A (3:51)

We've never sustained combat for so long. Yeah. And nobody knows what's going to happen, you know, and we need to get in front of it.

B (4:10)

Did you know that two out of three guys will experience some kind of male pattern baldness by the time they're 35? You want to take action now? Check out keeps you can message a doctor online 24 7, get prescriptions delivered straight to your door every three months, and all for a really affordable price. Babe, are you ready to take the trash out? Yeah, babe. Check out keeps.com ve our next guest has an amazing story. He started his military career as a Navy SEAL in the SEAL teams. He then screened for development group, also known as Seal Team 6, where he would become an operator and a Tier 1 breacher. In this episode, our guest discusses the effects that being a breacher has on the human brain. When he left Seal Team 6, he went to Budds to become a Navy SEAL instructor. He then retired, went on to a finance career for Merrill lynch in Beverly Hills, California. From there, he was a host on History Channel's the Selection and now runs a non profit with his wife called Vets, where they give psychedelic treatment to former operators who suffer from PTSD, traumatic brain injury, and CTE. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome number 010, Mr. Marcus Capone. Marcus Capone, welcome to the show, man.

A (6:13)

Thank you.

B (6:13)

It's a real honor to have you here. We kind of heard about you a little bit from Eddie Gallagher, and he was kind of talking about his experience that he had that you guys put him through with the psychedelics. And, you know, I've been, I've just been hearing a lot about that stuff. And when he mentioned your name, I had heard about you and I'd seen you on the History Channel and, and we have a lot of mutual friends, so I wanted him to, to connect us. And, and I'm just super happy that you're here, man.

A (6:50)

Yeah, I'm, I'm excited. You know, when, when I, you know, when you asked Amber and I to be on the show, we were, you know, we said, yeah, that'd be pretty cool because we don't, you know, we don't do these often. And I love what you do, and, you know, I'm just thankful that we're here and share my story, and I hope it helps you and helps. Helps others.

B (7:10)

So it's definitely going to. And we got a ton of stuff to cover, but starting off, we always start with a gift. So right by your side there, we got you a little gift. Little Sean Ryan show gift.

A (7:28)

All right, we got here. Man, I'm nervous. What is this? I'm knowing you.

B (7:39)

Say a little something for the ride home.

A (7:41)

Yes. Look at that. Gummy bears. Did my wife tell you I love gummy bears and freaking nice.

B (7:50)

Those S' more bikes are amazing, dude.

A (7:54)

These are just. No gummy bears.

B (7:56)

Yeah, like no, they're not special gummy bears.

A (7:58)

They're like, there's no cbd. There's no thc. They're just. They're just good old fashioned. Awesome.

B (8:06)

Sugar packed.

A (8:07)

I'm gonna eat the hell out of these.

B (8:08)

Thank you, Gummy bears.

A (8:09)

You're welcome. These are awesome. Very cool. How did gummy bears. Where. Where did. Where did that come from?

B (8:22)

You know, we were gonna make CBD gummy bears, and then there's like, a lot of lawsuits.

A (8:29)

Yeah.

B (8:29)

On CBD candy and stuff, especially when it comes to gummy bears. And so people started saying, oh, they're gonna get you for catering to kids or whatever. So I said, you know what?

A (8:41)

We're just gonna make gummy bears.

B (8:43)

I love fucking gummy bears. So we're just gonna do gummy bears.

A (8:46)

Isn't it crazy, though? Isn't it sad? The first thing I said is, like, are these CBD or THC gummy bears like that? That's the way that's like, that's where we're going now. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's crazy.

B (8:55)

We had an email. We actually had somebody email and had eaten two bags, and they said they still don't feel anything.

A (9:04)

I was like, he's got a stomachache and sugar rice. Yeah.

B (9:07)

He's like, man, I don't. How long does it take for these to kick in? And how long do I need. How many do I need to eat for them? Because I'm not feeling anything. Yeah, we're just like, they're just gummy bears, man.

A (9:18)

Yeah. Yeah. That's funny. But that's good.

B (9:20)

Yeah.

A (9:21)

Well, thank you.

B (9:22)

Yeah, you're welcome. I hope you like them.

A (9:24)

I will. I. I love candy. So, you know, but as we get older, I try to. Try to cut down, but those would be my. My midnight snack.

B (9:32)

Yeah.

A (9:32)

Sneaking in the pantry.

B (9:33)

Hey, I do that too.

A (9:34)

Yeah.

B (9:35)

But. Well, I just wanted to give you guys a compliment. With the last three guests we've had on here, Eddie Gallagher, Tulam, and you are all still happily married and have been married for a long time and have, you know, obviously been through a lot of shit. But one thing that me and my wife noticed last night is the amount of respect, you know, that you guys have for each other. You don't. You don't talk over each other. There's a lot of couples out there that, you know, you don't really know who to look at because everybody's talking at the same time. And you guys really respect each other and allow each other to talk. Without button in or cutting each other off. And it's just really refreshing to see that.

A (10:24)

I appreciate that we were talking about that earlier, right where, you know, it's, you know, we used to be that couple though. You know, we were that couple for a long time where, you know, the teams, like, they really, you know, really, it really sucks everything out of you. And you know, the women, they get so, you know, spiteful and you almost can't say anything without them, you know, barking down your throat. And I think, you know, we went through that. I mean, we went through all the ups and downs. It's taken us years to get to where we're at right now. And you know, I would say at right now we'll be close to 24 years together, 21 years married, and we are at our strongest. Like we're, you know, we're strong, right? Man, we're good.

B (11:14)

Congratulations. Yeah, that's amazing.

A (11:16)

Yeah, it's, it's still work, a lot of work. And we still have our moments. But you know, what you and I spoke about, the, you know, the awareness, you know, I can see myself now getting to that. You know, am I talking over her? Am I interrupting her? Am I raising my voice for no reason? The more you become aware of that, the more you reset your mind to, to, to go a different path than maybe what you were doing, you know, prior. So we're, we're strong, you know, we still have a lot of work to do, but I appreciate that because it's awkward. It's awkward when we get around some people, like you said, and you know, they're, they're, they're badgering each other or they're talking over each other, or they're condescending to each other. And you know, I remember turning to Amber and saying, were we like that? Like, is that, was that us? She goes, are you kidding me? Like, yeah, we were like that times 10. She's like, how we've stayed together is pure, you know, off a, you know, her pure hard headedness and her faith, really. And for me, you know, I always said, man, is there something better out there? And, and you know, I always got to remind myself when I look at her, I'm like, dude, you have everything you got, like right in front of you. Like, you got an amazing wife who's just a queen, you got amazing kids, amazing friends. You know, it's like, it's right there. Stop like searching for or thinking there's, you know, grass is always greener or something's always better. And I. You know, I still have to remind myself, but I'm reminding myself less now because now it's just. I get it.

B (12:58)

Yeah.

A (12:59)

I finally get it. It's taken a while.

B (13:01)

You know, it really shows. And one of my old business mentors who's really into shamanism, ironically, um, you know, he always told me, you know, happy people will just. They come. It just happens. They just come together. And I didn't see that for the longest time. Maybe it's because I wasn't happy. But, man, the last couple years, like, we're really attracting good, happy, you know, just solid human beings here. And it's just.

A (13:40)

It's.

B (13:40)

It is. It's just happening.

A (13:42)

It's. It's ugly, right, to hang around people that are not. Not like that. People that are. I don't want to call it depressed because, you know, we obviously work with a lot of individuals that, you know, need some. Need some work. But you want to surround yourself with. With good people, happy people, positive people. You know, that negativity that, that. It just, you know, I kind of grew up like that. My household, my mom and dad were. It was always negative. You know, anybody had money was bad, and, you know, they. They. They were just a. Everything was a negative outlook. You know, nothing was. They. They didn't understand that, you know, you know, having a positive mindset and positive framework and, you know, you know, it's a beautiful day out. You know, I don't know where I'm going with this.

B (14:33)

That's all right.

A (14:34)

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

B (15:25)

Yeah.

A (15:26)

So.

B (15:27)

Well, we're going to get into that real soon. But, you know, the other thing about dinner last night is it's always, you know, I don't really hang around a lot of team guys anymore. You know, we kind of talked about that. I just. One of the ways I got better was separating myself from the community. And. And, you know, I'm not saying that works for everybody, but it works for me. And the farther I move away from it, the more at peace and the happier I am. But back to dinner. It does.

A (16:01)

It's.

B (16:02)

Every time I do meet somebody I haven't met before, just. It's. I'm always reminded of how small the community is and how many names that we knew, you know, that we both know or have worked together with. Like, you know, first name that got brought up was Hooch. Second name, you know, Gabe. Gabe McCarty, my best friend who, you know, and when I was researching you and I heard your story and I heard about, you know, that your sister platoon, you know, was in Afghanistan, was. That was Red Wing. Yeah, I know Gabe was involved in that. And then we had briefly mentioned your best friend, Josh Harris, and that was Gabe's best friend as well. And so when I was listening to some of your podcasts and reading about you and Amber, I was like, man, he knows. He knows Gabe really well. He has to. Because you were just at all the bright.

A (17:03)

Yeah. No, I couldn't believe that when I saw it on your wrist. You know, I was just asking, you know, figuring, you know, it's, you know, one of your. One of your. Your brothers you lost in combat. Yeah. And when I looked at it, I went, wait, Gabe Aardi? Like, what? Like what happened to him? You know, and when you said, you know, can we talk about it or we don't talk about it, man, I mean, when you said he. The first thing, unfortunately, the first thing my mind goes to now is like, could I, you know, could we have helped him? Could I have helped him? You know, And I know the answer is yes, and I just wish I would have known. I wish I would have known because I think I stopped talking to him probably in 2000. I don't know, maybe five or six, you know, last time I saw him, and, man, that was just kind of hit me last night, a bit of a shock because we used to hang out, you know, at team 10 together and obviously, you know, worked out together, and, you know, we trained a lot together. And so that was. Yeah, it was disturbing. And, you know, I'm sorry that I didn't know you guys were good friends.

B (18:14)

Well, thank you. You know, but it's. It is refreshed. I didn't know him in the teams, and so, you know, kind of where I want to take this show is I want to talk about, you know, we're going to touch on your military career and then we'll move into your transition and some of the problems and stuff that you were dealing with. And then we're going to move into the psychedelics and the science behind it and how it's working and maybe some other alternative medicines.

A (18:45)

Yeah, there you go.

B (18:46)

So you want to hear.

A (18:48)

You want to hear a Gabacardi story?

B (18:50)

I would love to hear a Gabe story.

A (18:55)

So he goes out to free fall school and you know, like everybody else, some people, they pick it up right away. Others take some time, others never get it. I was kind of in the middle for like two or three days. I couldn't get in the wind tunnel. I'd get in and like, you know, shoot into the wall. And then I went away for the weekend and came back. I jumped in and like, you couldn't even move me. Like, I was still and, you know, just. Shit just happens that way. Gabe goes out to. I think he went out to Yuma or he might have been out to San Diego when they started doing the course out there, the free fall course. Well, he comes back and we had heard some rumblings like, hey, you know, Gabe's having a hard time out there with his exits. You know, when he puts a pack on, like, he's all over the place. And then, I don't know, it was a week later or whatever, we hear a story that like, yeah, Gabe was in like an uncontrollable spin on exit. Like ridiculous. Like they said on camera, it was scary. And they couldn't, they couldn't stop him. So the instructors, you know, the instructors jump out if, you know, guys, you know what freefall is. So as we're learning, you know, we jump out of the plane and then, you know, one or two instructors jump out and they're right there, right? They're watching everything you're doing. Well, he goes into this spin with gear on and they couldn't stop him. And the way they're taught in, in military free fall instructor course is like, they come in and they hit him. They try to stop him, but he's going so fast. You're talking about, you know, you're flying through the sky at however, 100 something miles an hour. It was just. I heard it was. It was scary. I guess, of course, he ended up okay. But he shows up back in Virginia beach at Team 10, and I'm looking at him like, gabe, what the fuck happened to your eyes? Both his eyeballs were completely bloodshot red. Like scary red. He's like, oh, all the blood in my eyes, all whatever vessels broke. Cause I was in such a rough spin. Like, everything just like he was so fucked up looking. But from that day we started calling him Red Dragon. From the movie. Yeah. So anyway, I thought you'd get a kick out of that story, but it was. Yeah, one of the last things I remember about Gabe, so.

B (21:22)

Solid dude.

A (21:23)

Yeah. Yeah. Animal, too. Just a beast. And evidently he was. He was a pretty serious hockey player. Yeah, like. Yeah, like two state titles. And yeah, he was. He was an animal. Yeah. But a good person. He was like, no ego.

B (21:39)

Great person.

A (21:40)

Yeah. Give you the shirt off his back.

B (21:42)

So speaking of Red Wing, let's kind of start there, you know. Yeah, I know that. I know that was your sister platoon out there.

A (21:50)

Yeah. As our task unit.

B (21:51)

So let's kind of talk about, you know, where were you? You know, it's kind of interesting how you found out and. And I'd like to just kind of start right there.

A (21:59)

Sure. I'll go back. You know, we were Training up for 2 years on workup and close to deployment. I don't know if it was a month or two months out. And again, you know, my recollection of a lot of things. You know, 13 years in the teams, they all went into one year, you know, so. So bear with me if I. If I get some of these facts wrong, but it was a month or two before deployment. One platoon was going to deploy directly to Afghanistan and the other platoon was going to Germany. And then after three months, we were going to switch. So the platoon that went to Germany goes to Afghanistan. Platoon that is in Afghanistan goes to Germany. Well, of course, we wanted to go to war first, and it was very busy at the time. It was 2005. There was a lot going on. And why we wanted to go first was because if we got to go to Afghanistan first and fight, then we got to go back to Germany and just drink and fuck off for three months. Right. Like, that was the idea. And that would have been great. The platoon that goes to Germany knew that we had to prepare to go to Afghanistan because we couldn't get, like, drunk and fat and not train and then end up in the middle of a war zone. Right. Yeah. So it was kind of like. It sucked, you know, if you were that platoon. So we flip a coin and we lost. So our platoon lost and we went to Germany and, you know, the other platoon went to Afghanistan, you know, and the rest is kind of history there, you know, off a simple coin toss. So I, you know, get. I get some goosebumps thinking about it that, you know, who knows? You know, who knows what would happen. I don't know how many people know about that. Coin toss. So they went to Afghanistan. We went to Germany.

B (23:56)

It no was a. It was literally a coin toss.

A (23:58)

The coin flipped.

B (23:59)

A coin?

A (24:00)

Yeah.

B (24:00)

Wow.

A (24:01)

Clipped it. Flipped a coin in the team room.

B (24:03)

Damn.

A (24:04)

Yeah. Heads I win, tells you lose, right? Yeah. So we went to Germany, trained and drank. Got to see the Tour de France. That was cool, but red wings. So, you know, middle of the night. I don't know how it happened. I think it was either I got a phone call or we found out helicopter got, you know, went down and, you know, you kind of wake up and start knocking on other guys doors. You know, we're in. We're in. We're in our barracks in Germany and nobody really knows what's going on. And, you know, guys start panicking a little bit. We can't get a hold of anybody. We don't know who's in the helicopter. We don't know anything. As a night, we stayed up all night. As night went on, we couldn't get any intel. Like, here we are. We're a SEAL platoon in Germany. It's our sister platoon that we just worked up with for two years. All our best friends are there. We have no idea what's going on. You're only thinking the worst, of course. You know, you think with some modern technology, we at least know what's going on. We start getting intel back from Virginia beach from our freaking wives that are telling us, hey, so and so. Just had a car pull up with, you know, seals in uniform to tell, you know, to tell the spouse that their husband got killed. And so we'd find out, you know, Jeff Taylor or, you know, Jacques Fontaine or, you know, Eric Christensen, and we're like, holy fuck. Holy fuck. You know, but again, we're finding the stuff back from our women in Virginia Beach. Like just the whole system at the time was screwed up and to no fault of anyone's. I mean, everybody we worked with, I mean, I always looked up to, you know, there's always a few bad apples. But I think the majority of team guys are there for the right reasons and they make the right calls when the time is right. And we. We just never lost that many people at one time, right? This was like. This was just new for the community since probably, you know, Vietnam ERA seals. And so I think there was a. You know, it was just a bit of panic, bit of lessons learned and all types of shit. So we went through that night and the next day of trying to figure out, you know, who's alive, who's dead, you know, what else happened. You know, I'm a little foggy on. If we found. If. If we knew that. That, you know, Marcus was alive, was anybody else alive? So we still didn't really know really, what was going on. And it took, like, a week to figure out.

B (26:48)

How fast did your. How fast did you guys start getting intel from your wives?

A (26:54)

Within a couple hours.

B (26:55)

That fast?

A (26:56)

Within a couple hours. Because I think if. You know, if I'm. If I'm remembering correctly, it definitely was the next day, because, like I said, this was nighttime. Yeah, definitely was the next day. And, you know, we didn't know what to do. Like, all we wanted to do was go over there and fight. We're like, we want to get on a plane now and go like that. That's what we want to do. Like, we need to go support them. Like, we need. Like, let's. Let's go. We. We stayed for a little while, so we wound up staying a few days, and we wind up just drinking really hard, you know, super drunk, telling stories. You know, we were just. We didn't know what to do. We didn't know how to react. Some guys in the platoon were so. You know, they were so. I want to say dumbfounded, but, like, affected that they were just, you know, depressed and didn't talk. And, you know, it was just. It was just confusion for everybody. Like, we never had loss before. Yeah, you know, we never had loss before. And it was. It was actually the first time where I thought, like, we're not Superman. Like, we're really not. And I thought I was. I really thought I was at that time. I thought, there's no way I can get hurt. There's no chance. Like, I'm. You know, I'm. I'm built of body armor. And it was the first time I got a little, like. I won't say scared, but a little anxious.

B (28:21)

It's not real.

A (28:22)

This is real. This is exactly it, Sean. You said it. It's the first time it got real. And. And that's cool. That's it. I mean, we signed up for that. It was no problem. So you wind up trying to think the timeline. I think Marcus. They flew Marcus in. You know, just kind of fast forwarding from all the, like, the, you know, the gritty details was, you know, we obviously found out that the, you know, the recce element, you know, sniper element, reconnaissance element got compromised and, you know, three didn't make it out. Mike Murphy being one of them, who was my. One of my bud's classmates, you know, good friend. But Marcus made it out, or, you know, eventually, you know, got rescued. And then they flew him into Germany to, like, debrief and, like, repatriate. And, you know, there's like a whole process they go through and they said, hey, like, he needs to see some seals. Like, he needs. He needs some team guys. Like, right now he's, you know, like. Yeah. So I volunteered. Lpo volunteered one other person. We went up to Ramstein and, you know, met with him. He was with the psychologist at the time, and. Yeah, it was just good to, like, you see him, you know, after that whole week of, you know, I'm sure for him, it was probably very. It was probably just like. I don't. Humbling is not the word, but it was just good for a soul, I think, to see some. Some fresh faces, some team guys that he knew after that happened, because I think, you know, he obviously went through everything he went through, and. Yeah, we just. We shot the. With him for a couple hours. I mean, he was, like, wounded head to toe. I joke with him now. I was like, dude, you look like. Like you had, you know, like, dried blood and cuts and just like his whole, you know, his arms and legs and face and neck and, you know, his legs were really bad. But it was good to just, you know, talk to him. Yeah. And I don't remember much of the conversation, but I do remember sitting outside on the. We were sitting on a. Like a wooden table, you know, and. And again, like, I didn't know how to. I didn't know how to react. I didn't know what to say. You know, what do I say to this guy who literally just been through hell and back.

B (30:58)

Yeah.

A (30:59)

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

B (31:30)

Yeah.

A (31:30)

You know, I never lost any friends, and I never. I never seen what hurt was like. And, you know, I could tell that, you know, he was hurt and you know, I know he won't get upset about me talking about this, you know, because this is real, right? This is what happened. And, you know, I hope. I hope he's good now, you know, that's all I pray for. Yeah, but so we did. We did that. You know, we hung out, and I believe he was going back to the States. If I. Again, if my. My mind, my. My memory serves me correctly, we went back to Stuttgart and got our gear ready and deployed, and we had a. You know, we had a fill. Half a platoon, because they just lost half a platoon. And we got there, and I remember it was the middle of night, and, you know, my other. My. One of my best friends in the teams, Maddie Roberts, he.

B (32:37)

We.

A (32:37)

We got to the camp, we got off the air, you know, we got off the flight, got on the ground, humveed over to the compound. Remember walking in and again, you know, getting chills, talking about it, like, again, I didn't know how to react. You know, here's a platoon that was there on the other helicopter watching, like, their buddies, you know, burn into the ground. And I was going to go see my best friend, and I remember seeing him in his room, and, you know, we just. We just embraced. And, you know, again, I just. I just didn't know how to react. You know, I just felt like I had to be there for my brothers, you know, how to be there for my buddies. And whatever it took to, you know, whatever it took to get through that situation, like, I was prepared to do that, and I was prepared to. To lend a hand and help, and, you know, I was ready to fight. Right? And that's all that mattered. And so it was good. It was good to see him, you know, kind of embrace. High five, you know. All right, what are we doing here now? And, you know, then, you know, you know, then we got to work.

B (33:57)

How long. So actually, I didn't even tell you this last night, but we were the platoon that relieved you guys. So we came in from. I think we'd surged over to two at that point and relieved you guys. I don't. I don't remember seeing you. I think I only saw, like, three people.

A (34:14)

Did you were. You're the platoon that had the. The bad Humvee wreck? Yeah. Hurt the Adam Brown, FBI. Yep. Adam. Adam lost his fingers. Oh, yeah. So you with Dom? You were Dom and Eddie?

