Episode 371 - Kegan Gill

Summary

Cleared Hot: Episode 371 - Kagan Gill

Released on January 27, 2025, "Cleared Hot" is hosted by Andy Stumpf, a former military aviator who shares compelling stories of survival, resilience, and personal growth. In Episode 371, Andy welcomes back Kagan Gill, a Navy F-18 Super Hornet pilot whose harrowing experience of survival and recovery provides profound insights into the challenges faced by military personnel.

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1. Introduction and Background

Andy Stumpf reintroduces Kagan Gill, highlighting his remarkable journey as a Navy F-18 pilot. Kagan's previous appearance on "Cleared Hot" showcased his experience as an F-18 pilot who ejected from his jet at 0.96 Mach, barely surviving the ordeal. Andy emphasizes the significance of Kagan's story of not just physical survival but also his battle with mental health crises post-recovery.

Notable Quote:

"His recovery from that, working his way back into being a naval aviator again, flying an F18 again, and then what I find to be the most impactful... his struggles back into what we both clearly call a mental health crisis."
— Andy Stumpf [00:27]

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2. The Incident: Ejection and Survival

Kagan recounts the day of his accident on January 15th while performing air combat maneuvering (ACM) training over the Atlantic Ocean. During a high-speed engagement, a combination of technical mishaps and human error led to a catastrophic loss of control. At 10,500 feet and approaching the sound barrier, Kagan attempted a nose-low maneuver, resulting in an uncontrollable dive at 0.95 Mach.

Notable Quote:

"I was inside a catastrophic dive... I instinctively reach for the ejection handle and pull out of that jet at the last possible second."
— Kagan Gill [21:47]

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3. Physical Recovery

Miraculously surviving the high-speed ejection, Kagan endured severe physical injuries, including facial trauma, a broken neck, fractured limbs, and a shattered dry suit. Despite these injuries, the timely intervention of rescue helicopters and medical teams at Norfolk General Hospital played a pivotal role in his survival.

Notable Quote:

"I was... two seconds from impact with the ocean going at 0.95 Mach. So right at the speed of the sound barrier, transonic region."
— Kagan Gill [21:47]

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4. Mental Health Struggles: TBI and PTSD

Beyond physical injuries, Kagan grappled with traumatic brain injury (TBI) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The conventional military medical system labeled his condition as PTSD, overlooking the neurological damage caused by his ejection and subsequent decompression sickness. This misclassification led to ineffective treatment focused solely on behavioral health rather than addressing the underlying physiological issues.

Notable Quote:

"The real underlying issue was the disrupted physiology of my brain being jacked up. If you approach it as an emotional issue, you try to fix the software before the hardware."
— Kagan Gill [72:12]

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5. Interaction with the Military Medical System

Kagan details his frustrating interactions with the military medical and bureaucratic systems. Initial treatments involved heavy reliance on prescription medications like quetiapine, which exacerbated his mental health struggles. The lack of understanding and support for TBI within the military framework hindered his recovery, leading to prolonged suffering and institutional challenges.

Notable Quote:

"The conventional medical system just masked the symptoms. The underlying ailment got worse as my life fell apart around me."
— Kagan Gill [100:10]

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6. Writing "Phoenix Revival"

Determined to reclaim his life and help others, Kagan authored "Phoenix Revival." The book serves as both a memoir of his survival and a guide for others facing similar struggles. Through candid storytelling, Kagan emphasizes the importance of resilience, personal agency, and seeking alternative treatments beyond conventional medicine.

Notable Quote:

"My hope with this book is that it'll inspire people and provide practical steps on how they can apply this to their own lives."
— Kagan Gill [107:04]

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7. Alternative Mental Health Treatments

Kagan explores various alternative therapies that aided his recovery, including prolotherapy and psychedelic-assisted therapy. These methods addressed the physiological aspects of his brain injury, offering relief from chronic pain and mental health symptoms when traditional treatments had failed.

Notable Quote:

"Prolotherapy with just a few pockets of sugar water alleviated my severe nerve pain, something no medication could do."
— Kagan Gill [94:30]

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8. Recovery and Resilience

Emphasizing personal responsibility, Kagan shares his journey of overcoming addiction and rebuilding his physical and mental health. Through disciplined self-care, fitness, and holistic approaches, he not only regained his functionality but also found purpose in helping others navigate their own recovery paths.

Notable Quote:

"The resilience of our bodies and minds is so powerful. The darker the place you find yourself, the more opportunity for growth you have."
— Kagan Gill [135:54]

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9. Publishing Journey

Choosing a hybrid publishing model, Kagan ensured he retained the rights to his work while maximizing his book's reach. Partnering with Ballast Books, he successfully published "Phoenix Revival," making it accessible on platforms like Amazon and Audible. This strategic choice facilitated greater visibility and control over his narrative.

Notable Quote:

"Going with a hybrid publisher allowed me to keep the rights to my book and receive a larger share of royalties."
— Kagan Gill [111:16]

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10. Future Plans and Motivational Speaking

Kagan is expanding his influence through motivational speaking and coaching, aiming to assist veterans and first responders in accessing alternative therapies. His ongoing projects include collaborating with treatment facilities like Beyond in Texas to establish veteran programs, leveraging his experiences to foster community support and healing.

Notable Quote:

"I want to provide tools so that others can dig themselves out of the holes they find themselves in."
— Kagan Gill [117:57]

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Closing Thoughts

Kagan Gill's story is a testament to the indomitable human spirit and the pursuit of healing beyond conventional boundaries. His experiences shed light on the systemic flaws within military medical care and advocate for a holistic approach to mental and physical health recovery. Through "Phoenix Revival" and his ongoing initiatives, Kagan continues to inspire and support those navigating similar dark paths toward recovery and resilience.

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Find Kagan Gill's Book and Connect:

• Book: "Phoenix Revival" available on Amazon
• Website: kagangill.com
• Instagram: @KaganGill
• LinkedIn: Kagan Gill

Support and Resources: For more insights into Kagan's journey and to access resources mentioned in the episode, visit his website or follow him on social media.

Transcript

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Continue bill credits or credit stop and balance on required finance agreement due bill.

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Credits end if you pay off devices early. CT mobile.com Good morning everybody. Hope your week is kicking off well. My guest today is Kagan Gill. He is a repeat guest on the show. I had him back on for a few reasons. I'll get to that in a second. His story of survival exceeds my vocabulary, that's for sure. If you caught him on the first time that he was on the show, then you know he was an F18 pilot in the Navy. He ejected at 96 Mach in an F18 Super Hornet off the Atlantic Coast a few seconds before impact. Let me just tell you, ejection seats are not designed to be operated at 0.96 Mach. Now, Kagan does a great job of talking about the why aviation, what caused the ejection, the injuries that he occurred during that, the fact that he probably shouldn't have even survived in the first place, his recovery from that, working his way back into being a naval aviator again, flying an F18 again, and and then what I find to be the most impactful, at least to me, and what I hope people can grab onto is his struggles back into what I think we would both clearly call a mental health crisis. Now, a lot of this was tied to tbi, but he went pretty deep and he talks about it and he wrote a book called Phoenix Revival. And it is not only about what happened to him, but how he got out of it. And that is, I think, probably the most important aspect of this episode. Strap yourself in, no pun intended. Even though there are straps on an ejection seat. Episode number 371 with Kagan Gil is gonna be a banger. Now, if you've been a fan of the podcast, you know the deal. I do ads. Give me 60 seconds to pay the bills. So I keep bringing this to everybody for free. Ladies and gentlemen, this episode is brought to you by Black Rifle Coffee. I know people thought that they were gone because I'm working with some other sponsors now. They're not gone at all. Let's head over to the website. Okay. I'm liking this. Oh, my God. A alpine multi cam wrap Snowmobile. Yeah, that probably doesn't suck. So what do we got here for 72 hours only 30% off. Flash sale. Well, you have another six hours to get ahold of that. I'm sorry. By the time this comes up, I don't think that's gonna be a thing. But if you're not a subscriber yet, you can start a subscription. So then you, you know, the next time that comes up, you'll be able to do so you can shop by category. I've gone through each and every one of these. I'm gonna highlight the one on the far right because this is the newest one. We just got these in the coffee shop. I'm not an energy drink person, but I've watched a lot of people buy these, and I've asked every single one of them for their feedback. It has been very positive in nature. Four flavors, 200 milligrams of caffeine, zero sugar, and only 10 calories. Freedom Punch. Wild Frost. I don't know what frost tastes like, but actually, the last person I watched got one of those and they said it was great. Ranger Berry and Project Mango. Blackrifflecoffee.com. if you have a coffee lover in your life, if you love coffee, if you want to get a subscription, if you want to get merch, if you want to get something to make coffee in or drink it out of, if you want to gift somebody, they have everything you need. And now if you are an energy drink fan, they got something for you there too. Black Rifle coffee. Com. Let's get into episode 371. Thanks for tagging along. Okay, I got the red smoke.

[B]

Sun runs north or south west of the smoke, west of the smoke. Okay, copy.

[A]

West of the smoke. I'm looking at danger close now. Oh, wait a minute. Give it to me.

[B]

I mean, it's cleared hot. Can't be cleared hot.

[A]

Okay. I'm just double checking. Trust be verified. You ever heard that term in the military?

[B]

It's a wise decision as a military leader.

[A]

You know the number of times that I've done stuff myself and I think I've hit record. My favorite one is where I hit the record button on the video, but it's on the wrong camera. So I'll do like a Friday episode Sitting in this chair. But the camera would be your empty chair.

[B]

Oh yeah, yeah.

[A]

I'm powerfully stupid sometimes.

[B]

There's like, there's like a bunch of different camera settings in the jet, in the, in the Super Hornet.

[A]

And so like you're talking outward.

[B]

No, like, well, there's, there is one option for that through the hud, but yeah, there's, there's different options that you can select for which display you record for the flight.

[A]

I thought you were going to go like selfie mode. Like you're going to tell me that this thing was built for social media and you can be like over the right shoulder.

[B]

F35 probably has that, but not the old 90s tech and the Super Hornet. But you have to select which, which display you want to record. And depending on what mission you're doing, you have to record certain stuff.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And so it happens all the time. You come back as a new guy going through the reg and you come back from the whole flight, they just drop like I don't know, 100 grand or whatever for this whole, all the other aircraft involved. And then you go to look at your tapes and you flip the switch to the wrong display and you're like, well, sorry about that.

[A]

Like we could run it again if you guys want to though, because I had a pretty good time.

[B]

Yeah, right.

[A]

What's the balance like up there in the F18 between flying the ship and managing your way through those systems and submenus?

[B]

Ask that again.

[A]

So you're up there flying, right? What's an F18 cost back in 2014?

[B]

About $89 million.

[A]

So you're up there piloting an 89 million dollar ship and there's the airmanship and aviation obviously moving it around and looking outside. But how much of that time in your experience flying are you actually head down, navigating through all these sub menus that balance between actually flying the bird around, having a good time or scrolling through a menu.

[B]

Like on the ground you try to get everything set up as much as possible.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And then if you're doing certain mission sets with like working with smart weapons or air to ground stuff, you'll, you'll have portions of the flight where you're doing this tactical admin to sort of get all the like deep dive everything set up inside the system so you're ready to rock. And when you get into a fight and you're in a tactical environment, everything should hopefully be mostly set up so that you're, you're not down in the cockpit like as you Say otherwise.

[A]

You're trying to fight air fight, ground fight, and you're trying to go through the fourth sub menu to select the.

[B]

Right thing, which, which the cast page in the super horn is a pain in the ass. Like, so you're, you know, you're doing the NY line, you're flying around, you're getting all the weapon systems set up, and then you got this super cumbersome cast page that you've got to input the nylon information into.

[A]

So what are you using a keyboard for that?

[B]

No, no, you're primarily using in front of. You've got like a digital keypad that you're using to punch stuff in.

[A]

What a pain in the ass. Ass.

[B]

It's a pain in the ass. It's not a great. They, they improved it a little bit and they keep coming up with software updates, but it's still pretty cumbersome.

[A]

I was just hoping that you were going to say the cameras were facing the pilot and so just like maybe when you fire the jet up, you put in your handle so it's straight to IG live or.

[B]

Oh, man, someday probably. You know, you brought up the.

[A]

Yeah, you brought up the F35. So obviously the F18, which is wild to say, is a legacy aircraft at this point. Yeah, because I remember watching the first Top Gun, I honestly thought the F14, it maybe still is the coolest looking damn airplane.

[B]

It's pretty ever.

[A]

But they were done by the time I got in or had just. I think they had just put them away 18s. Now they got the 35s and the 22s. If you were still in, say you were starting your aviation journey and you were assigned to an 18, how does somebody cross deck over to another platform?

[B]

Yeah, actually quite a few guys that I know are doing that right now.

[A]

Do they just ask?

[B]

Well, I think, yeah. Depending on your preferences needs of the Navy, depending on what billets are open in F35 squadron, you can potentially cross over from F18s to F35s. And a number of guys are doing that. You can also. I believe you can now go in through the aviation pipeline and select F35s right out of getting your wings in advanced training and go right in the F35.

[A]

That's a little bit of a gamble though, right, because you don't necessarily get what you pick.

[B]

Oh, yeah. You know how the Navy works. You get to put your dream sheet and they like to crush your dreams oftentimes. So it's, it's really a, it's really a gamble.

[A]

There's some good YouTube videos of. And I don't know if this happened to you, but it appears to be these pilots and I don't know what phase they're in. Their back is to a screen and it's reveal night. Whatever it is they throw up the platform that they're going to be flying behind them and you know, guys are getting F15 losing their shit. High fiving another guy. F35, F22. And then one guy's up there, you know, gets like C5 Globemaster and he still loses his shit as well. I feel like those are some of the best actors I've ever seen. It's like F22, C5 Globemaster, F16. And all three of them reacted the same way. I'm like one of you is not telling the truth or you get.

[B]

Or you get. Or you get the, you know like the drone, the UAV guy.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

What a blow, man. That was actually a big deterrent from. I looked at the Air Force but I was like I don't want to fly drones.

[A]

But if you were a F18 driver, which you were and you wanted to. You just got a wild hair up your ass and said 35s are the way. It's possible that you could have course corrected your own career.

[B]

Yeah. Had the F35. Wasn't even a thing when I was in.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It was still not. I think it was almost to go into operational testing as I was kind of leaving. But it's now. It's now totally. If I was still in and that was my desire. My buddy Aaron, call Signs Piccoli is going over there. He's going to be the training officer at the F35 training facility.

[A]

So that's amazing. They don't care about the additional cost because obviously it's a different system. Planes. A plane. Ish.

[B]

But yeah, I think, I think they really like taking some of the. More the guys with experience from the F18 community. And especially if you're a guy like Aaron who's a Top Gun weapons grad, you know, he's going to bring a lot to that community. Yeah. And they. And that's really how they're building that up is they're taking good dudes with good experience and, and bringing it to the F35 platform which is. It sounds freaking awesome. Like AI integration. The systems are just next level. It's like going from using like a. A Nokia brick phone. This is Super Hornets technology from the 1990s. And then you jump into, you know like the newest iPhone. When you get there and. Sounds pretty rad.

[A]

What I love is that There is no two seat trainer for the F35.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

After the sim, it's. I mean, not that I was going to say they throw you the keys. I'm pretty sure they don't involve keys, but.

[B]

Yeah, no keys.

[A]

Yeah. I mean you need to know the right sequence to start it. But that's. I mean the simulators are great in civilian aviation. I got typed in two jets and it's all level D sims where all the buttons are where they are and they have to function. So you are well prepared.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But you also know sitting in the simulation that you're sitting in a video game.

[B]

Right.

[A]

That is very different than climbing inside an actual F35 for the first time and taxing out and holding short of the Runway.

