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- [00:00]
Brent Tucker
Going to bring it up now. In fact, I might clip it and, and throw this in at, at the beginning, but. Because if they've listened to it by this far, then. Then they won't need to hear what I'm about to say. Guys will, will check out and they'll be like, oh, this. This isn't a war story. No one's stacking bodies. Yeah, this is the. You know, like, what's. You know what? No. Almost everyone that listens to this podcast either knows someone that can benefit from this discussion themselves can benefit from this discussion, or they're currently serving, whether it be military or as a first responder. And you will need to know something about this in the future. But because we're not talking about stacking bodies, like, well, I'll. I'll. I'll weigh in at the next episode. No, listen to this episode.
- [00:50]
Marcia Lessard
You need to know this because we have a friend. Chris is not an outward outgoing person talking about this stuff at all. And we got invited to a health symposium at Bragg. The first time he ever, in front of his community, said, like, hey, I had something wrong with me.
- [01:06]
Chris Lazard
Yeah.
- [01:07]
Marcia Lessard
But what drove that was we had a friend.
- [01:10]
Chris Lazard
Yeah, we, we had a friend who unfortunately put himself on the 22 a day. And like, we found out six days before that. And, you know, as much as it was like, hey, get in front of a stage and just talk, you know, briefly about your issues. I was still weird. But it was just like, you know what? It's. It's worth it.
- [01:25]
Brent Tucker
Yeah.
- [01:26]
Chris Lazard
Because a lot of regret goes into that about, you know, hey, you know, didn't reach out, didn't notice, you know, all those things. Feel horrible about it, but. So that's why we're trying to. Trying to do it now.
- [01:34]
Marcia Lessard
But I want to define that as he's somebody that you never thought would. He was young and, and easy to love and easy to be around. And, you know, I knew him longer than. Than Chris did and always had a smile on his face, always there for other people. And it just was the cumulative stuff and drinking and the wrong meds, and it just ended. And it was shocking that that was the person. So everybody says, check in on people. Don't just check on. In on people. Be community with people. Men heal in community with purpose.
- [02:11]
Chris Lazard
For sure. For sure.
- [02:12]
Marcia Lessard
Right? Be in community with people.
- [02:14]
Brent Tucker
And welcome back to the Tier One podcast. I am your host, Brent Tucker, owner of First Responder Coffee, Cigar and Cask Company. Go to FRCC Shop and use promo code TIER1 to get 15% off the best coffee, cigars and bourbon in the country.
- [02:36]
Chris Lazard
And I'm Drew Tucker with first responder.
- [02:38]
Brent Tucker
Coffee and cigar company.
- [02:40]
Chris Lazard
Start your day off with our coffee in the day with a relaxing cigar. Go to FRCC shop. Guys. I invite you to join our Patreon, brought to you by Cobalt Kinetics. We're giving away prizes. There's a fitness forum, there's behind the scenes exclusive content.
- [02:57]
Brent Tucker
There's a gun forum where a Cobalt Kinetics weapons expert is ready to answer all of your gun questions.
- [03:04]
Chris Lazard
So join our Patreon. What are you waiting for?
- [03:08]
Brent Tucker
And of course, this episode is brought to you by Human Performance TRT. Go to hp-trt.com for your testosterone and peptide needs. Use promo code tier one to get 20% off. What are you waiting for? Get your blood work done, find out what your levels are at, and use 2026 to become the best version of you. Let's do it. Dr.
- [03:49]
Marcia Lessard
Welcome to the Tier one podcast.
- [04:06]
Chris Lazard
This is amazing.
- [04:07]
Brent Tucker
Dude, check it out. With us today, we have retired Green Beret Chris Lazard. Welcome to the show. Chris is co owner of Brain Treatment Center Nova, Northern Virginia. Guys have two different locations. I love that, that you're in this space because I've, I've said it before. Anyone that's followed the podcast. Sometimes what I hate about experts is that they've never experienced what we went through yet they're telling us, you know, how we should feel, how it happened, what's going on with, with no, with no connection to it. And that you very much had put almost two decades in, in the military. You were with third group, you were with 19th group, several combat rotations. So, you know, TBI being something that is near and dear to my heart and something that you and your wife is here. She works with you as well. We'll, we'll introduce her a little bit after your initial story. But I'm, I'm really interested both to hear your story and, and get into the TBI aspect of it.
- [05:27]
Chris Lazard
Yeah, man. No, again, thanks for having us here. This is absolutely amazing. Thanks for everything you're doing to like bringing stuff, attention to this, this type of stuff. Yeah. So we started Brain Treatment Center Nova and what, last year, 2024. July 2024. We originally started it for our son who's on the autism spectrum. He was nonverbal at 4 years old at Task Force Dagger, you know, foundation. Shout out to them. They're amazing. Yeah, they saw his story, paid for, you know, the whole treatment, the flight, you know, everything to really support Us. And within three weeks, he started talking for this thing called mert, for those of you that don't know magnetic resonance therapy. So we went out there and, you know, I went out there to visit once. She kind of, you know, got the word that, hey, he's. He's talking now. Like, it was. I was like, no, he's not. There's no way. So I went out there, I was blown away, you know, Know, I met with him and he was like, hey, dad, you know, is that a school bus? And I was like, holy. I haven't heard this kid. Incredible. Like, tears.
- [06:30]
Brent Tucker
Yeah.
- [06:31]
Chris Lazard
But we were out there and a couple of guys from the unit were out there, a couple SF dudes, I think we're all sitting around a campfire, and they were talking about some of the symptoms that they had. And I was like, guys, that's normal. That's team guy. They're like, no, dude, get your stuff checked. Like, all right. So we went back and I got checked out for tbi, and lo and behold, they were like, you. You have an issue. You know, so that kind of what brought us here. And, you know, I guess in, you know, we did the whole prep program, went out there 2017, and we connected.
- [07:06]
Brent Tucker
On that because I said, I actually went to the same program just a few years.
- [07:09]
Chris Lazard
Yeah.
- [07:10]
Brent Tucker
After you.
- [07:10]
Chris Lazard
You guys are the best class, though.
- [07:12]
Brent Tucker
We are the prep stars. Yeah. Shout out to the prep all Stars. You know who you are. You're. We're still in a signal chat together.
- [07:18]
Chris Lazard
That's awesome, man. Dude, it's. And it's good to maintain that connection, dude. So, yeah. So for those of you that know Prep, it's a TBI PTSD clinic. It's supposed to be three weeks. I think I was there for about almost 10 weeks, something like that. Yeah, I don't, I don't actually know anyone that's there for just three.
- [07:33]
Brent Tucker
Yeah, the three, if I remember right, three weeks is, is like your assessment, you know, of sorts. And then they, Then they give you your plan.
- [07:41]
Chris Lazard
Yeah.
- [07:42]
Brent Tucker
And guys are there from maybe a month later to several months later, whatever that, whatever that plan they do and not. I love it. Just to brag about the prep program for a little bit, because they're also very holistic and their approach, even though they're. They focus on TBIs and they focus on PTSD, they're like, why we have you checked in as a patient at a, at a world class hospital? Because you're checked in, we can get you in the frontal line of, of, of Anything?
- [08:12]
Chris Lazard
Yep.
- [08:13]
Brent Tucker
And they have physical therapists, everything. They check you out from head to toe.
- [08:19]
Chris Lazard
No, it's a great program because that. That was the thing. I thought I was going to be there, and it's just going to be, you know, talk therapy. And it's not just. I mean, that's part of it. But, dude, everything from. Like, I should be wearing glasses right now, but you got me glasses, hearing. I mean, that's right. All the things they do. Do a lot of blood work. I mean, they do an incredible thing there. I really credit prep. I mean, and really, the va, they, you know, I was going through a lot of back then. You know, we'll probably get into that more here in a minute. But, you know, they stabilized me to the point where I could really start to heal. The problem was they stabilized me. It was a lot of medication, man. Yeah, like a lot of medication that really, you know, you're not at the point where you're actually functioning, but you're kind of like just meat and bones. It's just kind of, you know, working its way through Life. So in 2023, about six years after Sean out in Denver Brain Performance center out there, they said, hey, you know, we take tricare now. They do MERT therapy out there.
- [09:18]
Brent Tucker
Okay?
- [09:19]
Chris Lazard
They take tricare for tms, trade tricare for tms. Right. So we went out and he said, what's.
- [09:26]
Brent Tucker
And what's tms?
- [09:27]
Chris Lazard
Tran. Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation.
- [09:30]
Brent Tucker
Okay.
- [09:30]
Chris Lazard
MERT is like a. What's the word I'm looking for? A customized version of ems. So I guess I'll get into that now, too. So with mert, it, you know, we do an EEG prior, so we kind of get a good idea of the brain. It's not a diagnostic tool at all, but it shows us in our docs and the, you know, the lab at Wave Neuro, which they help us with the mer, where the issues are in the brain, what's lacking, and it goes after the alpha intrinsic wave. So what I like to explain it as is. So what MERT does is say, you're in another room, I'm in another room, we close the door, and I'm just whispering to you, you're not going to hear me at all. What MERT does is it will make me get louder and louder and louder. So the part of the brain that's not really as active actually starts to hear it, and they start communicating a little bit and everything starts getting coordinated. So I went out in 2023, and I was like, cool. We're going to get our son more treatment, right? The more the better, you know, at the time I was like, I'm good on all these medications. Started doing Mert, and within my goodness, three weeks, I started noticing some stuff. The three week emotions hit. You remember driving on the highway, like, because you know, it's a workout for your brain, man. And just like tears. And I'm like, why? Nothing. Nothing's wrong right now. I'm fine.
- [10:46]
Brent Tucker
Yeah.
- [10:46]
Chris Lazard
But by week six, I started noticing, wow, I had a dream last night. And I remembered it vividly, dude. I hadn't remembered a dream in like 15 years. You know, sleeping. I was the guy, you know, nyquil, Tylenol, pm, Melatonin, whatever I could get, grind it all up and it would still take me two hours to fall asleep and I'd still wake up during the night, dude. I did. By week six, I was like, holy. It's taking me 15 minutes to fall asleep and I'm sleeping through the night. And I was like, that's incredible. Like, you're small things, right?
- [11:16]
Brent Tucker
No.
- [11:16]
Chris Lazard
Not getting the road rage, traffic, anything like that. Have you ever been around Denver at, you know, rush hour? It's horrible. So I called her up. I was like, hey, I'm gonna, I'm gonna roll the dice here and come off some of these medications because I want to see if this can happen. Flashback to 2017 at prep. They took me off the medication to kind of see where I was at, try to try out different things.
- [11:37]
Brent Tucker
Okay, bro.
- [11:38]
Chris Lazard
It was. I was calling her up at like one in the morning, like, hey, you need to get your ass to the basement. There are snakes downstairs. And she's like, what are you talking about, dude?
- [11:47]
Marcia Lessard
So he was very believable. He's like, hey, Marcia, it's cold outside. And we had just moved to Northern Virginia. So I was like, I don't. I don't know what's happening here. He's like, it's cold outside. I don't know if I sealed all the pipes coming into the house. We could have snakes in the basement. So I'm like, I got babies asleep upstairs and I'm going down the basement. He's like, I have this stuff, it's called like real seal or something like that. He's like, you. And I'm doing it. Like, I'm with this. It's little, right? Like, not all psychosis is, you know, little green men running around. Sometimes it's snakes in the basement.
- [12:19]
Chris Lazard
And you're your wife.
- [12:20]
Marcia Lessard
What's that?
- [12:21]
Chris Lazard
Said you enabled me.
- [12:24]
Marcia Lessard
Yeah.
- [12:24]
Chris Lazard
So, you know, we were a little worried about me coming out because we didn't want it and I was just me out there with my son by ourselves. Like if I start going into cuckoo land, that's, that's an issue.
- [12:34]
Marcia Lessard
But you worked with a neurologist.
- [12:36]
Chris Lazard
I did work with the neurologist. We, we started coming off the med slowly and dude, it's been now over two years since I've had any medication at all and everything's been fine. And that was a lot due to Mert. Go ahead.
- [12:47]
Marcia Lessard
And we're not anti medication by any means. Like it's absolutely necessary sometimes for stabilization purposes, but then there's a cascade effect with that. And we often find with tbi, if you don't know it's tbi, if you're just saying it's depression and you add some of these meds in, it will induce psychosis, it'll increase anxiety.
- [13:05]
Brent Tucker
Yeah, I don't, you know, sometimes you say things in a snippet, you'll get a chance to really, you know, explain it away. I'm kind of anti medication. Kind of. You know, I, I think, I mean, don't get me wrong, I mean, it's not anti medication. There are so many clear and cut cases of, of medication. But I'm really, I'm just really, really tired of hearing another story from a veteran who's been over medicated from doctors. That's just the easy answer. Let me. And it goes, and it started before that, you know, with doctors in general and in health. Oh, you have high blood pressure. Well, and, and you're out of shape. And fat. Well, don't, don't tell the patient your fat. Get in shape and your blood sugar levels and your blood pressure levels and everything. No, let me just give you a medication for this and a medication for that. I'm just tired of, of the too quick to medicate and overly medicate society that our doctors and, and our va, who's supposed to be helping our veterans.