B (34:27)

I was with Eddie. Dom wasn't there. Joe, Eddie, Penny. Joe.

A (34:32)

Was Joe in that group? Maybe not.

B (34:34)

There was only a couple of guys that surged over.

A (34:37)

Okay.

B (34:37)

They're platoon to mine, but. And then we all got kicked out of Afghanistan. Iraq.

A (34:43)

But yeah, somebody should have told Adam Brown, like, he shouldn't have kept his hand on top of the hummingbird when it flipped. But I love Adam. I went to, I went to green team with Adam, so.

B (34:53)

Oh, man, what a solid guy.

A (34:56)

Yeah, you know, amazing, but.

B (35:00)

Well, so what was it like when you started working in Afghanistan and, and what were you guys doing? Did you go in to where Red Wing happened?

A (35:11)

We did not. We worked. We do, man. We worked a different part of the country that was real busy with Taliban fighters and we were working directly with the Kiwis. So the New Zealand sof, they were awesome older, made us feel like kids. Yeah, they all had big beards and they wore too much gear. And we work with the Canadian sof, they also made us feel like kids. Those guys. I think those guys were shooting more fucking testosterone than I've ever seen. They all look like 6 foot 4, middle linebackers, big burly beards and. And they wore too much gear, too. It's funny, we had it. We had. We had to teach some of those guys to strip off some of the weight they had. I mean, they were, they were going out in the field and we were. When I was carrying a saw or mark 48. Excuse me, mark 46 with nine, two, four, like 600 rounds. But my, my gear is really trim. Like, I, I was a, I was a gear nut and, you know, I used to really just try to trim it down because I was already two and a quarter, 230, and I drank probably ten times as much water as anybody else. And so, you know, I kind of, I went out heavy, so I tried to trim where I could, but I loved that thing. These guys were going out with, like, I mean, we're talking about humping, you know, in valleys and up in up mountains with like six pistol magazines, like on their belt, you know. Yeah, just, you know, stuff that I, they were built more for, it seemed like to me, like, you know, ct, right? Like counterterrorism, you know, fest rope on top of building, you know, blow the door in, you know, rescue the princess. But, you know, here we are, we're patrolling, you know, in, in like real rugged terrain. Like, bro, I know you're like, you've been here maybe 10 years longer than me, but you need to, you need to trim your, trim your down, otherwise we're going to be waiting for you. So anyway, those guys, though, they were tough as nails and we did a lot of joint Operations together with the Canadians and with the New Zealand, the New Zealand guys had their mobility down really tight. They were doing long range patrols for, you know, they do month long patrols out in the field, not coming back. A lot of recce work in reconnaissance. And the Canadians were doing more stuff that we were doing, which is, you know, kind of, you know, land, set a perimeter and then go patrol out on foot. We would only, we were staying out for, you know, maybe a couple days at a time.

B (37:58)

On foot?

A (37:59)

On foot, yeah, we were on foot. You know, we got in country and within the first couple days we actually, we had a really cool da, you know, direct action mission that I don't, I don't think we, we thought we were going to do something like that. But it was, you know, is right out of the movies that you would think about like, you know, two Blackhawk helicopters like, you know, came flying in right next to the target. You know, fast ropes go out, we go out. You know, I'm a breacher, right? So if anyone listening doesn't know what a breacher is, you know, it's an explosives expert. But that takes that explosives and then surgically, you know, places on a door or a window or a car, you know, and blows that thing in to make entry for the rest of the guys to make entry. And so, you know, I was a primary breacher for that platoon and for that, that op. And so, you know, it's dark, we just got in country, still trying to figure out where all my gear was. You know, fast roping gloves, weapon demo. Like, I felt like it was like a complete shit show. I'm like, you know, if anyone starts shooting at us right now, I'm just going to like fucking suck my thumb into the mud because I don't know where anything is on my body. But anyway, we figured it out. Get on the ground. And there was a big gate there and you know, we threw, I threw a big charge on the gate and blew the gate in and then we assaulted the compound and nobody got injured. It was relatively, I don't call it easy target, but super high speed for us. I mean, it was the first time any of us has ever seen any combat.

B (40:13)

Was that your first deployment?

A (40:15)

That was my second deployment, our first combat deployment.

B (40:18)

Okay.

A (40:19)

And so yeah, it was, you know, I think we have on, on video the guy we were going after. We have him on, on the flir.

B (40:30)

Oh, nice.

A (40:30)

He came out on the rooftop like this like as the Festropes were like getting deployed. And so like he knew. Yeah, And I think he was related to the local. Whoever ran that area. Yeah, of course. It's like his brother or something that we're going after.

B (40:48)

Yeah.

A (40:49)

But I remember specifically on that target. I'll never forget this. Clearing rooms. And now it's daytime, so it was like, we weren't allowed to do nighttime raids at the time. So first light, when you can see everything. And I remember entering a room, and there's, like, you know, women and children and whatever, and we, you know, we round them up. And I remember. I don't know if it was a terp or something, saying, hey, there's. There's a baby inside. I was like, okay, well, fucking, you know, what do you want me to do? It's like, tell somebody to go get them, right? The. To the. Their. Their people. So they come out. The guy comes out like this with the baby. And I'm looking at. The baby is naked, and it's got a fucking wooden dowel, like, probably this thick, maybe that long, sticking out of its ass.

B (41:47)

What?

A (41:50)

No idea. No idea why.

B (41:53)

Damn.

A (41:55)

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

B (42:22)

Damn.

A (42:24)

You know, like, I will never forget that. Like, I. I tell that story because it's just so. It's, like, haunting.

B (42:30)

Like, you see a lot of strange.

A (42:31)

Shit, like, what the fuck are these people doing? Right.

B (42:33)

Yeah.

A (42:34)

So anyway, so I thought that was a great, you know, great op. And then from there, that was like our only, I would say, urban kind of direct action mission. And then from there, we. We went in the mountains and we started patrolling daily and going after this. This. This Taliban line. I was like. I said I carried a saw. I was the team in the valley, clearing the valley while everybody else was. Had, you know, long guns and.

B (43:04)

Oh, nice.

A (43:05)

Yeah, it was great. They were like, well, we're just gonna hang out up here, and you guys.

B (43:08)

You guys see what you can get into, you know?

A (43:10)

But the crazy thing how our mindsets were back then was like, no, no, dude, I want to be down in the valley. Yeah, like, fucking. I'm down there. So we're patrolling the valley. Canadians had a high ground. The New Zealand Kiwis had The high ground. And our guys had the high ground.

B (43:30)

Oh, so there were three different. Three.

A (43:32)

It was big. We had like big operations going on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was a lot. It was like we were chasing a group of, I think it was like 40 Taliban. And we were watching them on like we were, we were actually, you know, watching them bound and leave us and we'd move forward. And this happened for a couple days. They left all their, you know, we were going through all their. As we were walking through the valley. But I remember the first contact we had in that valley. A couple of them were in a bush and I remember, remember engaging them with my saw. And once I started, like, it was like the whole world just lit up in this valley. And next thing you know, like we're bounding forward And I swear to God, this is like. I tell, I remember telling the story after. It was literally like I was. Saw this in a movie. Because I hear from behind me, I just hear. I'm like the. Is that like it was close? And I turn around and the valley was. It wasn't flat. Like it was, it was, it was super steep. It was only big enough, say to put no shit, maybe like three or four guys like in patrol. And the other guys kind of had to like walk. I mean it was, it was like that. And there's a fucking army Apache literally like this in a full on gun run coming straight at us. What do I mean, straight at us? Straight at me, because I was in the middle of this thing and I'm looking at it and it was like slow motion. And I mean like picture this right now you see like I could see the pilot, two of them, I think it was two pilots. And it's the birds like this. And all I see in the sand is this, right? Is the. Like you said, like you see out of a movie. You see like the gun trail and it was coming straight at me. And I'm going, what the fuck? And so I'm there with my chief. And you see all this in slow motion. I'm telling it, but this all happened really quickly. Everybody dives, right? Because they're trying to kill us. There's no doubt they were trying to kill us. And we all dive into some rocks, right? And the, the, the gun run, the actual bullets go screaming past the sand and then the helo goes screaming past, right? But this is how they worked then. They were shooting with guns. And then behind it, Dash two, the second helicopter that they rolled with was following up with rockets.

B (46:31)

Oh man.

A (46:32)

So here's in my mind, right? Like, I'm trying to, like, find my radio and turn it to fires and tell them to cease fire. I'm just trying to, like, get in the middle and, like, cover up. And I'm going, dude, this is it. Here come the rockets. Because guns go first, so they kind of see what's going on. And the second bird comes in and starts firing. I think was a 2.2.5. Is that.

B (46:56)

I can't remember.

A (46:57)

Yeah, hellfires, maybe. And, you know, those things kill. Yeah. And the second Hilo, I remember being behind this big rock. There was nowhere else to go. And just, like, looking the same place where I just saw the other one come through. And helicopter comes screaming through and I see the pilots, like, no shit. That's how close they are to the ground. And no guns. No guns, no rockets. Somebody, thank God, didn't have their head up their ass and was able to get on fires. I think it was our comms guy, and tell him to cease fire.

B (47:34)

Wow.

A (47:34)

But still to this day, I am still pissed off because I don't know who cleared those guys hot with us. We were on the offensive, engaging. Like, we were good.

B (47:45)

So were you guys taking fire from Taliban and our guys? US Apache, Yes. And everybody just.

A (47:53)

Yeah, my chief got hit in the face. My chief guy hit in the face. He was, you know, spitting, like, not spitting blood out. Blood was spitting out. He. He dove the other way. I dove this way. He actually got fragged. And. Yeah. So like I said, so somebody cleared them hot. And thank God somebody, not the same person, you know, called a ceasefire. Thank goodness, because those. Those 2.5s would have us up for sure. Yeah. I mean, depending on how good we were covered, you know what I mean? Like, got behind. Like, I was trying to hunker, like, in between these rocks, knowing that. All right, if. When the frag comes, like, if I can just get behind some rocks, like, you know, the frag will hit the rocks and maybe I'll get hit, you know, with some frag, but, like, my head's not going to come off, right. Or, you know, so that's. That's all I was thinking at the time.

B (48:49)

Damn.

A (48:50)

And so, yeah, and then I remember watching my chief pop up behind a rock and, like, his whole face was like. Like squirting out blood. And I'm like, wow, this again. This is real. Like, this is not. Is not a joke. So, yeah, it was exciting. It was fun shit, right?

B (49:09)

Sounds like it.

A (49:10)

Yeah. I mean, I tell you what, I couldn't Wait to get back to the fucking. The base there. The Siege of Soda, I think it was. Find out, like, what. Motherfucker just tried to kill me, you know, And I, like, wanted to, like, just choke somebody. I feel like I never found out. Like, we never were able to get back there. And still to this day. It's foggy. Damn. So.

B (49:33)

So did you guys continue on mission after that, or was that.

A (49:37)

That was for a full day. We cleared a bunch of caves, called in, you know, a lot of close air support to knock out some of those caves. And then I believe we went back, regrouped, new mission. And then we went out for a couple days, you know, and. Same, same, same stuff, though. So, like, my group, we were clearing the valley floor. My platoon and fire team, Cansoft Kiwis were watching our backs. We had a lot of support there. We were working with the A at the time. Did you work with them at all? The. No initials.

B (50:26)

We didn't work with any.

A (50:28)

Yeah, we had them. We put them on point for obvious reasons. And yeah, they had a few guys to get, get, get clipped just because, you know, we were going around these, These like, bends and they were, you know, they were the first ones there.

B (50:46)

Yeah. Did you find them to be pretty motivated back then?

A (50:53)

So I did. Not really. No. We were like, like we were telling those people what to do and where to go. And, you know, I'm probably chopping up a lot of this story and, you know, guys are out there and listening if I'm. If I'm messing up some of these, like, you know, critical details just because I. I don't fully remember them. You know what I mean? So I'm trying the best I can, what I remember. But I do remember, I do remember we got engaged by like a pillbox. Almost like it was like a. We came around and we kind of were just hanging out in the open, like it was not, Not a good thing to do. And there was like a PK or two PKs in this, like, you know, in a really nice bunker, elevated. And I'm like, sitting out in the middle and the anas are behind us on this rock, this huge rock, and there's a bunch of them, like 30 of them. They engage us, we engage them, but then the. The ANA starts engaging them. And this was our, like our, our. Our SOPs were. You guys don't fire when we're in front of you. Like, you're not allowed to. You're not allowed to pull the trigger if we're anywhere near you or in front of you, like, you're allowed to pull the trigger. If you're, like, ahead of us and pointing in that direction, that is it.

C (52:17)

We.

A (52:17)

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

B (52:52)

Oh, man.

A (52:53)

Right. So I'm screaming at them to, like, cease fire. Trying to figure out how to get the two guys that are shooting at us, the PKs, you know, the Afghanis are behind us, shooting over our head. God knows where these bullets are going. You know, it was. Again, just. My hair was just like. Yeah. Standing up, going.

B (53:14)

What was it, like an old Russian bunker or something?

A (53:18)

I don't know if it was a Russian bunker or a makeshift bunker, but it was like. It was beautiful. Right. It was, like, perfect that you come around the corner patrolling, and they're, like, sitting right there, and you couldn't see them. All you could see is the. The muzzle flash.

B (53:31)

Yeah.

A (53:32)

And the smoke. And so, yeah, I mean, it was. Wow, what a wild initial. Like, introduction to like, hey, this is war. Yeah, no shit. This is what it's like. It was great to talk about afterwards. Love it. Right. Because it's already done.

B (53:48)

Yeah.

A (53:48)

But at the time, like. Yeah, it was a little scary.

B (53:51)

Yeah.

A (53:52)

You know, definitely a little scary.

B (53:54)

For those listening that don't know what. ANA is just going back. That's. I believe that stands for Afghan National Army.

A (54:01)

Yeah.

B (54:01)

So it's working with the indigenous forces in country, and that's a. A Afghan National Army.

A (54:08)

Yeah.

B (54:08)

But what kind of. Did you guys find anything in the caves or were you finding a lot of.

A (54:12)

No, we just blew all the caves, like, so we didn't. Even if there was a cave. We just called in, you know, called in some. Some smart bombs to. To. To level them. We weren't, like, trying to really look for anything. We. We rolled up on some of their personal stuff because they were. They were sleeping out, you know. That was scary, too. Kind of walking up in their stuff, you know, thinking, anything. Booby trapped. Like, are they. You know, are they. Are they Looking at us right now.

B (54:42)

Were they.

A (54:43)

Did.

B (54:43)

Were they. Did they know you guys were.

A (54:45)

They were running. They were. They were running. Like, that's, that's the intel we kept, you know, we just missed them. Like, you know, that literally pots were boiling, you know, like, was. You know, and. And we just kept. Kept going, you know, but we had a lot. We had. We had a ton of support. We had a ton of. Ton of support overhead. I think we had some artillery 10 miles away that were firing. That was interesting too. Like. Like firing over us and like into, you know, where there's movement.

B (55:18)

Yeah.

A (55:20)

So that was cool. Like, I felt comfortable there. It's the stuff you don't feel comfortable about, you know, like, just like sticking your head in. Into a little open area where people could hide, you know, you're like, yeah, what is it? Is now the time? Am I gonna get it right here? You know?

B (55:34)

Yeah.

A (55:35)

And like I said, that's when I really felt like we were not invincible anymore. That's when I. When I knew, like, we got to be really smart here. We're not. This is not a game. You know, we gotta. We got to really know our. We gotta. We gotta tighten it up and, and make good decisions and not be stupid. And so, you know, and you want to run so fast, right? Like, you want to get in the fight. And that's when you started realizing when. I think that's when for most of the guys, when, when, when people started getting shot at. You know, one thing is getting, Getting hit, but just, Just getting shot at, that. That's. That's not going to tickle if it hits you. So maybe you should slow down a little bit and, you know, do things, you know, differently. So it's a difference between your training and wartime and that experience that you just. Until you experience it, it's. It's different.

B (56:31)

Yeah. Yeah, man, that was eventful. We didn't do anything. We did a couple of, like, ops there after we relieve you guys, but not much.

A (56:42)

And then.

B (56:42)

And then they kicked everybody out and we went to Iraq. And that was a lot.

A (56:47)

Yeah. More exciting. Yeah, but, but you know how it is. I mean, it. Yeah, it's like luck of the, you know, luck or the unluck of flipping a coin. Right. I mean, you never know. I mean, you know, all the, you know, all the older guys always say, you know, be careful what you wish for, or people have been in that situation, be careful what you wish for, because, you know, you know, people do. Right. You join the teams to go to war Most of us. And then, you know, you get stuck in a sticky situation and you realize, like, this sucks.

B (57:22)

Yeah.

A (57:22)

You know, so. But it's luck. You know, I had a buddy of mine who I worked with when I went, became an instructor and I'll never forget it, and I use it now because I think it's so true. You. You have to earn the right to go to war. Like, you don't. You. You're not entitled to go just because you, you signed up and you put the uniform on and, you know, you check the box or whatever. Like that's a pre. He said. He said. That's, that's what he said. He said going to war is a privilege. Right? It's a, It's a privilege to be there. You know, you got to work your ass off to get there. And so some people, you know, were complaining that they, you know, they weren't, you know, they were deployed to a certain area, they're doing PSD work or whatever and they weren't getting a fight. But I'll never forget when he said that. And I, And I tend to agree with him. And I just, I like that. Like, yeah, it was a real privilege to go to war. I. Looking back now, like, I don't, I don't ever take that for granted just because I signed up and got through buds and, you know, now I should go to war. But, like, no, we. We had to earn that. Yeah. You know, we had to earn it. Yeah.

B (58:35)

So you wrapped up that deployment. Come back home. What happened?

A (58:40)

Come back home. You know, it was, it was a nice homecoming, you know, because it was a really rough, you know, beginning of 2005, you know, or say summer of 2005. Yeah. When we got back, Amber, my wife, threw a big ass party. She was happy to have us back. You know, she bought me a kegerator. It was great. You know, had had everyone over and. And, you know, celebrated that we came back, but, you know, were still, you know, humbled that we, you know, we lost a lot of friends on that deployment. And so. But that's what we did, right? In the teams, we celebrated, celebrated loss, celebrated victory. We, we still, you know, we drank hard.

B (59:38)

Yeah. Deal with everything and bonded. Same way.

A (59:41)

Yeah. Yeah.

B (59:44)

But, yeah, I remember those days. But. So where did you go next? Did you continue on with team 10 or.

A (59:53)

Yeah, so I did two, two, two deployments. Two pumps at team 10. I'd actually screened for dev group a year prior to that, and they just said, like, you know, they told me I was good to go, you know, they said just, you know, go finish your second deployment and you come over next year. And so I came back, hung out in ops for a while with Josh, you know, Josh Harris, him and I, and we. We prepared. You know, we. I'd say we. Proper planning prevents piss poor performance. Him and I really focused on getting ourselves ready for. For selection. And so we worked out together, we shot together. We did many trips to all the, all the CQC trips that other platoons were going to like. You know, we just, we wanted to be good. And I would say we were better prepared than anyone. Like, we really, really focused on that for a while after we got back from. From, you know, the, the, you know, 05 deployment. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I went, you know, went to. Went to selection in 2006. I don't know how much, you know, you want to go into that or.

B (61:12)

Well, did you find out. Did you have any hiccups there? What was the hardest part for you? I heard a lot of guys have a lot of problems with air and then the CQC portion.

A (61:28)

You know, it's funny. Oh, man. What I have trouble with. Almost froze to death. Like, on towards the end. Like, we. We forgot we're doing, like, winter warfare or we're doing, like, mobility in elevation change. And I remember, like, taking off in. In like, a T shirt. And like, like three hours later, like, a couple of the guys were like, hey, make sure. Make sure Marcus doesn't freeze to death because he's, like, talking gibberish and he can't tie his shoes. Like, I just, I didn't have that experience of being in that environment. Like, I just never did it before. And it was kind of funny because, yeah, I was like, you know, I thought I had it. And whether it, like, got cold, it snowed, and thank God I had some really good people around me that took care of me. That was like the, I would say the only, like, really tough part I had with green team or other than that, I didn't, you know.

B (62:22)

So you were very well prepared.

A (62:23)

I was prepared. You know, I, I wanted to be there, you know, and I, you know, I did. I did real well. Yeah, I did. I did very well. And I, I. That's all I cared about. Like, nothing mattered in the world ever, you know, that that was it. And I tell people, though, I really struggled shooting a, Like a long gun. Like, not a long gun, but, you know, a, you know, M4, which we were going through training with, or trying to think. I think we Had. We may have had four 16s at the time. HK, I know we got them. But you, you get rated on your every day. It's. It's like wide open. It's very transparent, which I love. You know, it's not anymore about how tough you are. It's like how good you are. So you would get ranked in your shooting, your. Your time and stuff. And I remember initially on the the hk, like I think I was. After the first couple days maybe or the first week, I forgot what was. I was like dead last in. In. In my scoring.

B (63:27)

Oh wow.

