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

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

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:53Shawn Ryan?

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• 2:11Shawn Ryan?

  This episode of The Sean Ryan Show is presented by Keeps.

• 2:17Speaker 05

  The person I met, he was gone, and he had been replaced by, like, a monster.

• 2:33Shawn Ryan?

  Speaking of Red Wing, let's kind of start there.

• 2:40Speaker 02

  We flip a coin and we lost.

• 2:48Speaker 02

  So our platoon lost and we went to Germany.

• 2:51Speaker 02

  And, you know, the other platoon went to Afghanistan, you know, and the rest is kind of history there. I'm like three years out now, 2016, you know, drinking heavily, getting behind the wheel, not giving a fuck about anything.

• 3:09Shawn Ryan?

  Went down to Mexico, he got the treatment, and it sounds like that was like a light switch.

• 3:17Speaker 05

  Nothing has this much of an effect as psychedelic assisted therapies. So the success rates are just off the charts.

• 3:28Shawn Ryan?

  You know, just to put things in perspective, this year, I believe will be the first, the first time ever in American history where you could have been listed during wartime and left during wartime and done an entire 20-year career and retired all combat deployments.

• 3:51Speaker 02

  We've never sustained combat for so long.

• 3:54Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:54Speaker 02

  And nobody knows what's gonna happen.

• 3:58Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:58Speaker 02

  You know, and we need to get in front of it.

• 4:10Shawn Ryan?

  Did you know that two out of three guys will experience some kind of male pattern baldness by the time they're 35?

• 4:20Shawn Ryan?

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• 4:35Speaker 05

  Babe, are you ready to take the trash out?

• 4:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, babe.

• 4:49Shawn Ryan?

  Check out keeps.com slash V E.

• 4:55Shawn Ryan?

  Our next guest has an amazing story. He started his military career as a Navy SEAL in the SEAL Teams. He then screened for Development Group, also known as SEAL Team Six, where he would become an operator and a Tier One breacher. In this episode, our guest discusses the effects that being a breacher has on the human brain. When he left SEAL Team Six, he went to BUDS to become a Navy SEAL instructor. He then retired, went on to a finance career for Merrill Lynch in Beverly Hills, California.

• 5:37Shawn Ryan?

  From there, he was a host on History Channel's The Selection, and now runs a nonprofit with his wife called Vets, where they give psychedelic treatment to former operators who suffer from PTSD, traumatic brain injury, and CTE. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome number 010, Mr. Marcus Capone. Marcus Capone, welcome to the show, man.

• 6:13Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 6:14Shawn Ryan?

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

• 6:50Speaker 02

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

• 7:11Shawn Ryan?

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

• 7:28Speaker 02

  All right.

• 7:33Shawn Ryan?

  Man, I'm nervous. What is this?

• 7:36Speaker 02

  I'm knowing you.

• 7:39Shawn Ryan?

  Say a little something for the ride home.

• 7:41Speaker 02

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

• 7:48Shawn Ryan?

  Nice. Those snore bikes are amazing.

• 7:54Speaker 02

  Dude, these are just no shit gummy bears.

• 7:56Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. No, they're not special gummy bears.

• 7:58Speaker 02

  They're like, there's no CBD, there's no THC. They're just, they're just good old fashioned gummy bears. Awesome.

• 8:05Shawn Ryan?

  Sugar packed.

• 8:07Speaker 02

  I'm gonna eat the hell out of these. Thank you.

• 8:09Shawn Ryan?

  Gummy bears. You're welcome.

• 8:15Speaker 02

  Very cool. Um, I had a gummy bears. Where, where did, where did that come from?

• 8:22Shawn Ryan?

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

• 8:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:29Shawn Ryan?

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

• 8:42Speaker 02

  We're just gonna make gummy bears?

• 8:43Shawn Ryan?

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

• 8:46Speaker 02

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

• 8:54Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 8:55Speaker 02

  It's crazy.

• 8:55Shawn Ryan?

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

• 9:05Speaker 02

  You got a stomach ache?

• 9:06Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, he's like, man, I don't, how long does it take for these to kick in and how long do I need? How many do I need to eat for them to kick in? Cause I'm not feeling anything.

• 9:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:15Shawn Ryan?

  We're just like, they're just gummy bears, man.