[B]

Oh yeah, yeah. That adds a whole new level to it. And like I think about 50 of your brain power gets sucked out when the engines start in a real aircraft. But I mean even in the, even in the Super Hornet after the. You do an incredibly robust simulator training syllabus and then you only had like four or five flights in the aircraft before you soloed.

[A]

And those were in the doubles, the trainers.

[B]

Yeah. And there's only. I don't know if it was even that many. It might even been three. I think it was like three or four flights that you're flying in. Those, those twin seat ones were a mess. Like they're always broken because there's only like two of them on the planet that they use. They call them fts because they had a stick in the back.

[A]

Yeah, probably a good idea. But what did they expect of you on the first solo? Just some traffic pattern work or. What did they want to see?

[B]

You know, they expect you to be able to start the thing, you know, get it taxied out, take off, get out to the airspace, know the course rules, know how not to run another aircraft around Oceania or wherever. And then you actually go out and you do a pretty good aerobatic syllabus once you get out there. So you're doing loops and rolls and performance. You get to, you know, max perform the jet for the first time and pretty. It's pretty surreal.

[A]

You know how sore was your face from smiling the entire time afterwards?

[B]

Well, mine was smiling pretty good until like we went to take off and I had somehow not loaded the mission card. Right. And so all my waypoints for getting out to the airspace didn't load. And I didn't get notified or realize this until we had Taken off and rotated. And the gear were up in the wells, and the instructor in the back. Squeezer goes, so where are we going?

[A]

Yes.

[B]

I was like, oh, my God. How did I. How did I screw this up already?

[A]

And so, like, I think probably to the east, because that's where the Chocolate Mountains are.

[B]

Yeah. So luckily, you know, salvaged the situation. But that was always in the back of my mind the rest of the flights, like, did I just fail this flight because I didn't get the mission card to load? Right. Which in the sim, you get in the sim, the mission card's always loaded. You don't have to worry about that. But that thing's a giant computer.

[A]

Yeah. That's wild. You got to fly that. You mentioned Top Gun. Since you and I last sat down, there was a cinematic tour de force that came out involving Captain Pete Mitchell. I believe he was a lieutenant the last time we saw him. And it's obviously called Top Gun. Maverick Aircraft, I believe. The same one that you used to fly.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Thoughts on one man in the military tasked with not only training, but executing the most critically important strategic operations that our country has.

[B]

It was so well executed. And my wife watches that.

[A]

And she goes, why is it always him? Shouldn't he, like, teach other people how to do it? Why would it be him? I'm like, it's Pete Mitchell. He's a national treasure.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. Pretty phenomenal, you know, is much, you.

[A]

Know, hard for you to watch.

[B]

No, I loved it. I loved it. Like, the first one, you know, you watch it and you're like, oh, my God, this is really bad. But you love it still because it's just. It's such a classic. But this one, they did a much better job of sort of sticking a little bit closer to the accuracy of the truth, while the tactical stuff, you know, we can't talk about that anyway, so they have to guess what that is. But they did a really good job, I think, of sort of depicting somewhat. Something. Somewhat in the ballpark of reality.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And in the nostalgia of it. And, you know, what was the chick's name in it? Phoenix O'Connell.

[A]

Oh, that bar. Michael, please pull up the cast of.

[B]

Anyway, she's still Maverick. She's still an absolute gorgeous babe, you know?

[A]

How old is she?

[B]

I don't know. But well done, whatever it is.

[A]

Yeah. Tom Cruise is 107.

[B]

Yeah. So looks good, too.

[A]

Jennifer Conley.

[B]

Jennifer.

[A]

Yeah. In. In the real world, let's say, a mission like that came up, and the F18 was selected even above all the other we'll call stealth based technology aircraft, whatever it may be, wouldn't the deployed air wing probably just handle that as opposed to trying to do this pulled in selection at the Top Gun facility?

[B]

Yeah, I don't know how. I mean, I was never privy to anything like that going on in the real world, you know, I mean, isn't.

[A]

That why you do the robust train up, you do the. And people go to Top Gun and they come back and that's why we have people that are forward deployed.

[B]

Yeah, but then you couldn't have such a cool movie.

[A]

I know, I know. What did you think about the flying in that movie? There's obviously cg. Cause they pitched it as, hey, real flying. I'm like, yes, but those aircraft, no military aircraft are going to be allowed to get that close to each other for some of those things.

[B]

Yeah, it was. I mean there was real flying, but a lot of it was obviously enhanced.

[A]

It would have to be.

[B]

And I, I got a bunch of buddies that got to do the flying for the movie. So it's kind of cool and be like, oh, I know that guy, that's Vern or Fisty or whoever was doing it. And yeah, it was, it was really well done.

[A]

I thought the flying that I liked the most was the stuff low to the ground. I know they did that one shot where that thing was probably three wingtips off the ground, if not more than that. What level of permission is required to be able to do that? Because I feel like there's. I mean, you have airspeed, so you could gain altitude, but can you guys just rip around at those things 20ft off the deck?

[B]

You know, there's. Depending on what command you're at, in your experience, there's different altitudes you can get down to, but you are pretty damn low to the air, to the ground. You know, you have to. If you're using terrain masking, like if you were doing that in real life to stay out of radar.

[A]

Oh, that course that they were doing. I'm talking when they were coming straight out over the riverbed where they flew right over the top of the camera.

[B]

Oh, yeah, that was cool. Yeah, yeah, I think they probably, I think they filmed a lot of that out at the weapon school in Fallon. So they had some pretty high level dudes that they probably gave special permission to do.

[A]

That's what I'm talking about.

[B]

And they. There might be some enhancement, you know.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

With the video.

[A]

I don't know. I mean, there is behind the scenes kind of iPhone footage of them setting up that camera and just down the pipe, you see this dude come carving in and just set up on a straight run. I mean, I don't know how fast he was going. Obviously he wasn't supersonic because it didn't pop when he went past him. But there was ground disturbance.

[B]

Yeah, Yeah. I mean, they let us, like, even just doing training with JTAX and stuff out in Navy dare, for example, you can go out and do show of force, and you can get down pretty fast. And you probably got to see that from the ground.

[A]

We would always request an under. Undercarriage check. We didn't want to. For a low flyby, we would just request an undercarriage check. And it seemed like the verbiage was understood.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, you got to make sure there's not any fluid leaks. That's just safety, really.

[A]

For sure. The terrain stuff, you were saying, the masking, I feel like obviously that was a known course. Is that part of the flight curriculum? Because you. Yeah, when I'm looking at it, it drives my wife crazy how many times I've watched that movie. Now I watch it because it drives her crazy. So I watch different parts of it. But I'm looking, you know, you can tell. You can tell if, you know an F18, you can tell he's in the back seat, but whatever. As opposed to the front seat. But I started looking past, you know, Cruz or the. The actor, and looking at just the proximity from the shadow to the wingtip when they were doing some of those courses. Holy, dude. Yeah, I mean, they're. They're getting it.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's. That's one of the most fun things to get to do. And you. Fortunately, you get to do that very early in the training syllabus. It's one of the flights. You get to go out and do a low level.

[A]

I mean, I'm assuming they work you down, right? Let's say.

[B]

Yeah. You're not. You're not as low as those guys were doing it, but it's still pretty, you know, if you. Even if you're at a couple hundred feet going through the mountains.

[A]

Well, especially at that speed.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

How much do you miss it?

[B]

You know, I miss that kind of flying a lot. I really do. That, that was, you know, just a once in a lifetime experience to get to do that kind of stuff. It was so surreal and exciting and just like adrenaline. Like nothing, nothing can provide in other ways. But I don't miss all the.

[A]

Yeah. The bureaucracy. How could you.

[B]

The. There's a lot of nonsense you got to put up with and. And you got to work really freaking hard all the time, and there's not a lot of room for mistake. And so I don't miss that pressure. You know, I miss. I miss the people, I miss my friends. I miss the squadron, I miss the flying. But I don't miss all the nonsense that comes with it, that's for sure.

[A]

Yeah, I. I would actually say pretty much identically the same thing about the SEAL community. I could. If you could leave the big Navy part out of it, it would be spectacular.

[B]

Dude, they should be the best jobs on the planet.

[A]

Like the most infra clarity. I think they might be.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

You just can't escape the bureaucracy.

[B]

That's true.

[A]

Yeah. Michael, before I forget, would you grab us all some waters? I can't believe you didn't have them ready for us. We can keep talking. Yeah, you are. Oh, that's the. Usually, yeah, just grab the whole six pack or whatever's in there. The wean's gonna chirp away at you. Yeah. I can't even fathom being able to do that and then not being able to do that. That would be a really tough one to replace.

[B]

Yeah. You know, it gave. It gave me motivation to recover.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

When I was dealing with all the injuries was, if I get to go back and do that, how cool would that be?

[A]

That's a good carrot to have in front of the horse. To use a rough metaphor for the situation that you recovered from.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. It was a powerful one for sure.

[A]

Yeah. Oh, look at you getting one for yourself. And you gave yours to you first.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Says a lot about you.

[B]

Everyday water.

[A]

Everyday water. These are field craft survival waters. It's exactly like regular water. But I guess if you're in a survival situation, you could drink this too.

[B]

Nice.

[A]

Yeah, I'm convinced Glover actually just has a hose at his house and he just. It's probably just like city water that he pumps into these things and then Saran wraps them. But, you know, hey, good, not bad, man.

[B]

Tastes nice.

[A]

So you were a previous guest and probably the easiest way to make this a standalone episode is you're going to have to unpack. We've just talked about all the awesome shit that you get to do and the bureaucracy and my words for what happened to you would be a very unique and bespoke experience that not many have had. I'm not going to say the pleasure that not many have had the ability or opportunity to experience, but we should probably talk about Because I know it ties into the book as well too.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

Let's talk about what can go wrong in the F18. Yeah. And when things do go wrong at what speed they could potentially go wrong and then what happens to the human body.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, let's do it. I'll just let you recap.

[A]

Yeah, unpack. What happened to you?

[B]

Yeah. So I was, I was fairly, fairly young pilot in the Navy. I completed about two and a half, three years of training to get my wings out of Kingsville, Texas, flying the T45 goshawk. Went through a year long training syllabus in Virginia beach at VFA106 to train the F18 and become a fleet qualified pilot. So at this point I'd been doing it for 4ish years plus I'd been in the squadron for almost a year, I think it was about eight months on this day in January. And I walked into the squadron and on the whiteboard behind my buddy Fisty at the duty desk, he had this, he had used the shark tracker app to put up all the GPS tagged positions of all these sharks out in the area. And you know, we're always morbid sense of humor. I'm sure just like you guys in the SEAL community, just gallows sense of humor. Yeah, just the darker the better.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And so that was up on the whiteboard and he's kind of given me the rundown for the day. The buoy temps at 37 degrees Fahrenheit. You know, this is January and we're having a really cold winter in Virginia Beach. And then the air temps below freezing, we got windy conditions, the seas are churned up. And so he's fish, he's joking like, oh man, it'd be a terrible day to eject.

[A]

What day was this in January?

[B]

January 15th.

[A]

So we're only like just over an anniversary plus six days. Yeah, yeah. Okay.

[B]

So that's kind of like the setup before this flight. And about, about maybe an hour after that conversation with Fiste, I found myself out over the open Atlantic Ocean about 50 miles offshore and practicing air combat maneuvering, or BFM as we call it, or what people probably commonly know as dog fighting. And so a couple of aircraft within visual range of each other, extremely dynamic. You're performing the aircraft at the edge of its capabilities. You're operating weapons systems, defensive systems. You know, it can be a helmet fire, especially for a newer guy like me. I was still, you know, very much slowly learning the steps before this was going to become intuitive. Most of the flight had gone Gone. Well, we got to the end of the fight and we hit Joker fuel. So we reset our bingo bugs down to bingo, meaning we had just enough time left for one quick round of fighting. As we sort of exited the airspace back to Oceana and called the fights on. We ended up, because of the time constraints and where we were at, we ended up setting down, setting up a little bit lower and quite a bit faster than we typically would for this kind of a beam presentation, and called the fights on.

[A]

So you guys were not obviously literally side by side like my hands, but kind of in that configuration farther out, separated by distance.

[B]

Yeah, we were a mile abeam. Equal altitude, equal airspeed.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And that's where you call speed Angels, letting you know, let's rock.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

You know, despite it being non standard, I'm in the mentality of I want to lean forward, I want to push this, so let's do this thing. And I think that's the same thing that was going through my flight lead's mind, like, let's maximize our training and get some more shit done. So we call the fights on. Pitch in. I had just been qualified with this Jehemix helmet, and so I was really kind of focused on using this new piece of really cool kit. And as you know, like, any piece of gear that hasn't become intuitive yet can be a little bit of a distraction. Even if you're qualified in it, even if you've practiced with it and you've passed all the written test or whatever, which I had, it was still, it was just enough to distract me from realizing the air speed that I'd reached at this merge. And so as we crossed paths, I was already partially inverted and partially nose low. So I opted to maneuver the aircraft in this nose low dive towards the ocean above. The Top Gun recommended airspeed for doing such a maneuver. The Super Hornet can typically do a vertical maneuver like that in less than 5,000ft. And we have a saying, live by the gouge, die by the gouge. Which you guys might share that. I don't know if that's a Navy wide thing, but in the back of my mind, I had that number 5,000ft. And so when I did a quick scan of my altitude at the merge, I'm at 10,500ft. That gives me plenty room plus a 500 foot bubble above our 5,000 foot hard deck that's there for training purposes. So I opt to maneuver. I pull the stick in my lap and I just start performing that aircraft to the edge of its capabilities. And so you can feel the force of the jet. You know, you can feel that 7 and a half G's just compressing your spine, all the gear and everything on you. You end up weighing about 1600 pounds. And so you're breathing, you're trying to force the blood up into your head. And as I hit about bullseye nose low a few seconds later, I just felt the aircraft ease. And so it was like going around this sharp corner in a sports car and then having your steering wheel kick back halfway, except you're trying to steer it and it's not responding. And so if you put a control input into a jet and it doesn't do what you're telling it to do, or as expected, that's called out of control flight.

[A]

And.

[B]

And so very quickly, I'm in out of control situation, not fully grasping all the detail of what's going on at this moment. All I know is the jet's not doing what I'm telling it in that.

[A]

Particular attitude and airspeed. When you say you lost the flight controls, did it just want to continue in its dive? Like, if you had been in a turn, would it have just continued? Because it seems like you took it outside of the performance envelope for some point in that dive.

[B]

Basically what it had done is, is it hit a. An airspeed band in the transonic region. Right before you break the speed of sound, there's a spike in the parasitic drag. And this is like back in the 40s.

[A]

People are like, what in the actual are you talking about? I am an aviation nerd, so I'm totally with you on this.

[B]

For all the aviation nerds that are listening, and for those that aren't, I'm sorry, you can fast forward about 10 seconds.

[A]

Parasitic drag is basically drag because of shit on. On the outside of the aircraft. For people listening, there's induced drag, all sorts of stuff. But yeah, parasitic is. Think of the antenna on your car whipping. That is a type of parasitic drag, right?

[B]

You stick your arm out a car window on the highway and it pulls your arm back. That's the parasitic drag acting on the surface of your body. But in this case, they're trying to break the sound barrier back in the 40s, and the engineers were saying the parasitic drag is exponentially stronger as you approach the sound barrier. We don't think that you're going to be able to break the speed of sound. Of course, the pilots were like, well, watch us. And Chuck Yeager went out and blasted right through it. But that was the airspeed band that I Was in. I was at that sound barrier where this massive force. And because of that, the engineers made the decision to put this feature on the jet that limited how hard you can maneuver the jet as you hit that transonic region. They call it the G bucket. And they do that because they want to protect you from overstressing the aircraft if it has stores on the wing. So if you're carrying ordinance. I was not carrying ordinance. However, the gentleman who flew the aircraft right before me was doing a training mission and had programmed in simulated ordnance on the wings. And the aircraft treated simulated ordnance the same as it treated real ordnance. And so it did this limitation at the worst possible moment. And it was this limitation of the aircraft that was designed to protect from a minor overstress. And what it did is it induced a situation that caused catastrophic failure. You know, and unfortunately that, that's something that has had caused mishaps in the prior to me, but in much more experienced pilots. And it also, I know, I know a pilot that lost his life doing a low level when that same system kicked in as he's going through a canyon and overrode his control input at the last moment with no warning.