A (63:27)

The whole class like. And there's some people there like, you know, you lose 50% of the class. But I was first in the pistol. So like the pistol. I don't. For some reason when I came, I never shot a weapon. By the way, I grew up playing ball. I didn't even know how to turn a wrench before I got in the teams. I grew up in Long island, like, you know, lifeguarding, playing ball and whatever else. Wearing tight shirts and you know, gold chains jersey show, right? No. So like I never shot. But for me, a pistol, it was completely natural. I was very good pistol shot. Matter of fact, my first platoon, like, I think, well, I learned. You learned how to shoot pistol and buds. But like how much? Not, not a whole lot. But we go to our CQC block of training and I remember like, I remember beating some of the instructors and like in like Metal Mania and some of the other stuff. Like who the is this new guy? I was the only new guy in my first platoon too, which was. That's a whole nother story. But I remember beating some of the instructors that had been in the teams for like 10 or 12 years. I'm like, hey guys, I don't know this. The pistol thing comes natural to me. But the right. My point to this, the rifle. I really had to work. Like I had a. I had to like grind and do extra hours and you know, starting out last, I ended up. I ended up in the top 10. But it was a struggle and. But all it was is like I didn't really have good. I just need a little bit. I needed someone to watch me, you know, and just watch what I was doing. And it just took. The guy who ran that place just gave me some tips when, you know, when I was like in dead last. And it was just enough for me to. You know, once I learn, I tell people it takes me a long time sometimes to like figure stuff out. But once I learn, I'm A very good learner. Like, I shoot past a lot of people, you know, because, like, I got it now, but getting there sometimes takes me a while. And that's how it was with the rifle, man. It was like, I'm like, what am I doing wrong with this thing? Like, I can't hit shit, you know, but any. You know, and then I w. Up being okay, you know, an average shooter with that.

B (65:43)

But how many guys did you start training with? Roughly 80.

A (65:49)

80. 70. 70 or 80. Yeah. Lose about half.

B (65:53)

You lost. You lost half.

A (65:54)

Great guys, too, you know. Yeah. Just for whatever reasons, you know, unprepared or maybe, you know, safety issues, maybe some personality issues. But it was just great, you know, you think, you know, we were. We were super aggressive, but I feel, like, also very reserved, too. You didn't really have to. There's no reason to have a. An ego, even though there's a lot of ego.

B (66:22)

Oh, yeah.

A (66:23)

But. But. But, you know, what I'm trying to say is. I know what you mean. You don't have to tell anybody that you've been to the. You scored, you know, 30 touchdowns last year. Like, everybody just kind of knows that you. You scored 30 touchdowns. So if you tell people that, like, they think you're an asshole or just a bigger. So I think a lot of people think you got this different personality, but I almost think it's almost the opposite, where it's more. A little bit more reserved.

B (66:50)

So you wrap up training, you make it. You go over to Dev Group. For those of you that don't know, Dev Group is Seal Team 6, which is the most elite Seal team on the planet.

A (67:04)

I'm glad you said it because, you know, I. I still am comfortable saying those words, but, like, I get it. You know, I get it. You know, the first time I. I started using that word more is when I separated from the teams in 2013. My first real, like, business mentor and, you know, friend. He was a Royal Marine investment banker for 30 years, and he was cleaning up my resume. And he goes, marcus. He's like, what the Is a dev group? I'm like, what do you mean? I was like, that's where it worked. He's like, yeah. He goes, if you went to Harvard, would you put that in your resume? I'm like, duh. He goes, okay. He's like, how am I supposed to get you a job when you kind of went to the Harvard of what you did in your military career, but you don't put it on your resume? I'm like, that's a good point. Damian. He's. Okay, well, like, I need to clean this up for you. And just like, okay. I'm like, yeah, that's fine. So that's kind of how I kind of understood it, where here I am trying to compete with everybody in the private sector now, military guys and whatever. And he said, hey, man, you gotta, like, put something out there to try to separate yourself from others. And if you didn't go to Harvard and you've never done this before, like, how am I supposed to get you a job? You know? And that's kind of how that started. So. I get it, you know, it's. It's what I did. And I. I, you know, I don't love talking about it, but I understand, you know, if I don't give, you know, tactics away and I don't talk about friends that have been there or still there, you know, really, I try to. I try to do my best job of not beating my chest and not breaking the code, you know, in a way, but I feel like, you know, if I can talk about what I did in my prior life, you know, that helps others, and what we're doing here is just tell my story, then I, you know, I. I'm good with that.

B (69:21)

There's just humility, you know, but you do. And I. I, you know, the code is, you know, you don't talk about it or you don't, but you do it very tastefully.

A (69:30)

Yeah.

B (69:31)

And, you know, you're definitely not a chess pounder. And I knew if I didn't say that, you sure as hell weren't going to.

A (69:38)

And I. I despised. I despise those types.

B (69:41)

Yeah.

A (69:43)

So. As you do. So.

B (69:44)

Yeah. But. So what did it feel like getting over there finally?

A (69:49)

No, it was. It was good. I was, you know, super excited, ready to work with, you know, good people. Not. Not that I didn't work with good people. I worked with incredible people. Amazing people. It was just different, you know, it was just. It was the next chapter. Right. And very busy. Right from 2006-10. It was just. It was busy and. And it was awesome.

B (70:12)

So you're there for four years.

A (70:13)

Yeah, four years.

B (70:15)

What was your op tempo like? How much were you deploying?

A (70:22)

See what I can say? I mean, we were deploying. I'd say, you know, multiple times throughout the year and, you know, stay overseas anywhere from, you know, three to nine months. And you went out as much as you can physically go out? Yeah, I mean, it was. Yeah, it was. It was so busy, you know, the target Deck. Every. Every night there's someone bad that. That you can go after. You know, we shared a lot of, you know, we shared a lot of targets with, you know, other units, you know, rangers and any unit guys and SF and. And it was just, it was busy and so. But that, that's. That was fun, right? Like, that's 100% why we're there. I remember the first night I went out, I was. I was on point and I called myself a new guy, and it just got out of training and someone threw. Well, what I thought were, you know, someone was engaging someone really rapidly. And what I didn't realize is someone just threw like a nine banger.

C (71:33)

Oh.

A (71:35)

And I'm like, holy. Is this what it's like? It was like, literally the very first night we went out. You know, that was. Again, that was another wake up call. Yeah, like, like, dude, you signed up for this and like, you're getting. You're getting everything you wanted. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, yeah, like I said, it was busy. It was Busy in, in 07, it lost. You know, we were talking about one of my best friends, Josh Harris, and man, he tried to cross a river and just, you know, you could Monday morning quarterback at all day, but shit just went sideways and, you know, we didn't find him for ten, ten and a half hours later. Yeah, son came up and it was terrible, you know, going out like that. Yeah, it was just. He's just. He was a shocker, man. He's, you know, he was. He was like our, like our four horsemen, like our, our crew of four. He was, he was one of them, you know, Damn. And, you know, we say, you know, good things happen from, from, from bad things like that, but we, me and another one of my other best buddies, I won't mention his name just because he's doing some work. We, you know, we brought his body back to his parents, his family really in North Carolina, and his loss connected us to his family. And so, you know, we lost Josh, but we became best friends with his mom, his dad, his brother, who's like my brother, his sister, his twin sister, who he kept away from team guys on purpose. She's just amazing, beautiful, just like energetic and happy. And he was like, yeah, you're coming nowhere near these, these guys. And then, you know, aunts and uncles and like, you know, so we lost Josh, but we became like, we. We grew a new family, and that was pretty awesome. And so we hung out with them for a week in, in North Carolina and just kind of Celebrated his life, you know.

B (74:36)

Yeah. And I had the pleasure to meet him, but, you know, I've heard I just sound like, yeah, real pleasure to.

A (74:45)

Know the dude could do nothing wrong. Even when he did something wrong, like, he did it so cool. You're like, yeah, it doesn't matter. You just. You looked really cool doing it. So, you know, it was really cool. He was. I just love this story because we didn't know a whole lot about his history prior. Just like a lot of guys, you know, these guys come from all different walks of life. He was an art major and he has, he had his, his masters in architecture and went over to Prague and I just thought it was fascinating. And we never saw really any of his work, really, until after he passed. And I can't even tell you the amount of insane work that he has all over. It's incredible. He was so creative. So creative. And what was it, like, paintings or everything? Paintings, sculptures. He did it all.

B (75:37)

Like, no shit.

A (75:38)

Really talented, super talented. I'm sure that's why we were, we were friends. Because you're like, I really like this guy because he give a shit about conforming to, you know, jeans, sandals, black T shirt, the G Shock watch. Yeah. You know what I mean? Right? And so he just had a way about him when you, when you, when you went in his room at his house, like, he was a Renaissance man. So he had like, Catch her in the Rye and, you know, To Kill a Mockingbird and oh, gosh, what are all the others? Lonesome Dove and like, he just had, he had all the classics in his room and like, he was just that, you know, type of individual. I thought it was just so cool.

B (76:29)

Sounds like a deep thinker.

A (76:31)

Total deep thinker. Yeah. Until he, you know, until you're walking down the hallway with your water bottle and you walk by you and you would smack it out of your hand just because.

B (76:44)

So when you got over to dev group, what would you say some of the major differences are between, you know, dev group and, you know, the rest of the seal teams?

A (76:54)

Yeah, you know, one experience. So, you know, everyone over there is older, right. You can't go over there unless you've proven yourself in the teams. And so, you know, you got. You have to be good in the teams, but you're young, and then if you prove yourself there, you get to go over there and you get to learn from guys that have been around for 10 or 15 or 20 years. And so those are the guys with like that who looked like they were 6 foot 4 and 250 pounds with beards and muscles. Right. You know, because they're older and mature and. And the mission was a little bit more focused and so got really good. Really, really good at a few things. You know, you can shoot every day. Yeah, like, I remember. I remember making a. Making a stink when we were at the teams that I didn't even see my. I didn't even see my weapons for, like over six months. Didn't even touch him, you know, I don't know. I mean, how do you become a good shot if you don't? Yeah. You know, so you got, I mean, you know, yeah, you got the ranges. Use them. You know, you can shoot every day. Shoot all different types of guns. You know, nobody told you what to do. Is more kind of a big boy program. You want to take out MP7 one night, go ahead. You want to take out, you know, fucking mark 12, go ahead. 416, 417, doesn't matter. You know, it's like, it's up to you what you think you needed that night. So that, that, that was, you know, that was a big difference. You know, get treated like an adult until you didn't act like an adult, and then you got treated like a kid again.

B (78:43)

Yeah.

A (78:45)

And, you know, more resources, more money, and so, you know, better, I guess, access to training if you needed it.

B (78:58)

You guys weren't competing. When you get over there and you get in country, unemployment, you're not competing for. Are you still competing for air assets and drones?

A (79:07)

And I think you're always competing, but I think it depends. I mean, things change all the time. When I worked there, like, we seem to have everything we needed. Right. We always had AC1 dirty gunship, always had some fast movers that we could. We can call, you know, always had a good supporting element, whether, like, you know, Ranger blocking positions that, you know, were just, you know, that you needed. Yeah, that kind of, you know, protected our backs when we did stuff. And so, yeah, I. But. But I still think, you know, I think you always had to compete. I don't know if I saw it in my level, but probably as you go up, some of the leadership definitely were probably in the scrum fighting for, you know, work and, you know, but again, times are different. So if you had. If we were. If we had an AO that we were working for a certain amount of time, like, that was it. That was our ao. We can go out whenever we want, we can do whatever we want. Maybe if we went to another ao, we'd have to deconflict with that battle space owner, whoever that was.

B (80:19)

Yeah.

A (80:20)

You know, we used to do stuff in Iraq, and we'd have to ask the marines for permission to come into their area that they just. They've just been building relationship for like the last year. And then we'd come in and just fuck it all up by, you know, blowing every car up, every house, killing a bunch of people, and then saying, hey, you guys, deal with it. We're out. We're going to go hit the next target in somebody else's ao, you know, but again, like, there's a specific job and specific mission that we did, and we did that. And so, like, we were allowed to do that because we were going after certain really bad, you know, cell leaders.

B (81:02)

Yeah.

A (81:03)

And so there was no. There's no pussyfooting around that stuff, right. Yeah. And so then we'd say, you know, we'd say sorry and pay some money and. And move on.

B (81:16)

So you spent what sounds like about four years over.

A (81:18)

Four years there? Um, yeah, four years there. And, you know, I'd say by, you know, when. When Josh passed and we. We lost, you know, two other really fucking amazing individuals on that deployment. You know, just the tide started turning at that time. It just. I'd say personally, you know, it just. I think I. I saw my first psychologist when I got back from that deployment. I was just like, I needed somebody to talk to, like, really talk to. Say, dude, the. Is going on. Like, I'm. I'm not. Like, I used to be, like, I used to be Superman and. And courageous and. And there's like, something going on. You know, I'm. I'm depressed. I'm. I'm not. This is not the same. Like, it used to be. Like, this used to be not a job, and now it's becoming a job.

B (82:15)

How long were you there before maybe you started feeling just like, probably.

A (82:22)

End of third year, maybe.

B (82:26)

That's pretty fast.

A (82:27)

It was quick. I mean, I envy, you know, I envy the guys that are still there. You know, my roommate, My bud's roommate's still there, best friend of mine. You know, I envy that guys can keep going. I love that, you know, I joke with people. I was like, yeah, you know, I quit. 13 years. Yeah. But, you know, I don't know, man. My body was not good. Back is all up, and it was just time. Like, I was not my kids. The last two deployments, when the tide started turning a little bit, they were hysterical crying when I got out of the car to leave, like, bawling and so is Amber, you know, And I just thought I said, you know, I. I don't. I. I'm not sure I can do this much more. Like, it's weighing. It's like, really started weighing on me, like, really bad mentally, you know, that my kids are now being affected too, and they know what I'm doing. Before they didn't. They were too young, but that, you know, starting to get affected by me deploying.

B (83:40)

Yeah.

A (83:41)

So, you know, couple that. Couple, you know, the job, which I loved, of course. And I was just, like, trying to figure out, like, what's going on? What's next. Do I do this forever? And trying to think of, like, what the real turning point was. Well, the CEO asked me to go to go to ocs.

B (84:10)

Oh.

A (84:11)

And I was just like, not in a good place. It was like, I think that seventh combat deployment, and I was just. Or before that was B6. And then I thought, I don't know, is that a good idea? Is it not a good idea? I think if I stay in. Of course it's a great idea. But, you know, I'm not. I don't know what's going on right now. So I decided to go to ocs.

B (84:37)

OCS is Officer Candidate School, which. So you're going to become an officer.

A (84:42)

Right. And again, I just. I didn't know, you know, I didn't know what was going on at that time. I was just, like. I was a bit lost, really starting to get lost. And I went. And I remember. I remember calling my best friend up, you know, in the teams, and saying, hey, like, I can't go. Like, I can't get on this flight. Like, I'm. I'm not. I'm not in a good place. You know, we just got. I just got off our last deployment. And he's like, you gotta go. I said, yeah. But I said, man, I'm like, I'm not good. You know, Like, I. It's not gonna. It's not gonna be good. Like, I'm not good. And I don't. I'm not sure if you understood that. And I don't know if I understood it, but. So, funny story. So I show up, of course, got all these ribbons and metals and all this crazy. And you show up to OCS with, like, kids out of college. Like, it's the stupidest thing for team guys to go, to be in the same place as them. Like that. That's dumb. But there is a way around that. I found out afterwards. So I show up, you know, Like, I don't want to be there. I had fucking pounding headaches at that time. So, like, really bad headaches. And you couldn't. You couldn't have anything. It was like going to boot camp. So, like, I couldn't just go take ibuprofen, because the only thing that works for my headaches is 800 milligram ibuprofen. Not 200, not 400. 800, not Tylenol. Like, I have to take at minimum 800. Couldn't get that right. So here I am now. It's like, my first day. I'm. I have a pounding migraine. Start getting migraine. I started getting migraines around that time, right before that. And I'm like, hey, I can't function right now. Like, I'm like, my head is screaming. And they're like, well, you know, you put in a. Here, fill this out. We'll get you some. We'll get you something. Like, next four to six hours. I'm like, oh, gosh. Okay. So then we go in our rooms. We get our rooms, whatever. And they make us sit on the floor. Not in a chair, on the floor, and start reading the. Was it the 11 general orders of the century Is that we had Serious. Yeah. And so first off, like, my lower back is, like, just crushed. And, like, I'm trying to sit on the floor. I'm like, hey, can I, like, get a. Can I sit in a chair or can I lean up against the wall? Like, no. You know, type of thing. So here I am. I'm on the floor. I got fucking migraine headache. My back is killing me. I cannot sit still. Can't read these fucking general orders of century. And I remember literally taking the book, flinging it across the room. I'm like, okay, who's in charge here? Everyone's looking at me like, who the fuck is this guy?

C (87:46)

Like, shh.

A (87:47)

Like, no, I need to speak to who's in charge. Some lieutenant, whatever. And once I'm like, yeah. So I was like, I'm gonna go back to the last command I was at and like, yeah, we should talk about this. So we start talking, and he goes, you know, most people, we have to keep him here for, like, 12 to 14 weeks. I'm like, yeah, but I was like, I don't need to do that. Like, I need to. Like, that's. Do that for, like, the college kid who is just entering the military. Like, I've been in for 10 years. I've been. I've had seven combat deployments. Like, I don't need to be here. Like, I just need. I need to go somewhere. So within two days, they got me out of there, sent me back. And I remember, you know, sitting down Amber when I got back to Virginia beach and going, like. Like, I need. Like, I need a break, you know, Like, I'm not. I'm not doing well. And she's like, well, let's. Yeah, let's go figure something out. I'm like, why don't we go out to California, become an instructor? You know, we'll figure out what's up, we'll try to reconnect, be good for the kids. And that's what kind of started me, you know, got away from operating and I went out and I was a first phase instructor for a year, which I didn't. I didn't love. I was lost there.

B (89:00)

Well, before we go into that, just going, going back. You say you joke around about quitting, but, you know, I mean, that takes a lot of courage to say, hey, man, I'm not good. I don't want to go. You know what I mean? And, you know, and so I just want to say, you know, it's not quitting, dude. That's just.

A (89:20)

Yeah. No limit.

B (89:22)

And. And I think what happens with a lot of guys is, you know, a lot of people do hit their limit, but they don't. They don't. They can't say it. They can't say, I've had enough, I need a break.

A (89:32)

And.

B (89:33)

Yeah, and that leads, you know, I mean, you know where that leads, and I know where that leads, and, and, and that sucks, you know.

A (89:41)

Yeah. That's why I say I, you know, I envy the guys that don't need a break or maybe they do, and. And they're just, you know, but, you know, I wish I could have just kept grinding it out with no, no issues, you know.

B (89:54)

Yeah.

A (89:55)

But that wasn't me. That's not what, you know, my mind and body decided, I guess if you want to call it that. So. But no, I. I appreciate that.

B (90:08)

So you move over, you go to San Diego, you become a first phase instructor to try to get your mind right. And that sounds like that is kind of where things really started.

A (90:19)

Getting things started, things right right away went sideways. I didn't, I didn't mix well. I don't say I didn't mix well with the first phase instructors, but I was just angry. Like, I was pissed off. Why am I here? Should be back on the east coast with my buddies, still be operating, you know, finally someone was like, dude, you need to go go see the west coast, like dive medical officer. You know, you should. You're having like some. These, like these symptoms that, you know, you should just go see him. So I went to see him. I think he put me on. If I remember right, he put me on the first antidepressant. And. And I started seeing him once a week. And um, just. He's like, hey, he's like, what you're experiencing is. He goes, not that it's normal, but he's like. He goes, I'm starting to see this a little bit more than I'd like to.

B (91:13)

What year is this?

A (91:14)

This is 2010. 11. 2010, maybe 11. 2011. But he. He just said that everything I was telling him is exactly what he's experiencing the last, he said couple months. So this was like right when I think guys started, you know, it was very busy from say 04 to 10 or 05 to 10. And so he started seeing this wave of guys come to him for the same exact issues. Right. Whatever they were. Right now we're finding out what they are. But. And I don't think he knew. He just called it seal syndrome, which is. Which is true because they, you know, they did that, published a study called operator syndrome. So like he was. He was onto something. Just didn't or didn't have it. Yeah, but that's when all this start started happening, you know. And I got sent to Nico Clinic. It's the brain center that's connected to Bethesda. Do you know it at all or.

B (92:31)

Yeah, I've not been there, but I've heard about it.

A (92:34)

Okay. And bear with me. So I'm going to try to remember all this. Amber's going to do a much better job of the timelines. But, you know, there you're hoping to get better, but really they're just doing a lot of testing and it was cool because they found out like, you know, I had arthritis, both my hips and like my shoulders were torn and you know, a bunch of other. Bunch of other things found out had some. Some I don't know what you call them. Like, I don't call it dead spots on the brain, but like some. Some minor. Like TBIs. Yeah. Sub concussion blows. Right. Parts of the brain that didn't like blood flow and things like that. So I got put on some more drugs there. I think maybe Wellbutrin. I think something for nightmares. Have really bad nightmares. Like a lot of killing nightmares. So very like violent, you know, knife and guns and you know, the magazine Pops out and, like, weapon breaks and, like, forget my combat shoes, and you're fighting, like, you know, 30 guys hand to hand. Like, that was a very common dream I had. Often. It was shitty. And Amber, you know, she said I used to wake up, like. Just like. Like this loud, like, whimpering. And, you know, she said it was just odd. So I got put on. It was like a ni. Like, nightmare drug. I have it written down somewhere. I don't know the name of it, so that. With some SSRIs, antidepressants, I think. I'm not sure if it was there. I think I got put on a focus medication because I was having trouble just, like, focusing on anything. Like. Like, yeah, it was Provigil Individual, and then Ambien, of course, to go to sleep. So it just, like, started. I started that whole.

B (94:31)

She just listed off, like, five or six pills just like that.

A (94:34)

Yeah, that was, like. That was the sop. That was a concoction of drugs. And so I stayed on those for seven years. And, yeah, I just. It just. It just declined after that, you know, it. I went from there over to sqt, and I was great.

C (94:59)

Got.

A (95:00)

Got to work with some really close friends there, and, you know, I thought I was fine, but, you know, I wasn't. I was just mentally, like, just. I was checked out.

B (95:12)

Well, what kind of stuff were you seeing other than, you know, other than nightmares? Like, what was the family like?