• 9:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, that's funny. No, it's good.

• 9:20Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 9:21Speaker 02

  Well, thank you.

• 9:22Shawn Ryan?

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

• 9:24Speaker 02

  I will. I, I, I love candy, so. As I get older, I try to, try to cut down, but those would be my, my midnight snack when I'm sneaking in the pantry.

• 9:33Shawn Ryan?

  Hey, I do that too.

• 9:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:35Shawn Ryan?

  But, um.

• 9:38Shawn Ryan?

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

• 10:22Speaker 02

  I appreciate that.

• 10:23Shawn Ryan?

  to see that.

• 10:24Speaker 02

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

• 11:10Speaker 02

  We're, you know, we're strong.

• 11:12Shawn Ryan?

  Man.

• 11:13Speaker 02

  We're, we're good.

• 11:14Shawn Ryan?

  Congratulations, that's, that's amazing.

• 11:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, um, it's still work, a lot of work, and we still have our moments. But, you know, what you and I spoke about, the, you know, the awareness, you know, I can see myself now getting to that, you know, am I talking over her? Am I interrupting her? Am I raising my voice for no reason? Um, the more you become aware of that, the more you reset your mind to, to, to go a different path than maybe what you were doing, you know, prior. So we're, we're strong, you know, we still have a lot of work to do, but I appreciate that because, um, it's awkward, it's awkward when we get around some people, like you said, and

• 11:58Speaker 02

  you know, they're, they're, they're badgering each other, or they're talking over each other, or they're condescending to each other, and, you know, I remember turning to Amber and saying, "Were we like that?" Like, was that us? She goes, "Are you kidding me?" Like, "Yeah, we were like that times 10." She's like, "How we stayed together is pure, you know, offer, you know, her pure hard-headedness and her faith, really?" And for me, you know, I always said, "Man, is there something better out there?" And, and, you know, I always got to remind myself when I look at her. I'm like, "Dude, you have everything you got, like, right in front of you." Like, you got an amazing wife, who's just a queen. Um, you got amazing kids, um, amazing friends, you know?

• 12:44Speaker 02

  Uh, it's, like, it's right there. Stop, like, searching for shit, or thinking there's, you know, grass is always greener, or something's always better. Um, and I, you know, I still have to remind myself, but I'm reminding myself less now, because now it's just, I get it.

• 12:58Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 12:59Speaker 02

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

• 13:01Shawn Ryan?

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

• 13:42Speaker 02

  It's uh, it's ugly, right? To hang around people that are not, not like that. People that are, um, I don't want to call it depressed because, you know, we obviously work with a lot of individuals that, you know, need some, need some work. Um, but you want to surround yourself with, with good people, happy people, positive people. You know, that negativity that, that it just, you know, I kind of grew up like that. My household, my mom and dad were, it was always negative, you know? Anybody had money was bad. And, you know, they, they, um, they were just a, everything was a negative outlook, you know? Nothing was, uh, they, they, they didn't understand that, you know, you know, having

• 14:23Speaker 02

  a positive mindset and positive framework and, you know, you know, it's a beautiful day out, you know? I don't know where I'm going with this. That's all right. So hopefully we'll get that cut out. But um, what I'm just trying to go with is, is yeah, we, we trying to surround ourselves now by just good people, um, who think like us, who want to, you know, and, and we've learned the way we are now, when we're around other people, we, we feel like it, like that energy just moves through them too, right? They want to be better people. They say, man, look at these two, like where they came from and where they're at now.

• 15:00Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 15:00Speaker 02

  And, um, you know, I'm still, I still joke about trying to figure out a purpose outside of, of the military.

• 15:11Speaker 02

  What my head's saying and what my heart's saying, I'm starting to realize that, you know, my heart, we're doing it. You know, this is, this is making me happy. This is making other people better. And, you know, this is what I should be doing, probably full time.

• 15:25Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 15:26Speaker 02

  So.

• 15:27Shawn Ryan?

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

• 15:59Shawn Ryan?

  back to dinner. It does, it's every time I do meet somebody I haven't met before, just it's, I'm always reminded of how small

• 16:09Shawn Ryan?

  the community is and how many names, uh, that we knew, you know, uh, that we both know or have worked together with. Like, you know, first name that got brought up was Hooch. Second name, you know, Gabe, Gabe Accardi, my best friend who you know. And when I was researching you and I heard your story and I heard about, you know, that your sister platoon, you know, was in Afghanistan was, that was Red Wing.