[A]

Can you imagine how horrible that would feel pulling in whatever direction with all of your might burying it and the aircraft is not responding as you're hurtling towards an object?

[B]

Yeah, I can't imagine as I was.

[A]

Saying that I'm like, you're as normal a retard because you're talking to somebody who had this experience. But what do you think your VSI was reading as you were, I don't.

[B]

Know, thousands of people. Yeah, I don't know.

[A]

VSI for people listening is vertical speed indicator. And in a normal aircraft you're talking 500 to 750ft per minute. A nice casual climb. Yeah, I bet you were thousands, if not tens of thousands of feet per minute.

[B]

Oh yeah, just ripping. And you know, this all just happens in a few seconds. And the next thing I know the ocean's just rushing up at me. I can see the ripples of the white caps and the whole canopy is just filled with the ground. And this overwhelming sense of ground rush.

[A]

Is it chirping at you at all is Bitch and Betty going off?

[B]

So Bitch and Betty went off as I broke through the hard deck because I had the radar altimeter set at 5,000ft for training. So you know, it goes altitude, altitude. And then very quickly in the hud, the heads up display for those that I know. You know what that is? Yeah, that Points up and it tells you, pull up, pull up. And like I'm all right, pulling up.

[A]

No, no.

[B]

So in, in a lot of other fourth generation fighters, and I think all the fifth generation fighters, there's an interface between that ground proximity warning system and that same override system on the flight controls, the G bucket. So if it, if it detects that there's a pending collision, it overrides that.

[A]

System as it should.

[B]

And I would bet that when the test pilots were designing the system on the Super Hornet, there were plans in place to have the same thing. And I wouldn't be surprised if there was some sort of funding debacle or whatever that prevented that from connecting the two. But unfortunately the Super Hornet did not. So put me in this catastrophic dive, in part was my own fault for maneuvering the aircraft at such a high airspeed in this dive. And very quickly I just get this terrible sense of dread, like, oh, fuck. And from there my memory is pretty much very nonlinear. I got flashbacks of stuff, but I've been able to kind of recreate everything that happened through the investigation and the aircraft data recorder and everything we put back together again. But I instinctively reach for the ejection handle, assumed the position and pulled the ejection handle and punched out of that jet at the last possible second. I was two seconds from impact with the ocean going at 51 degrees, nose low. So a really steep dive going 695 miles per hour, which was 0.95 indicated Mach. So right at the speed of the sound barrier, transonic region. And a normal ejection will mess people up, compress the spine, cause flail injuries of their arms as they're ripped apart like a rag doll. And that's, you know, that's in straight and level flight below 180 knots.

[A]

I'm gonna say what is recommended eject? Airspeed?

[B]

Yeah, I think, I think the NATOFs, it's been a minute, but I think it's like below 180 knots, which talking to guys like you who've jumped out of aircraft at that, that speed, you'll feel it's pretty sporty still.

[A]

That, yeah, it is sporty. I mean, you go out as something like one of the bigger jets. I mean you just, you tuck up so you can eat it. But I'm also not attached to a chair and you're not adding the vertical, you know what I mean? You're just stepping out into the relative wind. So it hits you and then it, you, you have this horizontal flight and then it translates into Vertical. You get hucked from the ground at a low enough altitude. When you see people get out, they're actually getting thrown forward an incredible distance, and then you see them translate into a vertical fall. It's called the forward throw. It's pretty cool to watch.

[B]

That's rad.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, I think it's probably more rad than injecting at 0.96 Mach.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, definitely better for your body. But, yeah, this was just, you know, there's. There's an. There's a chart inside the NATOPS that shows the survivable envelope for the ejection seat. Like what angle and airspeed and altitude you can be at. And the parameters that I ejected at were nowhere to be found on this chart.

[A]

Like, did they change it for you afters?

[B]

They should have put a little pin, a little dot. But, you know, I. I shouldn't have survived that. And I was fortunate to be short. I was pretty strong at the time, and I had about 20 more pounds on me than I do now. And I was just this little stump. And that saved my body from just completely ripping apart. But still, it. Traumatic brain injury. Smashed my head to hell. Ripped off that Jehemix helmet. I was actually, I think, the first person to eject at high speed wearing the Jehemix, which there was a big question mark of like, is this going to decapitate people? It didn't.

[A]

On our subject data pool of one. We're looking good.

[B]

We're looking good.

[A]

Has anybody since ejected with one on?

[B]

You know, I don't know.

[A]

So I think one of one. You're still looking strong. Yeah.

[B]

Yeah, it worked. Yeah.

[A]

So far, so good.

[B]

It's, you know, it smashed my face to hell. Just impacting that. That wind blast at that speed, it was 100 times the force of a Category 1 hurricane, impacting my body instantaneously. This, it was an explosive force. So bashed up my face. My eyes were all swollen up. Broke my neck. My C1. In my neck. I broke my left scapula. Bilateral humerus fractures. My right humerus tore through my right brachial artery, causing internal bleeding. My left forearm shattered the radius and ulna and severed the median nerve that controls the left hand, the brachial plexus, which is the nerve that kind of powers your upper body. Got damaged, causing more impairment to my upper body. The dry suit I'm wearing to protect me shreds to hell. Rips open. So now, now I'm exposed to the elements. All the survival gear on my vest ripped off. The radio, the signaling equipment, you know, that little crappy flask of plastic water that once used to be like a nice brandy or something, you know, that was ripped off, which was probably for my benefit.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And then my legs were flailing so violently in this, in the airflow that the steel toe boots on my feet turn into medieval maces and just smashed open my lower legs, causing two open tib fib fractures in my lower legs. And this all just happens in just a split second. 2 seconds from pulling that handle, there's about a half a second ejection sequence. 0.4 seconds, you get this 50G and instantaneous G boost that eases to about 12 to 14G sustained boost. As you exit the aircraft. The aircraft plummets into the water, vaporizes right before impacting the ocean. That parachute managed to open and slow me. So I didn't die in impact with the ocean.

[A]

How high above do you think that canopy opening was? Maybe a couple hundred feet.

[B]

I don't know. I would guess that it maybe started to deploy around 1500ft. If I initiated the ejection at 2000ft, it took a half second to get out of the aircraft. So that would put the aircraft at maybe 1500ft. And then, I don't know. I think that parachute release is probably almost instantaneous at that altitude. So it maybe started to deploy.

[A]

There's still not a lot of time. No, probably a sub, maybe a 10 second canopy ride. What. How much of this did the. Your flight leader adversary in that moment, how much of this did he actually see?

[B]

He, he saw my parachute opening.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And that's.

[A]

Did he. Was he watching you kind of as you went into this dive and.

[B]

Yeah, so. So as I went nose low, he went nose high. And so he's up, he's looking over his shoulder down at me as he pulls his jet over the top of that. That's when he probably sees my parachute.

[A]

Deploy and then just sees your plane just completely vaporize.

[B]

Just gone. Yeah, it impacted the water so fast. There was like he didn't even describe any sort of visible explosion or anything. It was just.

[A]

That probably occurred about 200ft underwater.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, just gone. There was a little bit of film of the jet a on the surface of the ocean. But other than that, it was like if he didn't see my, my parachute, he wouldn't even spotted me. But he quickly, you know, he assumed the on scene commander. He dropped a mark on my GPS location, which I'm in the moving ocean currents at this point. So that Wasn't going to be accurate for very long. But in that short time he had, he spotted a fishing vessel about a mile from our position and so he got down really low and really fast when they wouldn't answer on maritime guard and thumped over their bow and that got them to turn up to that emergency frequency. And he was able to get them over to my position. And once they got there, you know, he's on fumes at this point. But in that time he was able to get them over to my position, which saved my life. And he was able to get other aircraft and vessels, head my way, coordinate with ATC and then bingo profile back to Oceana and landing with like probably just fumes in his jet.

[A]

Did they come get you with a heli? Yeah, they had to have, right?

[B]

Yeah. So they, they ended up sending out two helicopters. One was from HS11 that was operating off a nearby aircraft carrier. And then another One was from HSC 28 that was operating out of Norfolk. I think they were actually going to go down and do a weapons exercise with you guys. And they very quickly diverted their, their training mission to come save my ass. And one of the crew members on this helicopter, you know, he's like eating this meatball sub, like getting ready to go do this training mission. It's an easy day. And all of a sudden they get this search and rescue call and he just kind of throws that meatball sub in the remnants of the rapper. And you know, these guys show up. The HS11 helicopter shows up first. There was a miscommunication, so that rescue swimmer jumps in, there's a whole has rep on the rescue effort itself. Just because everyone is on different frequencies. Oh man, there's like multiple vessels, multiple helicopters and no one was talking to each other. Some near midairs and stuff like that. But that first helicopter had been instructed, not realizing the extent of my injuries, to bring me back to the aircraft carrier. And so that first rescue swimmer gets in, ends up swimming past my position, thinking I'm on the fishing vessel, which I hadn't actually gotten onto. Meanwhile, this HSC 11 hill or 28 helicopter shows up. Their co pilot, I think, or one of the pilots spotted my body, they spotted my head come to the surface for a second.

[A]

Was this being held up by flotation? I mean, were you conscious? Do you remember any of this?

[B]

Yeah, I've gotten it back in the form of night terrors. For years I was having.

[A]

Oh, that's right.

[B]

I would get. Yeah, I had really good sleep from that, like watching A TV show.

[A]

You don't want to.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. I was getting these flashbacks of being trapped in the water. I know you guys do this for fun, but that feeling of just getting.

[A]

Pulled underneath the surface, not use the word.

[B]

We do the breath.

[A]

We have to.

[B]

So. So that's just. That's where I was for like an hour and a half, just getting drowned alive. Fortunately, the one piece of my survival kit that actually worked was the lpu. Yeah, the life preserver unit inflated around my neck and created enough buoyancy that on occasion, I would bob back to the surface against the force of that downward pull of the parachute in the ocean current. Cheech, the Rescue swimmer from HSC 28 the week prior, had been involved in another Navy helicopter crash that had gone down very close to where I was down on this day a week later. It was one of those big MH53 Sea Dragon helicopters. They had an onboard fire and they had to ditch it out in the ocean. And the Navy policy at the time, which was founded on a good idea, which is if you're in an aircraft crash, you're probably going to have a spinal injury. So the policy was you have to be put onto a backboard before you're lifted in the helicopter. Now, putting somebody on a backboard in the moving ocean with a helicopter is really difficult, and it takes a lot of time. And because it took so long to rescue each of those members out of the ocean, several of them died from hypothermia. Everyone had survived the crash. I don't think there are even serious injuries from the impact.

[A]

But, I mean, depending on the type of fire, it's very likely that a helicopter pilot could hover at 10ft, slowly moving forward. People could jump out, and then they could ditch the thing. Yeah, you know, I get. And I'm sure it's from a sound planning perspective, but it's even in. It's briefed in civilian helicopter operations, if you have passengers and you have to ditch over water, come into a hover, let them exit, and then pull forward and crash the helicopter.

[B]

Yeah, they. They might have done just that. I'm not totally sure.

[A]

And if doing so, that sucks. And it's not. It's not the rescue swimmer's fault whatsoever. But that sucks that they died from exposure, whereas they probably just needed a hoist up into the 60.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. And I was very fortunate. You know, those were more lessons learned in blood prior to my experience. And. And Cheech had just come off. He didn't get, like, time off to process That a week later, he's ready to jump back in the ocean and do it again. But that's still fresh in his mind. And so he jumps in, he said, he comes down and hooked into my titanium carabiner. And he said, the force of that parachute just drug us both under. And he's, you know, a physically fit, capable swimmer, swimming as hard as he can. And he said, it's just pulling us. And he had done that in a pool in a training environment, but then to look down and just see a tangle of paracord and parachute in the dark blue abyss, he said, was a whole different experience. But he got. He got me cut loose from all that paracord, got us back to the surface, and then made the game time decision. Hey, this guy may have a spinal injury, which I actually did. I had a broken neck. But he's like, let's get him out of the water. He's been in the. In the water for over an hour and a half at this point. His dry suit's ripped up like, it's amazing. He's alive. And that was a wise decision. That saved my life. So again, another, like, crazy twist in fate here that. That saved me from this situation I shouldn't have lived through. They got me into the helicopter and on the route to Norfolk General, Level 1 Trauma Center, Joey's meatball sub had broken loose and ended up, like, getting all over me. So, you know, I'm coding, I'm like, they're doing everything to resuscitate me, bring me back to life. This whole flight, it's just chaotic on that helicopter ride. And they get me to Norfolk General, and they're kind of wheeling me off, and they're having to explain to the medical staff at Norfolk, like, hey, this guy's in bad shape. But that's just Joey's lunch.

[A]

You know, the meatball is not associated with this particular incident.

[B]

So, yeah, they rushed me in, they treated me for severe hypothermia. My body Temp was at 87 degrees Fahrenheit.

[A]

Probably saved your life, though, the shunting of the blood vessels.

[B]

It did. That prevented me from bleeding to death. They said had my dry suit actually function properly, I would have bled to death way before anybody got there. But they pumped the water out of my lungs, multiple blood transfusions. My kidneys were shutting down from rhabdo, the overwhelming amount of tissue breakdown. So they're just doing everything they can to salvage my life. Once they got my semi stable, they induced a coma and rushed me into surgery. And I spent the next week undergoing over a dozen different trauma surgeries to rebuild my skeleton with titanium rods and steel plates, fasciotomies on all my extremities to salvage from amputation, artery bypass. And after a week in that induced coma, they're trying to get me to wake up. They transferred me over to both of our favorite hospital at Naval Hospital Portsmouth, back to the good old Navy training hospital where my oldest was born. Oh, really? Oh, wow, that's wild. Well, I'm glad they're alive.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, I feel like we have childbirth dialed in a little bit better than the things that happen to you.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Hopefully it was a more straightforward process than artery bypass and fasciotomies and titanium.

[B]

I mean, yeah, luckily all that was done at Norfolk General.

[A]

I feel like you might have had some additional surgeries to correct the surgeries had it been done somewhere else, possibly. And I say that, and I have nothing but respect for military medicine, and I know they're doing the absolute best that they can. Not all doctors are created equal, and not all trauma centers are created equal either.

[B]

I had a phenomenal doctor at portsmouth later on, Dr. Christopher Hogan, an orthopedic surgeon there. That guy gave me the function of my left hand back. Brilliant, dude. Awesome, doc. So there. There's, you know, there's some good people there too, for sure, but their hospital system is a bit chaotic.

[A]

That's a kind word for it. We can leave it at that. So please tell me you have no memory of everything you just described because. Or are you night terroring about this as well?

[B]

No, no, I haven't had any flashbacks of being in surgery or anything.

[A]

Yeah, because you were juiced, right? You. So you're.

[B]

Yeah, they had me out pretty good.

[A]

Okay, good.

[B]

Between the head injury and the narcotics, I was. I was night. Night. I do, I do now. I remember very briefly, as they were transferring me over to Portsmouth, I woke up and I saw one of the flight surgeons, they're walking alongside my gurney. And I was just kind of like, oh, hello. And then I was back out again. And then I spent the next week in a non induced coma. And that was when they're like, we don't know if this guy's gonna.

[A]

Meaning your body just was out, just.

[B]

Wasn'T waking up, you know, and that's when, you know, family, friends, squadron mates are all sitting in the ICU waiting room at Portsmouth being like, you know, is he gonna live? Is he gonna be a vegetable?

[A]

Those are really rough rooms to sit in.