- [14:17]
Chris Lazard
Yes.
- [14:17]
Brent Tucker
Are. Are falling into the trap of doing.
- [14:20]
Chris Lazard
Yeah, no, I, I think that's huge. Right. Because I do think in some cases, like you said, medication is important to at least stabilize. But it doesn't attack root causes. It just says, all right, you know, it attacks symptoms. It's not going to heal a person. It's going to stabilize them so they can heal. And that's kind of what happened to me. But it's not the answer. And to your point, it's like if someone goes into anybody, they're in there for, like, you know, any doctor in there for 10 minutes. And, yeah, I'm depressed.
- [14:44]
Brent Tucker
Cool.
- [14:44]
Chris Lazard
Here's an SSR. It's like, bro, that's not. I honestly believe that for not everybody. Not everybody at all. We see a lot of them that come in our clinic. You know, hydration, decent nutrition, doesn't even have to be a health nut. You know, physical activity again. You don't need to be a triathlete, a CrossFit, or anything crazy. And then decent sleep, that would probably cure 90 of the issues that are out there with some people.
- [15:08]
Brent Tucker
It's. It's. It's not a pitch. It's just true. It's why I got into it. It's why I'm so emotional about it. Know, with. With the TRT company.
- [15:16]
Chris Lazard
Yeah.
- [15:17]
Brent Tucker
Because it's. It's not just. And I'm sure you'll get into this, but, you know, the low levels of vitamin D and the low levels of. Of testosterone associated with PTSD and tbi, especially when. When you start putting them together, it just. That alone, it makes it impossible of sorts to be active and then go to the gym and then tire yourself out at the gym so you can have a good night's sleep to. To have that hormonal balance. It's just. And again, it's not the end all be all. But let me tell you, if you. I had my testosterone was double digits, and there was just no way I was ever going to. I felt like I was dying.
- [16:01]
Chris Lazard
Yep.
- [16:01]
Marcia Lessard
Well, that's like the. That's the downstream effects of tbi, Right. Because you get the head hit and then you have. ATP is like the energy currency of the cell. Right. And then you have a higher demand for ATP, so that's pulling it away from other things. Why we see the. The hormones really go out of whack, and we see a lot of things at our clinic. We do mert therapy. There's a lot of great merc clinics out there all over. It's very accessible now, but we also add the component of functional health. So the doctor on staff at our clinic is from your community, and he really understands these elements of it. So we run these labs. We're able to get them mostly covered by Tricare, usually where we're really looking at that cellular function, we're looking at the metabolism of the cell, how it's using its energy, looking at the toxin load, which is huge. One of the big factors, I think, in Chris's recovery was he was mercury toxic. He has a. A methylation, snp called mthfr, which means his cells don't detox. We look at that. You guys are exposed to so much in training and overseas. You have to get those toxins out to re regulate brain function so that you're using your ATP properly so that your cells are metabolizing properly so that this methylation, this enzymatic process is telling the cells how to behave properly. So we're doing that too.
- [17:19]
Brent Tucker
And just for a second, I just want to properly introduce. This is Marcia Lessard, which is Chris's wife. She is co owner at the brain Treatment center, working on her second master's degree. Retired law enforcement. Medically retired law enforcement. So not only does she know what she's talking about academically, but she lived it as well. And I love that about both of, of your stories and I love that you guys do it together. I mean it's a, it's a, it's always a cool thing when, when a husband and a wife can come together for a common goal and purpose.
- [17:52]
Chris Lazard
I tell you what, I, and I'll tell everybody too. It's like there's no me if there's, if she's not around. I mean, it's just, that's just fact, man. Like I would not be in the position if it wasn't for her just to be able to function day to day. You know, I probably would have been, you know, you know, done something pretty drastic years ago.
- [18:10]
Brent Tucker
Chris, I don't want to be rude, but I just met you and I, I already knew that. Yeah, it's just, it's just apparent. I don't think you really had to say it. No. Already kind of figured that out. She's out there throwing acronyms and words out. Research later.
- [18:22]
Chris Lazard
Oh, bro, I, I, I married up, man. It, the thing is, is like she tells me some stuff and I'm like, okay, cool. And I'm like, I don't know, she just said it all.
- [18:32]
Marcia Lessard
Sorry, guys.
- [18:34]
Chris Lazard
Yeah, she's. No, she's incredible. Absolutely incredible.
- [18:37]
Brent Tucker
So the, I, I really, I just, I, I wanted to start out getting a, A, a foothold in, in, into this and then I want to come back later and, and deep dive it because I just, I, I love having, I mean, you guys, I, you've proven it already. Like you are tier one when it comes to your profession. Like, you guys clearly have thrown yourself into this and that's, that's why, you know, I wanted you on the show. Let's talk about your military background.
- [19:09]
Chris Lazard
Yeah.
- [19:09]
Brent Tucker
For just, you know, for, well, not just a Second, let's talk about your military background, and that'll get back into how the. Your. Your love and your. And your passion for this came about, and then we'll pick it back up and really. Because I got a lot of questions. Yeah, a lot of questions for you guys on, On. On this subject.
- [19:28]
Chris Lazard
Hell, I still have a lot of questions, but. Yeah, no, we learn how to go, man.
- [19:31]
Brent Tucker
Yeah, questions for her.
- [19:33]
Chris Lazard
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Exactly.
- [19:36]
Brent Tucker
When did you join?
- [19:37]
Chris Lazard
So I joined in February 2000. Started off as an 11 Bravo airborne down at 509th and Geronimo at Fort Polk, Louisiana. Golden Place. Ish.
- [19:50]
Brent Tucker
You know, some. Some people I signed up after 911 and I appreciate the. The kudos some people give me, and they're like, man, that was. That was real brave of you to sign up after 911.
- [19:59]
Chris Lazard
Yeah.
- [19:59]
Brent Tucker
But after a little bit of that, I actually started having almost feeling almost imposter syndrome of some sort. Because I know it sounds a little weird when I explain it.
- [20:09]
Chris Lazard
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [20:09]
Brent Tucker
It. For me to join, it took a. It took 3, 000Americans dying in the, you know, in a terrorist, one of the worst terrorist events in the world to happen for me to join, but you joined without that having to happen. So in a weird way, I have a huge amount of respect for, for guys who joined before 9 11.
- [20:28]
Chris Lazard
Yeah. I mean, for me, it wasn't. And this is going to sound so stupid, but like, for me, I, you know, with my. The childhood that I had, you know, I was a high school dropout. I didn't have a great home life. I needed to get out of there. In fact, I remember going to the recruiter's office and they were like, all right, you can go to Fort Drum, Fort Bragg, or Fort Polk. Those are your three options. I was like, Fort Polk is the furthest away from Boston. Get me on a plane. So, you know, for me, it wasn't, you know, I had to do something, something with my life. It wasn't just a matter of like, you know, and serving was just, oh, cool, I can serve on top of it. Yeah, that's kind of, you know, my thing. You know, I was actually planning on, you know, doing four years or whatever it was and then being like, all right, skedaddle. Go be a copper. You know, whatever the thing was. And then 911 happened. That's what kind of catapulted me to go to the SF world. And it was kind of just like a weird story. I just happened to be in the platoon office when an SF recruiter called for somebody else. He wasn't there. And they were like, well, can I talk to you? I was like, all right, you know, no idea what I was, you know, talking about. You know, I remember, you know, we're like, all right, meet me here for the PT test. More of the PT test. Dude, it was like Louisiana hurricane, monsoon, like, weather. And I just went. And I was the only one that she was supposed to be either of people there. I was the only one that showed up. And I'm just sitting there in the rain because I didn't have a car. You know, I was just recently promoted. E4. I couldn't afford a car, right? And I'm just sitting there in the rain, and the guy, I see, like one car there and there's a person in it. He ain't coming out. Finally stops the rain. He comes out. He was like, you know, you're Chris. I was like, yeah. He was like, all right, don't worry about it. Just, we'll get you started. Like, show me a PT card and you're good. And I was like, all right, cool, man. But yeah, man, it was funny because, you know, we were in the 509th and911 kicked off, and at the time, 509th was a non deployable unit.
- [22:17]
Brent Tucker
Okay.
- [22:18]
Chris Lazard
And I was like, well, I'm not going to get, you know, do my thing if I stay here. So I went to selection, went to the Q course. That was my. My quickest way out, I thought. And then halfway through the Q course, those dudes got deployed. And I was like, son of a bitch.
- [22:31]
Brent Tucker
Now how'd they get deployed if they were non deployable?
- [22:33]
Chris Lazard
They.
- [22:34]
Brent Tucker
Because, were you able to keep track of what changed?
- [22:37]
Chris Lazard
It was. I can't even remember. I think I was in MoS phase at the time. And then I just heard that they were actually, you know, getting deployed because they just needed people, you know, over there. And I think it was actually. I'm sorry, it was right before Iraq was going to kick off. They're like, all right, we're, you know, fighting two fronts.
- [22:52]
Brent Tucker
Yeah.
- [22:53]
Chris Lazard
Guess what? You guys are going now you're in it. And I missed my time. Yeah, no, it was good.
- [22:58]
Brent Tucker
Oh, that's. I. Well, we. We'll find out here in a second. You didn't miss it. And there's definitely. It definitely matters who you go with.
- [23:08]
Chris Lazard
Facts.
- [23:09]
Brent Tucker
So.
- [23:09]
Chris Lazard
Facts. Yeah.
- [23:10]
Brent Tucker
So the how's. How's the Q course for you? What. What. What ms? Not everyone always talks about this. What MOS did you want and what MOS did you get. And if. If they, if they varied.
- [23:22]
Chris Lazard
So my order went 18 Bravo 1. It was 11 Bravo, right?
- [23:27]
Brent Tucker
Yeah.
- [23:27]
Chris Lazard
You want to, want to work weapons? 11 Charlie. I was like, yeah, blow some up. And then I was like, I'm sorry. 18 Charlie, 18 Delta. Okay, all right, I'm going to go be a medic. And then 18 echo. And they told me. They were like, yeah, you know, after I got selected, you get 18 Bravo. Just, you know, come here. I was like, awesome. And then, like a month out, they were like, congratulations, you're an Echo now. Like, all right. It's the same thing with the group thing, right? Like, going through the camera, right? What group do you want? I was like, well, 10th and then fifth and then seventh. They were like, awesome. You're going to third group. Why did you ask?
- [23:58]
Brent Tucker
I know that that story is so. It's so prevalent, and it always makes me laugh. I don't know why they have us fill out those cards. They clearly don't care.
- [24:08]
Chris Lazard
No, they don't get you. Just tell me where you want and then don't give me hope.
- [24:12]
Brent Tucker
Like, just give me hope.
- [24:14]
Chris Lazard
Yeah, just. Just send me wherever you want to go.
- [24:16]
Brent Tucker
But, yeah, he got 18 echo.
- [24:19]
Chris Lazard
Got 18 echo, man. And. And it was actually a really good course. Like, the Echo course was actually really.
- [24:24]
Brent Tucker
Solid, which is a Special forces communications.
- [24:26]
Chris Lazard
Yeah, Special Force communications. So I was like the nerd on the team, you know, messing with radios and stuff like that. I always look at the Echo as, like, the kicker on an NFL team, man, because you kick a field goal and you're like, yeah, that's your job. You know, like, the second you miss it, oh, you're. You're ruined. But yeah, so it was. It was good, man. It was good.
- [24:46]
Brent Tucker
Did I. I believe you would have. You. You still would have done Morse code when you went through the course? No.
- [24:54]
Chris Lazard
So I was the first 18 Echo course that they stopped Morse code.
- [24:58]
Brent Tucker
Lucky you.
- [24:59]
Chris Lazard
Yes. Yes. Because I hear the horror stories.
- [25:01]
Brent Tucker
I know.
- [25:02]
Chris Lazard
I never did learn Morse code.
- [25:03]
Brent Tucker
You hear your horror stories of former 18 echoes that go through the Morse code course. Just stressed out about it and then not being able to stop doing Morse code. And they're sleep time because all they've studied for. For months is trying to pass this course. Listen to beeps.
- [25:20]
Chris Lazard
Just stressing.
- [25:21]
Brent Tucker
Just stressing.
- [25:22]
Chris Lazard
Yep.
- [25:23]
Brent Tucker
Yeah. What did they. I'd imagine it was the same thing. I, Because I was. I wasn't too far behind you. What. What they replace it with.
- [25:31]
Chris Lazard
So I, I, I honestly don't know what they Replaced with. I know we spent a lot more time in the trigraph thing. All that stuff.
- [25:37]
Marcia Lessard
Stupid.
- [25:38]
Chris Lazard
Yeah, exactly.
- [25:39]
Brent Tucker
They, they replaced it with a network. A computer network.
- [25:43]
Chris Lazard
A plus. They did all that. A cut plus computer stuff. That's right. The first two weeks, yeah, it was all computer stuff.
- [25:49]
Brent Tucker
You wanna, you wanna know what's funny? I always told everyone I'm a radio echo. I'm not a computer echo. No. And I was good at radios and I was not good at computers. And our, our 18 Delta had gone to college for like computer engineering or network engineering or something like that. And he managed all of our, all of our computer networks.
