113. Shawn Ryan: Beating Addiction, Military Industrial Complex, Trump Presidency Outlook

Speaker 1 Pharmaceutical companies and the food companies basically paying off the FDA politicians to vote a certain way. Same thing with war.

Speaker 1 Vote this way, we want to prolong this war, we're gonna develop more supplies for it.

Speaker 2 It just makes you wonder if any of the elites have our best interests at heart, because in our industrial food supply, the majority of our nutritional research is funded by big pharma.

Speaker 1 I don't think it's about ending it, but it's business.

Speaker 2 You were dealing with some pretty heavy mental illness. It's still just not in vogue to ask for help.

Speaker 1 Everything that you've worked so hard to accomplish, you're at the apex of what you do. And now nobody cares because you're not in that anymore.
There goes my whole identity.

Speaker 1 You have to learn how to reinvent yourself. They call it an ego death.

Speaker 2 Tens of thousands of our military men and women that are permanently on the chemical hamster wheel, which is further destroying their life.

Speaker 2 Why are we preventing people from accessing these kinds of therapies?

Speaker 1 What really did the trick was psychedelics? The most profound experience of my entire entire life. And I don't say that lightly.

Speaker 2 For you and military men and women that are in your group, what does this election mean to you?

Speaker 1 Part of the reason we got to where we were is because people in this country are scared to

Speaker 2 Today, we are thrilled to have a remarkable guest on the Ultimate Human podcast, Sean Ryan.

Speaker 2 Sean's journey is one of resilience, purpose, and relentless dedication from his days as a Navy SEAL and a CIA contractor to becoming a powerful voice in the veteran mental health community.

Speaker 2 Through his acclaimed show, The Sean Ryan Show, he's given a voice to the raw experiences of veterans, shedding light on PTSD and the healing potential of alternative therapies like psychedelics.

Speaker 2 Today, Sean will take us deeper into his story.

Speaker 2 He's going to share the profound ways that his spiritual journey, mental health advocacy, and commitment to self-resilience have shaped his life and his mission.

Speaker 2 Join us as we uncover powerful insights into what it truly means to be an ultimate human.

Speaker 1 Hey guys, welcome back to the Ultimate Human Podcast.

Speaker 2 I'm your host, human biologist Gary Brucker, where we go down the road of everything, wellness, longevity, anti-aging, biohacking, and everything in between.

Speaker 2 And every once in a while,

Speaker 2 I am blessed enough to have a truly iconic guest on the podcast, not just a guest that is known to the world, but a guest that has had experiences in life that are just so uncommon, but yet so profound.

Speaker 2 And today is one of those rare moments on the ultimate human where we get to have a really, really impactful guest with an incredibly special and not very common background.

Speaker 2 Welcome to the podcast, Sean Ryan.

Speaker 1 Hey, thank you.

Speaker 1 It's an honor to be here.

Speaker 2 It's an honor to have you, man.

Speaker 2 You know,

Speaker 2 military icon, you know, the work that you do for veterans,

Speaker 2 the awareness that you brought to post-traumatic stress disorder and

Speaker 2 even being very authentic about your own journey.

Speaker 2 You know, I find it very, very inspiring. And, you know,

Speaker 2 if you've ever watched my podcast and my audience knows, and it sounds like I'm just repeating the same old line, but so often the people that I have on this podcast that I feel are making the greatest impact in the world.

Speaker 2 are people that have solved a problem in their life, right?

Speaker 2 And whether it's post-traumatic stress disorder or, you know, alcohol addiction or a relationship issue, or they had chronic Lyme disease or whatever it was, and they solved that issue.

Speaker 2 And because of that journey, they're making a massive impact in the world.

Speaker 2 And I think you are definitely one of those people that turned a very storied, you know, military career into an impactful message. And I, and I just want to say on the eve of Veterans Day,

Speaker 2 Veterans Day is the 11th. What's today?

Speaker 1 The 8th.

Speaker 2 Okay. So it's March 8th.
I mean, it's,

Speaker 2 I can't think of a more impactful guest to have on the podcast. So I'm just, I'm so excited.
And sometimes, you know, I tell my, I tell my friends and family this all the time.

Speaker 2 I'm like, I don't feel like I work a day in my life because I really get to sit down with inspiring people like yourself. And so I've watched a lot of your podcasts.

Speaker 2 I mean, lots of people have watched a lot of your podcasts.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 this is a very self-serving question, but

Speaker 2 of all these incredible military stories and incredible feats that you've had on your podcast,

Speaker 2 what is the biggest standout for you?

Speaker 1 If there was guest-wise or or

Speaker 1 subject-wise, or I would say, let's do guest-wise and then let's go into subject-wise. I mean, guest-wise, military guys, man, there's so it's there's so many.
That's what I was saying.

Speaker 1 Like, that's hard. That's a really hard question.

Speaker 2 We were actually just talking about the uh, this, the sniper that did a

Speaker 2 mile shot

Speaker 2 and made a kill. I mean, these are the kinds of stories you'll find on this podcast.
If you're not familiar with Sean Ryan, you should be.

Speaker 2 And just the infinite amount of complexity of that, you know, a 10-second bullet trajectory.

Speaker 2 But you've had so many of these icons on, and you even started a foundation to preserve these stories.

Speaker 1 I didn't start a foundation. I help with a couple of different nonprofits, but

Speaker 1 I think

Speaker 1 a couple, there's been a lot of really big, impactful stories on the show.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 I don't want to say my favorite one because I don't get to have one.

Speaker 1 But some of the most impactful ones that I think there were was

Speaker 1 earlier on in my podcast, I had this guy on DJ Shipley,

Speaker 1 SEAL Team 6 guy,

Speaker 1 really like poured his heart and soul out and, I mean, talked about his suicide attempts, talked about his infidelity and the challenges that his wife and him went through.

Speaker 1 He talked about a lot of stuff that

Speaker 1 is really important.

Speaker 1 It's a peek behind the curtain that nobody gets to look at. And another guy that I think is,

Speaker 1 you got to meet DJ, by the way. He guys would get along really good.

Speaker 2 Is he a science nerd?

Speaker 1 He's a health nerd. Is he?

Speaker 2 Okay. He's my guy, though.

Speaker 1 And a beast. Yeah.
But another guy, Tom Tom Satterly,

Speaker 1 one of my favorite humans on the planet.

Speaker 1 He was a Delta guy. I'm sure you've heard the story about Black Hawk Down back in Mogadishu.
And

Speaker 1 a lot of people say that kind of the main character in that movie was Tom. Tom was a very junior Delta guy at the time.

Speaker 1 and went through that, talks about it very, very in-depth, very detailed, and

Speaker 1 served all the way through, you know,

Speaker 1 OEF, OIF, and just a

Speaker 1 just an awesome human being.

Speaker 2 But there's been, there's been a, there's been a ton of because I always wonder, you know, when you see these elite special forces, and you were SEAL team two and SEAL team eight, right?

Speaker 2 And for folks that don't know the difference, I mean, we always hear SEAL team six, but what, what are the differences between the, the, the, the different SEAL teams?

Speaker 1 And what are the what are the numbers really indicating especially so the so the yeah the numbers so you go through buds everybody you go through buds you go through sqt everybody becomes a seal

Speaker 1 and then so all the odd number teams are on the west coast all the even number teams are on the east coast out of little creek virginia or damneck um

Speaker 1 West Coast teams are all out of Coronado, California. And then there's an SDV team that's out of Hawaii, and that's

Speaker 1 like the mini submarines. But and then SEAL team six, so you get through, you go to a regular SEAL team, and you either go east or west coast or Hawaii.

Speaker 1 And then you, I don't know what it is now, but you used to, you could basically kind of do one enlistment or two platoons. Two platoons means two deployments.

Speaker 1 And so after you do two deployments, then you can screen to go over development group. And so screening is, is, it's kind of a series of things.
It's an interview with your current command.

Speaker 1 It's, it's a physical fitness test. It's a, it's a, you go interview over a development group and, and, and, uh, they kind of see, you know, if they think that you would be a good fit.

Speaker 1 And so that's, that's, if you're going to make it a career, that's the next step.

Speaker 2 You got to go. And what is that? What is that kind of career? When you say be a good fit, be a good fit to continue being a SEAL.

Speaker 1 Well, so when you go to development group, you go through a whole nother training course as well. So,

Speaker 1 so

Speaker 1 you go to the SEAL teams, you do your deployments, and then

Speaker 1 basically you try out. It's a tryout for the next level.
Wow. And so, yeah, so

Speaker 2 there's another level above like the SEALs. Yeah.
And there's like the ultra seals.

Speaker 1 I mean, pretty much. They're like super seals.

Speaker 2 You know,

Speaker 2 I've heard you,

Speaker 2 you know, talk about some of your real world experience. One in particular was Haiti, I believe, where you guys were,

Speaker 2 you know, patrolling at very low altitudes. And I mean, Hollywood has kind of sensationalized that, but

Speaker 1 this was a very troubled part of the world,

Speaker 2 you know, at that period of time and a very ruthless part of the world. And I don't think that they really wanted us to be there.

Speaker 2 Can you talk a little bit about that experience for, you know, for folks that have never actually faced combat experience?

Speaker 2 To me, it's fascinating because I feel like you can train yourself for just about anything, but I would imagine that no mission goes exactly like you plan.

Speaker 2 I mean, you have to find yourself in a place of the unknown.

Speaker 2 And this place of the unknown has got to be.

Speaker 2 one of the darkest, most frightening places because usually the types of unknowns that someone with your career would find would be things that could end your life.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 2 And it's a metaphor for business and it's a metaphor for life. It's a metaphor for relationships because,

Speaker 2 you know, like when a mother has a baby, there's no manual on how to raise the child. When, you know, when you get into a marriage, there's no manual on how to have a good marriage.

Speaker 2 We start a business, there's really no step-by-step manual on how to grow a business. And we, I think in life, we find ourselves in so many places of the unknown.

Speaker 2 Like, we started out with one intention.

Speaker 2 You guys go in with one mission.

Speaker 2 And then, holy shit, things don't go as planned.

Speaker 2 And maybe my exit strategy is now I don't have it any longer.

Speaker 2 And the support that I thought I was going to have is no longer with me. And, you know, I wonder if you could talk about that a little bit about

Speaker 2 when

Speaker 2 your training takes you to a place where you're outside of your background, you know, and you're preparedness. I'm excited to offer you free access to my premium membership, the Rule Breckas.

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Now let's get back to the Ultimate Human podcast.

Speaker 1 In training, you want to talk about it? No, I want to talk about it in real life. Real combat.

Speaker 2 Okay. Because

Speaker 2 you're one of the few that's actually seen real combat. And

Speaker 2 I was listening to some of your, you know, your Hades stories in them, and

Speaker 2 they were just terrifying about

Speaker 2 how roadside bombs were taking out your guys. And you're flying at very low levels,

Speaker 2 which is very dangerous.

Speaker 2 You know, I imagine small arms fire could get to you at those levels. So, I mean, you're in a constant state of fight or flight.

Speaker 2 I'd love it if you could talk about a situation that you found yourself in where you were truly in that unknown. Like,

Speaker 2 I didn't expect this.

Speaker 2 Maybe I didn't train for this.

Speaker 2 Maybe the exit I planned is cut off.

Speaker 1 And now, what do I do?

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 there's a lot of those.

Speaker 1 I was hoping there was only like one or two, but no, there's a lot of them. But

Speaker 1 yeah, you know, I actually,

Speaker 1 I didn't, I didn't do a whole lot in Haiti. It was,

Speaker 1 it was 2004. There was a lot of civil unrest there.

Speaker 1 Aristide was the president at the time. He got yanked out.
Wasn't me. I would have loved to have yanked him out.
Yeah. It wasn't me.
One of your guys yanked him out?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think it was, I think it was Team Six. But we were basically going to all these outer cities in Haiti

Speaker 1 to kind of get a pulse on what the rest of the country was like outside of Port-au-Prince, the capital.

