.

So you have to be clean for how long? Whenever they're like, just for them to be out of your system. So whatever the half-life, or whatever, you know, they just have to be out of your system. So we, you know, not we, but the treatment team, which is completely separate entity from us, We, but the treatment team, which is completely separate entity from us, you know, they do a whole intake, screening, stress tests, blood work, EKG, PIST test right before you go down, like to make sure that the person is good. Wow. Oh, yeah.

And then when they're there, they get hooked up to heart rate monitor, they get a port put in just in a unlikely event, something happens. It's medically it's done, it's so professional, it's perfect. There's a Stanford trained doctor that's there, emergency medicine doctor, one of the best, and then psychedelic trained nurses. So it's just an amazing staff. And then, and that's all of them. And she had the pre-integration, I guess, you know,

you want to call it pre-care, to get them ready. And they go to their experience and during their experience, therapist is there, so that therapist can be there to answer questions and during their experience, therapists is there, so therapists can be there to answer questions and help them if they need it. In the room. Yeah. Mine was there the whole time, slept at the foot of the bed.

Like, you know, my heart rate, sometimes we're up, you know, it was racing at like 141.50. Oh, wow. And that's just from what I was seeing. And it was affecting me, yeah. Others, there's some guys that their heart rate doesn't get about 40 beats a minute. You know, like it, everybody's different.

But that individual helped me, helped guide me through like, why am I seeing this? Why am I seeing that? Why am I talking to a dead buddy? Why am I talking to my dad? Why am I seeing toys? So you, So you're So you're talking you're actually conscious you take the pill

You're actually conscious while you're on it. Yeah, having a conversation. No, no, you're you're in With the eye shades on and the music You're you're in the movie Oh, God you're in the movie. Oh, good. You're in the movie. You don't know, you know, you're kind of you're separated from reality. Okay. Yeah. Think about I begin, you could take off the eye shades and you kind of come out of it. It's different than like psilocybin, LSD, where it's more of an awakened experience even though You also couldn't put the eye shades on and the music and you still have this have similar experience

But with Phil Sive and LSD ayahuasca these are very visual experiences, so you take them off and you're seeing you know things distort and You know, it's a different experience. That's why I began you put shades on you put music on You're seeing your your life play out in a movie you see I mean you I've watched I watched my life even file itself in like a file Like a movie file almost like defrag

my life even file itself in like a file, like a movie file, almost like Defrag. No, sure. But people talk about, you know, they see a defrag of their brain, like I watched it happen. Watched it happen. And you'll hear that, that's very common. So is it in chronological order? It could be, it could be anything. It could be a little bit jump around. Some people have had very focused missions of theirs. Everybody's different. What was yours?

Mine jumped around. Mine, you know, and again, I think it's because I, you know, I talked to you about, like, you know, my mind chatters, so it talks too much. And, you know, I jumped around all over the place. It talks too much and I jumped around all over the place. I also thought I experienced like a spiritual type of part of my experience, where I was very peaceful and white light and is this God? So people see that, people even have more profound visions of that.

That's why it's very personal. You know, at the end of the day, it's your brain. What's going on in your mind and drugs gonna fix it. The medicine's gonna fix it. And again, these things have been used for thousands of years for rights of passage and for healing, really. For a year. It's said, they've of passage and for healing, really, for... Yeah. It's said that they've been using them for up to 6,000 years.

6,000 years ago they were using this stuff. The risk to this stuff is like, is no. I mean, the toxicology of this, you couldn't eat enough psilocybin mushrooms. You couldn't, you psilocybin mushrooms. You couldn't. You would throw them up physically. You couldn't eat that many to die. The risks to these are so little, but they're powerful.

They're very powerful medicines and they have to be taken correctly. Yeah. I'm a big proponent. They have to be taken correctly. Yeah. I can tell. Yeah. Are you, I mean, how vivid, how vivid is it? How realistic is it? Are you, are you, in time magazine article that I read this year and so you talked to your father, you talked to friends that you lost on the battlefield, you talked to God. You're talking to them, like you and I are talking right now. So you're actually having a full-blown conversation. A full-blown conversation.