A (95:17)

Well, then I was just having a horrible time, you know, with my family, and here I is. Here is here. Here I was, you know, trying to make time for them. But, I mean, it was a nightmare. I was, like, drinking much heavier than I ever was. I mean, hard.

B (95:36)

How many bottles a night?

A (95:39)

I mean, I probably go through at least half a bottle a night always, you know, bourbon, brown. Brown water. But it didn't matter. I drink anything, but really just didn't have a connection with the kids. Didn't have a connection, you know, with Amber. Just a lot of fighting. Had a friend come over once, late night. I had. I got real drunk and had, like, had my gun out. And, you know, I was just, like, ranting about just stupid stuff, you know, stuff that happened in the past. And, you know, he was really concerned because, like, I was drunk and it was loaded and.

B (96:27)

Ambien.

A (96:29)

Yeah. I mean, Amy always take Ambien and then. And then start drinking. That was like. And, you know, that wasn't good, of course, you know, so it just. Just too many things that were just happening that were just not. It's not Normal.

B (96:47)

Was it affecting. Would you say it was affecting your work performance too?

A (96:54)

Yeah, I mean, I feel like I was a ghost at work. You know, I didn't. I mean, I sort of. I mean, I ran the cell, but, like, the guys ran the cell, you know. You know, I was trying. You know, I decided to go to school at that time, too. I was like, why not? I mean, it's just like, just one thing after the other. I would just constantly, like. Like just put shit in the way that.

B (97:22)

Yeah.

A (97:22)

Didn't make sense at the time. You know how we just like, work on you for a while. Yeah. You know. You know, I got through that, but, like, I look back and like, I really didn't get through it. Like, barely got through it, I think, you know, it was. It was just. It was just time to leave, you know, it was time to leave. And I tried to, you know, I was. I went in to the doctor to separate. And the psychologist, he said, hey, man. He's like, I can't let you leave like this. I'm like, what are you talking about? He said, like, you got a lot of going on right now. Like, you're. Your medical package is huge. Like, your. My medical records were big. You know, I had a. I was on a bunch of medications. It was clearly not in a good place. You know, he could tell I was like, running, basically, like just running. I. Trying to run, hide. And he's like, I'm not letting you get out. He's like, I want. I want to. You know, I want to look at this for a little while. I was like, okay. So I stayed in for probably an extra eight months. And what he did at that time was he pushed for me to get med board because he said, like, you're. You're going to be really bad when you leave. Like, you're going to have none of this support. Yeah. And like, you're going to spiral. And so he got me med. He got me. He got. Basically got like my. My medical stuff together, was able to get me med boarded and I got medically. Actually medically retired, which, you know, at the time I didn't give a. Honestly, like, I was trying to get out as fast as I could. Yeah, I literally tried. I was like, no, I don't want to do that. Like, that doesn't make any sense. Like, I'm. I'm good. You know, Now I look back, like, holy. You know what if I just would have, like, taken off without, you know, any of that. Yeah.

B (99:24)

So he really hooked you up, dude.

A (99:27)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's good sometimes. You should listen to doctors. Yeah, yeah. So I got out 2013, was medically retired, went to work up in LA, and, you know, it just kept. Just from there, you know, from. You know, the last part of the years in the teams just kind of just kept. Nothing was good. You know, sleeping was terrible. Nightmare stayed.

B (99:58)

Yeah.

A (99:59)

Headaches were bad.

B (100:02)

Just real quick, before. Before we move on to.

A (100:05)

Yeah, yeah.

B (100:06)

Your civilian life, why did you move over to skt? I've heard on. I heard you talking to Marcus Luttrell and Melanie Luttrell that maybe there was an incident with a student.

A (100:20)

Oh, yeah.

B (100:21)

Why you moved.

A (100:22)

Yeah, no, it's great. Great point. Do you want to hear the incident? You want to just hear why?

B (100:26)

Yeah, I want to hear the incident.

A (100:28)

Yeah, the first. You know, first, I. I didn't want to be there first off. Like I said, I didn't know what I wanted to do. So I was already. I was. I was already angry. I was super angry. And there was. There was an evolution, and I was out on the beach. I think it was the. I might have been running the evolution, like, the evolution chief or safety officer or something, and kept watching the student, you know, But I was like, really? It was just, like, I was just locked on to this person. Like, it didn't matter. And his name was Harris. You know, he had the name tag. And I just kept watching him, and he was, like, sandbagging everything, and it was just. He was just turning up the beach, and guys were running out of the water all, like, slow, whatever, and he was, like, one of the slower ones, and I just kind of, like, walked past the instructors, and I grabbed him, and I literally lifted him up off his feet and slammed him onto the hard sand as hard as I could. And I put my knee in his chest. Like, I was gonna, like, you know, almost like a. You know, like, knee and chest and. And ground to pound. And I just started screaming at him. Like, I grabbed his collar, and I was just screaming at him, like, cursing at him. I don't even know what I said, but it was just like, you know, like, spit was coming out of my mouth, you know, And I was talking about how he can. How he would. He's degrading the Harris name. Yeah. Yeah, that was. That was tough. Yeah. And I remember some of the instructors. And then one of the gss or one of the. I think it was a GS, you know, one of my good friends was like, kind of grabbed me. It's like, hey, man, like, the, like, we were right in front of the flagpole, you know, anybody could have been watching. And here I am slamming student and then just getting really violent. You know, I don't remember ever seeing that kid again, but it was not like that shit's not supposed to happen.

B (102:36)

Yeah.

A (102:36)

You know, and it's happened. I think we've all seen it, but again, everybody we've seen it from, like, those individuals were not right and I just wasn't right.

B (102:45)

Yeah.

A (102:45)

You know, I just wasn't. Obviously I wasn't right. So I just. I didn't like being there. I didn't like being like. Like a drill sergeant, in a way. I wanted to teach tactics. I thought I was better teaching tactics coming from where I came from. And so finally they got me over to. To. To sqt and I ran the CQC for two years. And that was. Like, I said, it was great. I got to be around some good guys that I really liked that I worked with over at Dev Group, teach some tactics. But, yeah, that's the. I don't think the beach incident is why I went over. You know, looking back, maybe I was so blinded that that's why I got. Maybe I got sent over there. Yeah. I don't know. Could be.

B (103:34)

Maybe a good possibility, you know.

A (103:36)

Yeah, it could be. Could very well be.

B (103:40)

Yeah. So, you know, one other thing I want to cover that we just kind of breezed over because is, you know, your job is a breacher.

A (103:50)

Yeah.

B (103:51)

And. And the reason I want to cover that a little bit more extensively is because the amount of explosions that you've been, that you've been. That you've initiated, I'm sure plays a tremendous part in. In your downward spiral and, and getting into the. The alternative medicine and that kind of stuff. So, you know, you said, you know, you were a breacher at 10 and you guys were going out all the time. You did one day, it sounded like, but then when you went over to development group, you know, it got a lot busy. Yeah, I was training.

A (104:32)

Yeah.

B (104:33)

So, you know, like. And I know you. You have no idea, but if you had an estimate, you know, how many explosives did you do you think you may have detonated?

A (104:46)

I'd say we're talking thousands. Yeah, well, I'd say several hundred to a thousand. Yeah. You know, I'm trying to be conservative just because of the multiple trips, the training trips, you know, being an RSO range safety officer. So then, you know, being the safety officer for guys that are, you know, blowing breaching charges and blowing them myself. It was definitely a lot. Yeah, definitely a lot. Because we're learning right, Sub concussive blows are, are actually worse than, you know, concussions, full on concussions. So, you know, we've, I think we've all had a lot of those. And again I always tell people, you never know who it's going to happen to. Some people can.

B (105:31)

What did you just say? What's worse than a concussion?

A (105:34)

Sub concussive blows. I did not know that. Yeah. And again, I hope I'm getting this right, but I'm almost positive that the sub concussive, the repeated sub concussive blows is what are causing what is going on right now with special operations community and why guys are having this quote unquote operator syndrome. What I obviously was experiencing is the constant, you know, the, the, the, you know, charge goes off, blast wave goes through you. Charge goes off, blast wave goes through you. Minor sub concussion blows. Maybe not, you're not fully knocked out, but your bell is wrong or you, you know, you eat that charge, you feel it. Just like in football when you get your, your bell rung, those are, there's an impact. These are, you know, blast. Yeah. A little bit different, but, but similar. What they're, you know, what the end result is at the end, at the end game, which you're hoping not to get, which is CTE. Right. But all these mild TBIs are, you know, they're adding up. You know, body keeps score. I think there's a book called the Body Keeps Score.

B (106:52)

So walk us through like a standard hit on a target. As a breacher. How close are you? What are you using?

A (106:59)

Sure, sure, sure. So standard target, say I was carrying, you know, multiple breaching charges from you know, tiny little, little explosives that could just blow a small lock to, you know, heavy, you know, I'd say, you know, heavy, heavy demolition charges that, you know, can blow a, a reinforced, you know, steel like door on a compound and blow the thing and like cut it in half.

B (107:38)

Well, how much or is it C4?

A (107:43)

See, I don't know if I want to get into the the.

B (107:46)

Or maybe a haversack.

A (107:50)

Haversack. You're gonna go through a wall.

B (107:52)

Yeah.

A (107:52)

So, you know, if we blew, if we blew a haversack, we're you know, blown through a wall. So I, I wish I had the numbers. If I remember the pounds, you know, poundage. But you know, say we throw, say we blew below a pound charge or half a pound on some of these door, on some of these like, you know, big steel gates. Yeah, we Were doing that every night.

B (108:14)

Yeah.

A (108:14)

And then again, if I go back to training, we may be doing that all week, like hundreds of times over. Yeah, right. And in training, we'd always make sure we got the standoff that we needed. There's minimum safe distance in combat. We didn't. There was no, There was no range safety officer.

B (108:38)

Yeah.

A (108:38)

You know, like, you are breacher. Like, you're in charge of making sure everybody gets back, everybody's out of the way. Nobody's looking at the charge. If you look at the charge, you could eat, you know, something bolt, a nut, something that'll basically go through you. But really all we cared about is not seeing the charge. So as long as we could not see it, like we felt like a lot of times we were good. So we would be well inside, mean safe distance as long as we're out of the blast zone.

B (109:07)

Yeah.

A (109:07)

Not getting hit with a piece of frag. So a lot of times we were eating that minimum safe distance. We. We were. We were well inside that.

B (109:15)

Well, like, what would a minimum safe distance be?

A (109:17)

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

B (109:47)

Yeah. Right. So we won't quote you on the minimum six.

A (109:51)

Right. Yeah, I don't, I don't have. I don't know the numbers. Like I said, I've been. I've been out of the game for a while, but, yeah, know, we knew them at the time. I knew them at the time, of course. And you could just see what your standoff is. But many times we were within. Excuse me, inside. That means safe distance. So that blast wave, it is really you up. It is. It is jacking you up. And there's sometimes. I've had buddies tell me that. Hey, man, you remember that charge you set off? Remember, you know, multiple times that where we were in an enclosed area. So like corners and walls. And now that concussive blow.

B (110:25)

Yeah.

A (110:25)

Is just exasperated example. Two times, three times, who knows? Right?

B (110:31)

Yeah.

A (110:33)

I mean, shattered your Teeth, literally, like, it's crazy, like, headaches. And, I mean, I did a thing recently. We shot, like, maybe two, three years ago. I was doing, like a. Watching some guys shoot a 50 cal for, like, three hours. Dude. I had such a pounding headache, like, you know, at the end, I said, well, this is obviously why I'm not doing this anymore, you know, but. Yeah, I mean, like I said, as a breacher, you're taking explosive. You're putting in a spot to make entryway into somewhere, and that when that thing goes off, it is. It is rocking your world. It is going right through your brain.

B (111:12)

Yeah.

A (111:13)

And it's why we're having problems with our endocrine system, why our hormone, you know, why our Testosterone is down below 300 now when we get back from deployment, why guys can't sleep, why guys are gaining weight, why guys are drinking so hard, why they're depressed, why they have anxiety. You know, doctors want to throw. You know, the military wants to throw this PTSD diagnosis. But, like, I don't even know what PTSD is, you know, if it's depression, anxiety. Okay, yeah, I had ptsd. But it's. It's. It's a brain thing. This is. This is definitely a brain thing.

B (111:54)

We.

A (111:55)

We. We. Me, You. Maybe. Maybe you're not feeling it. We have traumatic brain injury, mild traumatic brain injury that may not be. That may not be seen by other people, but it's affecting us on a regular basis. Yeah. You know, and some days we feel good, and some days we don't. But again, looking back at the history of events, it's obvious what happened. Like, I most likely started seeing some of those things early, you know, and then it just slowly, slowly declined. Maybe took, you know, maybe it took a while.

B (112:30)

And I just want to go through that because I want, you know, I just want people to be able to visualize exactly how close you are, especially as a breacher. He's done, you know, give or take a thousand. You know what I mean?

A (112:46)

Yeah, it's. And again, I, you know, I commend the ones that I did a thousand. What about the guys that are in there for 25 or 30 years that have done 2000, 3000? Yeah.

B (113:00)

What.

A (113:00)

What did our brains look like? Or what are they. What are they going to look like? How fast are they going to decline? You know, explosives happen. Like, you know, when you see it, like, it's done, that's how fast they are. Right. It's just like, boom. And you see the concussion, you see the smoke, you know, you you eat that whole energy.

B (113:20)

Yeah. I mean, just for example, like, you know, from my own personal experience, for those of you that have never. Have never detonated a bomb or, you know.

A (113:30)

Which is awesome, by the way.

C (113:31)

Yeah.

B (113:32)

Funny, right? But you can feel like. Like a lot of times you'll feel like your sinuses almost feel like they're clearing out your ears. If they're clogged, they feel like they've just been drained. Like.

A (113:44)

Yeah. Our master breacher. I felt, you know, terrible for he again. He's that guy who had two or three thousand charges and we do a trip and he'd. He'd bleed from the nose and the mouth and cough a blood, and I'm like, I don't think that's good. Yeah. You know, and again, I'm telling you, like, I'm. Right now, what I'm doing is I'm seeing the bag of gold and I'm telling you it's heavy and I don't want to carry it instead of saying, there's a lot of money there and we're going to be rich. Right. Like, I loved doing everything I did. Like, don't get me wrong, every. You know, but there was just some, you know, I loved all of it. But there was a price. You know, there's a price that NFL players, you know, and they stop playing at 35 if they're lucky enough to. To get to 35. Like, they're really. They're jacked up. You know, they're jacked up, but they'll never say they wish they never did that.

B (114:39)

Yeah.

C (114:40)

Right.

B (114:42)

Well, on that note, let's take a break and when we come back, we'll talk about revenue transition.

A (114:50)

Yeah.

B (114:51)

Where did you work? Was it Goldman Sachs or Morgan?

A (114:53)

I started out at Merrill lynch, then I got hired by Fortress Investment Group. And then.

B (115:02)

I'm sure that was interesting, but.

A (115:06)

In Beverly Hills. Are you kidding me?

B (115:09)

But we'll talk about that after the break it. All right, man. We're back from the break.

A (115:56)

And.

B (115:58)

You'Re in the finance industry.

A (116:01)

Yes. So we. So I was separated in 2013. San Diego. We sold our house, we moved up to Calabasas outside of la, and I went to work for Merrill lynch on a pretty substantial private bank team. So I started commuting from, you know, Calabasas to downtown Beverly Hills every day, which is probably, I don't know, 30 to 40 minutes in the morning, 5am because you have to be there before the market opens on the East Coast.

B (116:35)

What were you doing? Were you like stockbroker?

A (116:37)

No. Well, so that industry used to be stockbrokers, and all the good stockbrokers who had good clients, they transitioned into, like, a financial advisory role. So that stockbroker wind up taking their book of business and just managing those individuals from a financial advisory perspective. Meaning they'd help them. They'd still, you know, brokerage. They made their money off of making trades, but the. The fees for trades went, you know, now it's at zero.

B (117:11)

Yeah.

A (117:11)

And so that industry went away. And so, like I said, the good ones wind up becoming financial advisors, private bankers. You know, you give me $10 million and I manage your life, Right. I manage all your money. I put them in funds, I trade them if we need to. We help you with insurance, estate planning. You want to buy things, you want to set up trust for your kids. Like, that's, That's. That's what I did.

B (117:37)

So like a cfp.

A (117:40)

CFP was part of the team. So the cfp, they were the portfolio manager. So they actually. They actually did the trades. They knew when to do the trades. They. They did the. They did the difficult work. My job, they call it rainmaker, I go out and find the money. Oh, so it was my job to go out. And so you're a networker. Yes.

B (118:03)

So you went from.

A (118:06)

Blowing doors in to. To drinking martinis at the Beverly Wilshire and trying to, you know, trying to convince people that they had to move, you know, their $100 million over to our private bank team.

B (118:18)

How the hell do you go from kicking doors in and shooting bad guys to drinking martinis in Beverly Hills at the tip of the spear of the financial sector?

A (118:30)

Yeah. It's probably why I'm not doing it anymore. No, I mean, I got, you know, I got lucky enough to. To get hired onto a good team through, you know, through. Through my network. You know, I wish I had a little bit more mentorship there. I think they expected me to, you know, oh, you're a Navy seal. You can. You can just go figure this out. Yeah. And I did to a point. If I was doing that job now, like, life would be easy. What? I know. But I didn't know anything when I got out. Right. And so it was very difficult. I mean, I didn't understand that. I really had a grind at that probably for a good three years, maybe three to five, to like, really kind of turn the engine on. And, you know, after eight months, I was just pulling my hair out and. But, you know, I did set up. I set up a few very good meetings. One in particular that they were looking to. To bring in about $180 million from. From my. From my network, my connections. And the team couldn't close it. But that's what I was there to do. I was there to open doors. And it's funny, a mentor of mine now, who I work with still says, marcus, you're a breacher. Even in the private sector, you will always be a breacher, unless you want to do something else. But he's like, you're. That's what you're really good at. You're really good at networking. You're really good at building relationships with people. You're very transparent. You're honest, and that's why people like you. You're a breacher. You open doors. Right. You should continue to open doors in the private sector for that. So I would open the door and expect, you know, the team behind me to come in and. And finish it.

B (120:17)

Yeah.

A (120:18)

And so that was. That was kind of the job. But I got frustrated, like I said. I started drinking, like, super heavy. I was working ridiculous hours. You know, I wasn't seeing the kids, you know, activities. I wasn't really hanging out with Amber. My time's off. I'd go surfing in Malibu. I mean, this sounds amazing, right? But, like, it wasn't. Like, I was. Life was shitty, right? Like, I was depressed. You know, I was anxious that I wasn't going to succeed. And, you know, I was getting frustrated. I got a phone call from a friend, another friend, business mentor, who asked me to build a startup with him on the East Coast. And they had raised money that time at Fortress Investment Group. So I got hired into Fortress Investment Group as a vice president, got paid really well, and we built a couple of portfolio companies. And I did that for a couple of years, and that was a little bit better. Granted, the things we were doing at the time was a little bit early, so, like, didn't hit the market yet. So we were. It's one of those things that we just had to. We just had to keep grinding every day, keep the lights on, and eventually, you know, it would stick. But it just got a little, you know, I was commuting. I was doing the. The Red Eye from LAX to Raleigh, Durham.

B (121:43)

Oh, wow.

A (121:43)

Like, pretty regularly, you know, weekly or monthly. And it was getting tiring. And again, you know, I wasn't getting any better, you know, from the past. And so.

B (121:57)

Well, not to stereotype.

A (121:59)

Yeah.

B (121:59)

But generally, when team guys leave the teams, the social skills are not, you know, quite up to par.

A (122:07)

Right.

B (122:07)

What people are used To. And so I just find it really. No, it took interesting.

A (122:11)

It took a while. It took a while. It definitely took a while. I think I had a natural knack for. You know, someone said, marcus, you don't. Yeah, it'd be great to go take some sales classes, but people need sales classes when they don't have that kind of X factor, that it factor. And like, you don't need the sales classes. Like, you can just be you and you'll naturally sell whatever it is. But again, I didn't give things enough time to like, matriculate to, like, you know, and I'm learning that now. Like, you have to just got to put in your time. I feel like I was digging a lot of shallow holes, not just digging one really deep and just keep going and keep going and keep going. And eventually, you know, it catches on. And so the frustration was just through the roof. I'm like three years out now, 2016, you know, drinking heavily, getting behind the wheel, not giving a. About anything, not really having any friends that I hung out with. Amber started me at that time, started looking at some brain clinics because, like, I was just really, like, struggling with everything.

B (123:20)

Like, yeah, I read your article on Time magazine, which was really good, by the way, and we'll link it below in the description for everybody to check out. But in there it was saying that you. It sounds like you weren't even in the moment present.

A (123:39)

Oh, gosh, no. I was every. I was everywhere else.

B (123:41)

Getting lost, Taking your daughter to volleyball.

A (123:46)

Drinking, forgetting to pick up kids from activities. Friends would have to pick them up. I'd be too drunk. Yeah, all of it. Doing simple tasks at the house, you know, putting lights on the trees or simple like problem solving. We just couldn't. Couldn't figure it out. Get super frustrated, throw. Be impulsive. You know, we. We wind up moving to Dallas for a number of reasons. And it didn't get any better. No, I, you know, I freaking, like, choked out the bartender at the country club we belong to in. In Dallas and got on top of him and was like slapping him like, in the middle of, like this. You know, it just. Just real stuff that, you know, most private sector folks look at you like, what the is wrong with this person? Right? But we. To me, I thought that was just normal. Yeah.

B (124:42)

You know, well, it is normal to.

A (124:45)

Right.

B (124:46)

To us. Right?