- [26:14]
Chris Lazard
That's a great thing about being on a team though, man. Like, hey, you got the skills. Get over here. Right?
- [26:19]
Brent Tucker
Yeah, man. So you and what, what language did you get?
- [26:23]
Chris Lazard
I got French.
- [26:25]
Brent Tucker
French?
- [26:25]
Chris Lazard
Yeah. Going to Africa, you know, so.
- [26:28]
Brent Tucker
That's right. So third group is still covering down on Africa at that time. You got French because there's so many, you know, former French colonies, the, that still speak French there. Did you get to use French a lot when, when you went to Africa?
- [26:42]
Chris Lazard
No. Yeah, a little bit. I don't want to say no completely, just a little bit. But we always had interpreters with us, so it was kind of like, it kind of defeated the whole use of it. And you know, language is one of those things. You don't use it. It's gone, dude.
- [26:54]
Brent Tucker
Absolutely.
- [26:55]
Chris Lazard
She says, I, I used to speak it pretty good when we first met, but I'm like, man, I don't remember. I lick. You know, the kids, they took like, I don't know, a month and a half of French and they speak it better than I do now, you know?
- [27:04]
Brent Tucker
Yeah. It is a per skill to say huge.
- [27:07]
Chris Lazard
And it's a good skill to have. You know, we always talk about, like, we need to learn like a good language so we can talk about people and no one else can really understand us. Yeah, we never do. But the kids do it.
- [27:17]
Brent Tucker
The kids do it.
- [27:18]
Marcia Lessard
Well. He's also his. He's only third generation American on both sides of his family. And his dad is French. His dad speaks French.
- [27:25]
Brent Tucker
Oh, really?
- [27:26]
Marcia Lessard
Yeah. We had to change our daughter's name.
- [27:29]
Brent Tucker
What?
- [27:29]
Marcia Lessard
We the. We changed it from Vivianne to Viviana so he would enunciate it better. Right. Because he's got this Boston French twang.
- [27:36]
Chris Lazard
Yeah, yeah, little bit.
- [27:38]
Brent Tucker
So when you showed up, the third group, what was your first. Was the first ODA was its specialty.
- [27:43]
Chris Lazard
Oh, man. So my first day at 3rd Group went into 3rd Battalion ECO, first day meeting with the sergeant major. He was like, hey, can you swim? I was like, it's a weird question. I just did. I did the swim test in the Cuco, right? Yeah, I can swim. He was like, all right, cool. We're linking you up with the scuba team.
- [28:01]
Brent Tucker
I was like, right.
- [28:02]
Chris Lazard
All right, cool, man. And, dude, the next day, they had me at. It was one of the gym, the indoor pool there at the end of our dens. Indoor pool. I was at the deep end. They were like, all right, we're gonna tie your hands behind your back. We're gonna tie your feet together, and we're gonna throw you in the deep end. It's called drownproof. And I was like, no, that's called attempted murder. You probably shouldn't be doing it out in public like this. You know, take me to Mott Lake or something. And, bro, I was that guy who, if I went 10 foot underwater, I would panic, man.
- [28:32]
Brent Tucker
Yeah.
- [28:33]
Chris Lazard
And they were like, you know it. The guys there on the team were great, man. I still look up to them, man. They're. They're all older. At the time, I was like, what, 22 maybe? And they were all in their mid-30s. And we still talk to this day, great dudes. And, you know, they were like, hey, we want to keep you on the team, but you gotta get. You got your together.
- [28:49]
Brent Tucker
Yeah.
- [28:50]
Chris Lazard
And dude. And they did their part, right. They took me to the pool and you know, when they could. But it's. Dude, it's an oda. People are busy all the time, so a lot of it was on me to just, hey, dude.
- [28:58]
Brent Tucker
Yep.
- [28:58]
Chris Lazard
Get to the pool and just do your thing and just torture yourself. And then, you know, I eventually went to Key west, which was. It was the first all army dive course. It's like 2005 time frame, so it was like two weeks in the pool, which was.
- [29:13]
Brent Tucker
Are you kidding me? You went to the first all army dive. Score.
- [29:16]
Chris Lazard
First all army dive course. Yeah.
- [29:18]
Brent Tucker
And. Oh, five.
- [29:19]
Chris Lazard
Oh, five. Right before Katrina and Rita rolled in.
- [29:22]
Brent Tucker
Did you not graduate? Did you not go to. Did you. Did you go to Orlando to do your graduating?
- [29:27]
Chris Lazard
I did the last three days.
- [29:29]
Brent Tucker
You know how I know that?
- [29:30]
Chris Lazard
Were you there?
- [29:31]
Brent Tucker
I was in your dive school.
- [29:32]
Chris Lazard
Get out of here. Get the hell out of here.
- [29:34]
Brent Tucker
I was in your dive.
- [29:35]
Chris Lazard
No. Yeah. That's crazy, man. How do we not know.
- [29:43]
Brent Tucker
Crazy?
- [29:43]
Chris Lazard
Yes. That dude was a fish, man. That dude was a torpedo out of here.
- [29:50]
Brent Tucker
Yeah, man, we'll have some stories. Yeah. About that. I mean, it's not that Uncommon? Well, it kind of is. I'm not surprised. I don't. I don't know everyone. I mean, I'm sure we did at the time. I would have known who you are in time.
- [30:03]
Chris Lazard
Exactly. We're talking 21 years ago, 21 years later.
- [30:06]
Brent Tucker
Remember, everyone in the. In the course, but, yeah, we went to the same dive. Yeah. Together.
- [30:10]
Chris Lazard
Dude, that was intense, that one.
- [30:12]
Brent Tucker
Man, that is hilarious. I remember the.
- [30:14]
Chris Lazard
The 3K swim. They were like. Well, no one passed because a hurricane was, you know, on its way. And they were like, we'll just have you do it again.
- [30:20]
Brent Tucker
Like, remember, Remember? They kept. They were saying, tides and currents do not affect the combat diver. And then we all failed it because the. The tides and the currents were coming out so bad because of the hurricane.
- [30:34]
Chris Lazard
Where you were going, waves are so.
- [30:36]
Brent Tucker
High, and we're like, I guess tides occurrence does affect that diver. They're like, no, it doesn't.
- [30:40]
Chris Lazard
No.
- [30:41]
Brent Tucker
Well, we all failed.
- [30:43]
Chris Lazard
Shut your mouth. Yeah. Like. Oh, all right. Yeah. Sue, man, I think. I think he almost passed, but he. And when that dude. When that dude didn't make it, I was new, like.
- [30:53]
Brent Tucker
Right.
- [30:54]
Chris Lazard
Yeah, no, he was.
- [30:55]
Brent Tucker
He was swimmer number one in the class. Yeah, because he was an Olympic swimmer.
- [30:59]
Chris Lazard
Yes.
- [30:59]
Brent Tucker
He was older at the time. He was like. He might have been 40.
- [31:02]
Chris Lazard
He might.
- [31:03]
Brent Tucker
I think he was pushing 40, 38, something like that. He was older.
- [31:06]
Chris Lazard
Former French Foreign Legion, dude.
- [31:08]
Brent Tucker
Former. Former French Foreign Legion.
- [31:10]
Chris Lazard
Yeah.
- [31:11]
Brent Tucker
He was supposed to go to the Summer Olympics. I want to say all the. Back in 80 or 84, but they canceled the Olympics. And he was so mad, he joined the army, which is.
- [31:21]
Chris Lazard
That represents his personality.
- [31:23]
Brent Tucker
Yeah, Right. Oh, that's so funny.
- [31:26]
Chris Lazard
Yeah, man. No, that. That's. That's crazy.
- [31:27]
Brent Tucker
Yeah.
- [31:28]
Chris Lazard
So, you know, some.
- [31:29]
Brent Tucker
Some aware of that part of your life.
- [31:31]
Chris Lazard
What's that? Yeah, exactly. You were there. You remember the bus trip up there? Dude, I remember the bus trip. They were like, all right, we're going to stop. You can get a couple beers for the drive, because it's probably gonna. Dude. And people were coming on with, like, cases.
- [31:44]
Brent Tucker
I did my favorite.
- [31:45]
Chris Lazard
That was my steak.
- [31:46]
Brent Tucker
I'm from Orlando. So they fought till we were going to graduate. Orlando. I was like, we're perfect, right? I'll have a friend come pick me up from the graduate graduation ceremony, because I was in 20th group at the time.
- [31:57]
Chris Lazard
Oh, that's awesome, man. That's too funny. That's too funny.
- [32:00]
Brent Tucker
Gosh. Oh. So what. What you do after we graduated high school, so.
- [32:06]
Chris Lazard
Yeah. So, you know, at that Point I was, you know, with the dive team. You know, we had gone to Afghanistan prior to that, then we went to Afghanistan again after that. And then where'd you go now?
- [32:17]
Brent Tucker
Where. Where'd you go in Afghanistan?
- [32:18]
Chris Lazard
Where is Skin?
- [32:19]
Brent Tucker
Okay, yeah.
- [32:20]
Chris Lazard
Firebase Skin.
- [32:22]
Brent Tucker
Yeah.
- [32:22]
Chris Lazard
Which was, you know, it's like the wild west out there. It was, it was, you know, it was for. For action is a pretty solid spot, but yeah, man. And then I think, my goodness, a couple years after that, you know, I finished my time up at third group, which I still kind of regret at times. You know, I feel like, yeah, I probably should have stayed in. But the, you know, I went into the Guard from there and that was a, you know, that was good experience too.
- [32:45]
Brent Tucker
So the. When you went to the Guard, would you go to the same state? Were you serving in the same state that you were living?
- [32:54]
Chris Lazard
So kind of, yeah. So, dude, it. The whole Guard thing was like, I went back and forth because we moved up and down the whole east coast, whether jobs, you know, because I was going through my stuff. So I was job hopping a lot, you know, family stuff, stuff with our son, things of that nature. So I originally started off probably, what, year and a half at 20th Group in Massachusetts.
- [33:17]
Brent Tucker
Okay.
- [33:18]
Marcia Lessard
That's when we met. That's when I bought him on the Internet.
- [33:21]
Chris Lazard
He bought me. She bought me on the Internet.
- [33:23]
Marcia Lessard
Yeah.
- [33:23]
Chris Lazard
I was, I was, I was desperate for cash, man.
- [33:26]
Marcia Lessard
No, I was medically retiring from law enforcement. I didn't want to date any cops. So I did a match profile and he was on there and I was actually going on to cancel my match profile and he drove down from Boston for our first date and then I couldn't get rid of them.
- [33:40]
Chris Lazard
Yeah, Love it. That's when I was getting a job with State as a contractor.
- [33:44]
Brent Tucker
Okay.
- [33:45]
Chris Lazard
In Northern Virginia. So. Yeah, it wasn't up in New Hampshire or New Hampshire, Massachusetts very long at all.
- [33:50]
Brent Tucker
So I'd imagine, especially the. Now the. In 20th group where I was at. We're out of Florida, so. Yeah, yeah, we, we. Our dive team had a very heavy emphasis on like, you're going to the dive team and you will be dive qualified. And we had a green dive team the whole time I was there.
- [34:06]
Chris Lazard
So I'll tell you what, we. I was actually in Ocala for a year because we came down here.
- [34:11]
Marcia Lessard
ADOs.
- [34:12]
Chris Lazard
Yeah, ADOs orders.
- [34:13]
Brent Tucker
Okay.
- [34:14]
Chris Lazard
On the Care Coalition. So I had switched for about another year and a half. Ish. To be in 20th group in. In Ocala there. So. And I was on the dive team there.
- [34:22]
Brent Tucker
Okay.
- [34:23]
Chris Lazard
So yeah, some of the guys out.
- [34:24]
Brent Tucker
There at a 320.
- [34:26]
Chris Lazard
Yes, dude. And I tell you what, I would put that team up against a lot of active duty.
- [34:31]
Brent Tucker
Who's. Who, who's your team sergeant at the time?
- [34:33]
Chris Lazard
Rick Spear.
- [34:35]
Brent Tucker
Yeah.
- [34:36]
Chris Lazard
You know, gotta get out of here.
- [34:37]
Brent Tucker
Yeah, yeah. That was my dive team that I left.
- [34:39]
Chris Lazard
Yeah, yeah, I was, I was there for a small snippet, but I was there for a little bit. Yeah, yeah.
- [34:43]
Brent Tucker
Oh my gosh. Yeah.
- [34:44]
Chris Lazard
Dude, that team was stacked.
- [34:46]
Brent Tucker
Yeah, they. They were. I mean they took a big hit when I left, but.
- [34:52]
Chris Lazard
Kind of went downhill from there.
- [34:53]
Brent Tucker
Just saying. But I, I assure you Rick held it together. Yeah, no, Rick was leave some last names off because some of the jobs they still do. I'm sure Jason was still around.
- [35:04]
Chris Lazard
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [35:06]
Brent Tucker
One of my favorite people in the world, the team sergeant before him, he would it either. Still been company sergeant major, may have been up to battalion. Sean Keem's been on the show.
- [35:14]
Chris Lazard
He was. We did dive recalls with him. Yeah, yeah. He's an awesome dude.