You're therapist there. She might tell you like, so what was that thing about X, Y, and Z? You know? So I heard you say, you know, this is this to your wife or, you know, so yeah, I mean, you're, you may be acting out some of those things, or you may be thinking you're talking for your whispering them, or maybe you're just not whispering or saying anything you're just having the conversation. So it's

all different things. Some you may be vocal, some you may be whispering, some you may be doing vocal, some you may be whispering, some you may be doing nothing, some you may be doing a lot of hand gestures like touching things or grabbing stuff or clearing rooms or it's it is so individualized right. It's personalized medicine. Works for you or what you experience. It's going to be different from what I experience. But we're going to come out with similar lessons learned. You may stop drinking, you may stop using your opioids. You may be more aware.

You may understand that you're good with yourself. You love yourself. You're good. You don You love yourself, you're good. You don't have to hate yourself anymore. Or, you know, I mean, the stories are similar. And there's something going on, right? There's something, there's something happening there. How long has this lasted?

I began another challenge, it's long. Anywhere the peak is four to six hours, and then the back part is six to 12 hours. Iboga, the root, 24 to 36 hours. Wow. Talking about it cleansing, I mean, come out of there, life is good. You have no issues.

You have no issues. You have no ego. You can just walk in a room and just not worry about anybody or anything or put on a display or put on a face mask to act like you don't need any of that. You're just good when When you're done. Can you share with me maybe like a very specific part of what I really wish I did and I wish I wrote some of this stuff down? Yeah, because for me it was just, it was a lot of shotgun images and like short stories or me talking to dad for a little while, but I remember what we talked about, you know, and then me.

You know, I do remember, I do remember some of the high points. I remember very vividly me, like with Amber and the kids, and we're all like, you know, we're all like in arms, you know, like as a family, because we did that. It's always fun, and like we would just like it's kind of like hug around, you know, has a group and it was very uplifting. And for me that just showed me that dude, everything you think you're searching for, it's like here it is. Like you got them right in front of you. And like that's what it was showing me was that, you know, that you're constantly on this path to searching for, you're not even sure what, but you need to just stop and look what you have and be happy with that,

be satisfied with that. And I think that's what that was trying to tell me was that, you know, you have everything you need. Like, you don't, you don't got to go searching for other things. And, and that's what I took away from that piece that's kind of what the therapist had talked about. So trying to understand, like, what does this mean? You know, I don't know what I talked to the debt my dad about. He, you know, I have some, I have some great memories growing up. And he definitely stopped his life to like train me and teach me and play ball and like that's all I did is play ball.

But the other side of that it was like, if I didn't, you know, throw a touchdown, hit a home run, like, I was in love, like I was like beaten. It was all about success. You had to succeed. You had a win. You had to do right. Otherwise, they were in a bad mood. Him, my mom, I sucked. That's how I grew up was you had to do well if you wanted, like, love and attention. So trying to reset that many years of that type of mindset. And, you know, it's probably what drove me to, it definitely drove me to do certain things I did.

But that's not healthy. You know. Were you ever worried that it would, I mean, when you went down there, how many times have you done this? So I've done it three now. Three times? The second time, second time was bad. There was a fire at the house we were at. Something happened with the wiring

of like a one of the dryers. And this is terrible. I was in the peak of my experience. And And what I remember was I got woken up being told that I was going into open heart surgery and that it cut me open immediately because I was going to cardiac arrest. But that wasn't happening. That's what I perceived happening. So that was my memory of it. So it was really bad. That's where, you know, the medicine can be, you know, that's what I remember. But what really happened was caught on fire, they were just trying to get us out of the room. But again, I'm in the middle of a fucking strongest psychedelic on the planet. And I'm feeling the heat because it's real heat. So I'm in hell. Oh, man. You know, like, right? So it was terrible. Thank goodness. I went back like six months later a year later. And I had, and this was what told me that I'm good. I still work on stuff for the

rest of my life. And I may have to go do psychedelic therapy once a year or twice a year and I think that is great. There's, I mean, it's, you're only going to get better. The last time I went, I can actually say this like, it was peaceful. Like, it was peaceful for me. I had a big smile on my face. My heart rate never jumped. I didn't throw up. I just kind of, you know, I don't want to say enjoy the ride, but it was still intense. Like you still get a bit of an anxiety because it's, you know,

it's a tough medicine. But again, it's not something like, you're like, oh, let's go to do IBegame. Yeah, no, but this was a more pleasant experience. I was more prepared. I meditated throughout the whole experience. I repeated mantra throughout the whole experience in my mind. So I didn't have those prolonged, tough, demonic cutting of throats and shooting and knife fighting and blood and guts and like just bad You know shit that I had my very first experience that basically in my you know kind of cleansed cleansed the demons

Right like just kind of lifted all that weight off my shoulders the last time I didn't have that and it told me when I got either Like dude you're like, you won. Like life is good. Now I just go, now I just go figure the rest of it out. So that was really rewarding to have that the last time. Yeah. Yeah. And I tell people, we all have bad days. I still get depressed. I think I don't wish depression about anyone. It's horrible, you know, pure depression. And I think I have whatever it is.