[B]

And yeah, luckily one day the. The lights just came back on and I found myself in this brightly lit room. I had wires and plastic body wrap all over my body to protect this wound back stuff. I had just arms and legs covered in sutures and staples and big old surgical scars. And I was really out of it. Between the head injury and all the drugs that they had me on. I was just in la la land. But I remember trying to move and I thought that they had tied me down to the bed or that this little thin wool blanket was like made a lead or something. I couldn't move, but it was because I was paralyzed. And eventually the medical staff came back in and said, you know, here's kind of what's happened. You've been in a high speed ejection here at the Portsmouth ICU in the hospital and which at first I didn't even. I thought I was like in my bedroom and for some reason a bunch of people were there, but they eventually came in and said just to be real with me, like, you're just, you're never going to be able to walk again. You're not going to be able to use your arms in your military flying crews over.

[A]

Call that bedside manner?

[B]

Yeah, yeah, just fortunately.

[A]

But also. But we have some Jello that will.

[B]

Help you eat Jello. That's really my. That's what brought me through it all hospital jello.

[A]

I think there's zero calories in that shit. I ate a bunch of it when I had my stomach surgery last year and I feel like I could eat a trough the size of this table and there's several calories in it. I feel like it's just a way for them to cheat fluid into your body somehow.

[B]

Yeah. Isn't real jello. Isn't it made out of, I don't know, like gelatin? So from like muscle or tissue?

[A]

I don't know.

[B]

Animals, they probably don't make it out of that.

[A]

Dude, I've never been in the hot. I mean, what I'm not about to do is compare my hospital stay with yours because they were not the same.

[B]

You've had some pretty sporty hospital stays.

[A]

Only one. I have only been put under one time and put into surgery. But what did suck is that they didn't let me drink any water when I woke up and I.

[B]

That sucks.

[A]

It sucks. So they would give me chips of.

[B]

Ice though, in case you had to go back into surgery.

[A]

I don't know what it was. Part of me thinks they just are fucking with people because they want to make your stays.

[B]

It's unpleasant.

[A]

Your lips are as chapped as if you just walked across the Sahara desert. Water only chips of ice. So what I would do is I would wait until my wife went to sleep and the nurses would come in every two hours and they'd give me a cup of ice, and I would just breathe on it and melt it slowly and then drink it.

[B]

So you get the satisfaction.

[A]

I had to. I was dying.

[B]

Oh, yeah, I remember that.

[A]

Yeah, it was the worst.

[B]

Eventually they came in and they gave me a choice. They're like, you can either have this ice cold Coca Cola or you can have this Ensure, which was just basically sugar and a bunch of vitamins. And I was like, you know, in my mind, I'm like, you know, I think I deserve a Coca Cola. Oh, yeah, can I just have a cold Coca Cola? That sounds really good right now. And the nurse was so pissed off at me.

[A]

She wanted you to take this.

[B]

You don't want this thing with nutrients and vitamins. And you read the label of those insurers. It's a bunch of junk. They're both just sugary nonsense. But I was like, I just want a fricking Coca Cola. I'm alive. I don't drink Coca Cola every day. But right now I feel like having a cold Coca Cola.

[A]

Yeah, switch spots with me, honey, and go through what I went through. And then if a Coke sounds better, can I just have that without the judgment for one day? My life expectancy currently being measured by the passing of the sun. So maybe let's just take a wrap off here a little bit. Yeah, maybe I'll see the sundown, maybe I won't. I'll take the Coke. Non diet, please. Just give me the leaded one.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

But.

[B]

Yeah, that kind of lit a fire under my ass. When they told me I'd never do anything again, I was kind of like, well, fuck you guys. I'm gonna prove you wrong. And that. That kind of lit this little kernel of hope inside me, this little ember. And that's what I kind of started to feed with. Just kind of imagining, just using mindset stuff where I was like, what would it be like to be back in the jet? How would I get there? What's. What can I do today? And then it just kind of became of enacting this discipline of what can I do each day? And every day I busted my ass. Even if all that meant was I, like, wiggled a little bit on the bed.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But I applied that over the next three months. And was able to get out of the poly trauma center at Richmond that has some of the finest world cuisine that you can ever imagine. And, and they like to wake you up all night to give you medicine so you can sleep, which was really cool.

[A]

That is again, in my super short stay, they actually were trying to get me out of the hospital pretty quickly. And I think if you can, you have to because every two. That's what it is is every two hours. And they're scanning and beeping and checking. Hey, what are you doing? Like I was fucking sleeping until right, right now. Also I'll take a little bit of Dilaudid and you know, thank you very much for that. But yeah, it took us three days to drive home from Salt Lake City essentially. Cause that's all I could tolerate my stomach. But I slept better in those hotel rooms because at least if I was waking up it was because I had to take a piss as opposed to somebody like flashlighting you in the. What are you thinking about?

[B]

Oh, this is restful sleep. Yeah, yeah.

[A]

If you can get out of the hospital fast, do it because you will recover so much better outside of it.

[B]

Outstanding place to be if you have a severe trauma. Terrible place to be for any sort of recovery afterward. Totally no sleep, no nutrition, no sunlight, just. But I was fortunate, you know, things, things. There were really good therapists there that really cared about their jobs. I got a lot of help and got back to the function of being able to wipe my own ass again, which was a huge accomplishment, strong and, and walking around on a walker like a little old lady. But I then spent the next year and a half, so a total of about two years in recovery, you know, undergoing more surgeries, going through, you know, this whole investigation process for just having crashed an 89 million dollar jet into the ocean.

[A]

How much time did they give you before they started that? Because you were already dealing with enough stuff just trying to recover, well initially.

[B]

Into the poly trauma center, like within a few weeks of the accident and started trying to do it. And I think fortunately the guys that came in were like, this has to be put on hold. Like the level of brain injury and the amount of stuff that I was getting pumped full of from Dilaudid and oxycodone and all this stuff. I was just real loopy. And so fortunately they kind of put it on hold. But as soon as I got out of the hospital after that three month stay, it was like game on. And I like, I couldn't even like I had this condition called allodynia in my left foot. So it was really sensitive to touch. And at the point then I, like, I didn't even put socks on because it was so uncomfortable to put socks on. It just felt like needles in my skin. But I now had to go into these pre investigation, which felt like interrogations more so than questioning. But I had to go shove my feet into a pair of flight boots. You know, all my gear was gone. Like, fortunately, my squadron hooked me up with some new flight boots and gear and got me back on base. But I'm going. I'm going into the initial investigation on a cane. I was. I think I was on a walker even at first still. And I had to take the elevator to get up to the second level where they did it. So I was still in really rough shape, but I was at least like getting some mental function back enough to where I could have a conversation.

[A]

How do they deal with that when they're doing the investigation and they bump up with areas where, because of the tbi, you just don't remember?

[B]

Yeah, I mean, it.

[A]

Will they accept that answer? Like if they ask you a question like, dude, that is beyond a window of what I can remember?

[B]

Yeah, I think, I think that that was. That was fine. You know, they were able to put a lot of other pieces together to put it all back.

[A]

I'm assuming they didn't find the little black box, which is actually orange.

[B]

I think they did get it.

[A]

No way that thing survived.

[B]

It came out with the ejection seat and they were coming.

[A]

Oh, yeah, of course it would.

[B]

Yeah. All right, so they got that. And so that was how they were able to put back.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And they got a lot of data out of that, like the parameters and everything that was going on. But, you know, I went through this pretty deep dive life investigation, but fortunately that whole investigation is run by other naval aviators. So other guys, primarily in the strike fighter community, that understand the intricacy and difficult, how dangerous that job is just inherently and, and very fortunately, you know, despite me having part to do with the accident. You know, I think there's maybe this mentality that if you're a pilot and you make a mistake, they're going to hang out to dry. Which maybe that's more true in the civilian aviation world if you're a commercial pilot or something. I know they tried to hang Sully Sullenberger out to dry when, when he, you know, had to land that jet in the Hudson and save all these people's lives. And, you know, they're trying to run the simulator profile with like no reaction time required because they already knew what was going to happen. And they're like, why didn't you do at this airport? You could have made it to airport. And fortunately, I think Sully stood up and was like, well, how about you put a little reaction time into that to figure out the situation? And then they did that and they're like, oh, yeah. But had, you know, can you imagine.

[A]

Second guessing that particular situation?

[B]

Right.

[A]

Full on bird strike just after rotation climbing out. I mean, nobody's going to want to put it into the river. There is zero doubt that that dude saved everybody's life with his performance. And you want to come in there and Monday morning quarterback that. And it's a legit question to say when this was happening, because I guess Newark or one of the airports. And I have seen a simulator that did not have reaction time built into it. Somebody was able to make it back to the threshold of a Runway, but the instant they noticed an indication, they turned in that direction and they knew it was happening. And they knew it was happening. So, sure, I would agree that it's a valid question if an investigator was to say, in the course of this happening, did you have this thought? But you better put a pin in it right there.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know what I mean? Oh, why didn't you? What? You better put a pin in that right there. Because he did the absolute best that he could with what he was thrown. And I would challenge anybody to get into a sim and be thrown a similar situation like that, not knowing what's coming and figure it out real time.

[B]

Yeah. And you know, they, they took, they actually took the profile. They put a bunch of other pilots in my squadron in the simulator, not telling them what happened. And they told them, okay, you're going to get to the merge, you're going to be above, you know, this airspeed, but you still go nose low. And everybody who was kind of forced in that same situation, they all did the same thing. They all ejected. So at least that ruled out, like my decision to eject. Like, I did the right thing, you know, from that point, like, should I have maneuvered the aircraft nose low at that airspeed? No, that was a mistake on my end. But I was also able to admit that when it all came out and be like, yeah, and own it. And I think it's oftentimes pilots will go through this process and they'll have made a mistake that's contributed to the mishap and they won't take responsibility for It.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And because of that, they'll oftentimes lose their wings.

[A]

I think they would survive if they did so training accidents happen in the world that I came from too. And when they do happen, sometimes it's just injury, which is not acceptable. Right. And should be avoided. But sometimes it is catastrophic and it's loss of life. I know people who have been involved in catastrophic accidents and what saved them is that they were honest and they owned what happened.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

The other path, I. And it's. I'm hypothesizing here because I don't know what would have happened if they would have owned it. But my hypothesis is the few people that I've seen ejected from the community for those instances, had they told the truth, they would have survived. It was because they were unwilling to own it. And I totally understand why you're afraid to sit there in front of your peers and say, I made this choice and it was the wrong one. And it may have cost this person their life because you think that the two are inextric. They're linked. Inextricably linked. And if you say that, you're gone. But owning it is almost always the key to the salvation.

[B]

Yeah. And that really was.

[A]

And I don't know with the faa, though, I think they're more of a fuck you in the ass organization.

[B]

Yeah, that's what FAA stands for, I think. Assholes of Aviation. Or maybe Strong Ass. Michael immediately Aviators in the Ass.

[A]

What was the first one of aviation. Michael immediately trademark that and start creating a T shirt design.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

I'm just kidding. Faa. Really? Ladies and gentlemen, this episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. I have talked and I try to continue to talk about my utilization of therapy, counseling, whatever you want to call it, as much as possible. It has had a tremendous impact in my life in the moments where if you were looking at peaks and valleys, it helped pull me out of a valley. Now, don't get me wrong, talking to somebody is one thing. Doing the work that you're going to get out of that, that you need to do is another one. And I often hear people talking about when it comes to counseling or therapy, well, things are going great, and I don't feel like I need to talk to somebody. I totally support that. But what I'll throw back at that person is an analogy, and that is one of a vehicle, two different drivers, and neither of these people have an incorrect approach. One of them waits until the check engine light comes on to take their car in to get diagnosed. And the Other one, maybe they're getting ready to do a road trip. They go in early, when there are no indications they have a professional, pop the hood and look underneath it. Both, I think, can be wildly impactful. I find it's easier to course correct before you find yourself in a crisis. Just my personal experience. Therapy for me has been incredibly beneficial. Now back to BetterHelp. BetterHelp is a fully online platform, so it's gonna make therapy affordable and convenient. And they're serving over 5 million people worldwide. You don't have to worry about proximity anymore to being with your provider. You're gonna get access to a diverse network of more than 30,000 credentialed therapists and a wide range of specialties. What I'll say about therapy is this. If you don't click with somebody, don't give up on the therapy. Just find somebody you do click with, and you can easily switch therapists anytime at no extra cost. See, they're already ahead of me in the show notes. Now, instead of focusing on red flags in personal relationships or with friends, maybe it's time to start looking for some green flags. Things to look for before things become an issue. Visit betterhelp.com cleared hot today. And you're going to get 10% off of your first month, that is. Betterhelp.com cleared hot. Betterhelp.com cleared hot. Let's get back to the show.

[B]

Yeah, that's just a tragic thing that military aviators and military members shouldn't have to deal with. I mean, just the way that whole disclosure system is, is just a mess.

[A]

There's a reason why people choose not to check certain boxes. They know what will happen.

[B]

My friend, he made the unfortunate decision of being honest on one of those forms when it asked about alcohol consumption. And it's like, you know, as long as you say you're under whatever, one or two drinks maximum. But he's like, you know, everybody goes out and has a few more drinks than that on occasion. So he, he, he said so in the little notes underneath. Just being like, I'm just being honest, you know, I'm gonna do the right thing. He spent, I think about a year and a half, if not two years, grounded from his airline job, going to AA meetings because he said on occasion he would have more than two drinks of alcohol.

[A]

Meanwhile, a couple times you're. They pull a pilot out of a cockpit for blowing a 0.6 on the morning flight because my, my man was getting after it. My man or woman was getting after it. It's like, come on, guys.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Do you think, do you think that person wasn't drinking alcohol and just forgot to check that box on the form? It's like, no, people are people. And I'm telling you, the FAA employees that reached out to me were the most interesting ones. They're like, we know, we get it. We do it too.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, man. That, that whole thing has just created this system where you can't be honest.

[A]

And that's the problem. In, in that system. I would like to believe it was like the world or the investigation that you went through that if you did make a mistake and you did own it. And like, let's say you went to a proactive, Hey, I just fucked up. That they would allow you to work through that, maybe pass on some lesson learned and you would still be able to survive.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And the reason that doesn't happen is they, they are viewed as a guillotine. If you find yourself under their spotlight, you're done. That's what people think. And that sucks.

[B]

Yeah. It's not the way it should. Structure.

[A]

Not a great culture.

[B]

More dishonesty.

[A]

Yeah. It's not a great culture.

[B]

It's going to lead to much more serious issues. And I place that people can't be honest.

[A]

So that's my journey. Yeah, your journey.

[B]

Well, good luck with it. And I hope, I hope that whole VA thing gets resolved and those people stop getting. Because they don't deserve that.

[A]

It is an interesting one. You know, just because they can cross cross reference those databases, it's. It goes to the. Just because you can doesn't mean that you should. And I would like to know why the initial reach out, I just, I don't know. The pessimist in me thinks that at some point it comes back to money. Somebody in that system was like, what? This guy's getting disability. But hold on. At the same time, he's an airline captain. That's fucked up. He should be getting money from one or the other.

[B]

Someone had poopy pants.

[A]

I mean, how many times it comes down to that, though? One asshole.

[B]

A bored bureaucrat.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Stuck at a desk job, hates his life.

[A]

So. I don't know.

[B]

Doesn't like to see other people doing well.

[A]

No. So how did your, how long did it take your investigation to roll up?

[B]

It was the better part of a year. You know, they did all these preliminary investigations, one on one interviews and, you know, kind of put everything together, what had all happened, what all the contributing factors were. And, you know, my flight lead was hit because he had Set us up at a higher than standard a beam set at a lower altitude. Typically in that sort of setup, you'd be like 300 knots or less. So he took a big hit for that.

[A]

Did his career survive, though?