• 16:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:39Shawn Ryan?

  I know Gabe was involved in that. And then we'd, uh, briefly mentioned, uh, your best friend, Josh Harris. And that was Gabe's best friend as well. And, uh, so when I was listening, uh, to some of your podcasts and reading about you and Amber, I was like, shit, man, he knows, he knows Gabe really well. He has to because you were just at all the right.

• 17:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I couldn't believe that. When I saw it on your wrist, you know, I was just asking, you know, figuring, you know, it's, you know, one of your, one of your brothers you lost in combat.

• 17:12Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 17:12Speaker 02

  Um, and when I looked at it, I went, wait, Gabe Accardi, like,

• 17:18Speaker 02

  what, like, what happened to him?

• 17:19Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 17:20Speaker 02

  And when you said, you know, um, can we, can we talk about it or we don't talk about it? Um, I mean, I mean, when you said he.

• 17:29Speaker 02

  The first thing, unfortunately, the first thing my mind goes through now is like,

• 17:35Speaker 02

  could we have helped him? Could I have helped him? You know? And I know the answer is yes, and I just wish I would have known. I wish I would have known because I think I stopped talking to him probably in 2005 or 2006. The last time I saw him and, man, that was just, kind of hit me last night, a bit of a shock. Because we used to hang out, you know, at Team 10 together and obviously, you know, worked out together. And, you know, we trained a lot together and so that was, yeah, it was disturbing. And, you know, I'm sorry that I didn't know you guys were good friends.

• 18:14Shawn Ryan?

  Well, thank you, you know, but it's, it is refreshing. I didn't know him in the teams. And so, you know, kind of where I want to take this show is I want to talk about, you know, we're going to touch on your military career.

• 18:27Shawn Ryan?

  And then we'll move into your transition and some of the problems and stuff that you were dealing with. And then we're going to move into the psychedelics and the science behind it and how it's working. And, and, and, you know, maybe some other alternative, alternative medicines.

• 18:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, there you go.

• 18:46Shawn Ryan?

  So.

• 18:48Speaker 02

  You want to hear, you want to hear a Gabe Acardi story?

• 18:50Shawn Ryan?

  I would love to hear a Gabe Acardi story.

• 18:55Speaker 02

  So he, he goes out to Free Fall School and, you know, like everybody else, some people, they pick it up right away. Others take some time, others never get it. I was kind of in the middle for like two or three days. I couldn't get in the wind tunnel. I'd get in and like, you know, shoot into the wall. And then I went away for the weekend and came back, I jumped in and like, you couldn't even move me. Like I was still and, you know, shit just happens that way. Gabe goes out to. Think he went out to Yuma, or he might have been out to San Diego when they started doing the course out there, the freefall course. Well, he comes back and we had heard some rumblings, like, hey, you know, Gabe's having a hard time out there with his exits. You know, when he puts

• 19:39Speaker 02

  a pack on, like, he's all over the place. And then, I don't know, it was a week later or whatever, we hear a story that, like, yeah, Gabe was in, like, an uncontrollable spin on exit, like, ridiculous. Like, they said on camera, it was scary, and they couldn't, they couldn't stop him. So the instructors, you know, the instructors jump out. If, you know, guys, you know what freefall is. So as we're learning, you know, we jump out of the plane, and then, you know, one or two instructors jump out, and they're right there, right? They're watching everything you're doing. Well, he goes into this spin with gear on, and they couldn't stop him. And the way they're taught in, in Military Freefall Instructor Course is like, they come in and they're,

• 20:24Speaker 02

  like, they hit him, they try to stop him, but he's going so fast, you're talking about, you know, you're flying through the sky at however, a hundred and something miles an hour. It was just, I heard it was, it was scary. I guess, of course, he ended up okay. But he shows up back in Virginia Beach at Team Ten, and we're, I'm looking at him, like, Gabe, what the fuck happened to your eyes? Both his eyeballs were completely bloodshot red, like, like, scary red. He's like, oh, like, you know, all the, you know, all the blood in my eyes, like, all the, whatever, vessels broke because I was in such a rough spin, like, everything just, like, he

• 21:06Speaker 02

  just, he was so fucked up looking. But from that day, we started calling him Red Dragon, you know, from the, from the movie. Yeah. So anyway, I thought you'd get a kick out of that story, but it was, yeah. Thanks for telling me that. One of the last things I remember about Gabe, so. Solid dude. Yeah, yeah. Animal, too, just a beast, and evidently, he was, he was a pretty serious hockey player. Yeah. Like, he had, like, two state titles and.