Speaker 1 And it was just, there was, I mean,

Speaker 1 no shots were fired,

Speaker 1 but but a lot of prisons

Speaker 1 were

Speaker 1 not functioning, and prisoners were, you know, criminals were just everywhere. There were a lot of bodies kind of floating around and stuff on the shore.

Speaker 1 But, but the majority of my control Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 so,

Speaker 1 what's one I haven't talked about in a while? We did this one. I was at,

Speaker 1 this is actually when I was at the

Speaker 1 CIA. We were at a,

Speaker 1 I think it was around 2012 timeframe.

Speaker 2 I don't know how because after the SEALs you went into the CIA.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So around 2012 timeframe, I don't know how closely you followed the war, but there was an area of Afghanistan.

Speaker 1 It was supposed to be the, what was basically getting ready to happen there was going to be the biggest offensive push by the U.S. Marine Corps since Fallujah.

Speaker 1 And everybody knows, everybody knows about Fallujah. Fallujah was

Speaker 1 by far the bloodiest, deadliest battle of

Speaker 1 both those wars.

Speaker 1 And so

Speaker 1 big push to go and

Speaker 1 kind of push Taliban, Al-Qaeda

Speaker 1 out of the cities there.

Speaker 2 When you say push them out of the cities, you're going in to kill them.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Okay.
Yeah. Not me.

Speaker 1 I'm agents. No, you've never heard any way back.
No, you're

Speaker 1 back behind. No.
We're in the thick of it, but

Speaker 1 that's not my job anymore, you know, is to go in and do that.

Speaker 1 Honestly, it never was. That's more of a infantry

Speaker 1 conventional type operation. But

Speaker 1 anyways,

Speaker 1 before that push even got kind of got started, it was just a couple teams of us embedded down there to do surveillance and do some liaison stuff with with the local government down there um

Speaker 1 and and and basically just collect intelligence and

Speaker 1 so

Speaker 1 but one thing that we

Speaker 1 we kept up can i say that on here yeah you can say fucked up um so there's there's some things when you're working intelligence or or surveillance that are just

Speaker 1 it's just a no-go don't ever be time place predictable don't don't take the same routes don't take the same routes at the same time

Speaker 1 Don't have different routes into wherever you're going. And when I had gotten there,

Speaker 1 there was just a big bombing. It was horrible.

Speaker 1 A lot of agency personnel died. Basically, they had a double agent come in, present a fucking birthday cake to the chief of station.

Speaker 1 A lot of people at the agency get kind of attached to their assets and emotionally.

Speaker 1 He was a true double agent yep and so he was trusted by the cia the cake yep the cake went but he was and he took himself out too yeah and he took out took out all the leadership took out oh my god took took a lot of people out and uh so that had just happened when i showed up here and i i'd said hey uh we're time and place predictable the fuck are we doing yeah and um of course nobody wanted to listen because um when people like me come around for those type of operations a lot of of times I think we get in the way, but there's a reason we're there.

Speaker 1 That's why. And nobody wanted to listen.
Next morning, we got up,

Speaker 1 boom.

Speaker 1 There's like a hundred and something Taliban fighters on the other side of the river. They know exactly where our compound is.
So they started hitting the compound

Speaker 1 in a little house.

Speaker 2 You woke up in the morning. You're in a little house.

Speaker 1 Yep.

Speaker 2 100 heavily armed fighters out there.

Speaker 1 And shots just start coming through the house.

Speaker 1 And there's only a couple of us and so uh the reason we knew there was a over a hundred taliban fighters is because uh we had drones on station and they were reporting in and so

Speaker 1 um

Speaker 1 that wound up going until about midnight uh that night they started maneuvering around they they got in this big uh probably

Speaker 1 10, 15 story building, started shooting at us from over there.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 nobody would come get us. So

Speaker 1 I thought, that's

Speaker 1 a great question.

Speaker 1 But it just wound up being,

Speaker 1 we didn't have a lot of supplies.

Speaker 1 Meaning a lot of bullets. Bullets? We didn't have a lot of anything.
And

Speaker 1 yeah, so it was a lot of

Speaker 1 switching, switching out people on the roof and burning classified materials and thinking, holy shit, we're going to fucking die here.

Speaker 1 I knew this was coming. We were time and place predictable.
And

Speaker 1 the British actually wound up coming in around midnight to get our asses out of there. British Special Forces.
Just British Army, not British Special Forces.

Speaker 1 The big machine rolled through the town and got our asses out of there. Wow.

Speaker 2 Now, how were you communicating with them? I mean, how did

Speaker 2 you sharing intelligence?

Speaker 1 Well, there was a so remember they were, they were getting ready for the biggest offensive push since Fallujah. So there was, there were some Americans around.
There was a big,

Speaker 1 there was a big

Speaker 1 kind of ISAF base close by that had Polish special forces.

Speaker 1 Those guys were going out, getting some like every night, multiple times at night. Really?

Speaker 2 And then just getting engaged.

Speaker 1 Yeah, they were, I don't know what they were doing, but they were going out a lot. Okay.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 then it was big Brit base. So the British, British Army came in and pulled us out of there.
Thank God.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 I mean, I could go in.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 you were able to hold off 100 armed soldiers for

Speaker 2 dusk. I mean, daylight to date.

Speaker 1 It wasn't like they were right outside the door. You know,

Speaker 1 we couldn't even see the hundred Taliban fighters who were amassing on the other side of this river that we were on. It was,

Speaker 1 it was, we started taking contact, then they started, then they infiltrated that building that I was telling you about.

Speaker 1 You can find this. I should find the clip and send it to you.
Wow. But, um,

Speaker 1 but they were hitting us from that building, and then they were sending teams around

Speaker 1 kind of this neighborhood. We were kind of like in a, it sounds weird, but it's the only way to really describe it in terms that Americans would be able to kind of understand it.

Speaker 1 It would be kind of like a small gated community, but we only have one little section of it.

Speaker 1 And so they were, they had guys coming around the walls, like trying to figure out exactly, you know, which little area was ours.

Speaker 1 And then, and then when they pinpointed it, they got on that massive building and started shooting RPGs,

Speaker 1 small arms fire. RPGs.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 They sent the local,

Speaker 1 we sent some Afghan forces to go try to take care of it, and they were dropping grenades off the top story of the building,

Speaker 1 trying to kill those guys who were coming up to get them. And

Speaker 2 yeah.

Speaker 2 Wow. And, you know, I think for people that weren't really close to that war following that war, I mean, most of us get our information from the media, which is probably 2% of that is accurate.

Speaker 1 I'm giving them a more generous.

Speaker 2 I'm feeling kind of bad for him in the wake of what just happened.

Speaker 1 Oh, don't feel bad.

Speaker 1 You haven't sent any flowers out to you? No, dear. No.
I'm trolling all the mainstream now. I know.
Or the legacy meeting.

Speaker 1 I like trolling them now. Yeah,

Speaker 2 you've never watched so much MSNBC in your life, have you?

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 1 Oh, man.

Speaker 2 It's okay if you gloat over the over the meltdowns. It's all right to sorry to take a victory lap.
But,

Speaker 2 you know, when

Speaker 2 I think a lot of times, you know, over here, you know, the populace thinks of, you know, the Afghan armies, you know, they're like a bunch of just ragtag kids, you know, with the bandana, barely know how to shoot a gun.

Speaker 2 You know, they're probably working in a supermarket and then at night they're fighting. And, and, um,

Speaker 2 you know, as I watch your podcast and hear some of the stories, I mean, they're a lot more sophisticated

Speaker 2 and even a lot more trained

Speaker 2 than

Speaker 2 I think the average person believes that they are. I mean,

Speaker 2 I think the average person, they see a lot of these videos on TV. Nobody's in the same uniform.
Their trucks aren't, you know, perfect governmental vehicles.

Speaker 2 Everybody's kind of hanging on the back of a pickup truck and they just look like a...

Speaker 2 bunch of loosely gathered drinking buddies with a with a rifle, but it's not like that.

Speaker 1 No. I mean not at all.
I mean, you gotta, you, I think, uh, something that Americans

Speaker 1 grossly underestimate is, is, um,

Speaker 1 is the Afghan army and the people that are fighting over there. And I think where they really mistake it is just because those people don't have,

Speaker 1 you know, they live without a lot of things doesn't mean they're fucking stupid or doesn't mean they're not effective.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 1 so, you know, I think a lot of Americans are like, oh, that's, that guy dresses like that. He doesn't have the proper equipment.
He doesn't, he can't bullshit, man.

Speaker 1 Those people are extremely resourceful.

Speaker 1 They're very intelligent and

Speaker 1 they're very effective.

Speaker 2 And I think that's a huge misnomer, right? Yeah. That they're just a bunch of dumb hillbillies.

Speaker 1 Yeah, there's also the experience, too. I mean, you can take, you can take a guy like me that spent 14 years in and out of there.
Well,

Speaker 1 14 years in and out of there is nothing compared to just 14 years straight or over 20 years straight or

Speaker 1 some of these older village elders that have been there since the Russians invaded and been through that and then now all the way through this. I mean, I come home.

Speaker 1 You know, I do a six-month deployment. I come home.
The agency, I go 45 days, maybe 60 days, come home. Those, they live there for 20 years.
They don't, they don't go on vacation.

Speaker 1 They don't go home to their families back in the States where everything's fine. They're just gaining all of that experience throughout those years.

Speaker 1 So their commandos

Speaker 1 are

Speaker 1 more experienced than ours. Wow.

Speaker 2 I think that's a real level set as to what we face because I think it was always shocking when we would hear these stories of mass casualties or so many, you know, of our military men and women, you know, not coming home.

Speaker 2 And you go,

Speaker 2 how are we not just steamrolling over these people? I mean, we're the largest military force on the globe. We're the most sophisticated.
We're the

Speaker 2 highest trained. And then we, we,

Speaker 2 this should have been a, you know, virtual walk in the park. Is that a lot because there's also a political war keeping you guys from doing what you really need to get done?

Speaker 2 Or is it because they were a lot more formidable than

Speaker 2 you thought or

Speaker 2 than our military brass thought?

Speaker 2 Can you can you so like I'm seeing like were we were we on did we underestimate them is basically what I'm saying you know or I've also again through your podcast I've seen a lot of stories where

Speaker 2 the guys on the ground,

Speaker 2 the

Speaker 2 fighting forces wanted to finish a job, but for political reasons,

Speaker 2 they couldn't engage or they were redirected somewhere else. And

Speaker 2 it seemed like there was this tug of war between the command at the very, very top, sort of running things maybe out of Washington. And I don't profess to be a military scholar by any means, but

Speaker 2 running things out of Washington, you know,

Speaker 2 and then what was going on in the ground. And sometimes we just didn't give our guys the authority to just finish the job.
Yeah. Would you agree with that?

Speaker 1 Absolutely. Yeah, I think, and is that part of why it just drug on and drug on and drug on? Well, I think it drug on and drug on because war is a business.

Speaker 1 But in the beginning, I mean,

Speaker 1 I don't think it's hard to say. I would say that the

Speaker 1 disconnected

Speaker 1 upper brass of the military, the DC crowd, definitely underestimated the capabilities.

Speaker 1 Guys that are actually actually on the ground experiencing what's going on may be underestimated at the very beginning,

Speaker 1 but quickly became a new reality when you did see what they were capable of.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 now, what changed the war?

Speaker 1 I don't know exactly what the turning point was, but

Speaker 1 at the beginning,

Speaker 1 it did seem to be that we were there for the right reasons.

Speaker 1 The ROEs were loosened up. They made sense.

Speaker 1 They leaned on the benefit of the U.S. service member, you know.

Speaker 1 And at the beginning of the Afghanistan war, that was a, and always should have been, a special operations war.

Speaker 1 Very

Speaker 2 strategic. Precise, I guess.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 it, it, it, you know, at some point in time, the big machine wanted to come in.

Speaker 1 Then in came all the bureaucrats.

Speaker 1 And then the whole, everything changed. And

Speaker 1 I think that change happened right around 2005. I think that Operation Red Wings,

Speaker 1 that was, if you see in the movie, The Lone Survivor,

Speaker 1 that was that operation.