- [35:18]
Marcia Lessard
Dude.
- [35:18]
Chris Lazard
He's. He's not your typical sergeant major.
- [35:21]
Brent Tucker
It's not your typical sergeant major, but.
- [35:24]
Chris Lazard
Probably one of the best smedges that I've ever worked with. Oh, for sure. Yeah, yeah.
- [35:29]
Brent Tucker
Great dude. Great dude.
- [35:30]
Chris Lazard
Absolutely.
- [35:31]
Brent Tucker
So why would you. I'm so. I was a safow instructor for 20th group for a little bit and it was great because you get to see a bunch of different companies come through.
- [35:39]
Chris Lazard
Yeah.
- [35:40]
Brent Tucker
So if you own. Only thing I ever knew was a 320. And to. To me that was just the standard because I didn't know anything else. And when I saw other companies come through, I'm not saying they were bad, but I'm definitely saying a 320 was, was something special at that time.
- [35:56]
Chris Lazard
No, I agree.
- [35:57]
Brent Tucker
And so while. So why would you ever leave it?
- [36:01]
Chris Lazard
So at that point we went up north because I made a. And it probably wasn't the best decision, but go ahead.
- [36:09]
Brent Tucker
Yeah.
- [36:09]
Chris Lazard
I can see you want to say something.
- [36:10]
Marcia Lessard
Go ahead. Yeah. So when we were down there, our son at two regressed into non verbal autism overnight.
- [36:19]
Brent Tucker
Yeah.
- [36:19]
Marcia Lessard
Really high functioning kid, talking, doing all the things and then he was gone, rocking in a corner. So we thought. Chris and I both come from similar backgrounds. I think it's pretty amazing that a kid from like the projects wound up on a dive team because I'm from the hood too. We don't swim. Nobody taught us that. Right. So we thought if we moved up to New England where He was from. We'd have just more support, there'd be more resources. And let me tell you, where we moved. There was nothing that tricare covered. And that's how this story with this clinic really starts. So we were. I was driving two hours each way just for really poor speech therapy for him. I started getting certified in all these different therapies.
- [36:59]
Brent Tucker
Yeah.
- [36:59]
Marcia Lessard
And I was like, I'm going to do it. Nobody's going to do this for my kid. Like, I would for sure. And task force, Dagger, reach out, they didn't pay for any everything. They supported us through it. And they said, hey, just go try this therapy. And we flew out there. Part of the thing is morning sunlight. Like we talked about hormones a little bit. Morning sunlight, 30 minutes of it every day. Reset your circadian rhythm, but it also helps reset your cortisol. So I'd run with him on the beach every morning. Yeah, we do. Two miles from Balboa pier area. And one day I went to pull him out of the stroller. We were about, you know, four weeks into it. He was a super responder, so I don't want to give anybody false hope. He was a super responder because our diet was clean. Like I was neurotic about it. We did not eat additives. We straight paleo diet, all grass fed, organic. And I think that really helped him, like, be ready for this. So three, four weeks into the treatment, I'm running with him on the beach. He's real fussy. I pull him out of the stroller. He hadn't said a word to me in over two years. I pull him out of the stroller and I say, hey, buddy, you're so fussy today. And he looked me right in the eyes and he goes, I was busy today. Say it again. And I started recording. He said it again. And, you know, we did all the things that we're doing. So that's. That's where that kind of started. We flew back to New England. We stayed out there for six months for that MERT therapy. We came back to New England. And I'm not a high demand wife, I don't think, but I looked at Chris and I was like, you got to get me out of here. I cannot stay here anymore. And we ended. He ended up getting an offer in Northern Virginia from another friend that he knew from another group.
- [38:28]
Chris Lazard
Yeah.
- [38:28]
Marcia Lessard
But part of the reason why I think we cycled around so much is the TBI was really active. We didn't really know what was happening with that. And it was like shiny ball anywhere. There's a shiny ball anywhere. It can be a super cool guy.
- [38:38]
Chris Lazard
All those years, the dark years.
- [38:40]
Marcia Lessard
Yeah, there were some good times.
- [38:41]
Chris Lazard
There was a lot of good times, but there was. Yeah, a lot of bad but.
- [38:44]
Brent Tucker
And we'll, we'll get to those in a second. The, when you were at, at 19th and I'm sure you did some with, with third as well. What. Let's talk about J sets for a second. Yeah. Because yeah, we talk about combat deployments all the time. They were, they are fun to talk about. Yeah. But this, this is what, you know, the SF is, is back to doing. And this is, this is their bread and butter and none of them combat times. So tell everyone what, what it stands for, what and what it, what it is.
- [39:15]
Chris Lazard
All right, so J sets a joint combined exchange training. So basically, you know, SF teams will go into these countries that don't have, you know, there's not a lot of, I mean there might be some conflict going on, but you know, it's not a war zone or anything like that. And what. It, it's exchange training, but it's really for, you know, the SF teams to kind of train up some of the local, the host nation, military forces, special operations, things of that nature. You know, it's not a six month thing. It might be a month or two, but yeah, it, like you said, it's, it's the bread and butter for, for sf, I think. Right. That's, that's kind of what we do is, you know, go to these places, win hearts and minds and kind of train them to, you know, do their thing. But they're, they're fun, man. They're, they're great time.
- [39:56]
Marcia Lessard
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- [40:24]
Brent Tucker
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- [40:27]
Chris Lazard
How can I help?
- [40:28]
Marcia Lessard
The IRS said I filed my return, but I haven't.
- [40:31]
Chris Lazard
One in four tax paying Americans has paid the price of identity fraud.
- [40:34]
Brent Tucker
What do I do?
- [40:35]
Marcia Lessard
My refund though. I'm freaking out.
- [40:37]
Chris Lazard
Don't worry, I can fix this.
- [40:38]
Brent Tucker
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- [40:44]
Marcia Lessard
I'm so relieved.
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Brent Tucker
No problem. I'll be with you every step of the way. One in four was a fraud. Paying American.
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Chris Lazard
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Brent Tucker
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Chris Lazard
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- [41:00]
Marcia Lessard
The.
- [41:01]
Brent Tucker
And the. The idea behind them is that, hey, if we can go to these countries, that we'll take South America, for example, because it's an easy one.
- [41:11]
Chris Lazard
Yep.
- [41:12]
Brent Tucker
And if we can train them to combat the, the, the drug lords and combat them to identify terrorism and keep terrorism out, then we won't have to. We can prevent it from being a problem. And. And we won't have to do it ourselves necessarily.
- [41:30]
Chris Lazard
Yeah, you're at, you know, at that point, you know, as an SF team, you're. You are a force multiplier. Right. You know, you go in. So, like you said, we don't have to send because, you know, a lot of these countries can blow up to be really bad spots. And now we're sending a lot of units over there, spending more money, losing more people, things of that nature. The hope is, hey, if we train these people up, they can take care of themselves. And we're only sending, you know, eight to 12 dudes in there.
- [41:53]
Brent Tucker
Yep. Way more the. And they can be very mundane. But there's, but there's been plenty of crazy stories that, that come out from chase sets as well. You never know what's going to happen when you're out there in the Wild West.
- [42:09]
Chris Lazard
No, you really don't, man. So, you know, just the few on the top of my head. You know, going to Ethiopia was a basic J set, but then the next one I went to was in Mali, and for that one, they were like, no, you need to take gun trucks there and to go packed, because, you know, Aqim is still in the area. We're like, all right, well, see what happens.
- [42:27]
Brent Tucker
Yeah.
- [42:28]
Chris Lazard
And then the next one, they were like, no, you can't take anything. It's just five of you, and you have to be in civilian clothes the whole time. And it's like, completely different than the last two I was on, man. So, yeah, it depends.
- [42:39]
Marcia Lessard
It's.
- [42:39]
Chris Lazard
It's really different each time.
- [42:41]
Brent Tucker
And it is. It. It is a cool aspect that really only SF does. Yeah. I mean, for the most part. Right. So, you know, when it's. It's great. There's a bunch of other cool units when it. When it comes to combat, and that is true love. The Rangers love The seals love Raiders. Like the good guys are in those units.
- [43:02]
Chris Lazard
Yep.
- [43:03]
Brent Tucker
But guess what? When there's not a war, they're not doing anything. And SF is still going to exotic places.
- [43:09]
Chris Lazard
Yeah.
- [43:10]
Brent Tucker
Meeting exotic people and doing exotic things.
- [43:12]
Marcia Lessard
Yeah.
- [43:13]
Chris Lazard
Exotic is kind of. It depends. I remember we.
- [43:17]
Brent Tucker
I can't remember, but Ethiopia felt a little exotic.
- [43:19]
Chris Lazard
It was exotic, all right. And if, you know, you know, Spectrum. Yeah, exactly.
- [43:25]
Brent Tucker
There's nice things. I think there's poor exotic. It.
- [43:29]
Chris Lazard
Very poor. So we. I can't remember where we were supposed to go, but I was with 19th Group at the time and it was like in the island somewhere for a day set. And we were like, this is awesome. It got canceled for whatever reason. I don't remember why. It was nice.
- [43:41]
Brent Tucker
Yeah.
- [43:41]
Chris Lazard
It's too nice. Right. You can't send you guys there. Someone figured it out.
- [43:44]
Brent Tucker
Yeah.
- [43:45]
Chris Lazard
So you're like, all right, what do we want to do? We're on orders right now. So we did this like, hey, we're going to do mountain warfare training. We're going to go skiing, you know.
- [43:51]
Brent Tucker
Right.
- [43:52]
Chris Lazard
Had it approved. And then they were like, hey, good news, you're going to Bangladesh. Bangladesh is not nice, fancy islands at all. Yeah. And that was like, hey, you can't take anything. You know, it's just going to be you. And civilians were like, I don't know how I feel about this, man. But you know, we did. And that's, That's a great thing about sf, man. You get to do some door kicking stuff. You get to do some 7 dash 8 stuff. You get to, you know, ride around in trucks and look for fights, but then you get to do stuff like that as well. So you get a lot of different experiences that for sure, you know, Jack of all trades, master none. It's so true.
- [44:24]
Brent Tucker
Yeah. Yeah. It really, it really does create a different breed of, of operator. And, and I believe it shows in the end product. And the, and no organization is perfect. But, you know, at sf, we don't. I'm still proud to be a Green Beret. And, and, and thankfully, the generation after me and the genera. Hopefully the generation, the generation after them will uphold that standard as well. And I believe they will. You'll continue to make it easy for me to be a proud Green Beret.
- [45:01]
Chris Lazard
Yeah, man.
- [45:01]
Brent Tucker
I.
- [45:02]
Chris Lazard
And I think a lot of the young guys now, they're still out there getting after. They're still doing really good stuff. So I hear it's. They're having a little hard time filling the ranks now, you know, which kind of Sucks because you know, you hate to see that. But at the same time, the guys that are there, they're still doing it, man. It's good.
- [45:17]
Brent Tucker
Here's a silver lining of that and it's maybe just me trying to find a glimmer of hope.
- [45:22]
Chris Lazard
Yeah, yeah.
- [45:22]
Brent Tucker
If they're having a hard time filling the ranks, maybe that means they're upholding the standard because. Yes, because it's real easy to up to fill the ranks when you're not upholding the standard.
- [45:35]
Chris Lazard
So I remember when I left third group, just talking to some of the guys after I left, like a few years after, they were getting a lot of dude and that's when they were standing up 4th Battalion, stuff like that. And they were getting some guys in, sending to the dive team. Like, dude couldn't pass a PT test. So you know, they were trying to flood the ranks at that point. It's like that's a problem. Right. So I don't know. Hopefully you're right, man. Hopefully that's the case is no, they're being, you know, hey, we got the time now. Let's reset. Let's actually enforce the standards and let's, let's get some good people in here again.
- [46:05]
Brent Tucker
Yeah. I love it. The culture of the military is changing back to a little bit more of an old school mentality of a results oriented. Who cares about wokeism and diversity. This is, this is the defense of our country. Let's just get the best people in there. Let's have a standard worth upholding. Let's uphold it.
- [46:30]
Chris Lazard
Hegseth, man.
- [46:31]
Brent Tucker
And, and you can, you can hate Hegseth all you want. And, and to some degree, I, to some degree I get it.
- [46:39]
Chris Lazard
Yep.
- [46:40]
Brent Tucker
But, but let me tell you it. You can hate his background all you want. You can kind of hate the way he goes about things all you know, all you want. But what he's doing is right. And one of my biggest pushbacks is like, well, he was a, you know, National Guard retired major. I think he was okay. Like he is. He has no background, you know, to be doing this. Well, then you tell me while it took, why it took a National Guard major, Right. To come in here and set the record straight on standards and push out all that bs Right. When a retired four star has been filling this position time in, time out, and they've been dropping the ball.
- [47:23]
Chris Lazard
Right.
- [47:24]
Brent Tucker
So what does that say about our four stars?
- [47:26]
Chris Lazard
Exactly. And I'd love, dude, I'd love what he's doing. I do, I, I really do. I, I, he I was sold on him because I didn't know really much about him. When he first, you know, was announced in that position, I was kind of like, all right, you know, maybe. But as soon as he went in and called all those generals fat, was like, sold, Sold. Get him.