[B]

His career survived. It was altered because of the, the situation.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I, I, I felt some guilt for that because it's like this was my up and it kind of drug you in. But, you know, in a way, it was, you know, he had a contribution. You know, there, there were these tacmen recommended position or pads position, altitude, distance and speed setups. Pads setups for a reason, and that was to mitigate the risk of being at that high airspeed with a, you know, not terribly experienced pilot going no slow at the merge, which happened in a few seconds. But fortunately, you know, they looked at everything they, you know, they really do a deep dive on your life. It all kind of culminated after the preliminary aboard. It all comes to an admiral. This big wooden table, probably twice the length of this admiral's on one side, I'm on the other.

[A]

Very maverick. I'm imagining this scene.

[B]

Yeah, I'm in my whites, my summer whites. No shit.

[A]

Was there a guy sitting next to you telling you to shut up when you were about to speak, telling you that he believes the question was rhetorical?

[B]

I didn't get any of that, but I, yeah, it was actually, it was, it was a pretty wild moment, you know, surreal. Sitting there, my whole career on my line, like, is this admiral gonna rule in my favor or not? Cause it could go either way at this point. And he sat down at the end of the table and looked across. And the only thing he asked was, lieutenant Gill, are you fearless? And I don't know where it came from. Somewhere within me told me to say, sir, I don't remember a lot from the accident, but I'm certain what little cushion there is on the ejection seat was puckered up inside me real tight. And he didn't smile, he didn't make any change of an expression. Just stood up and walked out of the room. And I was like, that's rough. Just felt like the oxygen just got sucked right out of the room. And everyone's like. And then as the kind of, the gaggle kind of clears out of this room, this 06 Captain Super Salty Aviator grabs me. He's like, come with me. We go into his office and he gives me a mint Lifesaver. And he takes one. We pop him in our mouths. And he goes, congratulations, Lieutenant Gill. If you can get your Body working again. We're going to get you back in a super horn it. And that was like huge motivation to keep pushing. And it took about two years. I was able to max out the PRT again. I was able to overcome prescription drug addiction to all the, all the. They had me on for pain management and get a stack of medical waivers going through similar debacle of bureaucracy that you were just describing and, and got back in the jet and I was back flying for about a year and a half and it was sort of like this. That's where the, you know, the Disney happy ending would be. But wait, there's more, you know. I ended up eventually suffering from what was later recognized as residual effects of traumatic brain injury that were likely exacerbated by an aircraft pressurization system malfunction that caused decompression sickness. So little bubbles forming in my brain that exacerbated this underlying brain injury that was likely still there from the ejection. And it just kind of threw my life completely upside down. You know, I, I started experiencing vertigo. I started having panic attacks, couldn't sleep. Just persistent insomnia. Initially, I was treated in a hyperbaric chamber at a Navy dive base thinking it was decompression sickness, which I, I think there's a good chance. There's been a, a pretty widespread issue in the, in the F18 community for a while because there were these environmental control system malfunctions to the point where they were putting on the aircraft carriers hyperbaric chambers for pilots that would come back with dcs. They could rush them into the chambers.

[A]

So how is this happening? Because the cockpit, it's not pressurized, right?

[B]

It's pressurized.

[A]

Okay. So you guys could take your masks off if you wanted to.

[B]

And actually, I think more and more they're, they're getting to where pilots are primarily not wearing their masks.

[A]

Really.

[B]

They're realizing that by breathing oxygen all the time under pressure, sucking down probably whatever's coming off that plenum in the OBOG system, this thing that takes all the nitrogen out of the air to concentrate the oxygen is probably not the greatest thing for your system. And I think they've actually made a huge revision in it. And I think a lot of the time guys don't even wear the mask anymore.

[A]

I thought that's why you wore the mask, is that you were flying around in a non pressurized cockpit. Okay.

[B]

No, it is pressurized.

[A]

Okay. So if that thing malfunctioned though. Yeah, you could have some very interesting medical.

[B]

Yeah, there Was there was an issue with a growler that was taxing out and that system malfunctioned on the ground. And the pilot and the, and the wizzo in the back, or I guess, what do they call those guys? Ewoks. Everyone calls them Ewoks. The guys around the backseat of the growlers, they. They were both completely incapacitated because the freaking bubbles in their brain formed so quickly. It just completely blocked off blood flow to their brain. And they were both put in like a comatose state.

[A]

Jesus.

[B]

And I don't know if they ever recovered. And so they were having a really serious issue with these. And there's a whole sort of corrupt backstory to the, the invest, like the process that they went through to try to correct this problem. I wasn't involved in it directly, so I don't want to, you know, really talk out of line, but there was some shenanigans that, that caused a prolongment of those injuries that could have been resolved a lot faster. But that was very common at the time when I, I started to experience all this mental disruption. And so they thought that's a very likely case. So my life was sort of thrown upside down. I ended up going in eventually, reluctantly, to see medical, which, as you know, in the military, if you have a high speed job for all the reasons we were just discussing, you don't want to go in and say, hey, something's wrong with my brain, because, well, there goes your security clearance, there goes your medical clearance, there goes your career that you've just busted your ass to get into to have the best job on the planet. But I knew something was so seriously wrong that I was not going to be able to operate an aircraft. So reluctantly went to see the flight surgeon and pretty quickly got a delayed onset PTSD diagnoses. And then that's where the conventional medical system sort of just bit off on that PTSD diagnosis and then just started doing a deep dive into psychology and psychiatrist, you know, and unfortunately, the real underlying issue was the disrupted physiology of my brain. And the way that it was addressed was as a behavioral health issue. And this is something that happens all too common throughout the military community, especially guys in your profession who have been blown up and beaten up and, you know, spent decades just getting the kicked out of them dealing with traumatic brain injury. And it's starting to get a little more recognized thanks to it kind of coming out into the public when in the world of podcasting, especially Dr. Mark Gordon, Dr. Michael Lewis, Doc Kirk Parsley, there's a lot of guys who are kind of advocating for this different approach that says, you know, PTSD is directly linked to this underlying physiology of your brain being jacked up. And if you. If you approach it as an emotional issue, you know, maybe there's a time and place for doing cognitive behavioral therapy and cognitive processing therapy and. And all of these conventional, clinically based therapies and. But if the physiology of the machine's broken, you're trying to fix the software before you fix the hardware.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so I spent years kind of stuck in that medical system that was just, take these pills, come to your therapy sessions, and that's what we got for you. Sorry. And all that did was mask the symptoms a little bit. But as time went on, I needed more and more of those meds, more of the SSRIs. They were giving me a medication called quetiapine for insomnia at low dose. It's an antipsychotic medication that can help you sleep when your brain just won't shut down out of that fight or flight mode. And at first it did. It knocked me into this sort of drug induced state of unconsciousness, But I wasn't getting restful sleep, My brain wasn't healing, it wasn't recovering. And in fact, that stuff was poisoning my body. I was becoming weaker. I was, you know, it was causing hormonal disruptions, and my life just started to crumble apart. And I went into pretty bad psychosis, Just completely out of my mind. And, you know, was that at least.

[A]

A little fun at times?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Like, I thought. I thought my wife was Carrie Matheson from Homeland. Like, not. Not actually. I thought the show was based off of my wife. And she was the real, like, you know, this CIA agent with almost superhuman abilities that had come to rescue me from this group of black hat government assassins that had been sent to kill me.

[A]

That's what I'm talking about. So I was like, living in a goddamn TV show.

[B]

It was.

[A]

I'm not advocating for this, but I have always.

[B]

It was exciting at times.

[A]

Isn't it okay to verbalize your curiosity of being a little crazy would be sometimes fun?

[B]

Oh, there were definitely exciting moments. It was a lot more fun for me than it was for my wife.

[A]

Oh. For the person dealing with the crazy person. Oh, that's gotta be horrendous.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But as the crazy person, you're living in a sitcom, probably, like, get after it.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, my imagination maybe don't, because.

[A]

That'S probably really dangerous for the person trying to take care of you?

[B]

Yeah, my, you know, my wife had just had our little boy and I would come home and I would go into the kitchen. I would just be freaking out. And I would take the food that she's cooking on the stove and dump it in the garbage. I'd be like, you can't eat that. It's poisoned. Because I was, at this point, I was thoroughly convinced that I was being poisoned. That's why all this stuff was going wrong.

[A]

You were just not by that mechanism.

[B]

Yeah, it was in these FDA approved pills. And fortunately, with the support of my wife, I got through a medical board that was, you know, the Indiana Jones Temple of Doom bureaucratic edition to get through that process. Despite having stacks of medical, you know, records, the support of my command, the support of the medical staff, it was still just a goat rope.

[A]

I'm actually quite surprised they just didn't med retire you after the ejection.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. I fought not to be med retired at that point. I really wanted to get back to the cockpit and. And I did. But now, like, there was all this other stuff in the whole mental realm of dealing with brain injury became far more complex than. Than getting my body back. And I was eventually medically retired. I think it took 18 months of that med board, which was just a show.

[A]

Did you go through the MEB PEB process?

[B]

I think that's what it was called. I had a pebble. And.

[A]

Yes. Yeah, yeah. I don't remember what that means, but I remember that term.

[B]

Physical Evaluation board liaison officer.

[A]

I had recall is better than my own.

[B]

The worst pebble on the planet was the one I had.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Which made the whole process much more.

[A]

I'm sure it did.

[B]

You know, you get assigned an attorney that's in a different state that you get to speak with maybe 15 minutes through the whole process that has 3,000 cases a year. It's just. It was a shit show. But I fortunately, when I had to go to an appeal like, but got through that, was medically retired. Moved back to Northern Michigan with my family. And then that same treatment continued at the va and it was just take more of these pills and within a few days of having my dosage of quetiapine increased from 300 milligrams a night to 450 milligrams a night. My wife came home from a job interview to find me completely naked. Shaved off my eyebrows, my hair, my facial hair. And I was wearing a black plastic garbage bag tied around my neck like a cape because I thought it was Batman. And I was Going to go out into the Michigan snowy weather and fight crime.

[A]

I'm going to be honest with you. I love that portion of the story.

[B]

It is a great part.

[A]

I like that.

[B]

I was having fun.

[A]

Here's the thing. Here's why I like this for you. You thought you were Batman.

[B]

It was sweet.

[A]

That's what I'm saying. You were living in a goddamn DC movie.

[B]

Yeah, I had superpowers. Like, I could. I could look at pictures on my wall. Like, I looked at my commissioning paperwork and I was like, I could see the secret code in it. And it's like, oh, you've been selected for the secret program.

[A]

Michael Journey. These are dreams and aspirations. Like, I want Michael to have a story like this. He's young.

[B]

All right, well, you know, give yourself some Quetiapine. Really just start.

[A]

You're young. Listen, don't rush though, right? You're young, you have time for sure. But if you ever told me a story like that, I would tell you that I was proud.

[B]

I would say thank you.

[A]

Your wife. Okay, so now let's put the other shoe on. Imagine it's your wife, right? Or my wife. Or in Michael's case, him looking at himself in the mirror because he doesn't have a husband. Yeah, his husband. Fair enough. It's 20, 25. It's fluid. Okay. Now we have to imagine though, you open the door and you see that. Holy.

[B]

Yeah, it was, it was rough for her, you know, especially.

[A]

She's a special kind.

[B]

She's a trauma nurse, so she's dealt with psychotic patients. And.

[A]

Not at home.

[B]

Not at home.

[A]

She's just checking out that shit at work.

[B]

And she actually, she, like, she very quickly sprang into action. She started gathering supplies to go stay in the hospital. She knew where I was.

[A]

I mean, that's a clear mental health crisis, of course, but.

[B]

And so she, as she comes in, she instructed me to take my shoelaces out of my shoes because she knew they were going to steal them. And she comes back into the mudroom at our house and I'm in there with our little one year old boy, and I had tied one of them into a noose and put it around his head because in my mind I was playing Cowboys and Indians with my son and I was lassoing him. But she comes in and here's this crazy dude with a noose around her son's neck. And it like she didn't have time to process that at the moment, but you can imagine that doesn't help your romantic relationship a whole lot but she sprang into action.

[A]

That's two. That's one step forward, two step back type stuff, you know?

[B]

Yeah, a couple steps at least. Yeah.

[A]

Imagine if she wasn't a trauma nurse. Again, imagine. Imagine any. Whatever we'll call normal person coming home. And that's what they see. Holy.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

You're a lucky man. A, for her, the background that she had, but that. B, that she. Instead of putting running shoes on and going for her fastest mile ever, she dug in.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, she. Yeah, she really helped me get through it. Got me to the hospital, spent a couple nights and just out of body psychosis.

[A]

Like, how did you come out of the Batman phase? When did you realize you were not, in fact, Bruce Wayne?

[B]

Batman didn't last very long, actually. I think as soon as I had to take off my garbage bag cape, that dream was crushed.

[A]

That's where the power came from.

[B]

It was all in that garbage bag. And actually, as they were admitting me in the hospital, I went into the bathroom in the waiting room and I crawled into the garbage bag in the bathroom. For some reason, I had a. I had a thing with garbage bags. I was like, milo's my outfit.

[A]

Did you put the lid back on and wait for somebody else to come in?

[B]

It was big enough. I like Oscar the Grouch.

[A]

Unlock the door. Climb in there.

[B]

Hello.

[A]

Damn it. I wanted you to be Bruce Wayne for a couple days, man. You didn't have any of the billions either. No superpowers. No billions.

[B]

No billions.

[A]

Jesus. What does that feel like when you come out of psychosis and. And the gears kind of lock back in and you are back in objective reality? That's got to be jarring.

[B]

Yeah, it was. It was very inconsistent at first. It was, you know, in and out of psychosis still, like traces of the psychoses. And when I came to, I was at the Battle Creek Inpatient Psych Facility down in Battle Creek, Michigan. And what I started to see in my lucid moments was just truly abysmal care of American veterans in that system.

[A]

Based off of them not wanting to be able to or not having the resources to be able to or perhaps anything in between those.

[B]

A combination of. Lack of resources.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Policies that have been dictated by the pharmaceutical industry's ties to the VA system. I've talked to some flight surgeons very high up in that world who have been in those meetings and those decisions being made. And he says at the end of the day, regardless of how well intended the staff at the VA is, the policies get the final say by the pharmaceutical Industry, they've effectively taken control and their policy is to get you on as many of their products for as long as possible. And that is not how you heal people. For mental health, it's not going to come in a pill. And meanwhile, there's not funding for the basic things to treat you as a decent human being dealing with severe mental health issues. You're confined into a small room with multiple other veterans dealing with severe mental health issues. It's an impossible place to sleep to begin with. With all the commotion in the hallways at night, people yelling out of their minds in psychosis, people stomping down the tile floors with concrete walls that just echo everything. Everything's white fluorescent light. Every 15 minutes. When you're on one to one care, like I was in psychosis is they're required to come in every 15 minutes with a flashlight and shine a flashlight in your face and make sure you're not harming yourself.

[A]

I mean, we have things like ring cameras.

[B]

Right? And they have those cameras too.

[A]

I was going to say, why does that.

[B]

For some reason they're required to do that by policy. And in addition to that, the food is just absolute garbage. Ultra processed prison food. You're dressed like a prisoner in prison scrubs while the staff members wear white lab coats. So there's this sort of Stanford Prison experiment dynamic that develops. We were on. We didn't get to go outside more than maybe once a week into a concrete yard that was surrounded by high rise brick buildings and 8 to 10 foot metal fencing all around the perimeter. There's no connection to nature. There's no exercise, there's no sunlight.

[A]

You know what's weird? If you were to. In the description you just gave, if you were to take the context out of that and just meet a random person at the coffee shop, be like, hey, I'm gonna, I'm gonna describe to you an environment and I want you to guess where I am. They're not going to say hospital.

[B]

No. Is this where you go to treat.

[A]

Mental health or just if you ask them to guess, they probably say prison.

[B]

Yeah, it was. It was a prison. It was a. You got to become a prisoner of the war on mental health that's going on in our country right now.

[A]

Were any of the other Avengers there? Again, this is where my mind immediately goes. We had.