Speaker 1 What was that one about?

Speaker 1 That was, so they had inserted a team of snipers

Speaker 1 on a mountaintop to overwatch a valley. There was a

Speaker 1 HVT down there that they wanted or something. I can't remember exactly.

Speaker 1 A goat herder

Speaker 1 went up the mountain,

Speaker 1 found the sniper team kind of by accident. They made a judgment call.
Hey,

Speaker 1 let him go back.

Speaker 1 He went back, and then a whole army came and

Speaker 1 killed everybody on the sniper team except one guy who got away. We sent some Hilos in.

Speaker 1 His QRF that's a quick reactionary force, kind of like a backup. And those Hilos got shot down.
It was the

Speaker 1 biggest loss in SEAL team history until

Speaker 1 Extortion 17.

Speaker 1 So that operation.

Speaker 2 And that was a SEAL team.

Speaker 1 SEAL snipers.

Speaker 2 They were just

Speaker 1 overpowered. Yeah,

Speaker 1 there was only four of them. you know, Danny Dietz, Matt Axelson,

Speaker 1 Murphy, Lieutenant Mike Murphy, and then Marcus Luttrell, who was a survivor. Wow.
And then

Speaker 1 the Hilos that got shot down to come and to come and reinforce those guys. Wow.
And so that was a lot of controversy around that operation within the SEAL teams and within special operations.

Speaker 1 My team was actually the one that went in to relieve those guys.

Speaker 1 SEAL Team 2 went in to relieve Team 10 after that had happened. And

Speaker 1 they just shut down all operations,

Speaker 1 it seemed like.

Speaker 2 What do you mean?

Speaker 1 I mean, we just kept

Speaker 1 putting in these packages for operations, going after people.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 everything was getting denied.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I

Speaker 1 just being there at that time and knowing what everybody was doing before then versus after,

Speaker 1 that may have been a turning point. It did get very political.

Speaker 2 There was

Speaker 1 a lot of politics being played between upper leadership at the SEAL teams versus

Speaker 1 SOCOM. And

Speaker 1 I think that may have been part of it. The other thing I think that happened is

Speaker 1 Dick Cheney and Halliburton.

Speaker 1 Really? Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 Wow. Because you said, you know, war is a business.

Speaker 1 War is a business.

Speaker 2 And sadly, you know, there is a military-industrial complex. Oh, yeah.
And a lot of it's privatized. And I don't think that,

Speaker 2 you know, most of America is even aware of the money that's made from foreign wars. I mean, you know, you often wonder, like, what is our interest in just continuing these endless wars? I mean, we've.

Speaker 2 We've gotten so many of them in the last three years, and I'm sure you have an opinion on that, and I'd love to hear it.

Speaker 1 We didn't have any for

Speaker 2 four years, and then now all of a sudden you've got conflicts in Israel, and you've got

Speaker 2 conflicts in Iran, and you've got conflicts in, obviously, in Russia and Ukraine. And it seems like the whole world's going to hell in a handbasket quick.

Speaker 2 And we pull out Afghanistan, we leave $83 billion of our military equipment, which I saw the parade that they were kind enough to do the other day. I mean,

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 2 but this

Speaker 2 military-industrial complex, I mean, what's what's behind that?

Speaker 2 Who's driving the private companies

Speaker 1 that are pro-war?

Speaker 2 Because

Speaker 1 I mean, it's,

Speaker 1 yeah, that's who's driving it. I mean,

Speaker 1 back then, you got to look at where

Speaker 1 Dick Cheney.

Speaker 2 You can just call him Dick. Yeah.

Speaker 1 He is a fucking dick, isn't he? He is.

Speaker 1 So if you just want to say Dick, I mean, we'll know who it is. You can even call him the dick, big dick.
But

Speaker 2 he was CEO of Halliburton.

Speaker 1 And Halliburton was the logistics company. Halliburton KBR

Speaker 1 was the logistics company that put in all logistics for Operation Iraqi Freedom and the Afghanistan War. And so what does that mean?

Speaker 1 That means they are the ones building. all of the barracks.
They're building the chow halls. Any infrastructure that needs building, KBR builds it.
KBR delivers the mail. KBR cooks the food.

Speaker 1 KBR cleans, has the cleaning crews. KBR does, has the fuel points.
They deliver the fuel. They have

Speaker 1 every possible logistical thing you can think of was done for war. KBR in two different wars.
And the vice president of the United States was the former CEO of Caliburton when that happened. Wow.

Speaker 1 So now you can see, you know,

Speaker 1 the conflict of interest.

Speaker 2 I mean, we see, we see the same thing. You know, I'm much more cognizant of the food supply in our country, but it just makes you wonder if any of the elites have our best interests at heart.

Speaker 2 Because, you know, in our industrial food supply, the majority of our nutritional research is funded by big food, big pharma,

Speaker 2 which is what we were talking about earlier. That's why lucky charms are listed as more nutritious than grass-fit steak.

Speaker 2 You know, the majority of our

Speaker 2 research that gets approved through the Food and Drug Administration, you know,

Speaker 2 funded um um big pharma which actually leads to the the drugs the food makes us sick and the drugs fix what the food well they prolong what the food causes and it's why we have 65 almost 70 of our diet coming from highly processed foods um you know because you when i think when private enterprise is allowed to influence public policy um especially in war I mean people are dying for that.

Speaker 2 You know,

Speaker 2 I had a podcast guest on the other day that said, you know, we've privatized the profits, but we've socialized the expense.

Speaker 2 Meaning, the profits go to private enterprise, but the expense goes to the American taxpayer. Expense goes to the people.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 2 you see this over and over again. I mean, see the pandemic,

Speaker 2 you know, where did the where did the profits go? And who picked up the bill? Yeah. When we know where the profits went and,

Speaker 2 you know, the taxpayer picked up the bill. And I just didn't have as much of um

Speaker 2 you know non-myopic view into into wartime but it doesn't it doesn't surprise me that you know you have people that stand to make billions of dollars um

Speaker 1 you know off of a war that you know is either unnecessary or could have then been done yeah much different way i mean you know think about it i mean

Speaker 1 ukraine's got to be the same thing i still haven't figured out ukraine yeah

Speaker 1 it's the same thing I mean, you're talking about the pharmaceutical companies and the food companies basically paying off, what, the FDA politicians to vote a certain way. Same thing with war, right?

Speaker 1 So you got, I mean, oh, we left all those helicopters and tanks and everything over in Afghanistan, right? You don't think that, I don't know, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Gumman, Boeing, Raytheon.

Speaker 1 all these places were like oh just leave that shit there we'll build you new ones you know

Speaker 1 we have all this extra equipment, extra equipment. Cool.
Send that over to Ukraine. We'll build you some new shit.
You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 And so that's how it happens. It's, hey, vote this way.
We want to prolong this war.

Speaker 1 We're going to develop more supplies for it. Yeah.
How do we, how do we spend $110 billion?

Speaker 2 Or maybe even more. I've even heard $200 billion.

Speaker 2 And things are. They all made.

Speaker 2 Like, what do we get for $110 billion? Did we get any

Speaker 2 shift in the dynamic of the conflict? Or did we just basically kick the can down the road and we still have this prolonged style mate?

Speaker 1 I don't think it's about ending it.

Speaker 1 I think it's about its business. And so

Speaker 1 it's all of these companies selling their technology and

Speaker 1 their wartime products, their weapons, their bullets,

Speaker 1 their radios, jammers, logistics companies, all of that.

Speaker 1 They want the war to continue moving on

Speaker 1 because that's their business. And if there is no war, these guys aren't making any money.
It's just back to research and development.

Speaker 2 Do you think Trump's going to put an end to that? I know you've got to be pretty pleased with the

Speaker 2 events of the last week.

Speaker 1 Some big promises, but I mean, look, it's already happening. I mean, shit, it's been, what, two, three days since the election? Yeah.
And Hamas has already said, we're done.

Speaker 1 We're done. I saw that come out in Newsweek.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And I'm hoping that we can believe those. You know, some of these positive messages that, you know, Hamas is saying, hey,

Speaker 2 we're going to close up shop and Iran is going to, you know, engage in ceasefire talks right away.

Speaker 2 I mean, those are really positive things because, you know, I think, you know, again, I am not a war historian or, you know,

Speaker 2 you know, profess to know anything about

Speaker 2 wartime strategy, but, you know, when you, when you have these, these big countries and they think that there's feckless leadership there's like an open you know an open door with there's no consequences at least they know that there's going to be consequences and so they're like you know we don't want any part of that yeah we got you know two three months until shit's really gonna hit the fan for us let's come and have you know peace talks yeah i mean

Speaker 1 putin's already wanting to come to the table with negotiations

Speaker 1 I mean, when I interviewed Trump, he said that war would be done before he steps into office.

Speaker 2 So I remember he said that.

Speaker 1 I was saying that bold statement.

Speaker 1 I mean, I know. That is a bold, bold statement.

Speaker 2 I mean, because the mullahs and Iran,

Speaker 1 Putin, they don't seem

Speaker 2 like they'd bend to anybody else's agenda.

Speaker 2 Now they'll bend to it two by four to the face.

Speaker 2 But I don't think that, you know, really tough talk, like don't, I know, I really don't think that those things really frighten them.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 So to see them move this fast is, is

Speaker 2 pretty interesting. So, I mean, what

Speaker 2 do you have, are you aware that we have U.S. military special forces

Speaker 2 involved in those conflicts right now? I know they're in the region, but they say that we don't have our special forces and our men and women in harm's way.

Speaker 2 And you're not seeing like the death tolls clicking on the media. But I can't imagine that there's conflicts of this scale and that our men and women are not involved.

Speaker 1 I'm sure there's a couple. Okay.
But there's definitely going to be a couple in there, but I don't think that there are

Speaker 1 a large majority of

Speaker 1 U.S. personnel in harm's way in Ukraine.

Speaker 2 Well, at least I'm happy to hear that. Are you hopeful that this thing can be resolved? I mean, from where you

Speaker 1 100%.

Speaker 2 And how does it end? They annex some territory to Russia and

Speaker 2 Ukraine slightly shrinks in size. They have to leave NATO.

Speaker 2 I'm always curious to figure out, like,

Speaker 2 you know, there, there sometimes seems to be such an easy solution, and that's a very myopic view to ending this war.

Speaker 2 And you'd think, well, why didn't somebody think of that for the last several years while we were funneling hundreds of billions of dollars?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I don't, you know, I think we've been lied to about the reasons that we're over there. So I don't know, you know, exactly what it's going to take to end it.
But I do think that

Speaker 1 I've read and I've interviewed some people that say that

Speaker 1 the region that is being fought over is extremely rich in natural gas.

Speaker 1 And so, you know, while

Speaker 1 it's kind of funny, while the Democrats all are, you know, pro-Ukraine, let's go, we got to do this. I think the real reason that we are there.
or that we are aiding that is because I think that

Speaker 1 if Ukraine holds on to that, we will be the ones to build the infrastructure to pipe in all the natural gas into Europe.

Speaker 1 Now, if you remember before, that was Russia that was piping in all that natural gas to Europe. And Trump had even said, you guys are stupid.
Your enemy is supplying you with your energy supply.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 while, you know, this seems, while the Democrats

Speaker 1 or the previous administration or whatever the fuck you want to call it, you know, paints it out as some kind of humanitarian mission, I think the real reason that we were there is to actually build the infrastructure around those natural gas reserves to pump that into Europe because that boosts our economy.

Speaker 1 That is, I mean, whether you agree with it or not, hey, big surprise, U.S. is involved in another fucking oil war.
Right. Or, you know, I guess not oil this time.

Speaker 2 Well, natural keystone pipelines.

Speaker 1 I mean, but it also puts a major dent in Russia's economy because if they're not supplying all of Europe with natural gas from their pipeline

Speaker 1 and U.S. builds the infrastructure in Ukraine

Speaker 1 to pipe in the natural gas, well, then, I mean, that's, that would be, that would be amazing for our economy. Right.
You know, I don't, I think that would be a hard selling. So would be getting back

Speaker 2 being energy independent on our own soil.