- [47:43]
Brent Tucker
I have to stay on the subject for a little bit because I love it so much.
- [47:45]
Chris Lazard
Yeah. Yeah.
- [47:46]
Brent Tucker
And like, who. Who does he think he is to call in generals and lecture them? Well, my first answer to you is their boss.
- [47:53]
Chris Lazard
Right?
- [47:54]
Brent Tucker
Right.
- [47:54]
Chris Lazard
That's who he is now.
- [47:55]
Brent Tucker
That's. Let me tell you, those generals will call in anyone below them that they want and lecture them if they so desire. And that's how the military works. And no one's going to. No one's going to bitch and moan about it.
- [48:09]
Chris Lazard
Right.
- [48:09]
Brent Tucker
So guess what? When your boss does it, you are still in the military, too.
- [48:13]
Chris Lazard
Exactly.
- [48:14]
Brent Tucker
And the same thing about calling out fat generals. Don't be fat.
- [48:18]
Chris Lazard
That's it.
- [48:18]
Brent Tucker
Would have never called out any fat generals if you guys didn't police up yourselves. Right. Or we didn't have fat generals. So again, they hate. They hate the messenger. But his message is right.
- [48:30]
Chris Lazard
Do you think part of that is they see themselves in some of those generals? So a lot of those people are like, oh, you can't, you know.
- [48:38]
Brent Tucker
No, I, this is what I, I, I, I believe it is. And I, and I, I truly hate it. Like, this is how divided and biased we are as a country. No one can separate. Separate right from wrong. No one can kind of separate logical from illogical. They only see things through two lenses. Red and blue.
- [48:59]
Chris Lazard
Yep.
- [48:59]
Brent Tucker
And Hegseth is red. And so I hate everything he does regardless. Because it doesn't, Regardless of what he does.
- [49:06]
Chris Lazard
Doesn't fit my narrative. So I can't agree with.
- [49:08]
Brent Tucker
Yeah, that's true.
- [49:09]
Chris Lazard
100.
- [49:10]
Brent Tucker
Border security should be bipartisan position. It's crazy to me.
- [49:16]
Chris Lazard
Yeah.
- [49:16]
Brent Tucker
Pretty sure everyone in America. Yep. Should and does to some degree want a secure border. But that's how brainwashed we are. Oh. My leader for my side says this about border security. That's also what I believe. Right.
- [49:30]
Chris Lazard
Right. I just have to.
- [49:31]
Marcia Lessard
Can I say something about that?
- [49:32]
Brent Tucker
Wish you would.
- [49:33]
Marcia Lessard
Yeah. So in law enforcement, I was medically retired in 2000. When was it? 2009, 2010. But before that, we were right on the DC line. And coming from that area, from that socioeconomic status, I do see how different people arrive at, like, this is the way it should be. We should be compassionate. And, like, we need to be secure. I can see Both sides of it. But I don't think that people's broad opinions outweigh lived experiences. So I can remember dry. And a lot of people just say like people are cut. All they're hearing is people are coming here because they want a better chance. Who's going to say no to that? But they're not understanding the mechanisms in which they come here. So probably one of my last years on, I remember driving down this main road. We had a metro there, and that's important. And I'm driving down the main road and I look over and there's a little girl running down the street naked, half naked from the waist down. And I pull her in my cruiser. My sister in law is from El Salvador, I call her. Spoke pretty fluent Spanish at the time, but this is bigger, like, I need this. This little girl had scaled out of a second story window. She had been kidnapped from her village by the cartels. She was now cartel property. She'd been muled across and she had been held in that apartment for she estimated about two years. And over 30 guys a day at some days would come through off the metro. So you gotta call ice, she wants to go home to her mom. ICE comes in and they say, oh, she's cartel property. We're gonna take her home. But they're gonna mark her, they're just gonna snatch her up again. Now people don't understand that human dynamic because that's not being put out. And for a different perspective on that, probably about a week or two later. I used to eat on the food trucks all the time. Same best food, right? So I go down and I get food from the food truck. And it's these two mamas down there, they're older, like my age now, right?
- [51:23]
Brent Tucker
Yeah.
- [51:24]
Marcia Lessard
And they had to have been watching from the wood line because I get my food, I drive away. As I'm driving, I see a plume. They hadn't paid their cartel tax. So when you come over with the cartels, you typically owe a corporate tax for the rest of your life. I mean, that's the way it worked back then. They hadn't paid it. So the cartel, probably via MS.13 because there's some, you know, some overlap there, just threw a Molotov cocktail right through the window of the food truck.
- [51:50]
Chris Lazard
Really?
- [51:50]
Marcia Lessard
Right. So people don't understand these dynamics. And I think that's why, like, right, we need to be salt and light. We got to shine light on the truth. You put the truth out there and people need to see that because who on the left Wouldn't be sympathetic to A little girl, 14 years old, held an apartment for two years. Right. And you say these other people want a chance. There's a way that we can do this balanced, without letting the wolves in this.
- [52:15]
Brent Tucker
That, that narrative is, is something that has to be debunked as well to, to some degree. Like, well, they're, they're coming over here for a better chance. Well, of course, but just that. But that doesn't give you the right say I need it for a better chance. That, that, that mentality and that logic wouldn't work anywhere else.
- [52:36]
Chris Lazard
Right.
- [52:36]
Brent Tucker
Do you, you guys have kids? How about you just go force your kids into an upper private school and be like, I want my kids to be in here. I'm gonna come in here illegally and drop my kids off here, and I'm expect you to take care of them for a better chance.
- [52:50]
Chris Lazard
Could you imagine if I just broke into your house and like, well, it's raining outside. I need a better area to sleep. Like, no.
- [52:57]
Brent Tucker
Right. At no point is it okay to break into another place just for, just for a better life.
- [53:04]
Chris Lazard
Right.
- [53:04]
Brent Tucker
That's what they're doing.
- [53:05]
Chris Lazard
But, and I think you pointed out too, like, there's ways to do it. I'm all for if someone needs a better life if they do it the right way, but please come here. That's what we were built on. Yeah, but again, the right way.
- [53:16]
Brent Tucker
And I'm a broken record when I keep saying this, but your, your story is absolutely right. Who wouldn't side with that? But they have to hear the story. And if our news won't start telling more balanced stories, right. Then we'll, we'll never get to that.
- [53:33]
Marcia Lessard
Point when ICE came to pick her up. I'm from that area. They used to joke with me, you're the hug a thug, stuff like that. Like, like my second shift, my cousin was in a police chase. He was the one being chased. Right. You know, I'm from that area. So by the time they had come down from Baltimore to kind of pick this little girl and figure out how they're going to get her back to her mom, because that's all she wanted to do was go home. I had everything. I had talked to the kids in the area. I knew who was in that apartment. I knew, you know, like, oh, this. I'm going to give all this to ice. They're going to be able to shut this down. Because I had no idea how big the problem was back then 20 years ago. And when the girl came in she had Hopkins sweatshirt on. I went to Hopkins. I'm like, hey, I have all the information for you. You know, I'm young. I feel like my sense of, you know, I'm feeling more like I want to go get everybody. My whole goal was to eventually be a federal agent, be DEA before I medically retired. And she looked at me and she's like, I don't want to laugh at you, but, like, they'll kill you. They'll kill your family. This, she said, right now, this is 20 years ago. This little girl is a grain of sand in the entire beach of children that are being brought across for this. And she said, and they know that you're down there. They know that you've already looked into this. They've already packed that up and moved on. Right. And I was just, back then, just blown away at the enormity of this and the moral weight of it. Right. And so. So what do you do then? You just have to be more open about it. And that's why, for me, I tend to be kind of a black and white thinker now, seeing all this and seeing what's happened in the country, having daughters, being a woman, it's just incomprehensible to me that we're not listening to these stories, that this isn't the headline of what is going on. Right.
- [55:16]
Brent Tucker
You know, it made me think for a second when you're telling that story, and if they're coming in here for a better life, if you do it the wrong way and you have to live in the shadows because you came here illegally, I don't think. I don't think she was living a better life.
- [55:35]
Chris Lazard
Right.
- [55:35]
Brent Tucker
Well, you know. No, no, no, go ahead. You're right.
- [55:39]
Marcia Lessard
You also think, having come from an area that's kind of shady, you've been brought up around shady stuff. We've all done things that we regret in our lives. You live with the weight of knowing at some point, the check comes due.
- [55:52]
Brent Tucker
Right.
- [55:53]
Chris Lazard
Facts.
- [55:53]
Brent Tucker
Well, that's. That's. That's a good segue. Yeah. And. And to. So you medically retired.
- [56:02]
Chris Lazard
Yeah.
- [56:04]
Brent Tucker
Why. Why did you medically retire? But before you get to why you medically retired, let's. Let's get back to some of the signs and symptoms that led up to a medical retirement.
- [56:13]
Chris Lazard
Yeah. So, you know, like I said before, those. Those years are. They call them the dark years. So to, you know, I knew I had something going on, but I was very proud. You know, pride gets us. And I didn't want to really come to you know, terms with that. So I would do a lot of self medicating with either, you know, alcohol, painkiller. I mean alcohol and painkillers was that was it for me? Like I don't think maybe, you know, during that six, seven years, maybe 10% of the time I was on neither, but I was probably on either under the influence of alcohol or at least taking a painkiller in the morning probably most days.
- [56:50]
Marcia Lessard
He had a pretty significant injury though. He rolled off a mountain on an ATV in Afghanistan. Pretty significant back injury.
- [56:57]
Brent Tucker
Okay.
- [56:58]
Marcia Lessard
And back then we're still kind of in that window where they're just throwing Percocet at everything, you know, and that's what they did. Here's some Percocet.
- [57:05]
Chris Lazard
At the time of that injury, you know, I was still at shkin, right. And you know me, I didn't know any better. I was like, yeah, I'm fine, let's do our thing. So I didn't take care of it properly at all. I think a few days later I was up in the gun truck, you know, like, yeah, sure, let's go. You know, just time, wear and wear and tear and that's when you know, and there was other, you know, minor concussions, you know, on jumps, stuff like that, all that stuff, combatives training, all the stupid that we do. So it just, you know, accumulated over time. So, you know, I started noticing a lot of stuff with me that, that wasn't right. Right. Plus, you know, when you throw in, you know, other trauma that we go through in the military and training overseas, you know, childhood stuff because like we talked about, you know, they look for us, you know, specifically I think. Who is it? Jeff?
- [57:52]
Marcia Lessard
Kind of Dardia.
- [57:53]
Chris Lazard
Jeff. Dardia goes over it a lot. Task force dad, I think. Yeah, we were in the Q course together. Okay. Yeah, just a great dude.
- [58:00]
Brent Tucker
Yeah.
- [58:00]
Chris Lazard
But he talks about it a lot. Like, hey, there's a lot of dudes and you don't talk about that in the team room. You know, with childhood trauma, you're never going to talk about. Yeah, like this happened to me back then. You just don't talk about it. But once you, you know, once you get in a healing environment and you actually start opening up, you find out, oh, that happened to you. Like I dealt with that with my parents or I dealt with that as a kid and you're like, it's finding out it's across the board. So you start to accumulate all this stuff. So I was doing a lot of self medicating and doing a lot of stupid that I shouldn't have been doing and really, you know, hurting the people, you know, that mean or should mean most in that time. And she did. But I didn't know how to stop. It was kind of like the gas was on, you know, the pedal was pushed to the floor and the brakes were just broke.
- [58:45]
Brent Tucker
I've said this recently, but, you know, bear saying again, I do have. I have a very simplistic approach to this, and I understand that people also deal with things different. So what works for me may not work for someone else.
- [59:03]
Chris Lazard
Absolutely.
- [59:03]
Brent Tucker
But there are general truths as well, I think. I also think some people like to make it more complicated than it really is, to make it seem like it's a bigger problem that needs more resources, more time, or to make themselves feel better. The person feel better. Like, well, I never got better because it's really complicated.
- [59:23]
Chris Lazard
Right.
- [59:24]
Brent Tucker
So with that. With that preface my, My, my simple outlook to most of this is that it. It is simple. It. And it is. I'm say this with. With a grain of salt for a second. Easy. Somewhat easy.
- [59:42]
Chris Lazard
Yep.
- [59:43]
Brent Tucker
But it's almost on a spectrum. The sooner you stop it and you have to stop it.
- [59:49]
Chris Lazard
Yes.
- [59:50]
Brent Tucker
The easier it is. And that's. That's. That's when it's easy or not. People aren't going to like the word easy, but I'm not. But in a way, manageable. Is that the word, you know, that someone wants to hear?
- [60:02]
Chris Lazard
Yeah. That's a nice way of saying it.
- [60:04]
Brent Tucker
Right. And it is. And everyone early on is capable of making 100%. But just because you didn't make it, you know, that. Yeah. Doesn't. I'm not, you know, judging you on that. Yeah. But why that's so important is because I think now I know because, Because I lived it. And I got told, deployment after deployment, you have ptsd. You can't handle this. You're going to see something so bad you can't handle. Why would you, why would you tell. Why would you tell grown men that there's something they can't handle? Because if you tell someone long enough, they can't handle something, your head, as soon as something happens, you're like, well, I can't handle this. I just don't like that. I just, I think that, like a lot of things, I think the pendulum swung too far.