[B]

There was one other guy for a little while that him and I thought we were both superheroes. Listen, in our psychosocial listen, we could.

[A]

Have rallied the team that our country needs. Right. It's like again, there's got to be some aspect of this that is a good time. Like Batman and Robin are there. We got Superman, fucking Green Lantern over here.

[B]

I actually, I thought the. I thought Doc from Back to the Future teacher was in there with me, actually. And he.

[A]

He was Huckleberry.

[B]

He was this crazy dude that looked kind of like Doc. And. Yeah, he was showing me how to make your teeth whiten with pieces of Styrofoam, which was real weird. There's another dude sitting upside down in a chair eating a banana upside down, telling me how you have to eat your snacks upside down. Like, there's. There's some crazy going on in there.

[A]

Not all heroes wear capes.

[B]

Some eat their bananas upside down, man.

[A]

I feel like he's the guy in X Man who's like swinging from his feet, right? He's the. He's the scientist. Also, I've never tried eating a snack upside down, so I can't actually say whether or not he is valid in his claim.

[B]

He seems really happy about it, so.

[A]

Also, I'm not here to tell people how to party. If you want to eat your snacks upside down, eat your fucking snacks upside down.

[B]

Oh, yeah. Yeah. What I really saw in there, you know, like, you go through survival training in the military and you get a little taste of being a prisoner. And the same things that you do to perfectly mentally and physically robust healthy military members. Sleep deprivation, malnourishment, confinement, being treated less than human. Within a few days, a perfectly healthy person can start to experience visual and auditory hallucinations and delusional thinking. It just happens, especially with sleep deprivation. And now you're taking guys that are already in deep psychosis and you do all the exact same shit to them, and everything is to funnel you onto more pharmaceuticals. That's the one thing that they have an abundance of. Even if they would just cut out one of your pills a day, that would probably be enough to feed everybody in their halfway decent food and maybe hire enough staff so they could take you out on a regular basis. But that's not the financial incentive that. That powers the whole thing, which is the pharmaceutical industry.

[A]

There is not a punishment severe enough in my mind, if we could reduce it back or figure out the people responsible for those decisions.

[B]

I think what we should do, and this is a joke so that we don't.

[A]

Hold on, hold on. I'll be the determining factor because I think I know where you're going and I already like this.

[B]

I think we could get a bunch of SF dudes and military members who've been fucked by this system. Get them to capture some of the individuals responsible, some of these pharmaceutical industries, you know, give them a bunch of quetiapine. Or maybe not. Maybe just have them pull up and somebody that's dressed up as law enforcement or is law enforcement, and chuck them into one of these facilities and say, hey, this guy thinks he's the CEO of Pfizer. And then let them go through a little taste of their own medicine and see how that goes for him. I actually want to write a book about this. I think it would be a great fiction.

[A]

I second this idea to whatever panel and committee who would be willing to listen to us pitch this to them. I would like to second this idea.

[B]

It would be awesome, right? Jack Hart, he would be down for that, man.

[A]

Would he be down for it behind closed doors? I think he might be. On the public say, and here's the thing, that man is successful and I am so happy for his success. It might be smarter for him to support us as a silent partner. Silent partner. Yeah.

[B]

Good call.

[A]

He, of course, could write about it. It's like, jack, you support us. Anything that we tell you from this, you are free to use in any way you want to, but we need your backing. All right, no, that's. I would be completely happy to see that played out. I really don't think they'd like that experience.

[B]

No, no, I don't think they would.

[A]

Dude, how did you get out of there and off that stuff?

[B]

I was in there for about 40 days and with the advocacy of my family, my wife being a medical professional, my mom being a medical professional, they were able to advocate and say, we are able to provide him a location at home. We are able to provide 24 hour care. And that's what got me out of there. Otherwise I would have. I would have probably killed somebody in that facility. I was so frustrated. I was planning a prison break. I, you know, I was trying to escape. I was recruiting other veterans in there. I was showing them how to make weapons.

[A]

Hold on. Talk to me about your escape plans. So let's war game this. Let's see how your tactics were.

[B]

So, yeah, so most, most the guys in there were already what I just called zombies. You know, they had been so pumped full of drugs that they were just. There was a blank stare behind and they would walk around, they would eat at meals, but they would not respond to your conversation. They, you know, you would look at them and it was just like a ghost. But there were a few of us in there that Were very aware of what was going on in there and very frustrated by it. There was even a couple veterans that had been, you know, over the years of dealing with, you know, opioid addiction due to the stuff they had been given at the va, found themselves on the street on street drugs, living homeless, you know, found themselves in and out of federal prison.

[A]

And they.

[B]

They. They all agreed that had they given the choice to go to federal prison or go into this VA facility, they would rather be in federal prison because the food is better. You get to go outside. Every day, there's more activities. So, yeah, anyways, we kind of came together, those of us that had the mental faculties, and started encouraging people to stockpile warm gear, food, snacks, so you could have something to eat. Because this is, you know, early spring, northern Michigan. It's below freezing outside. There's still snow on the ground. And my plan was to go out at night, pull the fire alarm in hopes that they would think there was a fire. And in the fire drill, we would all get to egress the building, and those of us that were with it enough would be ready in our gear. We'd have our snacks packed, and we could make a run for it.

[A]

I'm gonna give you an A for your plan. There was no hostages involved. That would have been a plus.

[B]

No hostages. Ah, shit.

[A]

Where's your leverage? Damn it.

[B]

That's why I went. No, that's good.

[A]

You were thinking about the egress. You got snacks. You got warm clothing. I mean, that's all legit planning. You figured out a way to use their system against them. I feel like just take one of them hostage. So you got leveraging that would have gone a minus. Put one more vertical dash mark through.

[B]

That, and I would have been free into the northern Michigan woods.

[A]

Yeah, obviously, before you did that, you needed to put your cape back on, though.

[B]

I forgot the game too. Damn it.

[A]

How'd you titrate yourself off the meds? Because, yeah, when I got hurt in 2005, I was. God, I was just down in Vegas, and a buddy of mine that I knew at that time period was retelling a story that I didn't even remember because I was kind of working for him in the air ops. And he said, I came in with a baggie about the size of that black sweatshirt. Baggie.

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

And I was talking to him about. I'm like, these are the yellow jackets, and these suckers, let me tell you, they get you. But. And eventually, and I had forgotten this, I gave him that Bag. And I said, you have to take these from me. There was a couple I had to titrate myself off of specifically. One was an anti seizure medicine for kids that had a tertiary effect of neuropathic pain control. But if you just call turkey that thing, even though I am not inclined to have seizures, I might throw myself into that because I had been suppressing my body's natural ability to do so. So I had to work my way off a couple of those. And I didn't even remember those conversations with him. Probably because I was consuming the shit that was in that bag. Let me just say, I wasn't really washing it down with water.

[B]

I was in that place for a bit.

[A]

Yeah. Captain Morgan Spice rum with a good fistful of prescribed FAA approved meds. Let me tell you, you can really talk yourself into being a victim. And that this is what I do, and this is the only way I can get some sleep. It. I feel like I was on a fraction of what you were on, and it took me over a year to wean myself off that stuff. Some fat joke. How'd you do it? How'd you get off of it?

[B]

Well, with the pain meds initially, so that I could return to flying, I was. I was in that same place, you know, I was. I was taking all this oxy and all this other shit and. And I really liked a good single malt scotch with it because it goes down really well and then you just kind of melt into the floor and. And I.

[A]

Gravity really does shift.

[B]

I kind of like, just. I thought, like, I could see myself just staying here. This is comfortable. I have every reason to, like, just give up. Like everyone's told me I'm not supposed to. I could just stay like this. And it was pleasant, you know, it was peaceful. It was easy. I just sit out in the sun all day and melt into the ground. But I fortunately had some good friends that kind of, like, grabbed me, threw me in the back of their boat and like, were like, let's get out. Let's get you out of the house and do some. And that really kind of snapped me out of it to the point was like, you know, I don't really want to be that guy. I've seen where that goes, and I'm not going to do that. And so I made the decision on my own to get off the meds. When I went to the pain management folks, they're like, oh, no, you. It's working for you. Once these medications, you know, and it was crazy. They started giving me this medication called.

[A]

Gabapentin, that's one of the ones I was on too. And central nervous system depressant.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I was signing waivers for the dosage that I was on same. And the reason I knew I had to get off, I was at a gas station with my ex wife. We. We were in like a sedan, and she was asking about the cost of. To fill up the vehicle. And we're talking elementary school math. And I'm sitting there looking at the number, trying to do simple math, and I realized, oh, I am not in a good spot. Oh, yeah, I'm literally stuck in neutral. I'm not even in first gear. And I remember that day distinctly because that was the beginning of a really, really, really long journey to get off that shit.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, that was. I found gabapentin far more challenging to get off of than any of the opioids, which I had been given the gabapentin because they said, oh, once you're on gabapentin, you know, it's. It's much safer than these opioids. And I had already been dosed up on the opioids real high. And then once I got on the gabapentin, they just dosed that up to the point where I had to sign waivers to go up. And traditionally, probably not a good thing. I think I was on 2400mg of that a day. And they. And I still stayed on the opioids too, and they kept increasing that. So it was like. And actually what actually fixed, I was having this really severe shooting nerve pain in my left leg and foot that was just brutal. Like 10 out of 10 pain, like screaming in agony. My foot would spasm, and then it felt like there were like knives going into the bottom of my feet and it was on fire and just discomfort that, like, disrupted everything in my life. And this dude came into the room with a little bag of. A little IV bag of saline, or not saline, glucose, just sugar water and a hypodermic needle. He filled the syringe and he just popped these little sub Q pockets of this sugar water all along my foot and leg where I was experiencing this pain. And within about a 5 to 10 minute procedure with, I don't know, less than 50 bucks of medical equipment, that severe nerve pain never came back to that level.

[A]

Never again.

[B]

It's called prolotherapy. So if you're out there experiencing some sort of severe nerve pain. Prolotherapy, yeah. It was off the beaten path. I had to sign A waiver to do it. This doc was, like, sneaking in like he wasn't supposed to be there. But that changed, you know, my pain management, big time. But even when I was like, I don't need the pain meds anymore. I want to wean off them, the pain management clinic's just like. Well, just kind of keep. That's the way they're trained. Just keep you on it. Actually, let's boost that a little bit. Why don't we do. Why don't we try this one?

[A]

Let's boost that.

[B]

I was on over a dozen medications. I was on oxycodone, oxycontin, gabapentin, amitriptyline, tramadol, trazodone, plus all this other stuff. Colaze to deal with the constipation, all this other shit. And so I just decided to do it myself. And I just did one at a time. First, I was like, all right, let's try doing the amitriptyline.

[A]

And same. I was breaking stuff in half to just try to reduce dosage.

[B]

Same. And I would go back, dial it back a little, see how it went. And if I felt okay the next day, you know, let's move forward and do a little less. And so I did that individually, and I did that through the oxycodone and everything. And I got down to the gabapentin was the last one. And that one took me months and months. And that was by far the most miserable of just, like, feverish, nausea, pain, like, panic attacks, just. I felt like my nervous system was just on fire. But eventually, just by doing that little bit by little bit and just kind of feeling how I felt and. And if I needed, I would go back up a little bit. But once all that was out of my system, like, I got, like, the muscle tone back in my body. I started feeling energetic again. It was like this massive burden had been lifted off my body. I felt mentally clearer, and I. My recovery accelerated from that point.

[A]

I don't think about it often, but occasionally I'll think back about the young man I was at that time and the volume of shit that I was taking. And it's hard to objectively sit back and realize that the truest statement is that I allow myself to get that deep in the hole. It'd be easy for me to say somebody else dug the hole, and I jumped and I jumped in it, but I had my hands on the shovel on that one. It's tough to look back at how far off the tracks I consider it that I let Myself get. It's a rough optic.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I don't, I don't think the, the conventional medical system helps when you have a person in a lab coat with doctorate degree telling you this is the right choice.

[A]

Yeah. For clarity, they weren't telling me to wash it down with Captain Morgan.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

That was not ever part of my script.

[B]

But that is such a natural progression of that route, you know, now you're dealing with a mental, mentally incapacitated version of yourself. And. And it just, it just happens, like to the best of us.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know, it, it drags you down that path very easily.

[A]

It's tough to look back on. I was way, way off track of the person that I try to be.

[B]

Yeah. And glad you got out of it too, man. Like, I know a lot, don't I?

[A]

I think some of it is genetic luck. I, I don't really have an addictive personality. Like for me, alcohol, I can turn it off for years and don't give a shit. Or I can have a good time and have a couple drinks or occasionally drink far too much, which, you know, but it doesn't, it doesn't create this long term behavior. Opiates for me. My body processes them differently than a lot of people. My sister has the same struggle. So I never really got. I would. They didn't do much other than make you constipated. They didn't really work for me for pain suppression. So I. You know what I mean? It never was one of my tools. So I got a little bit genetically lucky in that. Had it been something else, I could 100% see myself having gotten lost in that addictive cycle because I know people, and I'm sure you do too. Legitimately hurt on the job. The military doctor legitimately prescribes them a pain medication for the pain that they're in, which is probably going to be an opiate during the time that we served. Probably going to be an oxy that gets a little bit out of control because the pain naturally was working its way out through the recovery. But they still want the pill. If that gets taken from them, they have a legit opiate addiction. They're probably going to source it elsewhere. And I know people who've gone through that trajectory and they're, boom, out of the military because of an addiction problem, like you said. The next thing you know, they're homeless.

[B]

Lost, you know, and deaths of despair.

[A]

Yeah, I get it. I feel like there was an aspect of the personality not aligning with it and the genetic Blood abnormality. That just probably kept me from going hard left.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. I was. I really replaced my addiction with fitness.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And. And I. I focused that energy towards my recovery.

[A]

I did exactly the same thing, and.

[B]

That really helped me. I needed something to be obsessed about.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And. And luckily, I decided to choose something healthier than scotch and oxy.

[A]

You know, I remember going into the gym for the first time when the doctors were telling me that I shouldn't be working out. I just was trying to go to the limit of what I could do. And let's be really clear, that limit was a bar that an ant would not be able to trip over. I mean, it was that low. It could. It could clear that. But the first few days where I was actually able to break a sweat, one, I had some of the best sleep of my life. But two, the sweat felt oily, and I'm like, got to get this shit. And the fact that it felt like that, like, I've got to keep doing this, because this is not what this is supposed to feel like. This is my body telling me that I have to do something about this. And at some point, I just took agency over my own recovery. And I have nothing but absolute respect for doctors. My sister's a nurse practitioner. She works in this. I love it. But in the environment that I was in with the military medicine in 2005, the decision that I took, I believe, was the right one for me. Me taking the agency and doing what I thought was best inside of the boundaries that the doctors gave me, but just kind of forging my own path, because the traditional prescription path for me just wasn't gonna do it.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. It's not how you treat an ailment. It's how you mask the symptoms. And meanwhile, that underlying ailment will just get worse and worse as your life falls apart around you. And, you know, despite having that experience with the pills, when I now started dealing with the mental health side of things down the road years later, I had that in my mind. Like, I don't want to do the pills. But again, as you go down that path of PTSD treatment in conventional medicine, that is the tool they have, you know, if, you know, this talk therapy is not working because the physiology of my brain's in chaos. They're not dealing anything with the brain injury. And then you find yourself, well, let's try some medication. Are you sure? Like, isn't there a better option? I don't want to go back on that shit again. Well, no, this is what works And I was again, believed the doctor and went down that route again. And maybe there's a place in the short term to use some of those medications.

[A]

I have legitimately heard sometimes that the chemical nature needs to be reoriented for a lot of the other stuff to work. I think the danger comes from long term or permanent use.