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 which is a problem. Not necessarily because what I'm saying is we own the

Speaker 1 basically what I'm saying is because of all the money that we dumped into Ukraine and because of all the, you know, because how involved we've been in that war, we have to be paid back somehow.

Speaker 1 We didn't just give them, however, I hope not

Speaker 1 hundreds of billions. Hopefully not.
Yeah, hopefully got annihilated.

Speaker 1 But, you know, that might seem like chump change compared to the natural gas that's going to feed Europe that we're going to take control of.

Speaker 1 And so I think that that plays a little bit more of a role than people might be aware of

Speaker 1 than just, hey, this is. I mean, look, it's

Speaker 1 what Russia did. They're trying to take land that doesn't belong to them.

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Speaker 2 And I remember when they were, I still remember very vividly when they were amassing along the border, and I was like, what do you think is going on? They didn't really hide it.

Speaker 2 It wasn't a clandestine, like, you know, in the dark of night kind of, you know, surprise raid. I mean, they built built forces up right on that border for months.
And

Speaker 2 I, I, well, I mean, I remember Biden talking about it, but that's probably not a good reference.

Speaker 2 But, you know, he was like, you could just do a small incursion or whatever he was, whatever he, he was saying.

Speaker 2 But it seemed like, you know, we were more aware of what was about to happen that we were like shocked.

Speaker 2 Oh my gosh, I can't believe that they actually went to Ukraine and they've been putting tanks on the border for the last four months.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And, And, you know, I always know that there's more than meets the eye.

Speaker 2 And when I meet people that have a profound depth of understanding and knowledge, like, you know, I listened to Bobby Kennedy talk about the history of

Speaker 1 how,

Speaker 2 you know,

Speaker 2 in his words, the U.S. really put them in a position to have no choice.

Speaker 2 And it's such a unique perspective, but

Speaker 2 he lays things out in such a beautiful manner about, you know, how we refused certain treaties. And

Speaker 2 we had made agreements with Russia not to allow certain things to happen, like certain countries to join NATO. And then

Speaker 2 when we recanted on those,

Speaker 2 we're somehow like surprised that they're behaving that way. And

Speaker 1 I didn't intend to start this podcast and talk about the Ukraine war.

Speaker 2 It's usually I'm like way out of my topic zone, but

Speaker 2 just to have you on here and get some insight into it. But I want to rewind the clock a little bit and

Speaker 2 get back to

Speaker 2 you know your story because your story is fascinating to me um about when you got out of the military um

Speaker 2 and and you were dealing with some pretty heavy issues um

Speaker 2 mental mental illness you know um some psychological issues and we were talking in the kitchen before we came in here about how it's it's still just not in vogue to

Speaker 2 ask for help, still not in vogue to you know raise your hand and say, I'm not okay.

Speaker 2 It's usually the families or the spouses or, you know, someone close to them that really tries to reach out and get them help.

Speaker 2 And I think there has to be a dynamic between somebody that is so highly trained, like a member of a SEAL team, and

Speaker 2 has seen that kind of combat. I mean, these, these are the men of men.
right and then to come back and have to be vulnerable um

Speaker 2 i wondered if you if you if you talk a little bit, because you've been very vocal about PTSD and very vocal about your journey.

Speaker 2 And I wonder if you might even talk about your journey and some of the issues that you solve. I love your psilocybin journey, by the way.
I mean,

Speaker 2 I am fully on board for the psychedelics, for the, you know, versus the chemicals, synthetics, the pharmaceuticals,

Speaker 2 and some of the other treatments that we can do, ketamine, under medical supervision to

Speaker 2 address the severe inflammatory conditions in the brains of a lot of these soldiers that are really causing them to be tormented inside of their own bodies.

Speaker 2 So, if you, if, if you wouldn't mind, I mean, I'd love to talk a little bit about your, your journey with that and how you solved that problem.

Speaker 1 Sure. Um,

Speaker 1 where would you like me to start, do I talk about how bad it got?

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, I want you to talk about as comfortable as you are talking about how bad it got because that's that's the problem, yeah, right? And and

Speaker 2 the good news is that, I mean, here you are today. Right.

Speaker 1 So, yeah, you know, I think there's just a,

Speaker 1 I mean, to kind of try to put it into a perspective that you might understand. I mean, it's very obvious you've done, you've done extremely well.
You're at the best at what you do.

Speaker 1 You built a fucking entire empire that is extremely impressive.

Speaker 1 Me? Yeah. Thank you.
Wow.

Speaker 2 Now really kind of you.

Speaker 1 Now I'm going to take all that away.

Speaker 2 Please don't.

Speaker 1 Right now. And you have to figure out how you're going to make a living, feed your family.
What are you going to talk about? What are you going to tell people you do?

Speaker 1 You're proud of what you built, right?

Speaker 1 So that all goes away, and you're just nothing. You have no idea where you're going to take the rest of your life.

Speaker 1 You know, these guys, most of these guys are under 40 years old, you know, so they still have their whole life ahead of them. So you're dealing with that, number one.

Speaker 1 Everything that you've worked so hard to accomplish,

Speaker 1 all the cool stories, you're at the apex of what you do. Nobody's better.
You've reached, you've reached the ceiling. Yeah.
You know, and now nobody fucking cares because you're not in that anymore.

Speaker 1 It's not relevant. And that's, you know, I think you see that a lot with pro athletes when they retire, when they get hurt, when they're done.
You know, it's like, well, there goes my whole identity.

Speaker 1 And so you have to, you have to learn how to reinvent yourself. On top of that, you're also dealing, you guys were talking about this earlier,

Speaker 1 addiction to adrenaline and the fight or flay response. I mean, busy minds, you know, you, you,

Speaker 1 you're always,

Speaker 1 I mean, I, I still love a good adrenaline rush, but I mean, when you come out of a job like that, and I don't know what the chemicals are, you would know a lot more about that than I would, obviously.

Speaker 1 But, you know, it becomes that adrenaline dump becomes an addiction. And so you, you are subconsciously looking for ways to kind of fill that void

Speaker 1 when you're not on deployment. And And then when deployments are all, one of them, when they're all over,

Speaker 1 you get anxiety knowing

Speaker 1 that you're not going to feel that again. You're not going to feel that

Speaker 1 it's not even a rush, man. It's,

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 when you are involved in heavy combat, it is, I mean, it's just,

Speaker 1 it's primitive, man. It's primal.
It's, it's,

Speaker 1 there's nothing in the world like it. It is like,

Speaker 2 I mean, you are,

Speaker 1 as weird as it sounds, it is a fucking amazing experience if you survive it and walk out of it. And that's all you want to talk about.
And that's all you want to feel. And that's all you want to do.

Speaker 1 And so that's, I mean, that's that's the reason I got out of the SEAL teams is I wasn't getting enough of it. Really? Yeah, that's a big reason I got it.

Speaker 2 Why you weren't being deployed as often?

Speaker 1 I wasn't getting, I talked about Afghanistan earlier, you know, and that when I got there, things had kind of changed, started getting political, bureaucrats started getting in.

Speaker 1 I mean, when I went in, I wanted to go out every night, multiple times a night.

Speaker 1 That's all I wanted to do was go on patrol, you mean, go like, go to go to war, right?

Speaker 1 On patrol, combat combat and uh and i i just i wasn't getting enough doses of it and uh that's incredible like i could i i i i mean the opposite i'm like i want to go home well but i mean me because i don't have that training um

Speaker 1 i mean you gotta you gotta remember too i mean it's years

Speaker 1 it's for me

Speaker 1 it was

Speaker 1 I mean, I joined the Navy, went through BUDS. Buds is six months.
If you make it through, for me, without any hang-ups, almost nobody makes it without any hang-ups.

Speaker 1 So you're looking at a good eight months. I would say eight to nine months would be average just to get through BUDS.
Then you go through SQT. That's SEAL qualification training.

Speaker 1 There's another four or five months. Then you get to your SEAL team.
You think you're a badass. Guess what? You're not.

Speaker 1 You get another year and a half of training at your SEAL team to go just to go to the fucking war, you know?

Speaker 1 And so you're looking at a good three, three and a half years of training just to get the opportunity to go to war. Wow.

Speaker 1 So you're ready by the time, or you think you're ready by the time you get there. But

Speaker 1 and so I'm kind of going through back to what we were talking about. I'm kind of going through like all the things that guys deal with.

Speaker 1 Then there's, then there is PTSD, which now they're saying special ops guys, it's called operator syndrome. They're kind of starting to transition that.
But, you know, it's, it's survivor's guilt.

Speaker 1 It's all my friends that are now dead.

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 1 I'm not saying me, but, you know, people, oh, I had to kill a woman. Oh, I had to kill a kid.
Oh, fuck. That person was probably innocent.
You know, I mean, all the shows kind of thing.

Speaker 1 And so there's, so there's just

Speaker 1 the stuff you were talking about earlier with sleep.

Speaker 1 Nobody, nobody I know that comes from this job sleeps right or sleeps well and and because you're you're in that constant state of of for lack of a better term paranoia even though once you've done it for so long it doesn't seem like paranoia it's just it's just life and so when you even that long after yeah wow and so you know when you get home Your identity has been stripped.

Speaker 1 You have all these chemical imbalances in your brain. You've seen more trauma than just about anybody on the planet.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 then your own injuries, you know, that you're fighting as well with, you know, banged up knees or,

Speaker 1 heaven forbid, amputees, you know, stuff like that.

Speaker 1 These are all the things that are kind of going through your head. And so for me,

Speaker 1 when I left the

Speaker 1 agency,

Speaker 1 I was looking for that adrenaline. And so

Speaker 1 I moved to Medellin, Colombia, and

Speaker 1 found that adrenaline by

Speaker 1 getting involved in cocaine rings.

Speaker 2 What brought you to Medellin?

Speaker 2 You just went there.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, pretty much. Okay.
And

Speaker 1 yeah, I was there for

Speaker 1 right about

Speaker 1 in and out for five years.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 realized I had

Speaker 1 a,

Speaker 1 was really skirting the line there, OD'd a couple times and pulled through that.

Speaker 1 And I never even did drugs as a kid.

Speaker 2 Did you do them in, you know, it wasn't your military service? I mean, obviously you're not doing drugs in the military.

Speaker 1 So it's after you got out.

Speaker 2 It just, just, it just, life's just not exciting anymore.

Speaker 2 So you had down to Medelline with a buddy of yours or something?

Speaker 1 Yeah, it started with a buddy. It started in, I started going to Cartagena with a buddy and then

Speaker 1 and then and then I just started flying solo down there and started kind of building a lot of contacts and stuff. But

Speaker 1 got really addicted to cocaine.

Speaker 1 Had two

Speaker 1 pretty close calls where I overdosed.

Speaker 2 And this is just from

Speaker 2 just used it for too many days too often.

Speaker 1 It was too much. Just coke all the time.
Just Coke all the time. I remember

Speaker 1 I was always paranoid that I was.

Speaker 1 Turns out Coke makes you paranoid, but who knows?

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 THC, same thing.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 no, I remember

Speaker 1 my best friend

Speaker 1 who's with me down there. I would always get worried that I was going to be.

Speaker 2 There's a good friend.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And he's dead now. Okay.
But

Speaker 1 he said, you don't need to worry.

Speaker 1 You don't need to worry about your ODN. If you're on speed, you don't need to worry that you're ODN unless things start to slow down.

Speaker 1 And I was like, huh, all right, I guess that makes sense.

Speaker 1 And then I remember the first time I felt it, things started slowing down. My speech was like, sounded like that fucking scene on old school where Will Ferrell's like,

Speaker 1 it's, it was, everything just slowed down. My voice slowed down.
My brain was moving faster than I could talk. I couldn't talk.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I just were you like.

Speaker 2 You were really, really wired at the time.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 So just your central nervous system was just absolutely frying done. And so

Speaker 2 the vision starts to narrow.