- [60:52]
Chris Lazard
Yep.
- [60:53]
Brent Tucker
But to go to your point, once you've made this bad decision long enough, I hate not being responsible. I hate relinquishing personal responsibility. But I get it. You do the wrong thing Long enough. I will. I don't ever want to say it's impossible, but I'll say it's really, really, really hard to, to dig out at that point.
- [61:16]
Chris Lazard
It's really hard because it all accumulates. Right. But to your point, yeah, you are still accountable. I don't care if, you know, as many concussions or bad stuff or anything, medications I was on, whatever, mixing and matching, I was still ultimately accountable for all of it. And I think that's a huge step is that's the first part right there is to be like, you know what? Yeah, I'm messing up, I'm messing up really bad. Go ahead.
- [61:39]
Marcia Lessard
And from a spouse perspective, even when he was in the guard, he was gone all the time. He was working for state department and all these things like that. We averaged it out and I'm a pretty independent person and I've been madly in love with him since the first day I met him. So it was, it was easy. But we averaged it out and he was gone maybe nine to 10 months out of the year for almost the first 10 months of our marriage. You know, and like 10 years, part of my. So I medically retired on PTSD, right. Had my face smashed up pretty good, had all that redone looks pretty good. And for me it was very easy because you guys are selected because you're high, highly capable of compartmentalizing. Right. So it's bad that they're seeding your compartments with you can't handle this, a psychological thing. Right. But you guys are, you're selected because you're basically superhumans. You're able to put some really bad in boxes and just carry on mission forward. Right. And so I, on some level, not at the same level, was able to do some of that. So when my law enforcement career ended, I was able to throw all in on, I'm just going to be his wife and we're going to have a bunch of babies. We're going to do this like this, we're going American dream here. And I, and I. And that's how I kind of self isolated because I, I was just having kids. Right, right. But for me, when he was home, he was on it. He was the perfect husband. I never had big indicators unless he was home for too long and then it was like, hey, like we, we probably need to look into something because I knew he was top performing in everything. He was still getting awards, he's getting these high level jobs. But too long, you'd start to see the roller coaster start to go, you know, and that was the big first indicator for me.
- [63:24]
Brent Tucker
Yeah. And it's kind of. And I'll. I'll. Is it kind of one of those things with you? It's. It's kind of. It's kind of easy to fake it for. For a little bit.
- [63:33]
Chris Lazard
For a little bit you can. Right.
- [63:34]
Brent Tucker
I mean, kind of what she's alluding to. If it's. If it's in and out, we. We can. We can. We can continue to. To pretend like everything's fine.
- [63:42]
Chris Lazard
Literally trained to win hearts and minds when. Hearts and minds for some of those people, you know, we're literally trained to do that.
- [63:47]
Brent Tucker
But you can only fake it for. For so long.
- [63:49]
Chris Lazard
Exactly, man. And, you know, and to your point, too, and I just got to bring this up, you know, they did, like, I remember talking to you about it, like, they're pushing this PTSD thing, like, a little too much. Every guy I talk to, I don't think a lot of them. It's not the overseas stuff that. But like, oh, you're going to see this stuff, and it's going to be. Guys aren't going to have PTSD over that. It's the stuff that they deal with at home during training, you know, not feeling like they meet the standard or whatever. Like having imposter syndrome like we talked about.
- [64:14]
Brent Tucker
Yeah.
- [64:15]
Chris Lazard
I think that's the stuff over time, that chronic stress that, like, really starts to. It's not the stuff overseas, I guarantee. I ask any one of my old teammates if they'd go back over. They wouldn't. A heartbeat. You can't physically do it anymore. Some of them are, you know, pushing 60 now. I don't probably want them over there, but. But yeah, man, it's like, I remember when they were really, really pushing that. They were trying to push this, like, victim mentality on us.
- [64:37]
Brent Tucker
Yes. Yeah, that. That's actually the right word. A victim mentality. And again, I just. I have to put in all these caveats, one, to properly convey my message. But. And I'm. And I'm not saying that. And I don't think it's what you're saying either. Yeah, some guys did have some really bad days.
- [64:59]
Chris Lazard
Absolutely.
- [64:59]
Brent Tucker
And some. Some guys, it is about combat.
- [65:03]
Chris Lazard
Yep.
- [65:03]
Brent Tucker
But after being in the system and going through the system and being spit out by the system, you see the amount, you see it and you see it holistically, and you're like, this is. This is broken. And I've said it before, it's not that I don't believe in ptsd. I absolutely do you call it whatever you want to call it? There are people that will break at some point.
- [65:26]
Chris Lazard
Absolutely.
- [65:27]
Brent Tucker
But my problem is this, because I know that will happen. Our resources are finite. So when you have a bunch of imposters, true imposters, either truly imposters, or they are broken because you told them they were weak and they believed you, right? When we have all these people that shouldn't be clogging up the system, that shouldn't be stealing all these resources, we are now stealing resources from guys who really have it, because the guys who really had it, who really had a bad day, who really had to carry pieces of their brothers on the. Onto helicopters. I want that guy to have all the resources and the, the world.
- [66:08]
Chris Lazard
Yes.
- [66:08]
Brent Tucker
And if he doesn't, it's because people are stealing it from him.
- [66:13]
Marcia Lessard
But also, even with that, they're still whole people. Right. They're not irrevocably broken. And it's very emasculating, these terms that we've been using for like our best warriors in our nation to say, like, you have this diagnosis, so this means like, you're done, you're checked out. A lot of this ptsd, pts, a lot of the core root of it is nervous system dysregulation. And if we can get your nervous system re regulated, you can be fully functioning for the most part. Again, we talk a lot in our clinic, especially with our doc who has similar background to ours about resiliency. And a lot of us who are good compartmentalizers, who grew up in these kind of rough environments, we, our cups aren't overflowing. They built our resiliency. Right. So we're highly resilient people, which means we're able, when the resources are available, to use them adequately for full recovery or, or to get there. But having diagnosis like ptsd, and now the big one is they want to just diagnose mood disorders and schizoaffective. You come in with any type of thing, mood disorder, schizoaffective, instead of like looking deep and going, oh, wait, you got whacked in the head, right?
- [67:18]
Brent Tucker
Yeah.
- [67:19]
Marcia Lessard
And these are, these are treatable things. These are, these are new sets of skills that you can learn to re. Regulate and rework your brain function.
- [67:27]
Brent Tucker
So I, I have two, two questions. One is outside of, of people answering questions, you know, of sorts whether you want to call operator syndrome, you know, when it's like, like those, how can, can we scientifically detect TBIs micro tears within the brain? Can we scientifically say, I've I've seen your brain. You have it?
- [67:57]
Marcia Lessard
Well, we do eeg, so we're looking at the electrical activity in the brain and there is, it's not diagn is a pattern that we typically see with tbi. There's a pattern that we see with ptsd. And over time PTSD starts to look like tbi. So I like to go down into more into the root causes of this, right, like on a cellular level and symptom wise, right? Because I can't, I can't say, I'm not a scientist in that realm. I can't say that we have exactly this. You're going to get your head scanned and then we're going to know that you have tbi. But do you have this symptom cluster when we're talking about Operator syndrome, right, It's a cascade of symptoms. Sometimes it starts with the concussive injuries, sometimes it starts at the initial trauma. But what we're really boiling that down to on the medical side of it is the cell danger response. Your cells are literally freaking out. Like we cannot regulate, we're super inflamed, we're carrying too much toxins and there's a cascade of effect after that. And that's what we're seeing in Operator syndrome. And the bigger part of that is that we're not treating the root causes, we're not treating the toxin exposure, we're not making sure the methylation, which is basically an enzymatic process that tells your cells how to behave and detox and express your genetics. And then we're not addressing the basic metabolic functions. If your metabolics is off, kind of how your cell creates energy and then the ATP is, you know, the energy currency. If all of that is off your neurotransmitters, all your happy chemicals are going to be really off. Your gut's going to be off. If you're exposed a lot overseas, if you have certain RF exposures, your gut is off, doesn't cause tbi, but it changes kind of the functions. If those root causes aren't addressed, you're going to feel like a mess. You're going like all the operator syndrome times 10. But if you get to those root causes, you address the functional imbalances, you're in a much better place where you can use your inherent resiliency.
- [69:42]
Chris Lazard
And I think that's kind of the issue, right, is everyone gets that blanket saying, oh, you're ptsd, but it might not actually be some ptsd. I mean, it might be some, but it might be a Lot of those vector borne illnesses. We talked about those toxic metals. You know, how many times have you got your brain whacked or your hormones out of balance? You talked about the trt, you know, know, so all that stuff can, you know, present similar symptoms to ptsd? You know, the fear is that we start labeling people this stuff, they start to believe that's their identity.
- [70:10]
Marcia Lessard
Yeah.
- [70:10]
Chris Lazard
And I think that's a major, major problem.
- [70:13]
Brent Tucker
Yeah. I've, I've, I'm not a big fan because the as, as you'll know, the, the military and officers love to just change a term.
- [70:21]
Chris Lazard
Yeah.
- [70:22]
Brent Tucker
And we didn't. For what. Yeah, we didn't do anything. We just changed a term and now it's new, but.
- [70:26]
Chris Lazard
Yeah.
- [70:26]
Brent Tucker
Cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's an exception to that and to me and I actually, I do like refer toing it, referring to it as, as ptsi. Post Traumatic Stress injury.
- [70:41]
Marcia Lessard
Yeah.
- [70:41]
Brent Tucker
Because a disorder basically makes it sound like, hey, if you have a disorder, you have that for the rest of your life and a disorder it. And it doesn't get better.
- [70:50]
Chris Lazard
Right.
- [70:51]
Brent Tucker
In fact it might even get worse. That's what you have. And I, I believe like any injury is its worst at roughly at the beginning.
- [71:02]
Marcia Lessard
Yeah.
- [71:03]
Brent Tucker
And it should get better now. Like an injury, there are some injuries that just aren't going to get better without, without medicine or without treatment, whether it be physical therapy. You know, there are things that require an injury to get better, but it's an injury, it should get better with time and properly diagnosed will get better with time. It's, it's just. And again, I would get off my, my soapbox and, and doesn't mean like who I am is, is who, how everyone should be, but I just can't imagine, you know, go through it here but thinking like my worst day that, that I had in combat, that I'm going to be 70 years old, still walking around every day thinking about that, that worst day. What a.
- [71:47]
Chris Lazard
Right.
- [71:48]
Brent Tucker
What a horrible life.
- [71:49]
Chris Lazard
Right.
- [71:50]
Brent Tucker
I refuse to believe that that's how it has to be. And so yeah, I make sure that's not how it has to be. I, I do what they tell me not to do. I put it in a little box and I put it back there.
- [72:04]
Marcia Lessard
That's a superpower though.
- [72:05]
Chris Lazard
It is a superpower. Yeah, I know.
- [72:07]
Brent Tucker
And, and I do and, and, and I get that. And a little bit to your point, I forgot to make it. But I'm glad, glad you said that. A lot of the things that I have to say really have to do with guys within special operations.
- [72:22]
Chris Lazard
Yeah.
- [72:22]
Brent Tucker
You know, because that's that. That's how. That's the. That's the. That's the litmus test. That.
- [72:29]
Chris Lazard
Yeah.
- [72:29]
Brent Tucker
That I'm judging.
- [72:30]
Chris Lazard
That's our standard.
- [72:31]
Brent Tucker
Yeah, that. That's that I know you're capable. That because you did this job. And it's not because I think I'm so great. I actually think I'm not that great. And if I can do it, I know you can do it, bro.
- [72:42]
Chris Lazard
That's how we all, you know, like, no, I'm a piece of man. Like, hey, if I could do it, you know. Right. G. But that's.
- [72:46]
Brent Tucker
But that's. That's a good point. And, And. And that's. I think I forget sometimes. I like to explain it properly. And now it's on the Internet forever. And you're like, hey, well, that's. But that's you. And you guys were specially selected. And that is absolutely correct.
- [73:00]
Marcia Lessard
And I think that there's an element of this, like, general, I think, pts, ptsd, ptsi, it's all very real. It can be cumulative, much like a tbi. But there's an element of telling people, this is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong. There's a methylation SNP called compti. It's really interesting to me because it's about how your brain processes dopamine. And almost all the SF guys that come through have a compt. Snip. It's literally called the warrior snip. Right. So they process dopamine at much higher levels than other people do. We can't say this is wrong that you have that snp. God created you guys that way because we need people like you. Right. You have these cumulative stresses that start in childhood, and they build up, and they don't necessarily mean you're falling apart at some point. It means you just feel numb. And then, much like grief, you learn to just kind of live around those things instead of addressing them. And then back to your point. If you get to the point where you address them, then it puts them in the proper compartments so that if you do have a drink or like you're getting into a relationship and you get into your first big fight or something, those compartments don't come exploding. Right. You just have to address the appropriate, appropriate things in the compartments and then put them back where they belong because it's cumulative. So I agree with you. It's an injury. You just have to take the time to address it. It is worse than the beginning. It can get kind of bad when you start unpacking those bags.