[B]

And unfortunately that's how it's prescribed. That's how a lot of these benzodiazepines are prescribed, like Valium, the. To calm your nervous system. Those are designed to take like once in a while when you're having a panic attack. But the way they get prescribed is, yeah, you're going to take them every day and then you build up this, this system that gets completely dysfunctional and, and that drove me into chaos. And I was very fortunate. Eventually, once I had gotten out of the hospital, you know, I started to take a pretty deep dive into my holistic health through what I was eating. I did like a real deep dive on, you know, eating unprocessed whole foods. I'm a hunter, so wild game in my diet, getting outside, exercising, and then that I think at least provided a foundation so that I could attempt to get off of these medications. And so I started the same way I did with the pain meds, I started to wean them off. And a tool I found useful along the way was the use of indigenous medicines. And I got access to psychedelic assisted therapy. That caused just a radical shift in my, my mindset and my nervous system. Initially, Heroic Hearts sent me down to Peru for ayahuasca. But then I did end up doing iboga, which is the plant that derived basically the same thing as ibogaine.

[A]

They pair it with the 5 Meo DMT.

[B]

I did, I did toad, but not at the same sitting as they do it. I know Ambio and some of those other guys like to do that combination. Combination.

[A]

The number of guys. Now, I mean, and again, you and I talked about this when you were on for the first time, but the number of guys. I know. So again, multiple years apart, it's unbelievable. I really, really hope that we can find a place where it can at least legitimately be looked at and find a source that doesn't involve having to go to a different country. Like, can we please bring this kind of treatment inside of our own borders?

[B]

Yeah, I think, I think right now Texas is sort of. Governor Rick Perry down there is fired up with this. They just had an awesome episode on Rogan.

[A]

I just had Brian Hubbard on.

[B]

I saw that. Yeah, he was so Articulate, Michael, that dude is like.

[A]

Would you be able to listen to Mr. Hubbard read like an instruction manual for several hours?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Yeah, I could. I would listen to him read this encyclopedia.

[B]

Most articulate voice.

[A]

Oh my God.

[B]

Ever be in existence.

[A]

Yeah, I just, I just sat back and was just like, just take us away. Tell me whatever story you'd like to tell me.

[B]

It's like he's reading off of like this perfectly prepared document, but it's just coming out of his brain.

[A]

An orator of the highest order.

[B]

Oh yeah.

[A]

He was fucking awesome.

[B]

Oh yeah.

[A]

So, yeah, I hope that, that, I hope that that works. My biggest reservation is the threat to Big Pharma and what they would do to. If there is anything that they wouldn't do to stop it.

[B]

I don't think there is. And they have massive. I mean, that's an industry that's far larger than this military industrial complex that we have going on. Far more capable. I think it's like five times the wealth, if not more.

[A]

Well, at least even if they go that route and try to hard slam it, at least it still exists in some places. I would just like to see it more readily accessible.

[B]

Yeah, the fact that it does there.

[A]

Yes. And the fact that that does still exist at a baseline level. Like. Okay, cool. Now let's figure out how we breach the wall with this thing and actually get people some help.

[B]

Yeah, I was, I was in D.C. this summer with Jesse Gould and a bunch of other vets advocating for the legalization of MDMA assisted therapy that had gone through this whole clinical trial that actually the FDA had helped construct. And then in the back end of it, the FDA said, oh, your trial is flawed. Basically the way the double blind placebos tested. Clinical trial to produce something that can be FDA approved is set up in a way that the only things that can be approved are a synthetic drug, something that's like a psychedelic. There's the way the rules are set right now. Basically can't pass that because you can't. You can't. Placebo. You can't have a placebo group when you're dealing with something that powerful.

[A]

Yeah, that'd be real tough.

[B]

And so the trial came back, the results were phenomenal. It was like 87% of participants reported drastic decreases in their PTSD symptoms. I think it was something like upwards of 70% no longer qualified to be. To didn't qualify as a PTSD diagnosis anymore. It was, it was phenomenal. And this is just. I think it was just two sessions of MDMA in A clinical setting. It's not like you take a thing of MDMA home and you go party at a rave. It's like. But it went to an FDA vote so that they could reschedule it from Schedule 1, which is considered no medical use, highly addictive substance, down to something different so that they could actually start providing that therapy. And when it came to the vote at the fda, unsurprisingly, they shut it down and they had their laundry risk of bullshit reasons and all these advisors that all had ties to the pharmaceutical industry that were, you know, recommending against it. So it was pretty transparent. But they kind of played their hand and. And I think there's a lot coming, especially with ibogaine. I think it's going to help change the.

[A]

I think if people are paying attention, like, if you're standing at the beach like, huh, the water's receding. I wonder why. Well, there might be a tidal wave. It will reach a point at some point, and I don't know what that will take, but it will be undeniable. I just don't know how long, you know, how much water has to recede for this to build, for it to crash over the wall.

[B]

Yeah, I think it's happening. I think there's been a momentum shift, and it's kind of an exciting time to be alive. There's some crazy shit going down right now. A lot of truth coming out.

[A]

I agree. How did you tie all this into a book?

[B]

Yeah, so as I kind of came to and regained mental and physical function and regained health, I kind of had this calling to share my story because I realized it was kind of a wild journey. And I started to see this is not an uncommon thing. So many Americans are dealing with this, especially in the veteran community, dealing with their health, being disrupted by trying to seek care in the conventional system. So I wanted to, one, you know, have this. I have this crazy story that can kind of draw the reader in, but really the message in this book is like this innate human ability that we all have, that the resilience of our bodies and minds and spirits is so powerful. And so my hope with this book is that it'll, one, inspire people, and two, it provides a whole lot of practical steps on how they can apply this to their own life and resources so they can potentially gain access to some of this stuff.

[A]

Were you taught those steps or this mindset, or is this something you figured out along the way?

[B]

No, it was just. It just kind of came through, fucking my whole life up. That's what I'm talking about and working my way out of the dark on my own. Like, you know, I had to find the light in that hole, in that. And then I just wanted to share that. And I had this overwhelming sense that I wanted to try to be of service again and help other people as I kind of got my together. And so that's kind of what inspired me to do it. It was a really cathartic, therapeutic experience to write about all this stuff in vivid detail. Like, in order to put it on the paper in a meaningful way, to really bring the reader in, I had to go deep into those moments. Like, what were my emotions? How did that feel?

[A]

Like, as Batman.

[B]

As Batman. That was one of the more exciting ones I would write. I would write some of these sections, and I would come back and just be, like, in a pissy mood for, like, a week. And my wife's like, you gotta. Why are you writing that? It's like it's you up again.

[A]

But I think there's also a reason that it's you up. I think tilling the dirt, you know, like, digging for gold should be hard.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

When you find the hard dirt to dig through. And it's so wild, too, because I feel like there is this push where every level of discomfort is a medically treatable condition. And I have found the most satisfaction in my life by pushing through hard things, not by going the other direction.

[B]

Right.

[A]

So if you're digging for gold and it's really shitty and you're having a hard time, maybe you found the right plot.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know?

[B]

Yeah. Like the one, like, I've never played a video game where when you start to encounter more bad, bad guys, that means you're going the wrong. That means you're going the right way.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. If there's nobody there and you're just wandering around, like, playing Zelda. Do you even get that reference at all? Michael?

[B]

Yeah, I know what Zelda is.

[A]

What is it?

[B]

It's a video game.

[A]

Tell me more about it.

[B]

The guy's got the sword.

[A]

Okay. Can't believe he was there. A resurgence of Zelda recently that I didn't know about because there's no way.

[B]

It'S still pretty big.

[A]

Okay. As you can tell, I'm out of the video game culture for a while. But that was a banger when I was younger.

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

But, yeah, if you're wandering around on your own, you're just clearly lost on the map.

[B]

But, yeah, you know, how long did.

[A]

It take you to write it?

[B]

It took me about nine months to write the initial 60,000 word manuscript. That was just, you know, it was just like a brain dump.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But over the course of the next couple years, while I kind of just figured out how to get it published and go through that whole avenue, I slowly, you know, rewrote things and would go in and expand on areas and, and over the course of those couple years, I got put in contact with these guys at Ballast Books. I was actually looking at another publishing company. It's called Dead Reckoning Collective. They help veterans put out work, put out published books. And I really like those guys. Those guys are awesome. I actually met Tyler Carroll, one of the founders of that, at a TBI clinic and he was going through the same TBI treatment as I was after his career in the army as a special forces medic. But I really like those guys, but their timeline was going to be a bit longer than I had hoped for. I really wanted to get this thing off the ground and I found this company called Ballast Books. They're a hybrid publishing company and so you pay for their services up front, but in return you get to, you keep the rights to your book and you get the lion's share of each royalty.

[A]

Oh, nice.

[B]

I had talked to too many people who had gone through conventional publishing routes and unless you're already like a big name, they're not going to put much of a marketing budget into you. And I heard too many people with these nightmare stories of they, they assumed they were going to go with a big publisher and it was going to get out to the world because you'd have this beast behind you. But one, they take your rights away. They, they keep the lion's share of anything that you make off of each book sale and then they're probably not going to put much money in your marketing. It's going to, the marketing is still going to be on you. So because of those different factors, I decided to go with this hybrid publisher and I'm really glad I did because I think it only took. We started doing it in July of last year.

[A]

In 24.

[B]

Yeah, July 24th. We took my, my manuscript and turned it into a printed legit frickin reality.

[A]

Didn't this just come out?

[B]

Yeah, released today.

[A]

I was going to say, looking back through our emails and I swear as I was passing through, you said January 21st. That's amazing.

[B]

Yeah, that's fortuitous.

[A]

Yeah, dude, of course.

[B]

Perfect time.

[A]

And I'll push this forward too in the, in the release schedule. So it's a little Bit closer to being associated with. Yeah, cool. Actually, Michael, remind me please to get this one out, whatever day is today, Tuesday, six days from now. I'll put it out next Tuesday, next Monday.

[B]

Yes, that'll help it, you know, see the light of day a little more.

[A]

Yeah, for sure. What do, what do you hope that somebody picks up the book? What do you hope that they get out of it? Like you said, tips and tools.

[B]

But yeah, well, one, I hope they enjoy it because it's a wild story and it gets in a lot more detail than we covered today. But I really hope one, it provides some inspiration for them, whatever they're going through, to see that within themselves that they too can, can make the choice. It's a conscious choice that we get to take our health back into our own hands. And it's not going to come from, you know, a pill. You have to make work. You have to apply discipline and you have to continue to move in that direction. But I want to paint that foundation for them. I want to give them those tools so that they can dig themselves out of whatever hole they found themselves in. And, and some resources too are included in the back of, of ways, especially if you're a veteran first responder can, can gain access to some of these modalities.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But at the very least, at least open their eyes to, you know, kind of how broken the conventional medical system is. As great as it is, if you're a trauma or you got to get surgery, you know, that's great. But as far as recovering from chronic health conditions and mental health issues, it's got a lot of shortcomings. So I want people to see you don't need that. Honestly, you don't need anything fancy other than to really do a deep dive on yourself, focus on your sleep. You know, cut out things that are poisoning you and disrupting your sleep, like alcohol, excessive caffeine, nicotine. These are things that can cause your sleep to be hell. And things like eating good whole foods, drinking clean water, removing toxicity from your life, be that shitty food, alcohol, shitty people, social media overload. There's so much toxicity in our culture. When you can remove all that shit and start nourishing the body again and calming the mind and giving yourself some space. And the importance of just slowing the fuck down and like just taking some time for yourself. It's not selfish. You're trying to help yourself so that you can become the best version of yourself and then you're going to be able to help people far better than if you're Just putting yourself in a hole, trying to put everything all out there, working your ass off all the time, and then find yourself in this mental health or physical health crisis. You're not doing anybody any favors, especially not yourself or your family.

[A]

I agree.

[B]

So, yeah, a lot of themes like that, and I really hope it helps, you know, shine a light on this sort of major problems that sort of be afflicting, seem to be afflicting our society as a whole right now.

[A]

I mean, naval officer, super Hornet driver, published author. Yeah, what the hell you got next? What's on your bucket? What's on your vision board for 2025?

[B]

Well, getting to be a dad has been a big one.

[A]

But you were a parent previous?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Okay, so you're adding to the football team?

[B]

No, I got two. I got two. And my wife and I, I think have decided that we don't want to be outnumbered, so.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

We're likely sticking to two.

[A]

Unless there's an oops, it really changes. I have three.

[B]

Oh yeah.

[A]

You go from man on man defense to zone and those little know it, they Bluetooth, they're like, you go left, you go right, fullback, dive up the middle and somebody's getting through the coverage. It gets wild. Failed.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I mean, what else? I mean, yeah, dude, you're a young man. Like what else, what else do you have out there on your distant trajectory that you're looking for? What kind of stuff do you want to accomplish?

[B]

Something that I've been doing a lot of is motivational speaking. I just kind of fell into this role about two years back.

[A]

That'll increase, I suspect, quite a bit with the book.

[B]

I hope so. Yeah. Yeah. I don't, I don't have like an agent or anything or a speaking bureau. I'm hoping to maybe make that connection at some point. But I. I've been representing myself and in almost every single event that I do, I'll get one or two jobs out of that. When people hear me speak, Bureau's can.

[A]

Be helpful, but they're going to scrape.

[B]

Yeah. You know, and I'm okay with some scraping if it helps build the consistent, you know, speaking engagements. That's been the challenge I found is like getting it consistently.

[A]

Just make sure it's worth it. Make sure what they take is actually of value to you, that it's commensurate with the service they provide.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. I've had some agencies reach out that want money up front and I'm like, fuck, how about like you help me make money and you get a little of it. But I'm not going to give you a bunch of money up front. So speaking, I'm actually in contact with the folks down at beyond, which is the ibogaine treatment facility kind of featured in that Brian Hubbard, Rick Perry episode of Rogan. They're interested in building a veteran program down there and they're doing a really smart business model where they're kind of taking their for profit program, which has been incredibly successful and using the profits from that to create a foundation so that they can have a constant revenue stream instead of having to go out and beg people for money all the time. And so they're trying to set up a program to get more veterans, first responders access to that program. So I'm hopefully going to help start coaching for them, maybe be down there as a facilitator at times and help other people. Kind of going through the same wild journey that I went through and kind of have this firsthand experience with. And so I'm excited for that opportunity. Maybe, maybe. I built a website, so I'm considering starting some sort of like coaching as this builds. I think the book is kind of the doorway to building a lot of these things off of it.

[A]

It's a great foundation and right, wrong or indifferent, it creates a level of credibility that I think will help individuals and organizations. That's where I think the book. And you know, I'm sure the book is fantastic. Haven't had a chance to read it because you literally handed it to me right before we sat down. But I will read it for sure. It just seems that that's one of the chips on the table that really helps get you to the table itself. Like you have that first chip and then a lot of these other things will help build on top of that.

[B]

Yeah, absolutely. I'm really excited. You know, this is never what I thought I'd be doing with my life, but I've found that this is like one of the most deeply satisfying routes that I've taken in my life. And it's kind of an exciting time. You know, personally, stuff I'm doing, I started doing jiu jitsu.

[A]

Nice.

[B]

Actually, my, my coach or my, my instructor, he went through class 261 with you.

[A]

Can you apologize to him for me?

[B]

No, he. He actually had, he had good things to say.

[A]

He said, I don't remember. I remember you put his name down. I saw hundreds of students. I don't remember him personally.

[B]

Yeah, I've got a picture I can show you after. But he says hello and he said as soon as he corrected how you were pronouncing his name from Sheehan to Shane, it looks like Sheehan, he said that you started to like treat him like a man a little bit more.

[A]

I mean, I'm always going to try to say people's names correctly. How long you been training?

[B]

Just since about August.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

So not very long at all. With his bassy white belt at this point.

[A]

I so love it happens. Not Michael though. He's smooth as butter. Like I'd say partially melted butter in the microwave for 30 seconds.

[B]

Very soft.

[A]

Yeah. A lot of things that could be described about him in that manner.

[B]

But, but that's, that's some good mental health therapy, man. I love it.