Speaker 1 Yep. Yep.
Wow.

Speaker 1 The vision narrowed. And

Speaker 1 then I woke up

Speaker 1 on the floor of a club. Of a club.
Yep. Wow.
Woke up on the floor of a club that didn't do it.

Speaker 1 That was actually my very first time doing Coke. But then

Speaker 1 it started happen. Then it happened two more times after that, years after that.
And

Speaker 1 so I realized I have a problem, had a problem,

Speaker 1 left Columbia, kind of got ran out of there, actually.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 left there, moved to Boca Raton, Florida,

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 kind of kept at it there. Thought if I removed myself out of that environment, that I would clean it up stateside, which which I didn't.
And

Speaker 1 then there

Speaker 1 had a suicide attempt

Speaker 1 where I just

Speaker 1 completely just kind of not kind of lost hope. I mean, my routine, Gary, was-lost hope that you would get out, that you would.
I just didn't care anymore, man.

Speaker 1 Like, all my friends were still involved in the war,

Speaker 1 either

Speaker 1 in the SEAL teams or a development group or in the agency.

Speaker 1 And to hear like what those guys were involved in and what they were doing, and I wasn't there.

Speaker 2 Then, why couldn't you have stayed? I mean, why was it your choice to leave?

Speaker 1 I think,

Speaker 1 I mean, it was my choice to leave, it was your choice, and uh, but then you also missed it, yeah, I missed it, and uh, and I really missed it for a long time, and so

Speaker 1 um, it ruined all my family relationships just because I was,

Speaker 1 when I was, I was drinking more than a fifth of vodka a day. I would wake up,

Speaker 1 my whole freezer was just completely packed with vodka mini bottles. My glove compartment, my car was packed with vodka mini bottles.
Everywhere I went, had flask or mini bottles. And

Speaker 1 that's how I would get through the day drinking that. And then at night, when I would go back home, I would just pull out a fifth and

Speaker 1 tug on that

Speaker 1 until the lights were out. And while I was tugging on that, I would take Ambient, Xanax, Valium, Lorazepan,

Speaker 1 Hydrocodine, anything I could to keep my mind from just going all the time.

Speaker 2 And how were you able to get that? Just dealers would get their hands on it.

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 I worked overseas and,

Speaker 1 you know, turns out that most countries you don't need a prescription to get whatever you want. So I would just go behind the counter and tell them what I want and throw it in

Speaker 1 a shopping basket and stock up and bring it all home.

Speaker 1 And, you know, I had done that for years. And so I had stockpiles of it

Speaker 1 at home.

Speaker 1 And then...

Speaker 1 And then I was also, you know, when I did finally start to

Speaker 1 kind of get some help and I started going to therapy,

Speaker 1 I mean, I would get it prescribed, you know, hey, can't sleep, need some ambient. Here you go.
Oh, here's some selenor. Here you go.
Here's this. Here you go.

Speaker 1 I mean, it wasn't, they weren't giving me everything I wanted, but they were definitely, you know,

Speaker 1 I could get it.

Speaker 2 What made you raise your hand?

Speaker 1 What made me raise my hand? What made you raise your hand and say, enough, or I want help? A couple of things.

Speaker 1 what got me out of Columbia is I went home to visit my

Speaker 1 family.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 when I started ODN,

Speaker 1 I would call my dad and like me and my dad are really close. And I would tell him, hey, Dad, I need to get the fuck out of here.
I'm not going to make it out of here.

Speaker 1 I wouldn't tell him what I was doing.

Speaker 1 But he was, he knew and he was worried. And I went home to visit him and

Speaker 1 in a

Speaker 1 super small town in Missouri.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I don't even know what happened, man. I just,

Speaker 1 I know me and my dad were supposed to go to

Speaker 1 a Cardinals baseball game the next day.

Speaker 1 And I must have blacked out.

Speaker 2 You OD'd again?

Speaker 2 You took the drugs with you?

Speaker 1 You dropped them?

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 I would bring them everywhere. I couldn't, I couldn't.

Speaker 1 I can't sleep without them.

Speaker 1 I can't sleep without them.

Speaker 2 Oh, these are prescriptions, so you can take them through an airport.

Speaker 1 No, you weren't taking like Coke and stuff like that. No, no, no, no, okay.
No, no, uh, drug trafficking. Yeah, but, um,

Speaker 1 but I would, yeah, I would just, I was like a walking pharmacy for benzos and opiates and

Speaker 1 sleeping pills. And

Speaker 1 I woke up and my dad was standing over my bed,

Speaker 1 and I, he was like

Speaker 1 tearing up. And I just could tell he was like, he didn't know what to do.
And

Speaker 1 he wanted me to get some help.

Speaker 1 And so at that point, I wasn't going to get any help, but I was like, all right, maybe I should like move out of Columbia.

Speaker 1 And so I did. And then

Speaker 1 the second kind of wake-up call was my suicide attempt.

Speaker 1 Again, don't really know what happened.

Speaker 1 I was a blue martini in Boca Raton, Florida, and the next minute I'm upstairs waking up

Speaker 1 in my bed alone, and my whole house smells like gasoline.

Speaker 1 Came downstairs, saw

Speaker 1 Glock on my bed,

Speaker 1 or I'm sorry, on the couch,

Speaker 1 which I never, and it's not the Glock that I carry or carried for

Speaker 1 personal defense. It something that I had pulled out of a safe.

Speaker 1 So probably was going to do something there. And then

Speaker 2 you don't even remember that. I don't.

Speaker 1 And then I walked out to my garage

Speaker 1 and I touched the garage door and it was hot to the touch. And I was like, oh, fuck, what is that? Is there a fire in there? And

Speaker 1 I remember thinking, if I open this door and there's a fire in there, it's going to get a big rush of oxygen. It's probably going to fucking kill me.
So I opened it and

Speaker 1 nothing happened, but my car was running in there.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I drove

Speaker 1 an Audi A8 at the time, and the seat was all the way reclined back. So, I

Speaker 1 pulled in the garage, closed the door, left the car running, decided I was lights out, let the seat down.

Speaker 1 Somehow, I fucking woke up.

Speaker 1 It was so hot that the exhaust melted a hole in the fucking gas tank and the gas tank was leaking onto the exhaust muffler. Wow.
And there was like a little bitty like fire in there.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 I called my best friend

Speaker 1 Dave Rutherford and kind of told him. you know, the situation I was in.
Then I called

Speaker 1 a really good friend of mine out of Boston who helps veterans.

Speaker 1 She's like an angel to a lot of people names Peggy Matthews. And then I called my therapist and Boca and they were all like, yeah, you,

Speaker 1 that's what that was.

Speaker 2 And so you think you pulled in

Speaker 2 prepared to do it and then something

Speaker 2 got you up and you just went upstairs and went to bed.

Speaker 1 And just don't recall that. I think I was God.

Speaker 2 And probably fumbled around the safe and got the gun out. And

Speaker 1 I think I thought about it. This is what happened.
Pulled in the garage,

Speaker 1 had an argument with somebody that

Speaker 1 I cared about a lot.

Speaker 1 And then left the bar, pulled in the garage, was going to kill myself there. Went into

Speaker 1 the living room, pulled out the gun,

Speaker 1 took all my clothes off on the couch.

Speaker 1 And then probably passed out there and then went upstairs to my bed at some point at the night.

Speaker 1 And so that was another wake-up call. And

Speaker 1 so I made a promise to my therapist that I wouldn't drink vodka anymore.

Speaker 1 And so

Speaker 1 I had successfully transitioned to wine.

Speaker 1 Wow. And

Speaker 1 so then, and I was good. You know, it...

Speaker 1 I started getting my life back together. I quit all the benzos.

Speaker 2 By yourself, you were actually strong enough to to get off of those by yourself.

Speaker 1 I got off all the benzos. Those are really tough.

Speaker 1 For the most part, I got off all the benzos.

Speaker 1 I had my emergency stash.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 yeah.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 then I met my wife,

Speaker 1 who's been sober for 14 or 15 years now.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 that obviously helped a lot. And then

Speaker 1 in the last three years, what really, you know, what really

Speaker 1 did the trick was psychedelics.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that I want to go down that road because you went out of the country

Speaker 2 to do this, and it wasn't just the psilocybin. You did other treatments.
Yeah. But I remember you describing it as pretty instant, like,

Speaker 2 meaning the impact of the treatment. And

Speaker 2 came back and just sort of knew the difference between what was poison and what wasn't. And you said, That's poisoning me, that's poisoning me, that's poisoning me.

Speaker 1 But you just were clear about it. And

Speaker 2 so

Speaker 2 talk a little bit about that journey because clearly you are in a very dark place.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 So, yeah, I just kept interviewing.

Speaker 1 I mean, you know, my interviews, I interview a lot of former colleagues and

Speaker 1 warrior elites. We'll call them that.
And And so, you know, in my interview process,

Speaker 1 I talk about, we do a life story. This is how you grew up.
This is what you experienced in combat. This is how bad it got.
This is what got you through it.

Speaker 1 And then we talk about what they're doing now, their business, to help elevate that.

Speaker 1 And so

Speaker 1 in these interviews, the first guy that I talked to was Eddie Gallagher. who had brought up psychedelic therapy.
And I was like, huh,

Speaker 1 this shit sounds like it's for hippies. And

Speaker 1 then another guy came on to talk about it. And I was, and it, it,

Speaker 1 and then another guy came on to talk about it. And then, um,

Speaker 2 so you were in the thick of it then when you were even,

Speaker 1 wow.

Speaker 1 And so then I had mentioned DJ earlier. DJ

Speaker 1 interviewed him and, and, uh, he was kind of like,

Speaker 1 It was sinking in, but after I interviewed him, um,

Speaker 1 he had, he was like, Hey, you know, I know you're considering this. Like, you should really fucking do it, man.
Psychedelic stuff. It's it works.

Speaker 1 And I understand, I understood some of the science behind it at this time

Speaker 1 by now, too. So,

Speaker 1 so I booked

Speaker 1 a trip and went down to Mexico to do an ibogaine and 5-MeO

Speaker 1 therapy treatment.

Speaker 1 and how are those done?

Speaker 2 IV?

Speaker 1 No. Um, you go so 5MeO, you smoke.
It's a toad venom. The Sonora Desert Toad, I think is where it comes from.

Speaker 2 So you just always wonder who figures this shit out.

Speaker 1 I know, right?

Speaker 2 You like found the first toad. It was like, hey, frankly, you know, let's, let's, let's crush him and smoke him and see.

Speaker 1 Wow, that really made me feel, you know, like ayahuasca.

Speaker 1 Yeah. You know, it's deadly poisonous.
I think a lot of people were saying the same thing about some of the stuff you're talking about. No,

Speaker 1 this is very true.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I don't know. And then, so you smoke that in Ibogaine.

Speaker 1 I think it comes from a root in

Speaker 1 somewhere in Africa, Gabon, or I can't remember.

Speaker 1 But that is like,

Speaker 1 it came in a capsule. And so.

Speaker 1 The Ibogaine experience was like 12 hours.

Speaker 1 I don't know how in deep-depth you want me to go on that.

Speaker 2 But was it 12 hours of like a trip? Like you were on mushrooms or LSD, like a like a trip.

Speaker 1 It's a trip. It's a trip trip.
It's a trip.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I mean, I've never done ayahuasca, but a lot of

Speaker 2 some people swear by it. Some people are very afraid of it.
You know, for me, the jury's still out on it, but

Speaker 2 just because I don't know that much about it,

Speaker 2 to say one way or the other, but I have seen stories of people,

Speaker 2 excuse me, very credible people that have had these incredible journeys like

Speaker 2 life-changing like what I feel you're about to describe

Speaker 2 and um

Speaker 2 where they were really in a dark place and really couldn't figure it out and um

Speaker 2 and I'm and and first of all thank you for being so vulnerable and really describing that uh that that situation like that I know it must be tough for you to even think think about it um

Speaker 2 but they literally they said it was like flicking a switch they actually were able to as they describe it almost get out of their own body and look at themselves and and be really honest with themselves and It was like they actually had an honest evaluation of themselves like I'm really fucking this up and I'm or

Speaker 2 you know, these are the behaviors that are really causing me to stay in this constant wheel of

Speaker 2 despair and disappointment and I'm not getting any traction in life. And they said it was so clear.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 So it's fascinating to me, you know, and you said you, you know, a little bit about the science. Is that of the psilocybin or the

Speaker 1 way, the easiest way for me to explain it, and

Speaker 1 I could be wrong, but this is what I've learned through my interviews is that, you know, the older we get, the

Speaker 1 I think it's obvious, right? The more, the older we get, we see it with our parents, right? The more set in their ways that they become.