And it's easier to fight back now. It's easier for me to snap out of it. But I can still go there. And I have to like work, I gotta work to fight back now. It's easier for me to snap out of it. But I can still go there. And I have to like work, I gotta work to make it stop. So I understand that when people say they're depressed, like I jump on that, because I know what that's like. Yeah, it's not, when you stay in bed, you stay in bed days at a time.

Don't get up, don't answer the phone, don't answer your texts, don't want to see anyone, don't want to do anything tired, like that's bad. And that's where I was before. You know, and now still have the depression, but able to literally fight, fight out of it quickly. I owe it to my experience. I owe it to that first time that was such a hard struggle. Like I needed to see that. I needed to go through that. Yeah.

And are the guys need to go through that if they're struggling, right? Like you gotta do the hard work. We call it work, it is work. But if you wanna get better, you gotta do something about it. The stuff just sounds amazing. You know, I was reading some of the stuff

that not just traumatic brain injury and PTSD that is known to have amazing results in them, but it's also seen results in autism, cancer patients, OCD, depression, anxiety, ADHD, and I even read something that might be helping a little bit with Alzheimer's. That's the part where that's the physiological piece where man, if this can actually physiologically heal the brain, like do something to the brain, I mean, it's going to be, it's going to be incredible what it's going to do for people that have TBI is that potentially can move into CTE, cause dementia, cause Parkinson's or whatever,

you know, whatever's going on with the brain. But all those things you mentioned, they're just studying a lot of that stuff now. But a lot of that stuff is because the brain's just wired a certain way. And so this is just kind of, like you said, chopping the default mode network and resetting, resetting some of those train thoughts, train patterns.

Damn, it's crazy, right? Yeah, it is. Yeah. So you come back home and it's like somebody flipped the lights. It's like the lights switch. Like I was like cognitively, like I was back. I was like sharp, focused.

I'm finishing my MBA at USC here in two weeks, my second grad degree. I would not have been able to do that prior to all this stuff. I mean, it worked so well on you that you sort of did not bother that. Yes. I mean, the first thing I said to Amber aside from when I come out at my experience and you know we huged and cried and The first thing I said I'm like How can oh I turned the doctor and I said how many I mean there must have been tons of guys have done this right before me Like now you're like the second And with a second, are you kidding me?

That's what got me. I said, okay, Amber, we have to start immediately. All our friends who are struggling need this. Like this is an over-entering. They need to do what I just did. And how are we gonna do that? All right, we gotta go find some money. So we'll go raise some money, but we going to do that? All right, we got to go, we got to go, we got to go find some money. So we'll go raise some money. Well, but we have to start a nonprofit.

So it's like, that was the conversation. And it's kind of a grassroots effort. We just wanted to fund a few individuals to prove the concept that this stuff works. And I turned into like a hundred, like that. Well, you know, and then, you know, the more people that get better, easier it is to raise money, still difficult to raise money because it's schedule one. And, but I mean, we spent over $100,000 on attorney fees, setting this up correctly so we can do it correctly.

It's been difficult. It's not easy. Now, and what we talked about, people are trying to do their own thing. Yeah. That's fine. We'll support where we can, but we have to stay on the path of what we're doing, not worry about anybody else. I mean, damn, dude, that's amazing.

You know, or you're doing any other type of natural medicines? Maybe like an aerowanna. I, you know, I'm not huge in a cannabis. I do take a ton of CBD, so like a lot. In the morning, in the evening, after workout, anything I could do to reduce inflammation, like I just take supplements for that, I take CBD for that, I take cold baths, cold showers, regularly, anything I could do to reduce brain inflammation, body inflammation. CBD cannabis, I mean, sometimes I definitely have trouble sleeping still. I wish I could sleep better.

So I do sometimes do a little bit at night before I go to bed. Sometimes I sleep, sometimes I don't. I usually just fucking end up in the pantry eating a lot of like cookies and chocolate at night. like cookies and chocolate at night. But yeah, I mean, I'm not for against it. Like, it's okay. No, it's okay. But I feel like I'm busy and I like to do, you know, and for me, it's not, you know, I'm too busy to like sit around and smoke pot.