[A]

You get to disassociate a little bit. You just think about jiu jitsu instead of all the other bullshit in your life.

[B]

Yeah, focus there.

[A]

Take a long term approach to it. You have a few more injuries than I do. Pick your training partners.

[B]

Well, yeah, yeah, I, I, I'm definitely taking the let's learn good technique vice. Exhausting myself athletically and damaging myself.

[A]

You'll pass the people who go physicality up front. Initially they will advance faster, but then you will wave to them as you pass by.

[B]

Nice.

[A]

Because that will only get you so far. You'll bounce up against a glass ceiling of ability at a certain belt level.

[B]

So that's an incredible sport. I, I was a wrestler in high school and I thought it was just going to be basically like wrestling. Wrestling. But the complexity and the art of it is next.

[A]

Pretty fun. Yeah. That means your top game is gonna be good though too because you understand pressure. How the do you win a dog fight? I was thinking about this when you guys were talking about playing. What do you guys say fights on.

[B]

Yeah, fight. You got to get a valid shot.

[A]

Yeah. So do you have to get behind somebody?

[B]

Not necessarily. Especially with the Jemex helmet, you can take a shot when you're not behind somebody.

[A]

So when it's all super dynamic, what are you trying to, you're just trying to get to an angle where your weapon system can engage gauge and theirs cannot.

[B]

Yeah. You're trying to get whatever weapon system you have on. Maybe that's a 9 mic or any A sidewinder, a heat seeking missile gets its seeker and you get a valid tone and take a shot.

[A]

Do they largely have to be kind of in front of you? Because they don't J hook, do they?

[B]

No, we don't have that ability to like go behind your back. Yeah, but it's, it's pretty far off boresight.

[A]

So when you guys rush with the helmet and you call fights on, what's the move there? Because you said you went, you came. You guys were coming towards each other though, right?

[B]

Yeah. You immediately kind of pitch in at each other.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Kind of point your noses at each other. And in that time you're, you know, with the helmet, you're trying to get your radar to acquire them so maybe you can get a shot off. But yeah, within a certain distance, you can no longer, like, due to training rules, they want you like, smashing your planes into each other and like flying right at him with a gunshot. You know, like in real life you would probably do that. But, you know, for training, they. They put a, you know, a little bit of a safety margin, which isn't much. But yeah, you're just trying to get. Get a shot on. You're trying to get your radar to lock on them or your weapon, your heat seeking seeker head to lock on them.

[A]

So when you went nose low and the reason he popped up is his, was he just trying to get that angle on you from above, essentially, or keep you in sight?

[B]

Yeah. In general, if you go nose high in the super horn, it's a better move, really, because you get gravity helping you turn the aircraft back around a lot quicker. So you can likely get the first shot. But I was actually, I was intentionally. That entire flight, I was doing a nose low maneuver because I was working on this low to high merge presentation to perfect this timing, reversal timing. So I was trying to get this low to high where I could practice when exactly I invoke the specific logic of the jet to do this sort of like super turn and get behind the other guy. That was my goal. I didn't do it the whole flight. But that was part of that you were working on. That was what I was working on. And actually, as I went into the snow low, like, that was something that led to that decision before I even started the fight, which was, you know, the wrong decision. But yeah, it's super fun. It was, you know, low level flying and that were probably about the two most fun things.

[A]

Did you ever start a really, like, cast with, like your cockpit right over the top because you were just hiding underneath them and you just rotated over the top.

[B]

Give him the finger.

[A]

What would happen to a naval aviator that attempted that clear CGI move of Maverick hiding underneath and then he just rotated and was flying inverted over the top? I feel like you're gonna get in trouble.

[B]

Yeah, there's probably some dudes that have done it they probably didn't talk about. They probably had their tapes off. I wouldn't be surprised if it's. It's been done before.

[A]

I just can't imagine fighting in a goddamn jet like that. That has got to be so much fun, man.

[B]

Yeah, it was surreal. It was really, you know, have this machine that can perform like that and all these weapons and it was a pretty kick ass experience as like a 20 some year old dude like to be entrusted with that and, and then get to the opportunity to go back to it and do it again. And I, you know, I wish it could have lasted longer. And had I known about the modalities I know about now in treating brain injury, I think, I think the military could do a way better job of proactively. Do you know Doc Kirk Parsley?

[A]

I know him well. So he was the dude who would not sign my discharge physical when I was trying to get out of the Navy.

[B]

No shit.

[A]

Yeah. And so. Which forced me to go to nico, which is what forced my PEB MEB process.

[B]

Because he wanted you to be.

[A]

He looked at my record and just said no, no. Because guess what I had avoided doing my entire career?

[B]

Going to medical.

[A]

Yes. So my record wasn't twice your career. It was nowhere near as thick as your book. It was maybe the table of contents. And he just looked at it like no, you will regret this for the rest of your life if you do this. I'm not signing it. And I was pissed.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because I had shit I wanted to do. Now I'm incredibly thankful.

[B]

That's, that's awesome.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

He, he's an awesome advocate and in that world. And I think he brought to the SEAL community what I hope happens to the strike fighter community as they're now starting to recognize that, you know, flying around in a jet and pulling all these G's up your brain.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And, and, and operating at that level of stress constantly too has an impact on your physiology in a negative way. And, and you know, he's taken this sort of proactive approach to providing nutraceutical supplementation and lab work so he can actually see what's out of balance. And let's address it up front so that you can perform at your best. Your health can be optimized while you're in the military and it's going to increase your longevity which is a very worthwhile investment when you have guys that you spend millions of dollars of training like and years.

[A]

Yeah. Millions of dollars.

[B]

Oh yeah. Experience like. So I really hope that, that starts to become more commonplace, at least in some of those higher level jobs in the military. And I really think had I gotten a TBI program and some hyperbaric oxygen therapy while I was still in, I'd likely still be flying.

[A]

I feel like military medicine has gotten better since our time and I'm glad to hear that they deserve it, for sure.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, it's, I think there's a, there's a lot coming out of the woodwork on TBI and stuff now.

[A]

I know. I was going to ask you, dude, tell me about your seven continent journey.

[B]

Oh, yeah, yeah. You had a seven continental journey.

[A]

Yeah, it was relatively near the same time period too.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. I, I had a friend, Vinnie, another F18 pilot, and he works, he has this jet aircraft management company and he helps, you know, people that want to have a private aircraft or a corporate aircraft. He helps them, you know, get one purchased, manage it, do all the cool tax loops for it for your business and provide a pilot. And so this is really like, it's called jet hq. So you're a wealthy person or a corporation, you want a jet, you just go talk to these guys.

[A]

Turnkey solutions.

[B]

You don't have to worry about any of it.

[A]

That's nice.

[B]

And anyway, he had been put in contact with this 7x project and they were, I think they were maybe considering them for the aircraft or whatever, but Vinnie's like, oh, you guys are doing this? Oh, it's for mental health, for, you know, travel all seven continents to raise awareness for PTSD and veteran suicide prevention. And he's like, oh, you should talk to my buddy Kagan. And so I got put in contact with Ryan Parrott, Birdman, through him. And it was like, it was just like a couple weeks out from the trip.

[A]

I remember you hit me up. It was right before you guys were gonna depart. I mean, like days before, but it was weeks before.

[B]

Oh, yeah. Did I ask you if you were going on that?

[A]

No, I think you had just asked me about it because we were planning our, like, I'll just call it a parallel initiative as well.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

So it was similar time period.

[B]

Okay. Yeah, yeah. I, I, at first I thought maybe you were going on the same one. Yeah. And then so I show up and it's just, it's just this rambunctious. It was like being back on detachment again, you know, in the military. You know, it was complete chaos, like all these different time zones and, and got to go to some incredible places.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And did you guys go back and.

[A]

Finally hit Antarctica, because. I know.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Okay, cool. Because you weren't able to hit it on the initial.

[B]

Yeah. Like, there was all sorts of, you know, last minute changes that were kind of a debacle that, you know, Ryan managed to salvage it, you know, not.

[A]

The easiest place to get into.

[B]

Oh, holy shit, man. The stuff he did to make it happen was pretty incredible. But, yeah, as we. We. Like, the coolest part I thought was we got to go to Egypt and skydive over the pyramids. You guys did that too.

[A]

I was going to say. I was going to ask you what your favorite experience of your journey was, because mine was surreal. Getting out of that plane and looking down and I don't have the vocabulary to describe it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And then landing near the Marriott.

[B]

We landed, like, way out in the desert somewhere.

[A]

Yeah. And we landed a deserted golf course where they had laid out rugs and carpets for packing and they had a coffee set up. And I'm sitting there like, what are we doing here?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Meanwhile, there was a corporate event going on right near the pyramid. I'm flying my canopy and getting ready to land. Like, this is what's going on here.

[B]

Yeah. That was a once in a lifetime experience. And through that, actually, I, you know, made friends with a bunch of the guys. And that's actually what got me into the whole speaking thing.

[A]

That's awesome.

[B]

Is they. They put me in contact with Jesse Itzler, who's pretty big entrepreneur.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And they had me come out and speak at one of his big mastermind retreats.

[A]

Yeah. Something builds to another that led to.

[B]

A whole network of people that were awesome human beings and good things happened. And so, yeah, the trip was awesome. The community that connected me with was incredible. And. And we're still, like, doing fun together. Birdman just put on this black ops event down in Texas in the fall. That was really fun. So, like, they basically. They got a bunch of operators that bring in a group of folks like myself who had never done any sort of CQB or anything like that.

[A]

And they waterboard you.

[B]

And there. There was no waterboarding. That would have been. That would have been a fun part. Maybe for next year. We'll see.

[A]

Maybe for the instructors, it might have been a fun part. I'm just here to tell you. Might not have been enjoyable.

[B]

But they do, you know, they do some really basic. The medical training was actually phenomenal. They do, like, tourniquet training, you know, know the March protocol, like, some really basic first aid stuff. So if you show up at a car Accident and someone's freaking bleeding out, you can help prevent it.

[A]

It's such a valuable skill up here. Montana's, I'll call it a two way friendly state.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

Everybody wants to talk about the bang and the bullets, but honestly, you're probably going to need to tourniquet more than a gun in your life. And it's just being able to be balanced and use both gives you the ability to take a life if you need to. But what's better than that? How about saving a life?

[B]

Yeah. Yeah, that was. That was really cool. Yeah. And then. And then the close quarter stuff was really fun too. Like, that's such an adrenaline rush. And at the culmination of the event, after just very minimal training where we're still incredibly dangerous. If they were live firearms, they sent us into like a scenario.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so you go out, you know, you're clearing rooms. There's like a hostage scenario.

[A]

That's awesome.

[B]

All right. You get a helicopter right into it. So it was like, you get a little taste of like, see, why can't.

[A]

The function community do that? That just come for be a pilot for a day. And at the end you get to go fly an F18. I don't feel like it's.

[B]

Yeah, well, I think there are programs. I know Whiz Buckley, another F18 dude down in Palm beach, he's got like a program like that.

[A]

So I think I'd say throw him in a sim, you know?

[B]

Yeah, yeah. But I think he. He takes guys up and they fight. What are those T?

[A]

Oh, the prop planes?

[B]

No, they're L39s.

[A]

A really good way to see your lunch for somebody who's not trained to do that stuff.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, they're sporty, they're fun. But yeah, it was. It was a kick ass experience. And I'm sure they got more coming down the. Down the pipe in the future here. Some things coming up that are cool, actually, I just got, you know, Christian Meyer and David Read, they do the MedEvac podcast. It's another Black Rifle affiliated show.

[A]

Okay. There are so many podcasts out there. I'm sure it's fantastic. It's just there's a bombarded, you know, I mean, you're bombarded with potential content. So.

[B]

Yeah, I thought because maybe you guys had some business relationship or something.

[A]

I don't think I've crossed paths with them. I haven't heard of the MedEvac podcast.

[B]

He's another really accomplished skydiver.

[A]

Sweet.

[B]

Wingsuit pilot. Cool, Great dude. But they're putting together this thing called the Romp and they're going to take us, a bunch of vets out to Scotland and we're going to do like some 54 mile trek through Scotland and just explore and on a dirt bike maybe. I think it's by foot.

[A]

Take a quad or a skateboard. I don't really feel like doing death marches anymore.

[B]

I don't know. We have to carry a heavy be packed but okay. So yeah, that's trying to think what.

[A]

Else we're stopping at. Bread and breakfast or what do we got? We have a massage at noon. Hot stone.

[B]

Like some luxury along the way.

[A]

Yeah, that's a little bit more like the adventures that I'm looking for these days. I'm totally down to do gnarly but in between, can we have a nice meal?

[B]

Yeah, that would be cool.

[A]

Yeah, I'll sleep on the side of mountain.

[B]

It's gonna be. I doubt we're gonna be eating MRIs or something.

[A]

You know, that's an experience in and of itself.

[B]

Won't poop for a couple weeks after that.

[A]

I still need to get a box of MREs because one day I want to give them to my children for Christmas. Just say you're, you're welcome and just force them for this is all you get. Here's an entire box. You guys get to figure out which meal is the best. Personally, I always love the beef stew. You can create your own economy and ecosystem. Trading jams and jellies and pound cakes and. But this is your food for the day. Enjoy it.

[B]

Oh. Oh man. I don't know how that stuff keeps people alive.

[A]

I am not sure it does anything other than sustain life at a bare minimum so you don't die. You're not thriving, I can tell you that much.

[B]

Yeah, a little bit of macronutrient.

[A]

God, so dense salt and just fat a clay man. Where can people find your book and where can people find you, especially if they want to reach out to and have you come speak about your experiences?

[B]

Yeah, you can find my book on Amazon. It just released today.

[A]

Is there a spot? I mean, is Amazon the best spot where it's the most beneficial for you? Is there a direct website that helps you more?

[B]

Yeah, yeah. Head over to Amazon because that helps to get more visibility on there and hopefully get this out to more people. You can get on there. You can get it in hardcover, paperback, There should be an ebook and audible dropping very soon as well.

[A]

Who did the audible?

[B]

I did.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Yeah, I actually had a good friend in Bel Air, where I live, helped me do a. He's got like a professional studio, recording studio. And so shout out to Dave Runyon. Thank you. He donated a lot of his time and equipment to make that possible. But he, he, he saw the value in this story getting out to the world. But, yeah, that'll be coming out. And then you can head over to my website. It's just kagangill.com K-E G-A-N-G-I-L-L L.com and you can get in touch with me there for speaking opportunities. You can learn more about my book. You can find a link on there as well. You can also find me on Instagram. I'm at Kagan Smurf Gill and. And you can follow me on there. I'm on LinkedIn just under my name too. But lots of ways to get in touch with me.

[A]

The old LinkedIn. Still not sure what it's for, but I'm on there, too.

[B]

Yeah, I've. I've actually gotten, you know, I've gotten speaking gigs off of there now. People get in touch with me for good stuff.

[A]

So I think the more touch points you have for people to communicate with you if you're in that world, the better. I don't think there's any downside because you can participate on these platforms to the degree you want.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And if people are looking for you and they can find you and reach out. Beautiful.

[B]

Yeah. If I wasn't doing this specific career goal, like, I would not have any of that. Yeah. I feel it drives me insane being on my phone or computer much, but. But it's for a good cause, you know.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And kind of. Yeah.

[A]

Well, hell yeah, man. Thanks for making the travel out. What do you want to leave people with, man? Don't eject it. Nearly the speed of sound, I reckon.

[B]

Yeah. There's. There's a quote I really love by Carl Jung. And it's. In order to grow, to reach the heavens, you have to have roots deep into hell. So whatever. Like that hard experience you're going through now, realize that that is cultivating something within you to turn you into the best version of yourself you've ever been. And the darker place you find yourself, the more opportunity for growth you're going to have.

[A]

Let's leave it at that. That's perfect. Awesome. Thanks, man.

[B]

Thanks again.

[A]

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[B]

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