Speaker 1 I'm that way.

Speaker 1 I think we're all all that way. But the way that

Speaker 1 it was described to me several times is that

Speaker 1 the neurons in your brain travel back and forth through the default mode network.

Speaker 1 And so that's what,

Speaker 1 from the front of your brain to the back of the brain. And it wasn't always like that.

Speaker 1 So right now for me and you, our neurons are just going shh, you know, front, back and forth, back and forth. And that's how they're communicating.

Speaker 1 But when we were young, we had all these other neural pathways that these neurons were using to communicate and get information to wherever the hell it needs to go. Well,

Speaker 1 as time goes on, those pathways start to close up. The neurons get lazy.
They're like, oh, we're just going to go to the default mode network and we'll just communicate this way.

Speaker 1 And so now you get stuck in your ways. You get stuck in that same hamster with that habitual pattern.

Speaker 1 And so, to my understanding, basically what some psychedelics do is they actually put up a block in that default mode network. So they're not just going back and forth anymore.

Speaker 1 Now all these neurons have to find new pathways or reopen old pathways in your brain that haven't been used in years and years and years. Wow.

Speaker 1 And so you, so these neurons are, are, so it's opening, it's, it's literally unlocking your fucking brain. Wow.

Speaker 2 And did you feel that that that was going on? During this 12 hours, were you frightened or paranoid? Did you feel like terrified or like your life was going to end or anything like that? I think calm.

Speaker 1 I was pretty calm. I mean,

Speaker 1 were you aware of it? Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's not like. So that's the other thing is, is

Speaker 1 they

Speaker 1 I was, I was a little nervous that

Speaker 1 I would wind up in some type of mental or

Speaker 2 agitated state or something. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But, but, you know, you're, you're, you are wired up to an EKG and an IV, but that's to get you out of something if, you know, if something goes wrong. And, um,

Speaker 1 and, so, so you can be in the middle of your experience having your experience. And then, you know, the nurse or the doctor comes around and like shakes you and they're like, hey, you doing all right?

Speaker 1 And you lift up your eye mask and you're out of the experience. You're like, yep, all good, buddy.
Going back in. Really? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Really like that. It is like that.
It is like you snap out of it. You know what I mean? It's almost wild.
It's almost, I mean, for me, it was almost like,

Speaker 1 it was almost like I had to concentrate to get into it.

Speaker 1 And, and if I want, you know, because you kind of surrender 12 hours, you got to take a pee break and all kinds of stuff. So, um, so yeah, you, you can, you can, like, snap out of it.

Speaker 2 It sounds like you kind of liked it or you were curious about it. I was.
Like, yeah, I can tell.

Speaker 2 You put the mask back down and you're like, I want to see where this goes. Yep.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yep. And, you know, I saw a couple things, but I didn't like relive any super traumatic events.
It was more like the way I describe it is it was like

Speaker 1 it was like I had two rows of TV screens going through my like

Speaker 1 vision with my eyes closed.

Speaker 1 And so it was just lines of them. And in each TV screen was like

Speaker 1 something that had happened in my life. And there was, there didn't seem to be like any,

Speaker 1 it wasn't in chronological order. It wasn't like from age, you know,

Speaker 2 from birth to now.

Speaker 1 It was just a bunch of,

Speaker 1 it was like somebody just put a bunch of life events on a deck of cards, shuffled them up, put them in a line and said, hey, we're going to send these through Sean's brain.

Speaker 1 And so there was shit that was like stuff that had happened with my dad back in the day, stuff that happened in Iraq, stuff that happened when I was a teenager, stuff, you know, and it was just.

Speaker 1 Did you feel like you're like, I'm seeing that, I remember that. Yeah, but it was weird because every time I would try to jump into that specific experience, like, oh, fuck, I remember that.

Speaker 1 I want to relive that.

Speaker 1 Or, oh, that was anytime I would try to concentrate on any specific event, everything would go away.

Speaker 1 Dude, that's the ultimate torture.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 so I would have to concentrate on not trying to concentrate on any particular memory so that they could just all filter through.

Speaker 1 And,

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 I don't know what the hell that means. I don't either.

Speaker 1 It was stuff that was,

Speaker 1 that I hadn't thought about in years.

Speaker 2 But it was accurate, dave. These were vivid memories.
Like, as it was past, you were like, I definitely remember that. Yep.

Speaker 1 You know, that was my, that was my best friend i forgot about him like yep that kind of stuff oh i mean i forgot i had that girlfriend in yeah college like wow it was almost like my brain was just sorting through like

Speaker 1 thousands and thousands of memories

Speaker 1 and then there was like some uh

Speaker 1 stuff that just still doesn't really make sense to me like some fear and loathing in las vegas type shit like it was walls of stuffed animals and i was on some fucking horse like it was weird yeah i don't know what that was, but

Speaker 1 woke up.

Speaker 1 So that was about a 12-hour experience and

Speaker 1 woke up, went downstairs. You have a gray day.
They call it a gray day after it's like the worst hangover you've ever had in your life.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 like actual headache, pain. Horrible.
Dizzy. Really? Vomiting, like horrible.
Just

Speaker 1 wow. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And that lasted a day.

Speaker 1 I mean, yeah.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I got up to go to the bathroom and I looked at my eyes and I remember thinking, like, my eyes look different. And, uh,

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 they looked lighter. And, um,

Speaker 1 and, uh, and sure as shit, I came home from that. And one of the first thing my wife said to me was, your eyes look lighter, and the whites of your eyes look white, whiter.

Speaker 1 So it wasn't just me. And

Speaker 1 so after that, though, we did the eye beginning. Then after that, you you have your day off, and then you do the 5MeO DMT.

Speaker 1 And the 5MEO DMT,

Speaker 1 I mean, that is

Speaker 1 a

Speaker 1 very short experience, maybe 15 minutes tops,

Speaker 1 but

Speaker 1 the most profound experience of my entire life. Really? It was, and I don't say that lightly.

Speaker 2 Even more profound than the one you just described?

Speaker 1 More profound than

Speaker 1 my kids being born. Like it was so intense

Speaker 1 and so revealing.

Speaker 1 I still remember it. Like

Speaker 1 it's

Speaker 1 a death experience.

Speaker 2 So for me. Is this something you'd want to do again?

Speaker 1 I've done it a couple of times since. Really? But I wouldn't say it's a good time.
You know, it's not like.

Speaker 2 Because you said a profound experience, meaning like this stands out to me, yeah, yeah, this is

Speaker 1 so you've had some experiences too. I mean, it's a death seal and the father, it's a you die,

Speaker 1 that's the only way to describe it. You die, you don't think you're dying, you know, you're you die, you think you're dying, like nobody can convince you otherwise.
It's not like

Speaker 1 I'm paranoid, you know, uh, pull me out of this. No, it's I'm fucking dying, and I'm like, nobody's there's nothing that can happen.

Speaker 1 And so

Speaker 2 but you're conscious, but you're aware that you're dead. So you accept that?

Speaker 1 You have a that's pretty much.

Speaker 1 I know it sounds really odd.

Speaker 2 And once you accept it, is there, is it,

Speaker 2 is it

Speaker 2 the profound sadness of

Speaker 2 the things you didn't get done in your life, the things you didn't say?

Speaker 1 It's the complete opposite of that. So when you're dying,

Speaker 1 it is

Speaker 1 it's they call it an ego death.

Speaker 2 But you

Speaker 1 first you kind of go through, and this all lasts maybe like 30 seconds, maybe.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 you

Speaker 1 first you go through the,

Speaker 1 holy shit, I'm dying and there's nothing I can do. And then it's, and then it's, oh shit, who am I leaving behind? I can't leave them behind.
And so for me, it was my wife and my,

Speaker 1 I think my son was like six months old. He was right around

Speaker 1 six months old at the time. And so I just like was grasping on for anything to try to

Speaker 1 try to live for them. I was like, I can't fucking leave my wife and kid here.
This place is a disaster.

Speaker 1 And,

Speaker 1 and um but you really you you you you think you're departing and um

Speaker 1 and then eventually you do give up but i will say like you know at the beginning you'd ask me you know about

Speaker 1 uh combat experiences where i thought i was gonna die and i've been through a ton of those but nothing like this really this was more profound than that wow you are you've accepted that you're either dead or you are about to die yeah it was truly accepted the most anxiety, most fear, most sadness that I'd ever felt all at once.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 2 then you,

Speaker 1 I don't think any, everybody can get to this because I know

Speaker 1 I've recommended this to everybody that works for me. I've recommended it to all my friends.

Speaker 1 It's, it was,

Speaker 1 what it's done for me is just so, so profound.

Speaker 2 And, um, even though it, the experience itself is horrible.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Because of of what happens on the other side.

Speaker 1 And so if you can get to the point where you

Speaker 1 can muster up enough courage to just die,

Speaker 1 then you

Speaker 1 like fucking cross over into this new realm.

Speaker 2 And once you surrender and say,

Speaker 2 okay, I got it. I'm ready to go.

Speaker 1 And the minute that that... that happens, like you cross over.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 man, this stuff sounds weird. And I always thought thought this shit was all for hippies, but it's not.
And,

Speaker 1 but,

Speaker 1 you know, you hear people talk about energy, and that person has a bad energy, and that person has a good energy, and

Speaker 1 energy is everything.

Speaker 1 You see that

Speaker 1 if you come out the other side, it is,

Speaker 1 I mean, a lot of people do it on a blindfold, and a lot of people say that they see the, they see, they go through a wormhole, they see the Big Bang, they see, um they see uh family lineage they see friends that have died in combat you know i didn't i wanted to do it without the eye mask

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 i remember looking out over the uh ocean down in mexico and i remember

Speaker 1 every time i do a psychedelic uh experience it's always very i don't get a whole lot of visuals i get a lot of intuit intuition

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I could see

Speaker 1 energy flowing from islands to the ocean, to the beach, into the air, up the trees, in the leaves. And it was, it was,

Speaker 1 it was, you hear a lot of people say, oh, we're all one. Everything's connected.
There's a oneness. There is a fucking oneness, man.
Like, really?

Speaker 1 You can see and feel intuitively the flow of energy, of positive energy.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 at the same time,

Speaker 1 I could feel and hear like the Earth's vibration.

Speaker 1 Wow. And you are just,

Speaker 1 you are so in tune with nature, God,

Speaker 1 whatever you want to call it, the universe. I mean,

Speaker 1 it's

Speaker 1 if any evil, any negative energy, any evil came into

Speaker 1 your field of view, it would stick out like a spotlight in the darkness. And

Speaker 1 it, it,

Speaker 1 you know, and on the other hand, it makes you realize that there is definitely

Speaker 1 life after death.

Speaker 1 There is, there is,

Speaker 1 we're all going somewhere. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And, um, now, are you a man of God? Are you?

Speaker 1 Absolutely. Okay.
Are you? Yes. Good for you.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Saved at a Promise Keepers Convention 20,

Speaker 2 1994, however many years ago that was. What's that? 1994.
I got saved at a Promise Keepers Convention. I went and.

Speaker 1 Awesome. Yeah.

Speaker 2 In 1994, I was in grad school and it was in Soldier Field.

Speaker 2 I gave my life to the Lord.

Speaker 2 They used to have a movement called Promise Keepers. It might still be around.

Speaker 2 But my lawyer tricked me into going to this.