Yeah. to sit around and smoke pot. But like I said, I definitely use it to try to go to sleep. And I wanted to be eaten too much after that. I mean, I went to therapy for three and a half years, twice a week. And my therapist was trying to, she kept telling me, you need to try this. That was when I lived in Florida where it's legal. Yeah, you know, you need to try this. You know, that was when I lived in Florida where you know, it's legal. Yeah, you can get it. Yeah. And you know, I had that, I'm not doing that shit.

That's for hippies. I don't do that. I don't want to turn into a fat turd and smoke pot all the time. And then, finally, I finally tried it. And then I, I, I can't say enough good shit about it. Really? Does it help? So that's where I'm probably just not getting the education that I need from it, you know what I mean?

And so, and I know there's like different strains and different types. And, you know, for me, I think I just need something that reduces my anxiety and like helps me sleep, you know? And that's, yeah. Yeah, you know, that's what I do. I know I can't do it during the day, you know I can't do it at all now because I live in Tennessee. It's illegal, but you know before I moved here

It was just you know when the work and day is done and you know, it's it's time to Switch it off and then you know, then I would smoke yeah or Switch it off and then you know then I would smoke yeah or Or vape or whatever yeah, whatever I had but Man, it's like I just I can't say enough good stuff about it. I mean it just it it I Gotta be honest like really fucking pisses me off that it's still illegal because I know how many people it's helping and it helps me and cut it. And what's the alternative? Yeah, now the alternative is so bad to Benzo's. Is much worse, heavy drugs.

Yeah, you're right about that. So I should learn a little bit more. You know, I have some gummies and I use like small doses of that. And I think that's good. I like that too because it doesn't like, you know, it doesn't affect like my breathing or anything like that. Yeah. So I, you know, I kind of like that.

But, well, as far as vets is concerned, what do you guys got going on now and, and, boom, where was it going. Yeah. So right now, you know, we've stayed underground for about, you know, close to three years because we wanted to do it right. We didn't want to, we didn't want to, one cause an issue in the community because we knew that we had fun guys in our community. And the worst thing that could have happened was some bad article publicity put out that veterans or seals or other special operations forces are like running wild on psychedelics or drugs.

And that would be detrimental to what we're doing. And so we just took everything really slow, to what we're doing. And so we just took everything really slow, kept it quiet, built up, I guess, the network of believers, you know, and these included some senior military leaders, admirals, generals, politicians, right side, left side. Now we're there, now we're good, now we have the support, the research is out there. People like you are now believing in it. So now the next phase is the first phase was let's fund as many treatments as we can. We did. Second phase, we will continue funding as many treatments as we can and more. Now we're in more of an advocacy, excuse me, advocacy role, speaking, doing podcasts like this, educating people, trying to change legislation. We're working on

HB 1802 in Texas, which is going to be in Texas of all places. Just past the House, past the Health Committee 11-0, passed the House like a hundred and I don't know what the number is, 124 to 12. Now it goes to the Senate. It'll be the first bill in the US to do a clinical trial with the Houston VA and Baylor Medical. And if it'll be, it'll be, be testing psilocybin, MDMA and ketamine. Wow. Yeah.

Yep. And so we're, I mean, everybody we talked to is confident that it's going to pass. Governor Perry is like leading the charge on that with us. He's a Republican. He's seen what it's done to the individuals that he knows. And so he's 100% behind it. And I think that's great because it's a bipartisan bill. So Republicans and Democrats are working together. So we're right in the middle of all that, helping them testifying,

speaking out, doing panels to educate the politicians, the lawmakers. We co-sponsored the bill in California. It was a decrim bill, but it was heavy into therapy, and we had to, because of the therapy piece. We didn't really have a choice. We just did a panel yesterday for Connecticut lawmakers. I just got a phone call from New York, Florida. So they're all reaching out to Amber Knight

to kind of be the voice for them to help start passing some of this legislation. So that's where we're at on the state level. Federal level, it's got to get descheduled or however it works from the FDA or excuse me from the DEA because the federal level, if they figured out, then the states are going to have easier time being able to research all these different medicines. So I don't know how that's going to go. So treatments, funding for treatments, advocacy, speaking out like this, podcasts,

articles. I don't know where else. I don't know where we're going to go from here. I mean, just the fact in today's political environment, you know, nobody can seem to agree on anything. The fact that you've provided enough evidence and examples of how effective the stuff is that you've been able to kind of unify, you know, Democrats and Republicans on one thing is nothing short of incredible. It's crazy. You know, they said in Texas, they can't even,