A (124:48)

And man, I just, I. I just wasn't. I just wasn't functioning, you know, I just wasn't doing it. And the kids started getting real distant from me because I was Just being, you know, I was being. Like you said, I wasn't present. I was angry. Nothing was right. Nothing anybody can do was good enough. You know, I was. Amber and I were just not good. Like, we were talking about before, you know, the badgering, the back and forth, condescending conversations. You know, we never did anything for ourselves. Yeah, it was. Man. It was a. It was a struggle. And. And again, the lack of any type of network of. Of people I wanted to hang out with, and some of the ones that I did hang out with was, you know, shallow. Yeah, it was shallow. So I think it was. It was 15 or 16. It was 15. He was 14. That started going to, like, other brain clinics. So I went to the one, and I went to a second one in Dallas and went to a third one in Southern California. Then I went back there. I was just trying to get answers. Like, what. You know, what's going on? Like, am I supposed to live like this for rest of my life? You know? And I really wasn't getting any answers. I was just getting, like, they would change my meds. Like, oh, you're on bupropion now. Let's put you on Lexapro or, you know, Cymbalta, or, you know, you're on Provigil. Let's put you on new vigil, you know, and, oh, you're taking 5 milligrams of Adderall. Let's put you to 10. And, you know, ambient's not working. Let's do the other one. And like. Yeah, it was never, like, let's just take you off this and figure out what's wrong. Let's just keep putting band aids on everything and try to figure out, I don't know, just to get you normal. I don't even know what that means. Yeah, right.

C (126:41)

What?

B (126:42)

I never went to a brain clinic. I. I had signed up for several of them, and then I. And then I always.

A (126:48)

Yeah, just.

B (126:49)

I don't want to know because there is no cure.

A (126:53)

Yeah. No, that's the scary part is when they tell you, like, you know, by the way, you know, here's. Here's a volume of your brain. And, like, see this part over here? Over here? Like, it's not, you know, it's not working like it's supposed to. And these are. You got all these. You got all the biomarkers for major depressive disorder, alcoholism, bipolar 2. Got diagnosed with, you know, just. It was scary. Scary. Yeah, because, like, then you start. You know, you start reading more and you start understanding that you're 40 years old, 39, and you're having problems with your brain.

B (127:33)

Yeah.

A (127:34)

What's gonna happen when I'm 50? So it was really frustrating, and it. I think it even made it worse because I wasn't getting any answers. I just. I just kept getting, this is what. This is what we do. $30,000, you know, $15,000, you know, you go there for a couple weeks. I did the. Was the magnets or the. I forgot which. I think it was called Mert. You know, that's definitely helping some people. I think it. I. I think it made me worse. Like, I walked out of there. I stayed for twice as long. I mean, I walked out of there. Just the world, you know, it was. It hurt every time I did it. Like, I feel like they did something wrong to me. I mean, I just had rage, you know, I. You know, I don't want to talk about some of the physical altercations I got into. You know, our son was starting to act up a little bit at that time, and probably because I wasn't present and we had so many issues with him, and, you know, I had, you know, several occasions where I had to, like, put him to sleep. Literally.

B (128:47)

Damn.

A (128:47)

Once at the house, once at the police station. Just. It was just nightmare. Everything. Everything happened. It was like nothing was falling into place. Everything was, like, wrong. You know, my relationship with my wife was wrong. Relationship with my kids were wrong. My business. Business life was wrong. Like, nothing was right. And when I say wrong, like, not wrong. It was just. It was bad. It was just not. Nothing was clicking. Everything was. You know, I felt like. Like, why am I doing this? Like, what the. Is the purpose for all this? Like, you're supposed to be good now. Like, you're not. And why, you know, And I always ask that question. Is, you know, is it my brain? Is it just transitioning? Am I just depressed that I don't have teams anymore? You know, but if you're just depressed, you wouldn't have all these other things that are going on. Right? Like, there's a reason that there's different, I guess, diagnosis.

B (129:53)

Yeah.

A (129:54)

And so I think the. The. The. The. The. The mer train, the brain magnets or whatever they were doing, I think that was like, the straw that broke the camel's back, you know, And. And I just. Sam, bro, I'm tired. Like, I. I can't. I can't do this anymore. Like, I'm like, I don't. I don't want to be here. Like, you know, there's no hope. Nothing's Working, you know, life sucks.

B (130:24)

Yeah.

A (130:24)

And like. Like, you guys would be so much better without me. And I remember telling her that so many times. Like, you guys would be so much happier. Like, you'd get over it. You know, you would. You know, you'd be sad, but, like, you'd live a happy life. You'd find somebody that's, like, nice to you and treat you well and doesn't act like this. And the kids would have somebody that is just not complete mess and a nightmare, and it would be good, and I would be gone. And, you know, then. And then everybody wins.

B (130:59)

Yeah.

A (131:01)

And. And. And that's how I felt for a while. And Amber was like. Honestly, she was like that. She said, you know, I've never quit on anything, and I'm going to figure this out. She didn't tell me that, but that's. That was her mindset. And so she just did her. She just. She just dug in. You know, she just started figuring out, all right, what. What else can we do here? And, you know, I'll let her tell her side, you know, her story. But in a nutshell, there was. There was a seal that went spent who was really bad, like, struggling bad. Went to the jungle for a couple weeks and did multiple sessions of ayahuasca therapy. Completely changed his life, became an amazing human being. I freaking love him to death. He's like the coolest person you ever want to hang out with.

B (132:04)

Who we were talking about last night.

A (132:06)

Yeah.

B (132:06)

That's insane.

A (132:07)

It's amazing.

B (132:09)

To even hear that come out of your mouth is pretty cool.

A (132:14)

But, yeah, I. I don't. I don't. Like, you know, I didn't ask him for permission to talk about him, so I don't think I should. But he. He owes his life to psychedelic assisted therapy, and his introduction to it was. Was ayahuasca ceremonies down in Peru. Like, you know, where they've literally been doing these for thousands and thousands of years. Safely.

B (132:43)

Yeah.

A (132:44)

He went from being literally probably in the worst place ever to the best place ever. And then he had to take that back with him to the States. And he learned Kundalini yoga while he was down there. And that helped him just continue on the success he's. He's at now. And now he's in, like, now he's an amazing individual helping, like, everybody. And so I guess in a roundabout way, he had funded another guy to go get similar treatment, except it wasn't ayahuasca. It was ibogaine, what they did the Time article about and ibogaine was initially studied and used for addiction. There's nothing else on the planet. Nothing else on the planet that can cure curb addiction overnight like ibogaine, you know, that's why I want to hear about Gabe. Like, it. It upsets me because I know if we could have got him an ibogaine treatment, he'd be here today with us. You know, it's unbelievable. And the reason it's not here is because it's that good, right? Yeah, a little bit of risk to it, but if you do all the proper screening, like, there's no risk. You know, the ones that there's. It's risk. You screen out and you can't do it. And this individual got better overnight. Same thing, same story, except you didn't spend time in a jungle. We went to a retreat center that administered ibogaine. So Amber was working with him and a doctor at the time, and, you know, behind the scenes, they basically got the money together and they were able to get me to one of the retreat centers. And I went kicking and screaming because, like, probably like you, I grew up, you know, kid on Long island, went to Catholic, all boys, Catholic high school, drank some beer, you know, never did. Never did. I never did drugs. Didn't even know what really they were. Yeah. And so for me, all drugs were bad. Psychedelics were psychedelics. They're crazy, right? Counterculture 60s, you know, Woodstock. So when I. When I heard about this, I mean, I was like, this is nuts. Like. Like most. Most of the guys, you know, that are. That are going through this treatment are the same way. A lot of them that haven't done the research, they hear about it and they go, this is crazy. But what they do is they trust that, like, 10 of their other friends went and gotten better. So they say, well, I trust you, so, like, I'll go. So I did my research. It took me about a year. No, no, it was less than a year. I think Amber was working on this for a year. But by the time it got to me, you know, there's a couple months, like, I'm not doing that. That's crazy. I wind up finally saying yes because I was tired and nothing else worked. Nothing else worked. And I remember. I remember going, you know, don't expect this to work like nothing else has. I don't know how you expect. Taking some psychedelic is supposed to, like, free me or clean me up or. Or save me. And so, you know, I went. Went to this retreat center. And you. The. The medicine is prescribed per your body weight. So What I would take is different from what you would take. You take a. They call it like a handshake dose to make sure your body doesn't react. It's about 45 minutes. It's just a light dose. It's like a micro dose. It's like drinking, you know, half a beer. You don't feel it. Just. They just want to see, you know, is your body good? My body was good. They gave me the flood dose. And, you know, within like an hour, two hours, you know, start hearing some buzzing and again, ibogaine. So I. What ibogaine is? Ibogaine is an alkaloid of the iboga root boga plant shrub. It's grown in West Africa. I think the plant has 13 alkaloids similar, like, you know, cannabis has 200 cannabinoids. And you pull THC and CBD and CBN. Iboga and ibogaine are the same. Iboga has 13 different, like, alkaloids in there that, you know, scientists can pull and do experiments. Well, ibogaine is like, is. Is the big daddy, and it's the one that really curbs addiction.

B (137:30)

So ibogaine is the most powerful.

A (137:33)

It's the most powerful psychedelic on the planet, hands down.

B (137:36)

Before we go into your experience and. And kind of the journey through that, I want to bring your wife Amber up here and kind of talk to her about what it was like when you were experiencing all these symptoms.

A (137:52)

Yeah.

B (137:52)

But before we break real quick, I just. I'm curious, and I think I know the answer, but everybody talks about the symptoms, you know, rage, anxiety, depression, insomnia, impulsivity, impulsiveness, nightmares. Nightmares.

A (138:11)

But do you. Do.

B (138:16)

Do you forget what the hell you're talking about? A lot of times in mid sentence, like, it'll happen to me. It'll happen. It happens to me all the time. It happens to me when I'm interviewing.

A (138:29)

It used to me. It used to phone. I'm in. In. Is it happening now?

B (138:38)

It's frustrating. Not like at this moment, but it's frustrating because I'll be talking, I'll be interviewing, I'll be talking to my parents, my friends. And I get frustrated because mid sentence, I'll just forget what the hell I was talking about. And then I have to verbalize why I quit talking. And it's.

A (138:55)

Maybe we need to get you treated well, but I mean, that's the thing. Yes. And that is the. That's the awareness, being present and being focused. You know, like, you're talking, but maybe your. Your mind's going somewhere else. So now you're mid sentence and you forget the second part of your, you know, when you're focused and you're talking and you're, you're in it, like you should be able to, to go. So if, if you're not, there's, there's some kind of disconnect going on in your head.

B (139:25)

Right.

A (139:25)

Like it's, that's your mind, there's, that's nothing else but something going on in your mind. I'm not a doctor to tell you what that is, but that's a symptom.

B (139:35)

That I was curious if you absolutely experienced.

A (139:38)

It absolutely is a symptom.

B (139:39)

And this got rid of that.

A (139:41)

This gets rid of. We're going to talk about what this does. I mean, this is, works on a few different levels physiologically, meaning. And this is what they're going to do. So Stanford's going to do their study on through vets. They think that not just ibogaine, maybe, maybe all psychedelics actually physiologically heals the brain, helps the brain, repairs the brain. Again, I'm not going to tell you what it does, but think of the volume of your brain potentially maybe increasing. Yeah. Instead of like a degenerative brain disease, dementia, Parkinson's, you know, decreases the volume of your brain. Right. It like basically dies. This is like helping you. So it works on the physiological level, it works on psychospiritual level, meaning trauma. Like that's where, you know, that's where psychedelics really go to work is. There is no hiding from psychedelics.

B (140:51)

Yeah.

A (140:52)

When you take it in a hero dose, they call it a flood dose. Big dose where you can't walk around. Like you have to be in a bed monitored by a therapist doctor. You can't hide from the medicine. Whatever you experienced the, that's holding you back. What may be causing your depression, maybe causing everything in your life to be full of turmoil. It could be buried in your subconscious. Maybe it's stuff that you, you've compartmentalized and you, you put away because we're really good at that. What ibogaine does really well and what other psychedelics do, psilocybin, lsd, ayahuasca, it goes down there and it just rips it out and it shows you. It just puts it right in front of you and says, here, deal with this right now. Deal with it. Are you good? Like it shoves it in your face. Ibogaine really shoves in your face compared to ayahuasca. Ibogaine they call like the grandfather, the father. Masculine. And then Ayahuasca is more like the grandmother feminine. But they both. They both do what they're supposed to do. Ayahuasca, they say, is a little bit more gentler. You know, Ibogaine's more like. And that's why it's so good for us. It's why it's so good for team guys and more than team guys. But we need it. We're, like, up on multiple different levels, right?

B (142:26)

Yeah.

A (142:27)

Trauma, childhood trauma, wartime trauma, wartime TBIs, transition trauma. What's my purpose in life? Like, just all of it. Right. Ibogaine just seems to just get to the root cause of all this and put you back to normal like you used to. When Amber saw me for the first time the morning after I did my experience, woke up finally, I was like, after. After, you know, 13 hours of puking and getting my ass kicked, literally, she was like, dude, that's Marcus from when I met him in college. Like, he's the. He's the. The. The fucking happy. Go. Lucky quarterback. Larger than life. Like, cool. Not angry, not judgmental. Just like, hey, hey, I'm here.

B (143:17)

Yeah.

A (143:19)

She said it literally, like, rewound years before I got to the teams.

B (143:24)

That's amazing. That's amazing.

A (143:27)

And. And that story is hundreds of times over. You know, we have funded now over 350 special operations veterans, mostly SEALs, because that's our network and that's who we know. But we've. We've funded many rangers, SF and Delta guys. You know, when somebody reaches out, we can't say no. But the stories are the same. They're the same stories.

B (143:52)

Wow.

A (143:52)

You know, like their life was put back together before they went through this mess. And so whether it's a brain thing or psychological thing or transition thing, like, I don't think that matters. You know, I think I had a little bit of all of it. But we're getting guys that have really bad brain issues or really bad trauma, and it's just fixing. It just works, you know, it just. It just works and. But it's rough.

B (144:25)

Yeah. Well, before we go too far into it.

A (144:28)

Yeah. Yeah.

B (144:29)

I do want to take that quick break. But with that being said, I just want to ask one. One more question.

A (144:34)

Yeah, shoot.

B (144:36)

So this is still illegal in the.

A (144:39)

US in the US is schedule 1, so. Which means you want me. No. Okay.

B (144:45)

It's a narcotic, you know, or people are. You know, it's. It's illegal. You're going to get arrested if you do.

A (144:51)

It's a Schedule 1, meaning there's no Medical benefit.

B (144:54)

Yeah. Do you think that maybe it's there because Big Pharma is running a $16 billion a year antidepressant industry? I mean, this would disrupt that.

A (145:11)

You mean disrupt the best drug on the planet that can curb addiction with over a 50% success rate and we don't have it here in the US I would say it has to have something to do with it. Nobody want, nobody who makes money wants to give somebody a pill one time that gets better and walks away and then doesn't have to come back and buy another, you know, get another prescription for the month and then another prescription for the month and then their prescription for the month.

B (145:38)

Big Pharma is willing to sacrifice life, tons of lives, like thousands of lives, you know, for money. Because if we were to legalize psychedelics which are obviously working, it would disrupt their $16 billion.

A (145:55)

It would completely disrupt it. I mean, the economics are incredible. We're talking about opioid crisis, we're talking about mental health issues, we're talking about people taking up beds in psych wards, people dying. You give them a psychedelic that can clean up some of these folks. Right. It's not going to do it for everybody. Everybody's different. But if it could just make a small percentage change that can save that many people. Like it's a, I mean this is like a no brainer. This is almost too obvious. It's almost too obvious. And we just need to, we just need to get the word out that I mean, that's obviously why we're here today is because we are trying to educate what is actually working, what is really working. Well, we don't have time to study this for 10 years. Yeah, we're going to have, we're going to have the next wave of not killed in action that you and I had to spend all our time in those memorials and funerals, you know, now we're going to spend our time there for suicides because we can't get this shit right. We're just going to keep giving pills that the on the label, right? If you read that there's a high, a chance for suicide by using this drug. Two individuals that are potentially thinking about committing suicide. How, how the hell is that? Right? Yeah. How is that even, how does that even make sense to most people? And I think, you know, I think it might be just the big machine, right? I don't, I don't think it's individual. I think if you talk to people individually, they get it. But as you know, changing laws, it takes work it takes time, and so we're. We're trying to do best we can with that.

B (147:51)

Yeah, well, let's take a quick break. I want to talk to your wife, and then. Okay. Then we'll get back.

A (148:09)

It.

B (148:38)

All right. Amber, welcome.

C (148:40)

Thank you.

B (148:40)

So we're. We're at the point where Marcus is. He just went to buds. He said he needed a break, so he's an instructor now. And we're kind of. He's starting to realize that he's in downward spiral, and he's starting to notice symptoms and that. That there's some family issues. And so I just kind of wanted to talk to you and kind of get your perspective on what was happening and how it felt as the spouse and maybe some of the things that you and your children were going through at the time.

C (149:16)

I'm sure Marcus went over how we met and the fact that we've been together for so long. So I knew him before he was a seal. And then, of course, I got pregnant, which is what kept us together as he entered the SEAL teams. And then 911 happened. So everything was very unexpected for us. In a very short amount of time, he had gone from being a larger than life. I mean, he was just everything to me. He was so easygoing. When I met him, I had never met anyone like him. And. And when he went to Bud's, I think I stupidly thought, like, we just have to get through this. And the 911 happened, and it was like, well, we just have to get. Get to a SEAL team, and we just have to get through this deployment. And I was losing him little by little this whole time. When he went over to development group, those deployments got really, really difficult. And he lost one of his best friends. In 2008, he was actually supposed to do the swim that Josh was killed doing. And so when he came home from that deployment in particular, it was a very, very fast downward spot. He was drinking a lot, but he was also. The tempo was so high that we really didn't have time to get our bearings.

B (150:58)

So after Josh's death is really when it really started to get real bad.

C (151:04)

We were never together. You know, I just. He was gone for up to 300 days a year. And so I didn't really know if he was suffering or how he was suffering because we weren't together. So when Josh died, it's just like something in him shut off, and he probably had, you know, some guilt that he wasn't dealing with because he was supposed to be on that swim, but he Also started drinking very heavily. And Josh was not the only death that happened. You know, even during that deployment, two others from his squadron were killed. And it seemed like those deployments there was at least one person not coming home every deployment. And so it felt like Russian roulette. It felt like at any given point this could be him. I know, I felt like. I know. And a lot of my girlfriends felt like that. Everyone had their family funeral dress picked out. Everyone had the photos ready to go because we had seen so many of our other girlfriends that weren't prepared. And so you learn over time, you know, 10, 20, 30 funerals, what to possibly expect. And I think we were all just like living this surreal existence of thinking this really could be us next.

B (152:41)

Yeah.

C (152:42)

And I could feel Marcus coming unhinged because it was very difficult to be at home, you know, dreading a knock at the door. But I can't imagine what it was like, you know, to be on a deployment and he was really coming unraveled. We thought that leaving Virginia beach would solve the problem. And it really escalated it.

B (153:11)

Was he self medicating at all or only with alcohol?

C (153:15)

He was really like anti pill his entire career. He was injured at various points and nothing super severe. And so he refrained medication other than maybe on deployment, you know, where he would take Ambien to sleep or something. He was self medicating with alcohol.

B (153:34)

How much alcohol?

C (153:37)

Again, I really don't know because I wasn't with him, but I, I was very concerned when I, when I was with him at how much he would drink and how frequently he would drink now.

B (153:55)

I mean, so you, you two were basically non existent to each other during.

C (154:04)

During the, you know, during the time when he was deploying? No, because it always felt fun when he was coming home. Like it was a visit, he was a visitor and he would leave again. So if he was home for five days, you know, max, that seemed like a long time. So it's easy to put on a happy face for five days. It's easy to have the house looking perfect and you know, dealing with someone who's spiraling for five day spans.

B (154:40)

Yeah, so. So you guys went? Well, somebody identified a problem. Correct? Because we had.

C (154:49)

Yeah.

B (154:49)

He left development group, which he obviously loved, to try to work on himself and maybe start some healing process or get a breather at least.

C (155:01)

We went through a very difficult point in our marriage in 2008, and at that time he was halfway through the minimum commitment. I thought Marcus would do 20 years in the teams and I thought he would never, ever leave the command. And I didn't give him an ultimatum, but he knew that it was time to focus on the family and that if I, you know, could, could somehow find a way to fulfill the, the final two years of his minimum commitment, then he would then focus on the family. So I respected his commitment to the command and he respected my willingness to fulfill it. And the intention was always as soon as he was done with that commitment, then our family would come first. So we left Virginia beach and we went to San Diego and he was an instructor. That's when the wheels really started to come off because he loved what he was doing, he loved the command, he loved his teammates. And even though it was very unhealthy, just the tempo and the, his mindset at the time, I think we knew how to live in that dysfunction and we did not know how to be normal people.

B (156:22)

Yeah, what, what are some of the things you started seeing when you say became really started coming unhinged, you know, what was it like? What was it, what was going on in the home front? Because we heard about, you know, kind of some of the stuff that was happening at work. We didn't talk a lot about what was happening on the home front.

C (156:52)

He was drinking a lot. He was very disconnected. Did he tell you about the OCS stint that he did?

B (156:58)

He did.

C (157:00)

So he was on the heels of that. He was very ashamed of that and he was not in a headspace to ever go there. That was the worst idea ever. And so it added to the shame, it added to the confusion, it added to his feeling of being a failure. And so by the time we got to San Diego, he was just lost. He didn't want to be deploying anymore in some ways, but in other ways he did. He didn't want to be a family man, but in some ways he did. So he was just really conflicted during that time. He was drinking a lot. And it was also very difficult for him to fit back into the family because he had been gone for so long and the family dynamic was really difficult. It was hard to co parent and live under the same roof with someone 247 that you're used to seeing for five day spans.