- [74:26]
Chris Lazard
I think if you treat an injury, it's like a broken leg, right. If you treat it and like, all right, I'm gonna rest on it for maybe a week and then I'm gonna go for a run.
- [74:33]
Brent Tucker
Done.
- [74:33]
Chris Lazard
It's not going to get better. The same thing with this is if I, you know, have that injury and I'm like, all right, and then I'm gonna just drink myself to sleep every night. That's not necessarily going to help it. But like you said, it all depends on how you treat that injury and it's not your identity forever.
- [74:47]
Brent Tucker
So I, I know. I'm. I understand the answer to this could be is based off of. Well, depends on the person.
- [74:53]
Chris Lazard
Yeah.
- [74:53]
Brent Tucker
But if we, if it's possible, if you could give me just the most common occurrence, if you will, the most general answer to this. If, if we'll keep it within special operations, military background. Person comes into the brain treatment center there in Nova, you guys have two locations, Correct. Where they at?
- [75:13]
Chris Lazard
Ashburn and Alexandria, Virginia.
- [75:15]
Brent Tucker
Where's. How does, how does the, how does the assessment start? And what is the assessment? What does it entail?
- [75:23]
Chris Lazard
So we're a buffet. What's that?
- [75:25]
Marcia Lessard
We're a buffet. You can pick what you want. Most people come in for, you know, TMS and then would like to move it to the more highly personalized MERT therapy because it does help address functionally what's going on. Raw data comes in back here. It's carried on the alpha wave. It's. It's interpreted up here. If that gets kind of slow and wonky, you can imagine that the interpretation is going to be difficult. People, I, I think it's great to show people the data on their bodies. Right. So we always do the eeg. Like, hey, this is how your brain is performing for me. And this is kind of like where we'd like it to be at. This would be optimal function. This is how we'll get you there. And we'll fine tune it every two weeks with. With wave and see what get. If we can get you there. And then we always, always offer the functional labs because we're looking at your cellular function and we're looking at your gut health. All of that is absolutely essential to good brain health. We talk, I post a lot about it on our Instagram, but we talk a lot about mental health and, you know, just throwing things under a diagnosis. But your mental health is going to be askew. If your guts are wreck, if you're you walking around with a large toxin burden, things like that, right? And then we also have an OT program that we designed. Usually around week three of either MERT or tms, you see some things bubble, like, they start bubbling. I was not really allowed to cry as a child, and I finally did the MERT therapy when we opened the clinic. Week three, every day I was crying into work on the way into work, crying, crying my eyes out. And I'm yelling at myself, like, what are you crying about? Get it together. And that's all it was for me. So we designed this OT program that incorporates myofascial release fascia. If you peel back an orange, it's kind of like the white that encases the fruit. We have that all throughout our body. And science was settled up into, you know, a decade ago. They thought it's just inert tissue, but it actually, like Chinese medicine had it right with acupuncture, because that addresses functional imbalances in the fascia at times, right? So we developed this program. It's occupational therapy. It's based on brain balance. It's billable to insurance, which I think is really important because so much of this therapy, so expensive. But we do basic movements. We do primitive reflex integration, and then we add myofascial release. If you're listening to this, you're interested in ptsd, ptsi, pts. Listen to the body keep score, because it does. And part of the place that holds it is the fascia. You know, the body, it accumulates over time in the body, and sometimes what's not present in your mind can be present in chronic pain, different things in your body, and that's the fascia. So we really like to offer people occupational therapy and myofascial release through our OT program. Because if it's week three and you start getting a little bubbly, right. It just makes it that much easier, just processes out. We have a separate program like that for kids on the spectrum. And then through Task Force Dagger foundation, we got linked up with an incredible psychiatric nurse practitioner who was also a former nurse synesthetist, and she does ketamine therapy in the clinic. That's her own separate business. But people get a little, you know, this and that about those things. This. I was cop. I worked a lot in areas that were just saturated in drug use. So when people started talking about psychedelics, I was like, hold the phone.
- [78:37]
Chris Lazard
Yeah.
- [78:37]
Marcia Lessard
I never saw somebody on PCP be like, that's it. I'm good to go. They just never saw it. But what I think happens with ketamine, because I've seen some pretty amazing things in the clinic is if you're always amped, your nervous system's really dysregulated, your, your baseline is a seven to ten. Ten's the worst, right. There's going to be consequences. It resets that baseline for you, right? So now when you're going through life, you're not, you're not white knuckling it, right? You, you have a new capacity and for just processing regular life information. So we have ketamine in the clinic. We do the nutritional stuff. We do the functional medic say to everybody, like, you could choose one, you could choose none. We have guys in there. We had a guy recently who was definitely ptsd. Like, he was it. He had a hard time seeking help for it. He really did. He's much older than we all are. He had lived some life. And so we start. He said, I just want to do this one thing. And you know, I was like, you know what? Then just do it. Just, I'm so proud of you that you're just doing one thing so that you can feel better living your life. Like, how cool is that that you're this age and you're doing one thing for yourself?
- [79:44]
Brent Tucker
Yeah, I've only. And I love that, like the, the outlook of that. Like it does. I just, I equate it to, to working out. Like, don't guess what. You don't have to do a full body max rep workout. You're just getting into it. Go, go, go, go. Move weights around, start off slow. Go, go, go do, go do biceps for 10 minutes and go home.
- [80:07]
Chris Lazard
You know, if that's your flare or whatever, you know. Yeah, month.
- [80:11]
Brent Tucker
But, but, but the beginning will start something else. Step one starts step two. That starts step three. And really what usually happens. And ironically enough, those people would normally go further and the people who jump all in right off the bat, crash and burn. Crash and burn. Major expectations that are just unrealistic and they get really demotivated where they don't see them fast enough.
- [80:37]
Chris Lazard
Yep. No, absolutely. And I think we see that a lot. A lot of times, you know, when people don't see instant results, it's like none of it works. It's like, bro, like, there's no, there's no easy pill. There's no, you know, magic pill. It's not going to cure everything.
- [80:50]
Brent Tucker
That that was true with me and prep. I started getting. Okay, I have really low tests. Like, let's. We'll fix that. I have got my, my Sleep study done.
- [81:03]
Chris Lazard
Yeah.
- [81:04]
Brent Tucker
You know, now I have a cpap. I'm gonna, I'm finally gonna sleep again. And I just expected the next couple weeks, I'm like, all right, I'm gonna, I'm gonna be back to my old self.
- [81:13]
Chris Lazard
Right.
- [81:14]
Brent Tucker
CPAP never worked for me. Yeah. It just didn't.
- [81:16]
Marcia Lessard
I have an alternative for you.
- [81:18]
Brent Tucker
It doesn't. I'm all ears.
- [81:20]
Marcia Lessard
Are you?
- [81:21]
Brent Tucker
Yeah.
- [81:21]
Marcia Lessard
Yeah. So one of the things that we do is refer to functional dentistry. And I have a device in my mouth. It's called an ALF device. And what it does is it resets the position of your tongue and it also expands your airway. Right. So it's not designed to replace a CPAP machine, but it inadvertently replaces the need for it. So the first three days I had this thing in my mouth, you know, I don't necessarily. I didn't need braces. They did. They start off with a ct. And my airway was pretty good because my surgeon had fixed me up pretty nice after my incident. And it reset the position of my tongue. I felt like I was having an out of body experience for the first three days. And I talked to this nurse practitioner and I was like, man, I got this off device. I feel like I'm walking around outside of my body. Which is hard for me because I'm a very like, in control of the bubble person. She said, oh, it's addressing your vagal nerve tone. Do you have ptsd? And I was like, yeah, yes, I do. And since then I like, sleep is my superpower since I've had this thing in my mouth. So like, we've tried to pull a lot of these types of referrals into our clinic for things like that. Another thing that we've been trying to do is get more educated and refer on like Lyme disease because the vector borne illnesses are just, they're all over the regions you guys deploy and train in. And they have almost the same symptoms of tbi. Ptsd, right?
- [82:39]
Brent Tucker
Yeah.
- [82:40]
Marcia Lessard
But the ALF device is a great device. We love broadband family.
- [82:43]
Brent Tucker
If you don't mind.
- [82:44]
Marcia Lessard
Alf.
- [82:44]
Brent Tucker
Alf. Okay.
- [82:45]
Marcia Lessard
Just like.
- [82:46]
Brent Tucker
Yes.
- [82:46]
Chris Lazard
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [82:47]
Marcia Lessard
And it's, you don't feel it. It's just in there. And it does. It helps. It helps. So when you sleep at night, you get this, this wash over your brain. It's like, like your central nervous system. Your, your, your fluid from your spinal column comes up and washes all the oxidative stress out of your brain. If you're not sleeping well, that doesn't happen. So the ALF device makes that more accessible.
- [83:11]
Chris Lazard
Yeah, we have. We have all our kids in it. She has it. I'm getting mine in March. So.
- [83:15]
Marcia Lessard
Yeah, it's pretty cool.
- [83:17]
Chris Lazard
We're sold on it. Yeah.
- [83:18]
Brent Tucker
The. Is that something you guys provide or is there a place you go for an al?
- [83:21]
Chris Lazard
Place we go, but we.
- [83:23]
Marcia Lessard
There's two. There's a family of doctors. They're all Dr. Bronson in northern Virginia. And they are like the ALF guys device, but that you can get an airway device just about anywhere. But I would recommend the ALF one because if you like the way it's making you feeling feel and you feel like. Like for me, it's like since doing MERT and having the ALF device in, I. I like to be hyper vigilant. I don't see a problem with it. I want to know. I want to know where people's hands are. I want to know where the exits are. That. That makes me feel good. Like, I don't want to take that away. However, since doing MERT and having the ALF device, the cortisol dump, that had started to happen with that, that's gone and I'm sleeping better, which makes everything better.
- [84:02]
Brent Tucker
And. And you touched on the. The ketamine therapy, which. Which I'm glad you did because it'd be something else I was going to bring up. What have you guys looked into? And. And again, like, I understand it's like, what works for one person may not work for another. And. And go. Goes. Goes down the line. Have you looked into O2 therapy?
- [84:23]
Chris Lazard
We do O2 therapy. Well, we do hyperbaric chamber. So we have. Yeah, we have a soft chamber. So it's not pure O2, but we have an oxygen inverter in there.
- [84:32]
Brent Tucker
Have you done it?
- [84:33]
Chris Lazard
You know, strangely enough is we own the damn clinic and I haven't done it yet.
- [84:37]
Brent Tucker
That's so funny. Yeah. It's so stupid, you know, it's so stupid. I own a TRT company. It took me months to get TRT and I'm a co owner in a trt.
- [84:46]
Chris Lazard
Yeah. It's just you haven't. I'm like, I'm gonna get in this every day and I haven't been in it once months. Yeah, it's crazy. But we started with HBOT just because it was one of the other things that we kept hearing, like, hey, you know, it does works wonders. So yeah, you know, we did our own research. We realized, yeah, this does amazing for brain. And it's a soft chamber. It only goes down to the equivalent about 10 or 11ft, 1:1.5 ATA, something like that, you know. But we went to a conference in September. Yeah. And just hearing the stories, like there were some veterans up there. It was a Marine up there talking about how it, like, changed his life. Life and just all the things it can be useful for, like, you know.
- [85:26]
Brent Tucker
I love the idea of it. You know, I've done some research on it. Yeah. Obviously there's, there's a ton of research showing that it's legitimate. Yep. And, and, and it makes sense. And it's. Obviously, it's natural. The only downside to that is the amount of time. It's a, It's a time thing.
- [85:45]
Chris Lazard
And that's why, you know, we're having trouble getting people in there because, you know, a lot of the recommendations are, hey, 20 to 40 sessions, you know, three times a week. Well, the session is you got to show up, make sure you don't have anything crazy in your pockets. It's going to catch on fire, you know.
- [86:00]
Brent Tucker
Yeah.
- [86:00]
Chris Lazard
And then a few minutes to go down, 60 minutes of depth, three to four minutes to come up. And it's just like, not many people, they're working adults, you know, a lot, not a lot of people have that time. But if you do have the time, man, it, it can do wonders over time.
- [86:14]
Brent Tucker
Really good results from it.
- [86:15]
Marcia Lessard
You guys go to a lot of schools when you're trying to hone in your skill sets, sets to be operators. Right. And so I think that that mentality needs to shift to, like, honing into, like, being the best you're afterwards.
- [86:30]
Brent Tucker
Don't bring logic into this.
- [86:31]
Chris Lazard
Yeah, yeah, you stop it.
- [86:34]
Marcia Lessard
I'll.
- [86:34]
Chris Lazard
I'll beat her later. No, I'm kidding. She beats me. No, I'm kidding.
- [86:40]
Marcia Lessard
Get in my guard.
- [86:41]
Chris Lazard
Yeah, get in my guard.
- [86:42]
Brent Tucker
Don't make me feel bad with. Yeah, true though. Right.
- [86:48]
Chris Lazard
And I do the same thing. I'm like, I don't have time for that. She's like, you're always, like, trying to. New workouts and like, you know, a new supplement. I'm like, I'm gonna do judo this week. Yeah.