they can't agree upon where a stop sign is placed. You know, those split they'll split their vote, you know, on the right side of the street, you know, it should be on the left side of the street, it should be this solid. You know, but this bill, unanimous, 11 to zero, came out of that health committee. And then the house voted, like I said,

there's only 12 nays. And I'm assuming the 12 nays were probably just didn't understand, they probably didn't even look at this. They didn't even know what it was. They just heard psychedelic and they're like, nay. No. You know, but that's still a large, it's a large amount that voted yay in Texas. And we're talking about a state that's history of conservative Republican Christian.

So I think if Texas leads the way in this, like the rest of the country is gonna lead the way. That's what I feel. If Texas could do it, because you figured it's gonna be done in California or New York or Illinois, right? Or some, you know, Washington, Oregon, but in Texas? Yeah. Come on, that should like tell people

like hard right, stay. Guys, just do a little little reading do a little research. So move forward. How can how can we help? How can how can the viewers help? Donations getting the word out what how do we find out all that good stuff? Yeah, so vet solutions dot org Got a beautiful new website. There's a donation link. We always need resources. We always need funding.

We're putting together some programs. We have an amazing advisory board. Five of them are on the top five most influential or influential individuals on the psychedelic space. We have five of those individuals on our advisory board. I mean, we have some real people involved. We always need resources if people have ideas for fundraising. We haven't done any of the big dinners. And some of the things that you and I

might have gone to golf events, things like that that raised money. We've done a pretty good job up until this point. We've got some really good individual backers that are keeping this thing afloat. Spread the word. Be a part of what Amber and I are doing. We just want to, we want to grow this, maybe we develop an international chapter, same thing, maybe in England or somewhere else in Europe or Australia where they're having the same type of veteran issues, 100% weird. Maybe someone even worse, they can do the same thing that we're doing here and maybe we collaborate.

Well, Willie will post all the links, social media links, you know down in the description along with your time article because it was a really good article. Awesome. Very informative. And, man, I just want to say, this is amazing. Like, what you guys are doing and how much you've accomplished in such a short period of time is just, it's incredible. Thank you. And the fact that, you know, you you have the curves come out and say, like, you know, because this is, you know,

still pretty taboo in most places. Definitely is. It's still tough. I don't love it at all. It's not fun talking about your vulnerabilities and the things that you failed at or that you sucked at. But I think it's really helping folks. and the things that you failed at or that you sucked at. But I think it's really helping folks. And every day that everyone I want to quit

because it's so fucking tough sometimes with like we talked about people coming after you and some of the laws and sometimes when you hit roadblocks and then we get a letter from somebody that went through treatment and they're like, you save my life. And that just keeps us going. And knowing the fact that we have really good close friends and brothers that I worked with,

I just wanna, like when they're ready, like I wanna hug them and help them, because I know they're gonna have the next part of their life is gonna be a challenge for some of them. Not for everybody, but for the ones that are challenged, like, I wanna tell people out there like, we're here, we're here to help. There's no ego. I don't care how tough you were before, like you're like,

we love you and we're going to, you know, we're going to make sure that you're okay. Well, I don't know how much, I don't know how much feedback you're getting, but I can tell you, you know, looking from the outside, you guys are making a tremendous impact on the combat veteran community and it's making some big waves and it's just really cool to watch. So, and I want to thank you for coming up here and giving me your time and Thank you to share your story and I know some of that stuff isn't isn't Isn't Isn't the funnest to

Go back to now, but honored so honored thanks for the gummy bears. Yeah, you're welcome, man But I have the best Best of luck to too. Yeah, thank you. Did you know that genetics can play an important role in gaining insight on how a person may respond to various medications? Understanding this may help reduce medication trial and error. GeneSite is a genetic test that analyzes variations in DNA. It shows how genes may affect someone's metabolism or response to medications commonly prescribed to treat depression, anxiety, and other mental health conditions. Visit geneSite.com for more information.

The Bullwark podcast focuses on political analysis and reporting without partisan loyalties. Real sense of day juboos sprinkled on our PTSD. So things are going well, I guess. Every Monday through Friday, Charlie Sykes speaks with guests about the latest stories from Inside Washington and around the world. You document in a very compelling way. All of the positive things have come out of this, but it also feels like we have this massive hangover.

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