B (158:09)

Yeah, you had mentioned, you had mentioned another podcast that I believe was your daughter that came to you and said, you know, how much longer are we going to live like this?

C (158:23)

Well, that was, that was several years later, actually, so.

A (158:27)

Oh, good. He.

C (158:31)

There are two events that happened in NSW Naval Special Warfare that kind of piggybacked on One another. The first was the killing of Osama bin Laden, which he was not at the command for. And there was this, this real regret, like, oh, I, I want to go back there. And then on the heels of that there was the helicopter crash extortion which killed 31. Many, many of those were friends of his, friends of ours. And so then it was like, okay. All of the hype from May was replaced with sorrow and reality in August. And we decided not to do that, not to go back to Virginia Beach. At that point I was just longing for some sort of normalcy. And normalcy to me was being a single parent living away from my husband who is deploying to war, training for war, drinking his face off. And I didn't have to see it.

A (159:38)

Yeah.

C (159:39)

When we were living under the same roof, I just, I became very concerned about is this sustainable? This isn't a good example to set for our kids, for him or for me to stay in a situation like this. And I think that we ignorantly just tried to run from it time and time again. First by leaving Virginia beach, than by getting out of the military completely, than by moving to Texas, which a year after he, he got out of the SEAL teams, we ended up in Texas. And he may have told you the beach is a huge part of his life. He was raised across the street from it. So being landlocked for the first time, more or less really, it was really difficult for him. And the wheels really started to come off in Texas. So we, he tried to replace surfing and going to the beach with golfing. We joined a country club. And of course, you know, so many regular civilian guys are just like mesmerized with team guys. And so he started hanging out with few guys that supported his drinking habits. Unfortunately.

B (161:04)

I think there's probably some stuff that you don't want to talk about when it comes to the drinking. Cuz, you know, along with that obviously comes a lot of, you know, other stuff. But I'm curious. And you guys went to Buds or he went to. Instructed Buds basically to work on the family life. And then when you got there, were you. And when you got, when you got there and you realized, oh, like this isn't really kind of what I was thinking was going to happen. And it seemed like that was the start of the downward spiral. And then, you know, when he was having regrets of, you know, leaving the command over at development group, by the time that he kind of felt conflicted, were you starting to think, were you conflicted? Was it so bad that you were Conflicted that maybe you thought maybe the best thing to do would be him going back into an operational role, playing again.

C (162:08)

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

B (163:10)

Is that when you started looking into the psychedelic therapy?

C (163:15)

No, this was when he was a BUDS instructor.

B (163:18)

It was that early?

C (163:19)

Yeah.

B (163:19)

And it got worse.

C (163:20)

Yeah. So I think, you know, my initial conversations with him were like, you really have a drinking problem, which when you compare yourself to others in the community, you really don't. But when you compare yourself to typical people or you go through an alcohol assessment. I think one time I did an alcohol assessment for him was some sort of an online tool and, like, I answered yes to 20 out of 22 questions or something. It was crazy, yet he didn't see it, he didn't believe it. So then that caused a lot of conflicts between the two of us because I was pointing out something that was clearly his numbing coping mechanism and he wasn't willing to see it. So he moved to la. He transitioned out of the teams, but before he got out, he went to Nico Clinic in Bethesda and he came back, I think, on seven or eight new prescription medications. So he'd gone his entire career with no prescriptions. And as he's leaving the military, he's, you know, got like this bag of new medicines and I was hoping that that was the answer. I wasn't a fan of medication, but also wasn't a fan of living like I was living. So he gave it a shot and processed out. He was medically retired. We went to la and he was in a completely new environment. He wanted, like, to just forget about the SEAL teams. He wanted to pretend like that never happened. Didn't want to deal with any of the residual fallout and just start a Completely new life with a completely new career path and around. Completely new. A new type of people. It was a disaster. Now the drinking was escalating and I just thought, I'm not doing this for the rest of my life. He was gone. The person I met, the larger than life person that I met was gone and he had been replaced by like a monster. And so I just thought, I can't live my life like this. I can't be a single parent in California. I wouldn't want to meet and marry someone probably from California. I needed to get to Texas and so I was able to convince him to give Texas a try, live on a golf course, at least just get out of the state, get out of California.

B (166:15)

Yeah.

C (166:17)

There was just stability in Texas for me. I felt it's closer to my family. My dad had just taken a coaching job down in Texas or at Texas, and I just felt like I needed to get there.

B (166:33)

So you guys went to Texas. It doesn't sound like things got any better. Oh, no, they got worse.

C (166:40)

Believe it or not, they got worse.

B (166:42)

Wow. How long after he moved to Texas did you start looking at alternative medicines?

C (166:52)

We got to Texas and things are actually pretty good. For about a year he was golfing. We joined this country club. He started drinking more and he started hanging out with a group of people that, you know, drank as much as he did. And so I was. I just didn't want to be in that sort of environment, you know, around. Around this. I wanted to be there for my kids and that caused a lot of division between the two of us. So he was out, you know, drinking several nights a week, whether it was Bloody Marys with golf in the morning or happy hour after golf in the afternoon or just out until 2am and I just thought, you know, he's. He's either going to drink himself to death or he's going to wrap his truck around a tree because he would be driving.

B (167:54)

Yeah. Damn. So you found, you found the psychedelic treatment. And.

C (168:10)

So Marcus was primarily diagnosed with ptsd, but that really never fully resonated with me because he absolutely loved his job and he wanted to deploy. Like, he always was happy to come home, but he couldn't wait to get back. And I just felt like he's really not that, you know, caught up in what happened overseas yet that was his leading diagnosis. And all the medications that the military had put him on, the NICO clinic had put him on as he was exiting, that were picked up then by VA Healthcare, they were causing so many other symptoms that there was a medication for this symptom and a medication for that symptom, and he was forgetting everything. So he was not able to take his medications correctly and that would cause a symptom. I just felt instinctively like this is not just ptsd, because I was seeing his cognitive functioning decline to a point of. It was terrifying. I remember watching him try to wrap a Christmas tree with lights, and he couldn't figure out where the ends plugged in and where you start and where you stop. It was pitiful. And he was 40. He would. He got lost driving our daughter to a volleyball carpool that, you know, we did two, three times a week. He couldn't remember people's names. I found a write up that he did as he was exiting the military, and it said, I'm frequently forgetting my teammates names. It just wasn't clicking neurologically. It was something just not right. He was not making connections. And during the height of our struggles, another one of his teammates took his life. And luckily the brain autopsy was released to the community. And it was the first time that I had heard about blast injury. And I also heard about another degenerative brain disease called chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or cte. It's what professional athletes, NFL players, MMA fighters are frequently diagnosed with postmortem. So you can't find out if you have it until after you're dead. But in my mind, suddenly everything made sense because Marcus had a history of 15 years of tackle football, 13 years working as a breacher, multiple combat deployments, multiple losses of consciousness, and all of the symptoms fit. So he had the history and he had the symptoms. And I just realized pretty quickly that this could be a death sentence. And times of essence, there's not a whole lot of information about it. There's. It's still, you know, very, very new. But I started getting into brain clinics, and I just thought, if this is a brain issue, surely brain clinics will know what to do. And he went to several of the top brain clinics. But he was getting worse, and he was getting worse because he was investing all this time and really wasn't making any sort of significant progress. And he was very frustrated. He was like a loose cannon. I was calling charitable organizations to arrange for him to go away to. To do a brain center that was in California. But I didn't just want to stop there. I wanted to hit it as many angles as I possibly could. So a couple of other charitable organizations were able to get him into hyperbaric oxygen, magnetic brain stimulation. And so he was doing like three things at once. And I went to visit him. And the first five days were pretty good, but I was there for a week, the last two days. Unbelievable. It was. I left thinking I just was hopeless. I went home. And that was in July. He had gone in June. In September, I went back. It was my birthday, so I went to visit him. My mom came and watched the kids, and I went to visit him in California. And we were in his truck on the 5, and I said to him something like, oh, babe, you're better than that. And he lost his mind. And he started barreling down a five, like 100 miles an hour. And I thought, if I live through this, I am going. I. This is it. And so I didn't say anything else the whole ride. We got back to where he was staying, went to sleep. The next morning, I called an Uber. I went to the airport, and I just flew back without even telling him.

B (173:30)

Damn.

C (173:32)

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

B (174:19)

Damn. I feel like a lot of civilians will, like, almost instigate an incident with. With. With guys like us because they want to see. They want to see what happens, and then. And then they see it and. But. And I start noticing that a lot. Do you. Have you ever noticed that?

C (174:47)

Oh, yeah, I've absolutely noticed that. I've noticed the instigation. I've also noticed, you know, just how much guys want to hang out with guys like you guys and, you know, like, beat their chests or feel like a man. And if that. A lot of times that looks like round after round after round after round of drinks. And I think everyone thought like, oh, this is Marcus. He's this big, you know, Navy seal. They didn't realize that the hell that that was causing on his family back at home. And I tried to tell this particular group, like, listen, this is a real problem here.

B (175:35)

Yeah.

C (175:36)

If you're his friend, please take me seriously.

B (175:42)

Yeah. Did they?

C (175:46)

Yeah, for a little bit, yeah. Yeah. But it was just a bad deal all around.

B (175:56)

Well, how did you find out about the psychedelics?

C (176:01)

So when I had decided to leave, I was really grappling with the weight of that. I reached out to a couple of the other women who had. Who were widows of suicide in the community, fairly recent widows. And it was textbook. The struggles were textbook. The behavior was textbook. And I was just preparing myself for what my life would be like as a widow of suicide, because I felt like it was inevitable. He was a ticking time bomb. And I reached out to the highest levels of support within the SEAL community and said, I'm going to lose him. And there was nothing. There was no help. Not meaningful. I mean, I think everyone's doing the best they can, but for me at that time, there was really not a lot. And so I'm just a fighter by nature. I didn't want to quit. I never really wanted to quit, but I felt like I had to do that from my kids. And then it hit me. My kids will live with this for the rest of their lives, and their kids. And we had this friend, the same one who I mentioned earlier, who had also been in a situation that, you know, this therapy was beneficial. And so he and his wife had reached out to me because they knew Marcus was struggling. And that's just how the community is. Like, just, you know, if, you know, someone needs help, just help. And they told me about psychedelic therapy, which was completely foreign to me. I tried to talk to Marcus about it a year prior to him actually receiving it, but he want to hear anything about it. He was like, that's weird. That's crazy. I'm not doing drugs. Like, no. I'm not going to Mexico. No. And that guy had. Was telling me consistently, and he was right. He's got to want this. He's got to be ready for it. He's got to choose this. You can't make him do it. And so he was running out of funding. At the Brain Clinic, I knew that we couldn't afford to live in two separate households, and that that meant he really. I mean, financially, we needed him to come back. We couldn't afford anything else. But I. There was peace in my house for the first time in years. And I thought, I just cannot have him back at this house.

B (179:14)

Yeah.

C (179:16)

I had also really been on my own journey at that time, where I was just. I had nothing at that point. It felt Marcus was. I had. Well, let me. Let me rephrase this.

B (179:39)

It sounds like you're just surviving.

C (179:41)

Oh, it was 100. Just surviving.

B (179:44)

They just strayed. Survival mode.

C (179:46)

Yeah. Because Our teenage son, who during these years, 15, 16, 17. He was chronically ill, but he was also chronically pissed. And he was causing a lot of. He was acting out a lot, which was causing a lot of stress and conflict between Marcus and me and a lot of division in our household on top of what was already, you know, so. So challenging. So between Marcus spiraling and our son spiraling, I just felt so pulled between the two of them. And then Marcus was taking so much time away from work. Really, you know, there wasn't work. So financially, we were devastated. Our son was chronically ill, so I had to step away from my very successful career as a real estate agent to take care of him. Not much else could have gone wrong during those years. And I just thoroughly surrendered to whatever was to come. Whatever. I surrendered to my faith. I really dug in. I sat, I sat, I cried, I screamed, I journaled, I prayed, I spoke, I declared. I just completely submitted to what was happening because I really. Even though I love solving problems, this was way too big for me. And the more I submitted, the more things spiraled out of control, but the more peace I had internally. And I came to just all of these amazing realizations during this time. I wouldn't trade that time, like, sitting here today, I wouldn't trade that time. It has given me so much perspective, wisdom, so much strength and purpose during that time. You know, I'm sitting with, all right, God, if this is where we're going, like, this is the end of the road, then I completely trust that. And I just felt like, no, there's more, there's more. And I remember the therapy that our friend had told us about, and I thought, what if I just approach him in a completely different way? I felt like my heart was supernaturally changed, and I was able to see him through eyes of grace I would have never been able to do on my own. I just. I saw him for the struggles that he was facing, and I realized that no one wanted to be different more than him. And I was. I would. I became so full of compassion for him, whether his struggles were psychological, physiological, spiritual, and manifesting in the form of, you know, alcohol abuse. I just approached him completely different. So he came home, he said, you know, what do you want me to do? I don't. I can't stay here. And I said, you can come home, but when you get home, like, I want to have a serious talk. And so he got home, and I sat him down, and I just said, listen, I will fight for you every day for the Rest of your life, but you've got to fight with me. I will never leave your side. I just stopped shaming him, guilting him, threatening him. All of these things that I had done for so many years that weren't working. I was just perpetuating bad behavior. I just came alongside him and met him where he was at, not where I wanted him to be. I was just standing in the middle of a road saying, get to me. You know, get to me, and I'm going to shame you and threaten you the whole way here. And he. He was stuck. He wasn't coming. So I just met him where he was at, and he agreed to go. He agreed to go to Mexico. And I had no idea if this would be. If anything, it was for me to know that I had tried everything.

B (184:25)

So you were pretty skeptical.

C (184:28)

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

B (185:14)

So he went down there.

C (185:18)

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

B (185:43)

Yeah.

C (185:44)

And so the date kept getting pushed back, and he was getting more and more just despondent. He was just, like, practically fetal position on the couch. And every time the date would get pushed, he would lose hope. And he's like, I said I'd do this. It's not happening. And I was just begging him at that point to hold on.

B (186:06)

Yeah.

C (186:12)

I think our entire. Everyone felt it in our household. I remember one time our son called and said, mom, are you home? And I said, no, I'm not. Why? He goes, I need to borrow a shirt from dad. But your bedroom doors closed, your bathroom doors closed, and even your closet doors closed. He goes, I'm afraid to open it. I don't want to find him hanging.

B (186:37)

Oh, shit.

C (186:39)

Yeah, we could feel it. It was palpable.

B (186:44)

Wow.

C (186:46)

Yeah. And there are a lot of kids living like that. You know, the Seal community does a lot for the children, but we could definitely do more because there are a lot of kids who've lost dads, but they live with them. They see them every day. They still have a heartbeat. And, you know, they. They've lost their dads, too, because they're living with a shell of a human.

A (187:29)

Yeah.

B (187:34)

Well, let's move to some good stuff. How about that? Okay, so he did. He went down to Mexico. He got the treatment. And it sounds like that was like a light switch. So what was it like? How long was he down there?

C (187:52)

It's quick. He flew out on a Friday morning, got down on a Friday afternoon evening. The treatment started on that night into the following Saturday. And so that other team guy was there with them the whole time, and his wife was counseling me the whole time. And then I went to the clinic on Saturday evening, and I had a complete freak out moment where my heart rate was just, like, through the roof. And I was like, what have we done? This is nuts. It is so outside of my comfort zone. I am a conservative Christian. Like, what am I doing here?

B (188:39)

Yeah. So you were down there, too?

C (188:42)

The day after.

B (188:43)

Okay.

C (188:44)

The day after. And I just thought. I mean, I tried to convince her, like, I don't want to go. No, no. Like, I do not want to see him right now. I was scared. I was scared to be disappointed. I was scared that he would be completely normal and that would freak me out. I was scared that he would be completely different. And so she was like, he's asking for you. You have to go. And I'm very grateful that she made me go because when I saw him for the first time, it was like I saw him for the first time I saw him for the first time I ever met him. His entire countenance and demeanor was 100% the guy that I met. It was like all of the darkness, all the anger, the rage, the despondent. Despondent. Just. It was gone.

B (189:44)

Damn. It was literally just like that.

C (189:47)

It was just like that. And it wasn't like I was freaked out. I thought maybe this would make him, like, super zen and, you know, really weird hippie. It was not that it was very. It was like being reunited with someone that you haven't seen in a very long time.

B (190:05)

Damn.

C (190:07)

Yeah. And. But they're just the way you remember them. His eyes looked different. His eyes were lighter. His Spirit was lighter. He was, like, free of everything that had been weighing him down.

B (190:25)

Wow. And that just continued on, I mean, was.

C (190:31)

Yeah, I mean, I would say, you know, I don't want to give the wrong impression. Like, this is a miracle cure or a silver bullet of any kind. It's about as close as you can get.

B (190:41)

Yeah.

C (190:42)

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

B (191:33)

Damn.

C (191:33)

And all of a sudden, like, he was, like, he was paying attention to everything.

B (191:41)

Well, how long after that did you guys organize and start vets?

C (191:48)

So I left the clinic on Saturday night. I went back on Sunday. When I saw him on Sunday, he hugged me and he said, babe, this is exactly what all the guys need. And that was, ironically, on Veterans Day, his treatment had been pushed, pushed, pushed all through October into November, and he was treated on Veterans Day. And the following month in December, we were contacted by what would become our first donor. She said, could you recommend a charitable organization that supports veterans? I want to do end of year giving. And Marcus said, you know, I actually have a friend. I just had a treatment and it saved my life. And I have a friend who's struggling. We can't give you a tax write off, but you could actually save someone's life. And I can tell you a little bit about him. And she was like, yes. So that's how all this got started. She was the first donor. Her donation was big enough to help several. And so at that point, we were just telling our story, raising money, giving it to the treating physician. And at that point, you know, I. I didn't really want to have too much to do with this. I felt good about helping for sure, but I really, you know, I had a very successful career in real estate. I was not looking to pivot.

B (193:19)

Yeah.

C (193:23)

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

B (193:58)

Yeah.

C (193:58)

So before we put our names on anything, we wanted to make sure that it worked. So the first goal that I set was 12 individuals in a 12 month period because we didn't know, is this a temporary fix? Is this a long term thing? It seemed too good to be. True. True, you know, and I was actually going through a very difficult phase myself after this because I didn't know what did we just get into this. We were so desperate. Like, when you're desperate, you will do anything. And when we had done it, the deed was done. It was like, what just happened? So I was going through my own whole, you know, come to Jesus, like, with this thing. Like, what is this? And so we're like, all right, let's just very cautiously go about this. And so 12 guys, 12 month period. At the 11 and a half month mark, one of my best friend's husbands took his life. And it was. He was truly the last person anyone ever would have thought would do something like this. It was devastating. I. We flew back to Virginia beach to his funeral, which was at the chapel at Little Creek. And it was the first suicide funeral that I had been to. And I had a visceral reaction on the pew of the. The, you know, chapel that I was in. And the whole pew started shaking. I was just overcome. Like I couldn't control it. It was like. Like there's a whole thing about releasing trauma. Trembling. Like, it happened to me at his funeral and I just had this like, download of this is gonna be the next wave to hit this chapel if you don't do something about it. Like, I'm sitting next to Marcus, who, you know, I. I'm feeling like we just averted this sort of crisis. And I can't believe I'm sitting in Chad's funeral. Like, it was Chad just. I looked around and I just saw all the faces of so many of the guys and their spouses that I had seen at countless other war funerals. And I was just like, you know what? We haven't wanted to put our names on this. We haven't wanted to share about this. We haven't wanted to come out and stand on a stage because of the stigma, because of the. These therapies are so misunderstood, especially almost four years ago.

B (196:27)

No.

C (196:29)

And I just was super convicted. None of that matters. This community matters more than my pride.

B (196:37)

Yeah.

C (196:38)

And these lives matter, and these children matter, and these women matter more than our comfort level.

B (196:46)

Yeah. Well, you've saved a hell of a lot of lives, so. So far. Sounds like. So.

C (196:54)

I mean, thank you. I. I cannot take any credit, honestly.

B (196:58)

Well, you may not want to take credit for, you know, all these people that have gone through the treatment, but I'll bet it feels pretty damn good to see the results when your organization is, you know, you. You guys funded it, you led the way, you sent them down, you know, and they're coming back and it's working. That's. That's. I mean, it's got to feel amazing.