- [86:56]
Brent Tucker
Yeah. It actually reminds me of the same. Which is so true, is, you know, you know, show. Show me what you spend your time on, and I'll show you what's important to you. And you can say you're serious about your, your own personal health and you can say you're important about whatever it is.
- [87:12]
Chris Lazard
Yeah.
- [87:12]
Brent Tucker
Yep. But show me the time you put into it, and I'll let you know if, if you're really Serious about it.
- [87:17]
Chris Lazard
Is this legit or you just talking the talk? Right. And I think there's a lot of people out there that do, like, I'm all about wellness. Like, cool. You know, they go. Go to the gym for 45 minutes three times a week, and then, you know, McDonald's and video rest time. Bro. That's not.
- [87:29]
Marcia Lessard
I help with a lot of group therapies in the veteran settings, and I. I always kind of have this tagline like, do you want changes? Yes. You got to make changes.
- [87:39]
Brent Tucker
Yeah.
- [87:39]
Marcia Lessard
You got to commit to it. You got to make some changes. You got to get out of your box.
- [87:42]
Chris Lazard
But if I just push harder, everything will be better.
- [87:45]
Brent Tucker
Right? That's. That's the deal.
- [87:46]
Chris Lazard
Yeah.
- [87:46]
Brent Tucker
I just do the same things. Harder.
- [87:48]
Chris Lazard
If I just double up the weight, this is. Be fine. Like. Yeah, it's.
- [87:52]
Marcia Lessard
Yeah.
- [87:53]
Chris Lazard
Which is why we're in the position we're in. I guess.
- [87:55]
Marcia Lessard
You're doing pretty good.
- [87:56]
Chris Lazard
Yeah.
- [87:57]
Brent Tucker
Well, I'm glad you guys came on and got. Got to talk about this. It's. It's. Again, it's. It's something that gets talked about, but to bring someone in here that actually does it for a living.
- [88:08]
Chris Lazard
Yeah.
- [88:08]
Brent Tucker
Can. Can touch on all the you different therapies, talk on, you know, the science behind it, the how. How we got there, what are we doing currently? What's. What's. What's. What's. What's the best out there? That's. It's. It's more. More than. More than worth it to have you guys come out here. I love it.
- [88:30]
Marcia Lessard
Yeah.
- [88:30]
Chris Lazard
No, dude, this. This was absolutely amazing. On that note, too, like, you know, we don't have all the answers. I don't think anybody does, but we're constantly looking for. Hey, what's another thing that we could possibly bring in there because.
- [88:41]
Brent Tucker
Yeah.
- [88:41]
Chris Lazard
Or refer people out to, like, Raymond. It's, you know, hey, we might not have the answers, but we know a guy, you know, and, you know, we'll send him out there, but just to bring, you know, hope and just resilience and quality of life to everybody out there. That's what we're just in it for. So.
- [88:54]
Marcia Lessard
And the spouses.
- [88:55]
Chris Lazard
And this. Of course, the spouses.
- [88:57]
Brent Tucker
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I hate it because I'm gonna bring it up now. In fact, I might clip it and throw this in at. At the beginning, but. Because if they've listened to it by this far, then. Then they won't need to hear what I'm about to say. Guys will. Will check out and they'll be like, oh, this. This isn't a war story. You know this, you know, no one's stacking bodies. Yeah, this is, you know, like, what's. You know what? No, it. Almost. Almost everyone that listens, not everyone, but almost everyone that listens to this podcast either knows someone that can benefit from this discussion themselves, can benefit from this discussion, or they're currently serving, whether it be military or as a first responder. And you will need to know something about this in the future. But because we're not talking about stacking bodies, like, well, I'll. I'll. I'll weigh in at the next episode.
- [89:50]
Marcia Lessard
No, that's okay.
- [89:51]
Brent Tucker
You listen to this episode.
- [89:53]
Marcia Lessard
You need to know this because we have a friend. Chris is not an outward outgoing person talking about this stuff at all. And we got invited to a health symposium at Bragg. The first time he ever, in front of his community, said, like, hey, I had something wrong with me.
- [90:10]
Chris Lazard
Yeah.
- [90:10]
Marcia Lessard
But what drove that was we had a friend.
- [90:13]
Chris Lazard
Yeah, we. We had a friend who unfortunately put himself on the 22 a day. And like, we found out six days before that. And, you know, as much as it was like, hey, get in front of a stage and just talk, you know, briefly about your issues, that was still weird. But it was just like, you know what? It's. It's worth it.
- [90:29]
Brent Tucker
It. Yeah.
- [90:29]
Chris Lazard
Because a lot of regret goes into that about, you know, hey, you know, didn't reach out, didn't notice, you know, all those things. Feel horrible about it, but. So that's why we're trying to. Trying to do it now.
- [90:38]
Marcia Lessard
But I want to define that as he's somebody that you never thought would. He was young and. And easy to love and easy to be around. And, you know, I knew him longer than. Than Chris did and always had a smile on his face, always there for other people. And it just was the cumulative stuff and drinking and the wrong meds, and it just ended. And it was shocking that that was the person. So everybody says check in on people. Don't just check on. In on people. Be community with people. Men heal in community with purpose.
- [91:14]
Chris Lazard
For sure.
- [91:15]
Brent Tucker
For sure.
- [91:16]
Marcia Lessard
Right? Be in community with people.
- [91:18]
Brent Tucker
And I think what's just. And these are the things that. I'm not an expert on it, but I don't have to be to see some of these things reoccur. And it. I think you have to be an expert to. To question some things. The amount of school shooters, the amount of people who commit suicide that are anti depressants, makes me question antidepressants why wouldn't you. I got some. If that's what it's supposed to do. Right. And you have people shooting up schools and shooting up public spaces and, and killing themselves and they're on antidepressants. It makes, it makes me question antidepressants, absolutely. Doesn't. Doesn't necessarily make question as a complete whole, but there's. There's something that deserves to. To be questioned there. Who, who we giving them to? How much. How much. How much are we given? What's, what is going on here?
- [92:10]
Chris Lazard
Right. Interacting with other stuff that they're already on, you know, and what they're doing in their life.
- [92:15]
Brent Tucker
Right.
- [92:15]
Marcia Lessard
And what's their background? Have you talked about their brain health? Have you talked about how many times they've hit their head or blocked, blacked out on a jump or something like that? Is that really the appropriate thing to do in this situation or is it the easy thing to do because it's on a flowchart?
- [92:30]
Brent Tucker
There? It is, yeah. Or is it the easy thing to do?
- [92:32]
Chris Lazard
Yeah, that's.
- [92:33]
Brent Tucker
That's, that's, that's. That's. I'm afraid of. Yeah, but, you know, we, we're. As a, as a. As a community and as a culture, we're all so quick to talk about certain things, but I don't. Again, I'm not much of a conspiracy theorist, but there's something with Big Pharma that has to be looked into.
- [92:54]
Chris Lazard
Do.
- [92:54]
Brent Tucker
It's. If, If. If I'm questioning it, it's gone. It's. It's. It's pretty. It's pretty bulletproof.
- [93:01]
Chris Lazard
I think it's at a point now where many people are questioning it. It's. It's not. Yeah, I, you know.
- [93:06]
Brent Tucker
Yeah.
- [93:07]
Marcia Lessard
In the hospital, I do see where some things get people really regulated. There are people who just want the magic pill. That's their choice. We live in a free country. You get to make that choice. And sometimes that works for them. Yep. Sometimes it really doesn't. And that's why that's listed on the inserts. So, like, it's not a conspiracy to point out their own dis. Disclaimers, right?
- [93:29]
Chris Lazard
Yeah. No, that's. That's just truth. They say it.
- [93:32]
Brent Tucker
It is. I mean, it is a free country. I mean, I, I can. I can want things. All I want. I like.
- [93:39]
Chris Lazard
But do you know what's best for you?
- [93:41]
Brent Tucker
Yeah, exactly. You know, the lot felt great. But I can't just go in there and say, I want. I want more Dilaudid.
- [93:48]
Marcia Lessard
Yes. Yeah. You shouldn't.
- [93:49]
Chris Lazard
Yeah. I'm sure shooting up heroin, I'm sure. Feels great in the moment. Is that, you know, and you might want to do that, but that's probably not the best thing you should be doing.
- [93:57]
Marcia Lessard
Yeah.
- [93:57]
Brent Tucker
Yeah.
- [93:57]
Marcia Lessard
Yeah.
- [93:58]
Brent Tucker
Well, thank you guys so much.
- [94:00]
Chris Lazard
Thank you.
- [94:01]
Brent Tucker
Coming out. Thanks for. Thanks for sharing your story and we'll. We'll stay in touch.
- [94:06]
Chris Lazard
Absolutely, brother. Thank you. This is amazing.
- [94:08]
Brent Tucker
If. If you won't use that O2 chamber, I'll. I'll.
- [94:11]
Chris Lazard
Come on up, man. We'll get you in it. We'll get you in it. We're going together. Make it weird. We're divers. We're divers, man. As. We can do that.
- [94:17]
Brent Tucker
We want to say dive school. We've.
- [94:19]
Chris Lazard
We didn't even do it.
- [94:20]
Brent Tucker
We've been in that.
- [94:21]
Chris Lazard
In weirder situations before. Right, Exactly.
- [94:23]
Brent Tucker
Much shorter shorts. Exactly.
- [94:25]
Chris Lazard
I still have mine, by the way.
- [94:27]
Brent Tucker
Yeah, I still have my udts.
- [94:29]
Chris Lazard
Nice.
- [94:29]
Brent Tucker
I sure do.
- [94:30]
Marcia Lessard
Nice.
- [94:31]
Brent Tucker
I can pretty much fit into them.
- [94:33]
Chris Lazard
It's kind of scary when I do, but that's all right. That's all right. It's all right.
- [94:40]
Marcia Lessard
Yeah.
- [94:41]
Brent Tucker
Yeah.
- [94:41]
Marcia Lessard
So you can.
- [94:42]
Brent Tucker
What you got?
- [94:42]
Marcia Lessard
You can follow us on Instagram. We're at Brain Treatment center, underscore Ashburn on Instagram, and our website is btcnva.com or brain treatment center ashburn.com.
- [94:55]
Chris Lazard
Yep.
- [94:55]
Marcia Lessard
Yeah.
- [94:56]
Brent Tucker
And then I have one last thing.
- [94:57]
Chris Lazard
Yeah.
- [94:58]
Brent Tucker
Actually, you gotta tell us a funny story.
- [95:00]
Chris Lazard
Shoot. A funny story. I'm. I'm brain farting right now.
- [95:03]
Brent Tucker
Help me out.
- [95:04]
Chris Lazard
I know you got a lot of funny stories.
- [95:05]
Brent Tucker
It can't all be dark times. There's no stories.
- [95:08]
Marcia Lessard
That story where the Arabian Night knights came down the thing. I don't even know.
- [95:11]
Chris Lazard
I don't know if that's really a.
- [95:12]
Marcia Lessard
Funny story, but it's funny because I'm not as exposed to that.
- [95:14]
Chris Lazard
No. So.
- [95:15]
Brent Tucker
Yeah.
- [95:15]
Chris Lazard
What was that?
- [95:16]
Marcia Lessard
You have a better, funnier story. I'm sure that you have some.
- [95:19]
Chris Lazard
Yeah, no. So I'll just say that because you said it, but it's really not that funny a story. But we'll go with it. No, we were in. In Mali and we were on a boat. It's like the weekend thing. Okay. Like, you know, hey, you can do whatever. These three, like, Arabian Night dudes come up, and they're on horses, and it's like you could see them on top of the hill. We're stopped for lunch or something.
- [95:37]
Marcia Lessard
Turbines and flares.
- [95:38]
Chris Lazard
Yeah. Like the whole thing.
- [95:40]
Brent Tucker
Yeah.
- [95:40]
Chris Lazard
And I have pictures of them, actually, as they, like, riding down towards us, and we're like, oh, this is cool. You know, the Arabian Nights. We're gonna take pictures with them, and we're all packing. No one knows we're all packing. And they start, like, yelling at us, and we're like, the. Did he just say right? And our interpreters, like, no, they. They're demanding you give them money. And then we just flashed them, and then they go, no more yelling. They just all took off, man. And it was just. It was kind of funny, but it was like, yeah, that was interesting. Almost got robbed by Arabian nights of, you know, Aladdin, who's trying to rob me, goes.
- [96:11]
Brent Tucker
That's where the old Malawi phrase came from. Don't bring a sword to. To a gun fight.
- [96:18]
Chris Lazard
Yeah, sword, man.
- [96:21]
Brent Tucker
Yep.
- [96:21]
Chris Lazard
It was like that scene in Indiana Jones, the dudes doing all the sword tricks.
- [96:24]
Brent Tucker
Yeah. It would have been like, cool horses. They still cannot run bullets, right?
- [96:28]
Chris Lazard
Yeah, exactly. Exactly, man. Exactly.
- [96:31]
Brent Tucker
We'll take it.
- [96:32]
Chris Lazard
Yep.
- [96:33]
Brent Tucker
Thanks, guys.
- [96:33]
Chris Lazard
Thanks, brother. Appreciate it.