Speaker 2 It was a Christian men's event. I didn't know that.
He told me it was like a motivational thing to go see these motivational speakers. And it was

Speaker 2 this movement called Promise Keepers. And I'll just never forget.
I mean, I joined hands with 70,000 Christian men and started to say the Lord's Prayer. And I just

Speaker 2 fell apart and went down to the stage and gave my life to Christ.

Speaker 2 Why did your attorney think that you needed to go to a because he's he was a he was a you know really strong Christian guy and um

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 uh

Speaker 2 I thought I was fucked up, but after your story, I feel pretty good about myself.

Speaker 1 I feel actually really good.

Speaker 1 I'm just kidding. Um,

Speaker 2 you know, um, you know, I was in, I was, I was in grad school and, you know, I was just typical, you know, self-centered and, you you know, I wasn't doing anything crazy. I was partying a little bit.

Speaker 2 I was, you know, I was going through grad school and

Speaker 2 had a decent relationship with a girlfriend at the time and

Speaker 2 ended up becoming my wife back then.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 2 he, he just was a really powerful Christian. He's like, hey, I want you to come to this.
this event. I think you, you know, I think you really love it.
These motivational speakers, it's so inspiring.

Speaker 2 And I thought it was going to be like one of, you know,

Speaker 2 like David Goggins kind of, you know, on stage telling you to get your shit together.

Speaker 2 He wasn't around then, but

Speaker 1 so I was like, okay, you know, I'll go.

Speaker 2 And it was a very profound experience for me.

Speaker 1 Good for you.

Speaker 2 But I didn't mean to interrupt you, but so you say you're convinced now that there is something on the other side.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I mean, I didn't,

Speaker 1 I mean, now I'm a believer in Jesus. And amen.
And, but at that time, I just realized,

Speaker 1 honestly, like

Speaker 1 it made, it took me.

Speaker 1 This sounds weird because it made me a better person, but it kind of took Jesus and God out of the picture for me.

Speaker 1 Not that I was like some stand-up Christian man or anything back then, obviously, I wasn't.

Speaker 1 But I was like, man, I always wondered about this. Now I know that's not real, or that's what I thought.
But

Speaker 1 coming out of that, you know,

Speaker 2 so profoundly sad. Like,

Speaker 2 in that moment,

Speaker 1 yeah. But I mean,

Speaker 1 I did feel the presence of my best friend, Gabe, who died.

Speaker 1 He was down in Columbia with me for a while. Another SEAL that I worked with at the agency as well.

Speaker 1 But anyways, I got home.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I told you that my wife, the first thing she had noticed was my eyes

Speaker 1 were lighter brown and my whites were whiter.

Speaker 1 And I went down there to be more in the moment, too, with my son because I'm a dad now. And

Speaker 1 I know a lot of business people struggle with this.

Speaker 1 How do you,

Speaker 1 I'm in love with my business. I'm sure you are too.

Speaker 1 And so

Speaker 1 it can be a challenge to turn it off at night and be in the moment with the wife and kids. Right.
And

Speaker 1 that bothers me.

Speaker 1 There's always something to do. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 it bothers her, too.

Speaker 1 It took me right back into the moment. I was able to shut it off.
It made me more,

Speaker 1 all these weird things happened that I wasn't expecting. It made me way more efficient and productive.
I was getting like a week's worth of shit done.

Speaker 2 Hey, guys, I'm really excited to announce this. Perfect Aminos has gotten a serious upgrade.
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Did you just realize that was not important? Yes. Because I got to imagine on your

Speaker 2 deathbed,

Speaker 2 you know, people that are processing their life

Speaker 2 they can't go back and redo it now. You know, it's at the end, but they do, maybe you get a chance to consciously look back, but you got a chance.

Speaker 2 You got a chance to consciously look back and then go fix it.

Speaker 2 And I think that's what sounds so profound about your experience because I saw someone on Instagram the other day, and it was a, it was a pastor.

Speaker 2 He was delivering a graduation ceremony, and he talked about how many times he'd been at the the bedside of a man or a woman in their last moments.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 2 he talked about the typical things that you would say.

Speaker 2 You know, they weren't like, hey, bring my trophies by so I can see them one more time, or can you wheel me down to the garage so I can be around the car collection? You know,

Speaker 2 I just want to see it one last time. And,

Speaker 2 you know, remember, remember when we took that company public and we sold it? It was, he said it was, it was all just about love.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And the only people that he

Speaker 2 said it was the one common thing, you know, like the only people they wanted around were the people that were really, really close to them. And maybe at that moment they appreciated them the most.

Speaker 2 But you got the enviable opportunity to go back and maybe fix it.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 So you're super efficient. Right.

Speaker 2 How about, you know, is addiction still knocking at the door?

Speaker 1 No. So that's, this is the, this is the, I did did not even go down there to quit drinking because, like I had said,

Speaker 1 in my fucked up mind, I was fine because all I was drinking was a couple of bottles of wine a night, not vodka.

Speaker 2 Well, you're him in the Columbian bam, bam, and I feel some vodka.

Speaker 1 I tell you, you're in a good place, you know, relatively speaking.

Speaker 1 But, um,

Speaker 1 but you know, I mean,

Speaker 1 so

Speaker 2 I

Speaker 1 lost like

Speaker 1 all my addictions, and so I was still taking Adderall. That's gone.

Speaker 1 I was smoking cannabis to go to sleep. I quit that for about six months.
Now I'm back.

Speaker 1 Yeah. But sleep's like the one thing I just cannot.

Speaker 2 I'm going to hack it for you, man.

Speaker 2 When I go on your podcast, we're going to take the clip from this podcast where you couldn't sleep and you're going to be like, holy shit, I'm sleeping like

Speaker 1 I got you, brother.

Speaker 1 I'd still used

Speaker 1 benzos here and there, gone. Sleeping pills, gone.
Booze, gone.

Speaker 1 And there was sugar gone for about for about six months. And so.

Speaker 2 Sugar's back, too.

Speaker 1 Sugar's back. Okay.
Sugar and cannabis are back. Caffeine was gone for a long time.

Speaker 1 Still don't drink coffee. Now I'll have tea.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 it wasn't any effort either. It was just,

Speaker 1 it was just,

Speaker 1 it was like my mind

Speaker 1 got a download

Speaker 1 and it was just, this shit's poison. This is poison.
This is poison. This is

Speaker 1 poison. Don't do it.
And it wasn't like

Speaker 1 there was no urges. There was no cravings.
There was none of that. It was just, I'm done with this shit.

Speaker 1 Wow. I'm not drinking anymore.
And so this February, this Valentine's Day will be three years

Speaker 1 since I've had a drink.

Speaker 2 That's amazing, man. I mean,

Speaker 2 like I said, for me, the jury is still out on those.

Speaker 2 I don't have my arms around it enough, but I've had people like yourself, credible, that have had these just profound experiences.

Speaker 2 That is an amazing story. And I'm sure that you now know other people that have gone through the same thing that have had similar tons.

Speaker 1 Wow, it's incredible. I know a guy,

Speaker 1 really good friend of mine.

Speaker 1 I get, I, I'm just going to say it because it's helping so many fucking people, man. But this guy was blown up in Afghanistan,

Speaker 1 survived the worst.

Speaker 1 He

Speaker 1 was in the worst car bomb that I've seen somebody actually live through.

Speaker 1 I'll put it that way.

Speaker 1 Basically turned a... Toyota land cruiser inside out and he lived through that.
He drove over.

Speaker 1 He got hit by a suicide bomber. Okay.
Then, fast forward, then he got shot in the head in a road rage accident with a 38 special lights out in the middle of the road. Still has shrapnel in his brain.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 so

Speaker 1 I'm really good friends with him.

Speaker 1 He was a former Green Beret, worked with him at the agency. And when he got shot in the head, I had gone down to

Speaker 1 help him and his wife.

Speaker 1 And he's just been struggling ever since. Well, his wife

Speaker 1 called me and my wife one day, and she was saying that he is bedridden

Speaker 1 five to six days a week. Can't get out of bed when he can get out of bed.
His vertico is so bad, he has to walk around with a cane.

Speaker 1 He can't go outside without sunglasses on, even on a cloudy day, because his light sensitivity is so bad. We haven't had sex in over two years.

Speaker 1 And I'm thinking, holy fuck, man. And I had told him about this therapy several times.

Speaker 1 Called him up, connected him with some people,

Speaker 1 got him down there super fast. And he fucking walked out of that exact same experience that I did, left his cane there as a souvenir for these people.
He's like, I don't need this shit anymore.

Speaker 1 Went home, fucked his wife, doesn't need the sunglasses anymore, isn't bedridden. This was probably about six months ago, still doing great today.
Wow.

Speaker 1 That is incredible.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah. That is incredible.
I mean, this is so far outside of the ultimate human.

Speaker 2 That is, that is just incredible, though, man. And, you know, and I think my intellectual curiosity really wants to dig in.

Speaker 2 I'm going to go down the rabbit hole on this because, you know, RFK, he posted a statement.

Speaker 2 I thought it was pretty badass. And he mentioned psychedelics in it.
I don't know if you saw this, but

Speaker 2 he has said the FDA's war on public health is about to end.

Speaker 2 This includes the aggressive suppression of psychedelics, peptides, stem cells, raw milk, hyperbaric therapies, chelating compounds, ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, vitamins, clean foods, sunshine, exercise, nutraceuticals, and anything else that advances human health and can't be patented by big pharma.

Speaker 2 If you work for the FDA and you're part of this corrupt system, I have two messages for you. Number one, preserve your records and number two, pack your bags.
Damn, I love that guy.

Speaker 1 I love that guy too. Like,

Speaker 2 you know, because

Speaker 2 when you have people in your condition, in your friend's condition, when we have tens of thousands of, you know, our military men and women that are permanently on the chemical hamster wheel,

Speaker 2 which is further destroying their life. And there's something that an adult

Speaker 2 can do to make a sound decision for their own body with a full understanding of the consequences.

Speaker 2 You know, why are we preventing people from accessing these kinds of therapies when all they have is a persistent vegetative state, like what your friend had basically found himself in?

Speaker 2 That's not living. I mean, you're alive, but you're not living.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I'm, you know, I'm a big fan. I remember during COVID, there was the the right to try.

Speaker 2 And,

Speaker 2 you know, this was only for the people that were in the darkest parts of their life. They were in the ICU with pulmonary fibrosis.
They didn't have modern medicine, have nothing left to offer.

Speaker 2 And things started parachuting in, like stem cells and exosomes and nebulized exosomes. And people were coming off of ventilators and respirators and

Speaker 2 fibrotic tissue in their lungs was actually becoming healthy tissue. Things that like medicine would have told you could have never happened, you know, nerves remyelinating and, and things like that.

Speaker 2 And, um, and I, and,

Speaker 2 you know, to me, the pace of medicine is, is slow because we have to move at the pace of the regulatory environment, which I totally understand and embrace because you can't have a, you know, a bunch of charlatans just putting random stuff into human beings.

Speaker 2 But, um,

Speaker 2 but it's really, you know, it's really profound to know that it can have that. that big of an effect on somebody's life.

Speaker 2 I want to sort of pull us out of the hole for a second.

Speaker 2 I know that you've, you know, you got to be really happy with what happened in this last election, but for you

Speaker 2 and military men and women that are in your group, I mean, what does the future look like for you? What does it mean to you? What does this election mean to you?

Speaker 2 As far as the direction of the country and

Speaker 1 what you. I mean,

Speaker 1 I could tell you you know when when

Speaker 1 when they pulled off the win Trump advance I got to tell you man like I did not realize how much baggage I was running around with on a daily basis were you an angry little smurf oh yeah

Speaker 1 I mean I've been trying to I just couldn't I couldn't understand like what the fuck we were doing like

Speaker 1 Like, how are we going to send the Taliban $80 million a week? Did you know that we were doing that? No. We were sending the Taliban $80 million a week in cash.
In cash. For what?

Speaker 1 Great question.