C (197:25)

It does feel good. It is very humbling. I. This is going to sound crazy. I was on a run in 2016. Things were about as bad as they could get. You know, Marcus's treatment was 2017. 2016-17. Indescribable. And I had headphones in and I heard. I literally heard a voice. This is gonna sound nuts. And it said, I'm going to ask big things of you. And I stopped and I looked around and there was nobody. And so I just put my hands on my knees and I just put my head down and I just said, like, if I can be of service, use me. If this pain can be of service, use it. And that's exactly what I've tried to do. And so I've literally just been in the passenger seat. I have got to give all of the credit to God. I do, because, you know, he created me a certain way to have the, I guess, ability to be the driver, a driver behind this on the funding side. But this has just happened. It's just happened. And we've just been willing participants, and we are just one spoke on the wheel at this point. There are a lot of people making this happen. It might have started with us, but a lot of people get credit for this. So after Chad's death, it was just like, we're doing this. And the next goal I set was 100 special operators beyond the SEAL community, along with IRB backed research. So if all that looked good, then we would really get serious about founding an organization to take this mainstream. So, of course that happened. And in 2019, we founded VETS. We provide funding for veterans that are leaving the United States to Seek psychedelic therapies just like Marcus did. Many of them are truly on the brink. They have tried several things that haven't worked and they're really suffering. So we don't want to. There are a lot of barriers to access. First of all, these therapies are scheduled in the United States, so they're illegal. And furthermore, veterans in many cases are struggling financially. So we exist to pay for the treatments, but we also realize that this is a very unique opportunity to collect research so that we can advocate for change to veteran health care, to the scheduling, drug law, whatever. These therapies got a really bad rap in the 60s. And of course Nixon with the Controlled substances Act in 1970, shut down all research and banned all of these substances in the US so you have guys with and gals with 10, 20 combat deployments, 30, 35 years in the military that can't get access to meaningful care in the United States. The average number of medications that most of our grant recipients are on are like between 7 and 9. So we just give them an opportunity to have an experience with a medicine that actually works and is working across four key areas of suffering in the veteran community. Psychological, dealing with past traumas, whether it's childhood trauma, war trauma. Physiological. There's a real brain connectivity element that needs to be further researched with psychedelics addiction there. Many of the substances, especially the one Marcus did, are very anti addictive and then spiritual. So there's a lot of darkness that has infiltrated I think just the military community, special operations community, SEAL community. So there's a real spiritual cleansing happening as well. And nothing has this much of an effect in these four key areas as psychedelic assisted therapies. So the success rates are just off the charts. And everyone that gets funding from us knows two to five others that need help immediately. So we've funded to date over 350 special operations veterans and some of their spouses in seeking these therapies. 350 in like less than four years.

B (202:29)

Wow.

C (202:29)

Yeah.

B (202:30)

That's amazing.

C (202:31)

Thank you.

B (202:32)

Are there, are you aware of any negative side effects from this? Everything so far sounds extremely positive.

C (202:41)

So more research needs to be done on ibogaine, which is the therapy that Marcus did. Preliminary data shows that there are contraindications with it can cause a cardiac event in people who are not properly screened. I've had one of the world's leading, maybe the world's leading ibogaine provider tell me that if properly screened it's as safe as getting a colonoscopy. But it all comes down to the screening process. So, no, I mean, other psychedelics, as far as research shows and we know are very physiologically safe.

B (203:19)

Wow. So that's a. That's. That's the only thing. And that's. Yeah, that's only if you happened to go through. Happen to not go through the screening and maybe have a heart condition.

C (203:35)

Right, right. Yeah. There. Many of these things grow from the earth. So this is part of my whole, like, reconditioning of my belief system was when did I believe that something manufactured by an industry that caused the opioid epidemic is a cure, but something that God put on earth that grows freely in the ground is a drug? You know, I, I had to completely flip flop that.

B (204:10)

Yeah, well, I mean, big pharma, you know. Yeah, big pharma, they can't. I mean, when I was looking this stuff up, they run a $16 billion a year business. Just an antidepressant. Antidepressant market. That's just antidepressants.

C (204:34)

That's insane.

B (204:35)

Yeah. And so of course, they don't want something natural, you know.

C (204:39)

Right. Or something that you need one or two times.

B (204:42)

Yeah. So it's not in their best interest. And what a shame. You know, it really is a shame.

C (204:50)

It is a shame because I feel like, you know, you, Marcus, so many others that were the prime fighting age when 9, 11 happened, even the rest of your life before you have half your life before you. Yeah, most likely. So I didn't want Marcus to be beholden to bunch of prescription medications for the rest of his life because you just keep adding, you know, there's just every year that goes by, there's another, another, another. He's not on anything now. And that's the case with most of our grant recipients. They have to titrate off all their medications to have, you know, the, the experience. And then they don't get back on and they're going back to psychedelic therapy and as needed, which might look like once a year, twice a year, quarterly at most. And they're doing great.

B (205:46)

That's awesome.

C (205:46)

Some are even risking arrests to microdose psilocybin because it completely replaces antidepressants and creates all sorts of brain connectivity. So for tbi. Super effective.

B (206:01)

Yeah. Yeah. Researching. That sounds amazing. It's. I mean, the fact that it's, it's disrupting the. What do they call it?

C (206:13)

The default mode network.

B (206:15)

Yeah, the default mode network with what is it, the front part of your brain and the back part of your brain. And it's only what, like 10 of your brain is like a neuron highway. And the fact that, you know, it's disrupting that and then forcing the neurons to make connections and pass information through the other 90% of your brain that we don't use is fascinating.

C (206:43)

It is fascinating. There are a lot of key themes that are coming out of the treatment weekends, which range everything from, you know, I feel free to my brain works again to I want to live again. I've had all that I want right in front of me this whole time. I'm so grateful to there is a God, to we're all connected. It's all about love. I want to pay it forward. And it's just been the most amazing thing to be part of. And so at the most core fundamental level, when I had that freak out, where it was like, what have we done? I asked myself, were your prayers answered? Yes. Did it save Marcus's life? Yes. Did it save my marriage? Yes. Did it save my family? Yes. How's that? Bad?

B (207:41)

Yeah. So you guys are going to research. You guys are funding Stanford to do a ton of research on this. What does that look like? When are they starting?

C (207:54)

So we're in a partnership with Stanford. The. The Stanford portion has an angel funder, and then we are going to be funding the treatments of 30 veterans who are receiving ibogaine. And the hypothesis is that ibogaine may create some sort of a benefit for blast injury or cte, any sort of degenerative brain disease. Ibogaine is known to be the only substance that promotes glial cell growth in the brain. So in a degenerative brain disease, glial cells are slowly dying off and the brain's atrophying. In this study, Dr. Nolan Williams will be assessing whether the brain could actually. I guess I don't even know how to properly increase in volume, maybe for. For after ibogaine heal itself. Yeah, yeah. So I'm clearly not a scientist, but the idea would be to see if ibogaine could be a potential treatment for TBI or blast injury, cte, and possibly other diseases like als, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, where the brain is slowly dying, and ibogaine creating. Having the ability to create nuclear cell growth. Could that stop it? Could it slow it down? Could it reverse it? You know, I don't know. So it's very exciting. And the study has been postponed due to Covid, but hoping that we can get that started June, July of this year.

B (209:34)

Man, that'll be interesting.

C (209:36)

I know.

B (209:37)

That'll be really interesting.

C (209:38)

That was my biggest takeaway. With Marcus when he came out of treatment? Yes. He was completely psychologically cleansed and he didn't have a drink for like nine months. Now he can have a glass of wine, a beer, and it does. It's not a problem. He also had a spiritual, you know, he was like very spiritually connected after the treatment and then return of his cognitive functioning was remarkable. So I don't know. There's something to it. A lot of guys report the same thing.

B (210:15)

Right on, man.

C (210:16)

Yep.

A (210:30)

It.

B (211:01)

So now we're going to get into the actual process of doing the psychedelic down in Mexico and kind of what.

A (211:08)

That looked like, but Mexico, Costa Rica. Oh, Canada. Yeah, it's really anywhere. These drugs are either unscheduled or, or legal. And so we have, you know, we have vetted partners. Yeah, really now, around the globe that are dying to help our guys.

B (211:32)

So how are you, if you don't mind me asking, and you don't have an answer, but how are you making these connections in all these different countries?

A (211:44)

Not sleeping much at night. Okay. Working through the weekends. A lot of research, just everything. So research the network. The initial success we had of helping guys, you know, funding, finding them opportunities to go get these treatments. Word of mouth spread pretty quickly because these industries are. Well, I'd say the psychedelic space is not huge. Everybody knows kind of everybody. In a way. Word gets around pretty quickly that there's a group out there that is funding treatments for special operations veterans. And then when they hear seals, they're like, those guys are getting better from this stuff. And then somebody calls and says, hey, by the way, I have a retreat here or I treat this, or I can help you, or, you know, or there's, you know, donors that are connected to, you know, some of these retreat centers. And so we've just, you know, in two and a half short years, we've built a pretty robust network of providers. We've raised over $2 million. Like I said, we've funded now over 350 individuals, guys and girls, spouses, we're starting to fund now and we have a waiting list of over a hundred.

B (213:18)

Wow, that's amazing. You know, before we took the break, you were talking about, you know, the next wave is coming and, you know, just put things in perspective. This year, I believe, will be the first, the first time ever in American history where you could have enlisted during wartime and left during wartime and done an entire 20 year career and retired all combat deployments. And, and I think you're right. It's going to be a big, you know.

A (213:52)

Yeah, I get a big problem coming. I wish I could take the credit of saying that, you know, Amber's the one who really like harps on that. That we've never sustained combat for so long.

B (214:02)

Yeah.

A (214:03)

And nobody knows what's going to happen, you know. And we need to get in front of it. Like we're not. Like why would we wait. Why are we going to wait for like this to hit the fan? Like, like we need to get in front of it right now. Like we need to. We can't continue sending guys anti suicide suicide pills. You know what I mean? It doesn't work. Or to centers that are just collecting shit ton of money and guys are just walking away scratching their head. We can't do that anymore. You know, a lot of that stuff does work, but we need a tool. We need more tools that work. This works. There's no doubt. I will go head to head with anybody that doesn't believe in this, anybody in the world and show them the proof. Yeah. There's nothing on the planet that is working better for mental health problems than psychedelic therapies.

B (215:00)

That's amazing.

A (215:01)

Which is, you know, which is psychedelics. Right. You got to throw the therapy piece in there. You have to integrate prior post integration. It's 90 of the healing. Can't just give the person the drug and expect them to heal. It's kind of like a holistic approach to this whole thing. But it works. It works.

B (215:20)

Yeah. Well let's go into your, your experiences. But just real quick before we do that, I kind of want to just educate the audience on how this works, how I understand this works. I did a lot of research on this before you guys got here because I want to know. Perfect. Maybe you can.

A (215:39)

What the hell, you can tell us then.

B (215:40)

But. So basically some of the problem here is the default mode network and the default. The way I understand it, the default mode network is two small portions of your brain. One in the front, one in the back. And it is basically a highway of neurons which is passing information back and forth to those two specific locations in the brain. The rest of the brain is actually pretty dormant from what I understand. We don't. I can't remember the percentage, but I.

A (216:18)

Think we only use maybe 10%.

B (216:20)

Yes. Very small percentage of our brain which is the default mode network. Now the default mode network is internal thinking. It's your ego. It's self critical. It's protects you judging others. It's basically the. If you're thinking about the past, if you're thinking about the future, if you're judging somebody, if you're self critical, you know, all that's ego. That is the default mode network.

A (216:51)

It's what we've been taught. Yeah. And when you're growing up and you, you go to do something, your parents say, don't touch that. Yeah.

B (217:01)

So. So apparently when you're born, you use a lot more of your brain than we do. You know, when, when, when, when we're.

A (217:15)

Our age, because we're free. We haven't been, we haven't been institutionalized yet.

B (217:22)

Yeah.

A (217:22)

We haven't been told. No.

B (217:23)

It's amazing. Like, reading this stuff is just fascinating.

A (217:28)

And that's why as you get older, Ryan, I mean, it just. You get more and more institutionalized because you're not, you're not resetting that. You just. That default mode is just going. It's on autopilot. It's on repeat.

B (217:46)

Yeah.

A (217:46)

It just keeps repeating. And so you have to figure out a way to, to disrupt that.

B (217:54)

So apparently what happens from, you know, from the sources I research from, is basically when you take one of these psychedelics, it disrupts that neuron highway on the default mode network. And so there is no more information being passed in between. And if you take antidepressants, benzos, you know, those kind of volumes annex, whatever it is, it's. It's basically slowing the neurons going back and forth in the default mode network. Now when you take the psychedelic, it disrupts the default mode network or maybe even, you know, shuts it down, which forces your brain to. In. In the neurons in your brain to. To communicate with other sections. Sections of your brain. Making the neurons more efficient. So.

A (218:58)

Allows you to wake up. Sorry, Allows you to wake up.

B (219:02)

Yeah. So it literally, you know, I was very skeptical this stuff too, you know, and until I started hearing more and more guys talk about it. Now you. You've 100% sold me. But, you know, I used to think, you know, oh, this is for hippies. You know, I don't do that. And now I'm like, maybe these hippies were. Maybe they were onto something.

A (219:24)

Yeah.

B (219:25)

And when they say it unlocks your brain, they actually mean exactly what they're saying. It unlocks the other, the other 90% of your brain and makes it more efficient.

A (219:41)

Makes you more creative, makes you. Makes you be able to. Makes you smarter. Right. Like if you're using 10 of your brain and now using. I'm gonna make up a number, even 11, 12.

B (219:51)

Yeah.

A (219:52)

Like you just right now using more your brain power. What a doctor explained to me is what you're talking about. The brain's really good at talking like linear psychedelics. It like opens up the highway, right? So if you have like a two lane highway, it just turned it into like a 12 lane highway.

B (220:12)

Yeah.

A (220:12)

And it allows different parts of brain to interact with each other that were not talking to each other before. And it's like a baby, right? Like babies, you know, or kids have such incredible creative minds, right. They're like, hey, you know, what if, yeah, you know, what if I took this and you know, right. Kids are like coming up with all these great stories and ideas. You're like, that's nuts. And that's because they're not, they're not brainwashed, they're not institutionalized. To think of this way that that doesn't work. They're just thinking, right. Like, of course a lot of it is, you know, is Babel, but they're able to creatively think outside the box. We've been put inside the box by constantly be told, no, don't touch that. You know, take your shoes off when you go to the house. Make sure to eat all your vegetables. Some of that stuff is good, but you're seeing where I'm going, where a lot of that stuff is not good. You know, we can get into all types of things that have institutionalized us to think a certain way. All this is doing is, you know, it's the matrix for your mind. Like think outside the box. Right. Unconventional thinking is what we try to do in the teams. Think outside of this institution of the military that, you know, keeps thousands and thousands of soldiers doing things a certain way. But we need to think a little bit outside of that box. Otherwise we're just like everybody else. So just think of you being able to be more creative, more ways that you could potentially pursue something better and more efficiently than what you were maybe told from somebody. I don't know if I did a good job of trying to explain that, but that's what you're talking about with the default mode network gets disrupted and it just allows your brain to interact in different ways that it hasn't or that it hadn't since it was a child.

B (222:25)

Yeah.

A (222:25)

Who has such an imaginative mind, right? Like we could all think like children in terms of creativity and you know, in imagination, not in terms of like, you know, lifetime of lessons and that type of education.

B (222:42)

I mean, thinking about, you know, thinking about the science behind this and what it does, I mean, it makes, it makes a hell of a lot of sense because the default Mode network is past. You know, it's future. It's ego. It's, it's, it's all the trauma that you've experienced. It's all forming who you are as a person. And if you only have that one highway when you take that hallucinogenic or psychedelic, it's like somebody just flip the power grid on in your head and, and it's, it's amazing.

A (223:15)

So that's why people call. You know, a lot of people experience what they call an ego death.

B (223:19)

Yeah.

A (223:19)

You know, depending on each person's different but you know, high dose. A lot of people see themselves just like they call. Is this what death is? Like it just died. Their ego just died. That, that whole self, that protecting mechanism just went away. And they're able to look at life now as like, holy. I never even looked at this stuff before. You know, I was so drilled into what I only learned over and over again. Now I'd actually see a tree. Yeah, it was green. You know, we get some individuals that come out and say, you know, I've been eating. I forgot what it was. It was like apples or something for like my whole life. And I looked at it and didn't even realize like the damn color of it until I took a psychedelic because rewired my way of thinking, like made me like think a little bit, be more aware of actually what's going on. That's why people say a lot of times like now I can see stuff, you know, as it's happening or before it's happening or when two people are acting a certain way. Like when two spouses interact. I mean, it's so obvious now. I could tell that's a good relationship, that's a bad relationship. Off of what I, what I personally got off of the medicine. Yeah, it's.

B (224:44)

Well, man, I could go on about this all day, but it's great and I want to, it's great.

A (224:50)

You know, I do want to say like everything else, it can be abused. Yeah, abused like it was in the past. But the great thing about psychedelics is they're not habit forming, they're not addicting. And that's good because that's what I think some people get scared of. Like, oh no, you're addicted to drugs, you're addicted to drugs. They don't have addictive qualities. Ketamine. Ketamine does. It's a bit of a different psychedelic. Ketamine's really amazing for depression. Major depressive disorder. Again, probably one of the best things they can do immediately for Suicidality. So someone's really struggling, you can get them, you can kind of get them out of that, that mindset pretty quickly. With ketamine protocol, that's the only one that has the potential for abuse. The other ones, I mean, yeah, you can abuse it like you can abuse alcohol, except alcohol is highly addictive. Opioids are highly addictive. Psychedelics are not highly addictive.

B (225:54)

I mean, it sounds like, and I think I heard you say it, and I was reading it too, is that ibogaine is just, it's, it's, it's so powerful that you're not going to want to do it every day or every.

A (226:09)

Week or if you like ibogaine, you have other, you have other issues to work through.

B (226:13)

It's.

A (226:14)

No, I mean, this is, again, this is going to hell and back.

B (226:17)

Yeah, you're.

A (226:18)

You're seeing, you're. You're visiting the demons, right? And that's not fun. But you have to do that to get better, right? Like, you have to, you know, you need, you need some pain to get better. You, you work out hard so you can be stronger. You know, you, Nothing in life is easy, right? Like, it's that, it doesn't, Life doesn't work like that. Well, ibogaine is like that. It, it, it kicks your ass so you can be better so you can lift the rocks out. You know, one of the doctors we work with told me, marcus, this is like, this is pulling all those heavy bricks out of your backpack. If you have a thousand pounds of brick bricks, when you're done with your treatment, as you're going through your, your experience, the bricks are just falling out. It's just, you're just, you're, you're just getting lighter.

B (227:06)

Yeah.

A (227:06)

You know, and it's such a good feeling when you're done. You're like, like, wow. Like, I get it. Like, I get it.

B (227:17)

Let's go into your experience then. So what, you, you fly into wherever and, and what happens?

A (227:28)

Where do I want to go?

B (227:29)

Well, how long is the.

A (227:30)

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

B (228:26)

So is this is the couple weeks with a therapist?

A (228:30)

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

B (228:53)

So how, what, what kind of stuff are you doing in the, in the two weeks of therapy before, before you go, how are they preparing?

A (228:59)

It's a lot of talk therapy, but it's a lot a talk therapy around what the medicine is going to do, what it's going to open up, what are the issues you may be having? What do you think you may be having? What was your childhood like? What's your time right now? What do you think you're going to experience in there? What kind of traumas did you have? Like, it's kind of like an intake with the coach, though, so the coach could understand and help guide you and prepare you for when you go in there. If you did have childhood trauma or you did have wartime trauma, like, that's what you're going in there to get better. Like to go in that mindset of I want to forget or I want to deal with. I should say forget. I can't get past seeing my buddy killed. It's affecting my whole life. I want to deal with that during this experience. And so you prepare yourself to deal with that specifically. And then there's other stuff that's just gonna, it's just gonna. Like I said, the medicine finds the things that are wrong with you. So there's stuff that will just, you know, pop up in there. I mean, I had, I talked to my dad. You know, my dad had passed that year. And, you know, it's. It's like the experience is an awakened dream state. So you put eye shades on, you put noise canceling, headphones on. Nice music. The music, as it runs through your body, it brings out emotion. So as the music may get more intense, you may get more darker, you know, deeper images, disturbing, you know. And then if it gets lighter, I would see visions of like happy Amber and happy Kaden and Maggie, you know, know our kids. And like, we're, we're in a good place. We're an open field and we're happy and we're singing and whatever, you know. And then the music would get intense again and the intensity, you know, brings out emotion and it brings out, like dark, you know, demonic. For me, my first experience, the therapist said, marcus, I've been doing this for 20 years. I've never seen anybody struggle like you did. Like, I've never seen anybody puke for as many hours as you did and just have such a tough time through it. But because of that, like I said, it just, you know, it changed my life. Yeah.

B (231:18)

So you go, so you go down there, you do the couple weeks with a therapist.

A (231:22)

You go, you do a couple weeks with therapist, and then you, you have to get off meds. Alcohol you can't take. You know, you have to get off all your, your antidepressants if you're on them. Like there's a weaning off period. Yeah, for some that's really difficult as you know, but you, you can't. You know, there's some contraindic. Contraindications, you know, with some pharmaceuticals. So you have to be clean for how long? Whenever they're like, just for them to be out of your system. So whatever, the half life or whatever, you know, they just have to be out of your system. So we, you know, not we, but the treatment team, which is completely separate entity from us, you know, they, they do whole intake, screening, stress tests, blood work, ekg, piss test, right before you go down, like to make sure the person is good.

B (232:14)

Wow.

A (232:15)

Oh, yeah. And then, then when they're there, they get, they get, they get hooked up to heart rate monitor, they get a port put in just the unlikely event something happens. So it's, it's medically, it's done like, so it's so professional, it's perfect. There's a Stanford trained doctor that's there, emergency medicine doctor, one of the best. And then psychedelic trained nurses. So it's just an amazing staff. And that's all of them. And so you have the, the, the pre integration, I guess you want to call it, pre care to get them ready. And they go, they go to their experience and, and during their experience Therapist is there. So therapist can be there to answer questions and help them if they need.

B (233:08)

It in the room.

A (233:10)

Yeah, mine was there the whole time. Slept at the foot of the bed. Like, you know, my heart rate sometimes were up, you know, it was racing at like 140, 150.

B (233:19)

Oh, wow.

A (233:19)

And that's just from what I was seeing, and it was affecting me. Yeah. Others. There's some guys that their heart rate doesn't get above 40 beats a minute, you know, like, it. It. Everybody's different, but that individual helped me, help guide me through. Like, why am I seeing this? Why am I seeing that? Why am I talking to a dead buddy? Why am I talking to my dad? Why am I seeing toys?

B (233:42)

So you. So, so you're.

A (233:46)

Man.

B (233:47)

So you're talking. You're actually conscious. You take the pill. You're actually conscious while you're on it and having a conversation.