• 21:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, he was, he was an animal.

• 21:36Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 21:36Speaker 02

  But a good person. He was like no ego.

• 21:39Shawn Ryan?

  Great person.

• 21:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, give you the shirt off his back, so.

• 21:42Shawn Ryan?

  Speaking of Red Wing, let's kind of start there, you know.

• 21:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:46Shawn Ryan?

  I know that, I know that was your sister platoon out there.

• 21:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was our task unit.

• 21:51Shawn Ryan?

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

• 21:59Speaker 02

  Sure. I'll go back. Um, you know, we were tra- training up for two years on workup. And close to deployment, I don't know if it was a month or two months out. And again, you know, my recollection of a lot of things, you know, thirteen years of the teams, they all went into one year, you know. So, so bear with me if I, if I get some of these facts wrong, but it was a month or two before deployment. One platoon was going to deploy directly to Afghanistan. And the other platoon was going to Germany. And then after three months, we were going to switch. So the platoon that went to Germany goes to Afghanistan. Platoon that is in Afghanistan goes to Germany. Well, of course, we wanted to go to war first.

• 22:43Speaker 02

  And it was very busy at the time. It's two thousand and five. Um, there was a lot going on. And why we wanted to go first was because if we got to go to Afghanistan first and fight, then we got to go back to Germany and just drink and fuck off for three months, right? Like that was the idea and that would have been great. The platoon that goes to Germany knew that we had to prepare to go to Afghanistan because we couldn't get like drunk and fat and not train and then end up in the middle of a war zone, right?

• 23:16Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 23:16Speaker 02

  So it was kind of like sucked, you know, if you were that platoon. So we, we flip a coin and we lost. So our platoon lost and we went to Germany. And, you know, the other platoon went to Afghanistan, you know, and the rest is kind of history there.

• 23:39Speaker 02

  You know, off a simple coin toss. So I, you know, I get, I get some goosebumps thinking about it that, you know, who knows, you know, who knows what would have happened. I don't know how many people know about that. Coin toss. Um, so they went to Afghanistan. We went to Germany. It no shit was a, it was literally a coin toss. It's a fucking coin toss. Flipped a coin. Yeah. Wow. Clipped, flipped a coin in the team room. Damn. Yeah.

• 24:06Speaker 02

  Heads I win, tails you lose, right? Yeah. So, we went to Germany, trained and drank. Um, got to see the Tour de France. That was cool. Um, but Red Wings. So, you know, middle of the night. I don't know how it happened. I think it was either I got a phone call or we found out helicopter got, you know, went down. And, um, you know, you kind of wake up and start knocking on other guys' doors, you know, we're in, we're in, we're in our barracks in Germany. And nobody really knows what's going on. And, you know, guys start panicking a little bit. We can't get a hold of anybody. We don't know who's in the helicopter. We don't know anything. As the night, we stayed up all night. As the night went on,

• 24:50Speaker 02

  we couldn't get any intel. Like, here we are, we're, we're a SEAL platoon in Germany. It's our sister platoon that we just worked up with for two years. All our best friends are there. We have no idea what's going on. You're only thinking the worst, of course.

• 25:06Speaker 02

  You know, you think with some modern technology, we at least know what's going on. We start getting intel back from Virginia Beach from our freaking wives that are telling us, hey, so and so just had a car pull up with, you know, SEALs in uniform to tell, you know, to tell the spouse that their husband got killed. And so we'd find out, you know. Jeff Taylor, or you know Jacques Fontan, or you know Eric Christensen. And we're like, holy fuck, holy fuck, you know?

• 25:40Speaker 02

  But again, we're finding this stuff back from our women in Virginia Beach. Like, just the whole system at the time was screwed up.