Speaker 1 We already gave them $83 billion

Speaker 1 a week. Maybe they needed the fee.
A week, we did. Wow.
And so I started, you know, sending up flags through my podcast on that. Got a lot of politicians involved to try to cut that funding.

Speaker 1 But basically what it was is, is

Speaker 1 we were sending,

Speaker 1 basically, we were funding Afghan NGOs or

Speaker 1 nonprofits

Speaker 1 without looking into them at all. And so the Taliban, I can't remember the exact number.
It was like 900 new NGOs since the, like within the first year of the Afghan withdrawal.

Speaker 1 And those were all set up by Afghans. And so I don't want to go too far into that.

Speaker 1 It's unbelievable. Not

Speaker 1 Sorry, not set up by Afghans.

Speaker 2 You have leakage like that. Nobody, you know, you always hear about the,

Speaker 2 you know, the $5,000 toilet seat that made it through the government, but

Speaker 2 to think that there's holes that big that could be filled.

Speaker 1 It's crazy, man. Yeah.
You know, and, and,

Speaker 1 and then to see people not want to give it any light of day because it makes their, it makes their guy look bad. It's like,

Speaker 1 do you know many fucking people are going to die? Like 9-11 was a $500,000 budget.

Speaker 1 We're sending them $80 million a week. How the fuck do you think this is going to turn out? Yeah.
You know, and

Speaker 1 it was that. It was the border.
It was, it's Ukraine. It's, I don't even know why I'm saying was because all this is still going on, but it's, it's our power grid.
It's the Chinese state.

Speaker 1 It's, it's our, our,

Speaker 1 our, um,

Speaker 1 what the hell am I trying to say? Our

Speaker 1 supply chain.

Speaker 1 You know, do you know about the power grid? How vulnerable that is? Water supply?

Speaker 2 It is unbelievable how, you know,

Speaker 2 I'm not a doomsdayer, but I have an off-the-grid place in Colorado that's solar-fed electricity, glacier-fed spring water, well inseptic.

Speaker 1 No bunker,

Speaker 1 but

Speaker 2 we've got our own little 50-acre slice of paradise out there. And I'll tell you what, I'm happier out there than I am in this beautiful place Miami.

Speaker 2 Um, and it's super basic. You know, I got a freaking, you know,

Speaker 2 I've got a propane stove and a little fox that comes onto the you know porch every night. I get this free loading deer that eat my flowers every day.
Um, and it's just amazing.

Speaker 2 I have the razors that you just rage around the mountain, they got a shooting range on the back of the property.

Speaker 2 And um, it's at 10,500 feet when you spend the summer up there and you come back to Miami to sea level, you feel like

Speaker 2 you know, yeah, you took a limitless pill, you know?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 It's my workouts for like four or five weeks are incredible.

Speaker 1 It's simplicity.

Speaker 2 So sleep, yeah, but it's simplicity. I was talking to actually Devin Levesque about this, and he's got this incredible microfarming concept that he's building these communities around,

Speaker 2 you know,

Speaker 2 animals that are, you know, being raised and then,

Speaker 2 you know, turned into food and raising your own vegetables and,

Speaker 2 you know, growing your own food and building a community around it and having these membership clubs that are actually built around sort of getting people back in touch with nature and

Speaker 2 into a community where you're just doing the basics, sauna, cold plunge,

Speaker 2 conversation,

Speaker 2 clean whole foods,

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 an environment where you're back in touch with nature. And I so identify with that because

Speaker 2 Nothing makes me feel better.

Speaker 2 None of all this fancy equipment.

Speaker 2 I probably got a million and a half dollars worth of equipment in this apartment, but then put on a 20-pound rucksack and going for literally a four-mile walk in the woods.

Speaker 2 Not even kidding. Like I get back from that and I tune into myself and I'm like,

Speaker 2 holy shit, I feel amazing.

Speaker 1 I put on a heavy vest and a pair of boots and I grabbed the water bottle and just did this little four mile hike.

Speaker 2 And I wasn't even trying to like, you know, bust my own balls. I wasn't trying to push myself so hard to,

Speaker 2 you know, to,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 2 even improve my fitness. It's just walk in the woods with a 20-pound rucksack.
Yeah. And, you know, you don't realize how simple that is.

Speaker 2 And, you know, there's a lot of evidence now that exercise is more impactful than SSRIs for treating, you know, depression.

Speaker 2 Like they say, you want to, you want to fix somebody's depression, push them in cold water.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 2 Push a sad person in cold water and see if they're still sad when they get out.

Speaker 1 You know,

Speaker 2 it's, it's, you know, and it just reminds me so, so much how

Speaker 2 just getting back to the basics can be so profound.

Speaker 1 Can I say, as we were talking about, what the election meant to me.

Speaker 1 And I just want to say

Speaker 1 that

Speaker 1 I think part of the reason we got to where we were is because people in this country are scared to tell the truth and to stand up. to shit that they don't like.
I agree. And

Speaker 1 here we are now, right? We got through that four years, which was a fucking disaster.

Speaker 1 And, but you know what it was? It was people like you and people like me and Rogan and Lex Friedman and

Speaker 1 all these podcasters

Speaker 1 who, well, actually, I can't even say all of them. They're able to get around the studio.
A small handful.

Speaker 1 of podcasters who who don't care what people think of them and aren't scared of what might happen for just asking and Tucker, asking questions, just asking questions, the right questions, and standing up against this shit, just from

Speaker 1 talking on a podcast, you know, and so,

Speaker 1 and I think it's podcasts that pulled us out of this because the mainstream media was putting out garbage. I mean, it was, still is.

Speaker 2 I just saw an announcement today of a reporter that just announced he's going to write a hit piece on me. Did one on Rogan, Rogan, one on Joe Dispenza,

Speaker 2 did one on Huberman and AG Greens. And now he's like, you know, just made the announcement that I'm his next.

Speaker 1 Congratulations. Yeah, yeah, I know.
So I feel like I kind of won the lottery. I'm like, wow,

Speaker 1 put my name on that. Do a whole journalistic

Speaker 1 do it on both of us. But what I want to say is, I mean, we're all still here.
None of us are in prison. None of us are dead.
Our businesses are all exploding because we did that.

Speaker 1 And so when it starts to get tough again, don't be a fucking pussy and speak up and

Speaker 1 say what's on your mind.

Speaker 1 And maybe we won't wind up here again because that's what happened.

Speaker 2 I think that's a very valuable lesson learned.

Speaker 1 Look,

Speaker 2 this has been amazing. I wanted to make sure that before we close things out, that I talk about your what's a day in the life of your daily routine look like now?

Speaker 2 I mean, because the drugs and the alcohol are gone, the benzos are gone, the Adderall is gone,

Speaker 2 all of those things that sort of blurred the lines between daytime, nighttime, reality, and fiction.

Speaker 2 Those have all moved out of your life. You got two beautiful kids

Speaker 2 in an incredible marriage.

Speaker 2 I hear you speak about your wife, and

Speaker 2 the changes that you went through when your son was born.

Speaker 2 So,

Speaker 2 what does a day in the life

Speaker 2 look like now? I mean, do you have a cold punch routine? Do you have a morning routine? Do you have a exercise routine?

Speaker 1 I have a light exercise routine, but I think a Navy SEAL would have a pretty intense exercise routine.

Speaker 2 Do you feel like you exercised enough back in the day that you're good?

Speaker 1 Pretty much. You banked it.

Speaker 2 You put some eight deposits.

Speaker 1 No, I do. I do a light workout every morning.

Speaker 1 And then to be honest with you, Gary, me and my wife are

Speaker 1 really trying to just figure out our big big goal this year was health.

Speaker 2 I'm glad to be part of that journey, man.

Speaker 1 We have tried to,

Speaker 1 I mean, we don't know where to look, man. You know what I mean? So, so we've really, we've cleaned the diet up, started going to

Speaker 1 a

Speaker 1 natural, what do they call it? Naturopath. Yeah, naturopath doctors.

Speaker 1 I don't know if you've, I'm not plugging them, but it's helped me a ton. The Yuka app.
Have you heard of the Yuka app?

Speaker 1 It's like this app you put on your phone. You can pretty much scan just about anything.

Speaker 2 And it tells you what the contents of the grocery are. Yeah, I didn't know it was called Yuka.
I have seen that before. It's actually pretty good.

Speaker 1 It tells you the additives, what the additives do to you. Yeah.
And so, I mean, we've just

Speaker 1 we found that app. We went through our entire kitchen in like one night.
It's so good. Scanning everything, throw just about everything out.

Speaker 1 All the shit we thought was healthy turns out is horrible for you.

Speaker 1 So we started doing that. Um, some

Speaker 1 we're really just trying to clean it up, man, and figure out.

Speaker 1 I mean, it's like every day now,

Speaker 1 I feel like I hear somebody, you know, dying of cancer or high rate of trial, or you know, industry.

Speaker 2 It's almost a one and two now.

Speaker 1 So, we're trying to clean it up, you know, and I think we've done

Speaker 1 I know we've done a really good job because I'll taste foods that I don't eat anymore after doing this for six to nine months. And I'll taste the fucking chemicals in there.

Speaker 2 Yeah. No, Devin and I were literally talking about how your palate changes.
And like when you eat whole foods, you crave whole nutritious foods.

Speaker 2 And without going too deep down the rabbit hole of the science behind it, but we have a hormone in our body released in our gut called GLP-1. And essentially, it's the satiation hormone.

Speaker 2 It tells us that we're full. And, you know, big pharma also makes it semaglotide.
you know, wagovi, ozempic.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 2 you, you, you can raise that in response to really whole, nutritious foods, like what we had in the kitchen before we came in here.

Speaker 2 And highly processed foods, you know, unnatural flavorings, food additives, colors, dyes, preservatives, you know,

Speaker 2 chemicals, synthetics, artificial sweeteners, those don't satiate us. Our body doesn't recognize them.
So the brain doesn't think you've eaten.

Speaker 2 And so it needs you to eat more because it needs the nutrients. I mean, it's an infinitely complex but very intelligent organ, and it knows we haven't gotten enough nutrients.

Speaker 2 So, I mean, you're going to eat again. And if you keep eating the same process, shit, I mean, this is why the obesity pandemic is what it is.

Speaker 2 We want to push down on the obesity with weight loss drugs instead of pushing up on obesity with whole foods.

Speaker 2 You know, you look at videos from, we talked about this too, you know, from

Speaker 2 JFK, you know, like you look at high schools in the, in the 50s and the, in the 60s, play fine the fat person.

Speaker 2 Like they just weren't. They're all fit.
They're doing muscle ups and climbing up the walls with their little hand towels and running a mile in, you know, under seven minutes.

Speaker 2 And everybody's fit and lean.

Speaker 1 And,

Speaker 2 and, you know, now we've just, you know, we're the sickest, fattest, most disease-ridden nation in the world of all the civilized nations.

Speaker 1 It's crazy.

Speaker 2 But, um,

Speaker 2 but this was, this has just been incredible, man.

Speaker 2 First of all, I'm very excited. And

Speaker 2 I take

Speaker 2 great pride in you trusting me to be a part of that health journey. I'm excited to talk about that on your podcast.

Speaker 2 But before I wind down every podcast, I ask all my guests the same question.

Speaker 2 And there's no right or wrong answer to this question. And it's, what does it mean to you to be an ultimate human?

Speaker 1 What does it mean to me to be an ultimate human?

Speaker 2 Because I think you're an ultimate human.

Speaker 1 I think to be an ultimate human, you have to constantly think about how you're going to leave this world a better place than when you entered it.

Speaker 1 Be a good husband. Be a good father.
If you're not either one of those, then find somebody to mentor and make them a better person. Wow.

Speaker 2 That's amazing, man.

Speaker 2 Well, I mean, this has been incredible, Sean.

Speaker 2 I want to have you back sometime, man.

Speaker 2 Your journey is astounding. You made a huge impact.

Speaker 2 And my audience is going to absolutely love this. So, thank you for coming on, man.
I appreciate it. And as always, that's just science, guys.