A (233:56)

No, no, you're. You're in. You're in with the eye shades on and the music. You're. You're in the movie.

B (234:04)

Oh, good.

A (234:05)

You're in the movie. You don't know. You know, you don't. You're. You're kind of. You're separated from reality. Okay. Yeah. Think about Ibodine. You could take off the ey shades and you kind of come out of it. It's different than, like psilocybin, lsd, where it's more of an awaken experience. Even though you also can put the ey shades on and the music and you still have this f. Similar experience, but with psilocybin, lsd, ayahuasca. These are very visual experiences. So you take them off. I mean, you're seeing, you know, things distort and, you know, it's a different experience. That's why ibogaine. You put shades on, you put music on. You're seeing your. Your life play out in a movie. You see. I mean, I watched my life even file itself in, like a file, like a movie file. Almost like defrag. No, people talk about. They see a defrag of their brain. I watched it happen. Watched it happen. And you'll hear that. That's very common.

B (235:15)

So is it in chronological order, your life.

A (235:18)

It could be every. It could be anything. It could be a little bit jump around. Some people have had very focused missions of theirs. Everybody's different.

B (235:28)

What was yours?

A (235:31)

Mine jumped around mine, you know, and again, I think it's because I, you know, I talked to you about, like, you know, my mind chatters so. Talks too much and I, you know, I, I jumped around all over the place. I also thought I experienced, you know, like a, like a spiritual type of part of my experience where it was very like peaceful and white light and, you know, is this God?

B (236:01)

Yeah.

A (236:02)

You know, so you people see that. People even have more profound visions of that. That's why it's very personal. You know, at the end of the day, it's your brain, what's going on in your mind and drug's gonna fix it, the medicine is going to fix it. And again, these things have been used for thousands of years for rites of passage and for healing. Really? For.

B (236:24)

Yeah, it said they've been using them for up to 6,000 years. 6,000 years ago they were using this stuff.

A (236:31)

The risk to this stuff is like, is nil. I mean it, the, the toxicology of this, you, you couldn't eat enough psilocybin mushrooms. You, you couldn't, like, you would, you would, you would throw them up before, like physically you couldn't eat that many to, to die. Like, it's, you know, these things, the risk to these are so, so little. But they're powerful. They're very powerful medicines and they have to be, they have to be taken correctly. Yeah, I'm a big proponent. They have to be taken correctly. Yeah.

B (237:09)

Yeah, I can tell.

A (237:11)

Yeah.

B (237:13)

Are you, I mean, how, like, how vivid, how vivid is it, how realistic is it? Are you, are you in Time magazine article that I read that you're in, it said you talk to your father, you talk to friends that you lost on the battlefield, you talk to God.

A (237:31)

You'Re talking to them like you and I are talking right now.

B (237:33)

So you're, you're actually having a full blown conversation, full on conversation.

A (237:37)

Your therapist there, she might tell you like, so what was that thing about X, Y and Z? You know, so I heard you say, you know, this, this and this to your wife or, you know, so. Yeah, I mean you're, you may be acting out some of those things or you may be thinking you're talking but you're whispering them. Or maybe you're just not whispering or saying anything, you're just having the conversation. So it's all different things. Some you may be vocal, some you may be whispering, some you may be doing nothing, some you may be doing a lot of hand gestures like touching things or grabbing stuff or clearing rooms or it's, it is so, it is so individualized, right? It's personalized. Medicine works for you or what you experience, it's gonna be different from what I experience, but we're gonna. We're gonna come out with similar lessons learned. You may stop drinking. You may stop using your opioids. You know, you may be more aware. You may understand that you're. You know, you. You're good with yourself. You. You love yourself. You're good. You know, you don't have to hate yourself anymore or, you know, I mean, the stories are similar, and there's something going on. Right. There's something. There's something happening there.

B (238:57)

How long does this last?

A (238:59)

I began another challenge. It's long anywhere. The peak is 4 to 6 hours, and then the back part is 6 to 12 hours. Iboga, the root, 24 to 36 hours.

B (239:13)

Wow.

A (239:16)

Talking about a cleansing. I mean, come out of there. Life is good. You have no issues. You have no ego. There's no. There's just. You could just walk in a room and just not worry about anybody or anything or put on a display or, you know, put on a face mask to act like you don't need any of that. You're. You're. You're just good. Yeah. When you're done.

B (239:45)

Can you share with me maybe, like, a very specific part of.

A (239:52)

I wish. You know what I really wish I did is I wish I wrote some of this stuff down.

B (239:56)

Yeah.

A (239:58)

Because for me, it was just. It was a lot of, you know, shotgun images and, like, short. Short stories or, you know, me talking to dad for a little while, but I don't remember what we talked about, you know? And then me, you know, I do remember. I do remember some of the high points. I remember very vividly me, like, with Amber and the kids, and we're all like, you know, we're all, like, in arms, you know, like, as a family, because we did that. It's always fun. And, like, we would just, like, just kind of, like, hug around, you know, as a group. And it was very uplifting. And for me, that just showed me that, dude, everything you think you're searching for, it's like, here it is. Like, you got them right in front of you. And, like, that's what it was showing me, was that, you know, that you're constantly on this. This path to searching for. You're not even sure what. But you need to just stop and look what you have and be happy with that, be satisfied with that. And I think that's what that was trying to tell me, was that, you know, you have everything you need. Like, you don't. You don't got to go searching for other things. And. And that's what I took Away from that piece. That's kind of what the therapist had talked about. So trying to understand, like, what does this mean? You know, I don't know what to talk to my dad about. He, you know, I have some, Some great memories growing up. I mean, he definitely stopped his life to, like, train me and teach me and play ball. And like, that's all I did was play ball. But on the other side of that, it was like if I didn't, you know, throw a touchdown, hit a. Hit a home run, like there was. I didn't. I wasn't loved. Like, I was like, beaten, you know, like, it was all about success. Like, you had to succeed, you had to win, you had to do. Right. You know? Yeah. Otherwise, like, they were in a bad mood. Him, my mom, I sucked, you know, and. And so that's how I grew up, was you had to do well if you wanted, like, love and attention. So trying to reset that many years of that type of mindset and, you know, it's probably what drove me to. It definitely drove me to do certain things. I. I did, but that's not healthy.

B (242:25)

Yeah.

A (242:25)

You know.

B (242:29)

Were you ever worried that it was. I mean, when you went down there. How many times have you done this?

A (242:36)

So I've done it three now.

B (242:37)

Three times.

A (242:38)

Yeah. The second time. Second time was bad. There was a. There was a fire at the. The house we were at. Something happened with the wiring of like, a. One of the dryers. And this is terrible. I was in the peak. Peak of my experience and it. What I remember was I got woken up being told that I was going into open heart surgery and that it cut me open immediately because I was going to cardiac arrest, but that wasn't happening. Like, that's what I perceived happening. So that, that was my memory of it. So it was like, it was really bad. That's where, you know, the medicine can be, you know, that's what I remember. But really what happened was caught on fire. They were just trying to get us out of the room. But again, I'm in the middle of a fucking strongest psychedelic on the planet, and I'm feeling the heat because it's real heat. So I'm in hell.

B (243:42)

Oh, man.

A (243:42)

You know, like. Right. So it was terrible. Thank goodness. I went back like six months later, a year later, and I had. And this is what told me that I'm. I'm good. Like, I. I'll still work on stuff for the rest of my life, and I may have to go do psychedelic therapy once a year or twice. A year. And I think that is great. There's, I mean, it's, you're only going to get better. The last time I went, I could actually say this. Like it was peaceful. Like it was peaceful for me. I had a big smile on my face. My heart rate never jumped. I didn't throw up. I just kind of, you know, I don't want to say enjoyed the ride, but it was still intense. Like, it's still like you still get a bit of an anxiety and because it's, you know, you're, you know, it's, it's a tough, tough medicine. But again, it's not something like you're like, oh, let's go do ibogaine. No. But this was a more pleasant experience. I was more prepared. I meditated throughout the whole experience. I repeated mantra throughout the whole experience in my mind. So I didn't have those prolonged, tough, demonic, you know, cutting of throats and shooting and knife fighting and blood and guts and like, just bad, you know, that I had my very first experience that basically in my, you know, kind of cleansed. Cleansed the demons. Right. Like just kind of lifted all that weight off my shoulders. The last time I didn't have that. And it told me when I got out of there, like, dude, you're good. Like you're like, you won. Like life is good now. Just go now just go figure the rest of it out. So that was really rewarding to have that the last time.

B (245:41)

Damn.

A (245:41)

Yeah. You know, and, and I tell people we all have bad days. I still get depressed, I think. I don't wish depression upon anybody. It's horrible, you know, pure depression. And I think I have whatever it is and it's easier to, it's easier to fight back now. It's easier for me to snap out of it. But I can, I can still go there and I have to like, work. I gotta work to make it stop. So I understand how people say they're depressed. Like I jump on that because I know what that's like.

B (246:16)

Yeah.

A (246:17)

You know, it's night when you, you stay in the day. You know, you stay in bed days at a time. Don't get up, don't answer the phone, don't answer your texts, don't want to see anyone, don't want to do anything. Tired. Like that's bad. And that's where I was before, you know, and now still have the depression, but able to literally fight, fight out of it quickly. I owe it to my experience. I owe it to that first time that was such A hard struggle. Like I needed to see that, I needed to go through that.

B (246:55)

Yeah.

A (246:57)

And our guys need to go through that if they're struggling. Right. Like, you gotta, you gotta do the hard work. We call it work. It is work. But if you want to get better, you gotta do something about it.

B (247:14)

So this stuff just sounds amazing. You know, I was reading some of the stuff that not just traumatic brain injury and ptsd that it's known to have amazing results in, but it's all. They're also seeing results in. Autism, cancer patients, ocd, depression, anxiety, adhd. And I even read something that might be helping a little bit with Alzheimer's.

A (247:42)

That, I mean that's, that's the part where, that's the physiological piece where man, if this can actually physiologically heal the brain, like do something to the brain, I mean it's going to be, it's going to be incredible what it's going to do for people that have TBIs, that potentially can move into CTE, cause dementia, cause Parkinson's or whatever, you know, whatever's going on with the brain. But all those things you mentioned, they're, they're just studying a lot of that stuff now. But a lot of that stuff is because the brain is just wired a certain way. Right. And so this is just kind of like you said, chopping the default mode network and resetting, you know, resetting some of those trained thoughts, trained patterns.

B (248:27)

Damn.

A (248:27)

It's crazy, right?

B (248:29)

Yeah, it is.

A (248:30)

Yeah.

B (248:31)

So you come back home and it's like somebody flipped the white dude flip the light switch.

A (248:36)

Like my, I was like cognitive, cognitively. Like I was, I was back. I was like sharp, focused. I'm finishing, you know, my, my MBA at USC here in two weeks. My second grad degree. Like I would not been able to do that prior to all this stuff.

B (248:57)

I mean, it worked so well on you that you started a non profit. That's.

A (249:03)

Yes. I mean the first thing I said to Amber, aside from when I come out of my experience and we, you know, we hugged and cried and the first thing I said, I'm like, how can. Oh. I turned the doctor and said, how many. I mean there must have been tons of guys have done this right before me. Like, no, you're like the second. And with the second. Are you kidding me? Like that's what got me. I said, okay, Amber, we have to, we, we have to start like immediately. Like all our friends who are struggling need this. Like this is a no brainer. Like they need to do what I just did and how are we going to do that? All right, well, we got to go. We got to go. Got to go find some money. So go raise some money. Well, but we have to start a nonprofit. So it's like. That was the conversation, and it was kind of a grassroots effort. We just wanted to fund a few individuals to prove the concept that this stuff works. And that turned into like, a hundred. Like that.

B (250:02)

Wow.

A (250:03)

You know, and then, you know, the more people that get better, the easier it is to raise money. Still difficult to raise money because it's, you know, schedule one and. But, I mean, we spent over $100,000 in attorney fees setting this up correctly so we can do it correctly. You know, it's been difficult. It's not easy.

B (250:22)

Yeah.

A (250:22)

And we talked about, you know, people are. People are trying to try to do their own thing. Yeah, that's fine. We'll support where we can, but we have to stay on the path of what we're doing, not worry about anybody else.

B (250:37)

I mean, damn, dude, it's. That's amazing, you know, Good shit. Are you doing any other type of natural medicines?

A (250:50)

You mean like marijuana? I. You know, I'm not huge in a cannabis. I do take a ton of cbd, so, like, a lot in the morning, in the evening, after a workout, like, anything I could do to reduce inflammation. Like, I just. I take. I take supplements for that. I take CBD for that, take cold baths, cold showers regularly. Anything I can do to reduce brain inflammation, body inflammation, cbd, cannabis. I mean, sometimes I have. I definitely have trouble sleeping still. I wish I could sleep better. So I do sometimes do a little bit at night before I go to bed. Sometimes I sleep, sometimes I don't. I usually just end up in the pantry eating a lot of, like, cookies and chocolate at night. But, yeah, I mean, I'm not for or against it. Like, I just. It's. It's okay, you know, it's okay. But I feel like I'm. I'm busy and I like to do, you know, and for me, it's not, you know, I'm. I'm too busy to, like, sit around and smoke pot, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But like I said, I definitely. I definitely use it to try to go to sleep.

B (252:08)

Yeah.

A (252:09)

And I wound up eating too much after that.

B (252:11)

Yeah. I mean, I went to. I went to therapy for three and a half years twice a week, and my therapist was trying to. She kept telling me, you know, you need to try this. You know, that was when I lived in Florida, where, you know, it's legal.

A (252:27)

Yeah, you can get it.

B (252:28)

Yeah. And, you know, I had that. I'm not doing that. That's for hippies. I don't do that. I don't want to turn into a fat turd and smoke pot all the time. And then I finally, I finally tried it and man, I, I, I can't say enough good about it, really.

A (252:45)

Does it help? So that's where I'm probably just not getting the, the education that I need from it. You know what I mean? And so, and I know there's like different strains and different types and, you know, for me, I think I just need something that reduces my anxiety and like, helps me sleep, you know, and that's.

B (253:02)

Yeah, yeah, you know, that's, that's what I do. I don't, I can't do it during the day, you know, and I can't do it at all now because I live in Tennessee. It's illegal. But, you know, before I moved here, it was just, you know, when the working day is done and, you know, it's time to switch it off and then, you know, then I would smoke.

A (253:24)

Yeah.

B (253:25)

Or, or vape or whatever.

A (253:28)

Yeah.

B (253:28)

Whatever I had. But man, like, I just, I can't say enough good stuff about it. I mean, it just, it, it, I gotta be honest, like, really pisses me off that it's still illegal because I know how many people it's helping and it helps me. Me and.

A (253:44)

Got it.

B (253:45)

And what's, what's, what's the alternative?

A (253:48)

Yeah. Now the alternative is go back to benzos. Much worse heavy drugs. Yeah, you're, you're right about that. So I, you know, I, I should learn a little bit more. You know, I have some gummies and I use like, small doses of that. And I think that's good. I like that too, because it doesn't like.

B (254:06)

Yeah.

A (254:06)

You know, it doesn't affect like my, in my breathing or anything like that.

B (254:12)

Yeah.

A (254:12)

So I, you know, I kind of like that.

B (254:16)

But. Well, as far as vets is concerned, what do you guys got going on now and, and where's it going?

A (254:26)

Yeah, so right now, you know, we've stayed underground for about, you know, close to three years because we wanted to do it right. We didn't want to. We didn't want to one cause an issue in the community because we knew that we had to fund guys in our community and what the worst thing that could have happened was, you know, some, some bad article, publicity put out that, you know, veterans or seals or other special operations forces are like. Running wild on psychedelics or drugs and. And that would be detrimental to what we're doing. And so we just took everything really slow, kept it quiet, built up, I guess, the network of believers. And these included some senior military leaders, admirals, generals, politicians. Right side, left side. Now we're there. Now we're good. Now we have the support. The research is out there. People like you are now believing in it. So now the next phase is. The first phase was let's fund as many treatments as we can. We did. Second phase, we will continue funding as many treatments as we can and more. Now we're in more of an advocacy role, speaking, doing podcasts like this, educating people, trying to change legislation. We're working on HB 1802 in Texas, which is going to be in Texas of all places. Just passed the House, passed the Health Committee, 11 to 0. Passed the House, like 100 and I don't know what the number is. 124 to 12. Now it goes to the Senate. It'll be the first bill in the US to do a clinical trial with the Houston VA and Baylor Medical. And if it'll be, be testing psilocybin, MDMA and ketamine.

B (256:24)

Wow.

A (256:25)

Yeah. Yep. And so we're, I mean, everybody we talk to is confident that it's going to pass. Governor Perry is like, leading the charge on that with us. He's a Republican. He's seen what it's done to the individuals that he knows. And so he's 100% behind it. And I think that's great because the, the. It's a bipartisan bill, so Republicans and Democrats are working together. So we're right in the middle of all that, helping them, testifying, you know, speaking out, doing panels to educate, you know, the politicians, the lawmakers. We co sponsored the bill in California. It was a decrim bill, but it was heavy into therapy. And we had to. Because of the therapy piece, we didn't really have a choice. We just did a panel yesterday for Connecticut lawmakers. I just got phone call from New York, Florida, like, so they're all reaching out to Amber and I to kind of be the voice for them to help start passing some of this legislation. So that's where we're at on the state level, federal level, it's got to get descheduled or however it works, you know, from the FDA or, excuse me, from the dea. Because at the federal level, if they figure it out, then the states are going to have an easier time being able to, you know, to research all these different medicines. So I don't know. I don't know how that's going to go. So treatments, funding for treatments, advocacy, speaking out like this, podcasts, articles. I don't know where else. I don't know we're going to go from here.

B (258:16)

I mean, just the fact in today's political environment, you know, where nobody can seem to agree on anything, the fact that you've provided enough evidence and examples of how effective this stuff is that you've been able to kind of unify, you know, Democrats and Republicans on one thing is nothing short of incredible.

A (258:37)

It's crazy. You know, they said in Texas they can't even. They can't agree upon where a stop sign is placed. You know, they'll split. They'll split their vote. You know, it should be on the right side of the street. No, it should be on the left side of the street. It should be this solid. You know, but this bill, unanimous, 11 to 0, came out of the health committee and then the House voted. Like I said, there's only 12 nays, and I'm assuming the 12 nays probably just didn't understand, like, they probably didn't even look at this. They didn't even know what it was. They just heard psychedelic and they're like, nay. But that's still a large. It's a large amount that voted yay in Texas. And we're talking about a state that's history of conservative, Republican, Christian. So I think if Texas leads the way in this, the rest of the country is going to lead the way. That's what I feel. If Texas could do it. Because you figured it's going to be done in California or New York or. Or Illinois, right?

B (259:33)

Yeah.

A (259:35)

Or some, you know, Washington, Oregon. But in Texas. Yeah, Come on. That should like, like tell people.

B (259:42)

Yeah. Hard. Right.

A (259:43)

State guys just, like, do a little reading, do a little research.

B (259:48)

So moving forward, how can. How can we help. How can. How can the viewers help Donations? Getting the word out. What. How do we find you all that good stuff?

A (259:58)

Yeah. So vetsolutions.org we got a beautiful new website. There's a donation link. We always need resources. We always need funding. We're putting together some programs. We have an amazing advisory board. Five of them are on the top five most influential or influential individuals on the. In the psychedelic space. We have five of those individuals on our advisory board. I mean, you know, we got. We have some real people involved. We always need resources if people have, you know, ideas for fundraising. You know, we haven't done any of like the big dinners and, you know, some of the things that, you know, you and I might have, you know, gone to, you know, golf events, things like that, that raise money. We've done a pretty good job, you know, up until this point. We've got some really good individual backers, you know, that are keeping this thing afloat, Spread the word, you know, be a part of what Amber and I are doing. We just want to. We want to grow this, you know, maybe. Maybe we develop an international chapter. Same thing. Maybe in, like, you know, England or somewhere else in Europe or in Australia, where, you know, they're having the same type of veteran issues, 100%, we heard maybe some are even worse. They can do the same thing that we're doing here, and maybe we collaborate.

B (261:34)

Well. Willie will post all the links, social media links, you know, down in the description, along with your Time article, because it was a really good article.

A (261:44)

Awesome.

B (261:45)

Very informative. And, man, I just want to say, this is. This is amazing. Like, what you guys are doing and how much you've accomplished in such a short period of time is just. It's. It's. It's incredible.

A (262:02)

Thank you.

B (262:03)

And the fact that, you know, you have the courage to come out and say, like, you know, because this is, you know, still pretty taboo in most places.

A (262:11)

Definitely is.

B (262:11)

It's.

A (262:12)

It's. It's still tough. I don't. I don't love it at all. It's. It's not fun talking about your vulnerabilities and the things that you failed at or that you sucked at, but I think it's really helping folks. And every day that Amber and I want to quit because it's so fucking tough. So sometimes with, you know, like, we talked about people coming after you and some of the laws and, you know, sometimes when you hit roadblocks, and then we get a letter from somebody that went through treatment, and they're like, you saved my life. And that just keeps us going, you know, and knowing the fact that we have really good, close friends and brothers that I worked with that I just want to. Like, when they're ready, like, I want to hug them and help them, because I know they're going to have. The next part of their life is going to be a challenge for some of them. Not for everybody, but for the ones that are challenged, like, I'm going to tell people out there, like, we're here. We're here to help. There's no ego. I don't care how tough you were before. Like, you're like, we love you. And. And we're gonna, you know, we're gonna make sure that you're okay.

B (263:21)

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

A (263:56)

No, but. Honored. So honored. Thanks for the gummy bears.

B (264:00)

You're welcome, man.

A (264:02)

I had a blast.

B (264:04)

Best of luck to you.

A (264:05)

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