• 25:47Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 25:47Speaker 02

  And to no fault of anyone's. I mean, I mean, everybody we worked with, I mean, I always looked up to, you know, there's always a few bad apples, but I think the majority team guys are there for the right reasons. And they, they make the right calls when, when, when the time is right. And we just never lost that many people at one time, right? This was like, this was just new for the community since probably, you know, Vietnam era SEALs. And so I think there was a, you know, it was just a bit of panic, bit of lessons learned. And all types of shit. So, so we went through that night and the next day of trying to figure out, you know, who's alive, who's dead, you know, what else happened?

• 26:31Speaker 02

  You know, I'm a little foggy on if we found, if, if we knew that, that, you know, Marcus was alive, was anybody else alive? So we, we still didn't really know really what was going on. And it took like a week to figure out.

• 26:48Shawn Ryan?

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

• 26:54Speaker 02

  Within a couple of hours.

• 26:55Shawn Ryan?

  That fast?

• 26:56Speaker 02

  Within a couple of hours because I think

• 27:00Speaker 02

  i- i- if, you know, if I'm, if I'm remembering correctly, it definitely was the next day. Because like I said, this was nighttime.

• 27:06Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 27:07Speaker 02

  Definitely was the next day.

• 27:11Speaker 02

  And, you know, we didn't know what to do. Like, all we wanted to do was go over there and fight. We're like, we want to get on a plane now and go. Like, that, that's what we want to do. Like, we need to go support them. Like, we need to, like, let's, let's go. We, we stayed for a little while, so we wound up staying a few days. And we wound up just drinking really hard, you know, super drunk, telling stories.

• 27:33Speaker 02

  You know, we were just, we didn't know what to do. We didn't know how to react. Some guys in the platoon were so,

• 27:41Speaker 02

  you know, they were so, I want to say dumbfounded, but like affected, that they were just, you know, depressed and didn't talk. And, you know, it was just, it was just confusing for everybody. Like, we never had loss before.

• 27:54Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 27:54Speaker 02

  You know, we never had loss before. And it was, it was actually the first time where I thought.

• 28:01Speaker 02

  Like, we're not Superman. Like, we're really not. And I thought I was. I really thought I was at that time. I thought, there's no way I can get hurt. There's no chance. Like, I'm, you know, I'm, I'm built of body armor. And it was the first time I got a little, like, I won't say scared, but a little anxious. It got real. This is real. This is exactly it, Sean. You said it. It's the first time it got real. And, uh, and that's cool. That's it. I mean, we signed up for that. It was, it was no problem. Um, so you wind up,

• 28:39Speaker 02

  trying to think the timeline.

• 28:46Speaker 02

  Think Marcus, they flew Marcus in, you know, just kind of fast forwarding from all the, like, the, you know, the gritty details was, you know, we obviously found out that the, you know, the recy element, you know, sniper element, reconnaissance element, got compromised. And, you know, three didn't make it out. Uh, Mike Murphy being one of them, who was my, one of my bud's classmates, you know, good friend. Um, but Marcus made it out, or, you know, eventually, you know, got rescued. And then they flew him into Germany to like, debrief and like repatriate and, you know, there's like a whole process they go through. And they said, hey, like, he needs to see some SEALs.

• 29:29Speaker 02

  Like, he needs, he needs some team guys. Like, right now, he's, you know, like, Yeah. So, um, I volunteered. LPO volunteered. One other person, we, we went up to Ramstein and, you know, met with him. Um, he was with the psychologist at the time. And, um, yeah, it was just good to like, you see him, you know, after that whole week of, you know, I'm sure for him, it was probably very, um, It was probably just like, I don't know, humbling is not the word, but it was just good for a soul, I think, to see some, some fresh faces, some team guys that he knew after that happened, because I think, you know, he obviously went through everything

• 30:12Speaker 02

  he went through. And, uh, yeah, we just, we shot the shit with him for a couple hours. Um, and he was like wounded head to toe. Um, I joke with him now, I was like, dude, you look like shit. Like you had, you know, like dried blood and cuts and just like his whole, you know, his arms and legs and face and neck and, you know, his legs were really bad. Um, but it was good to just, you know, talk to him. Yeah. And I don't remember much of the conversation, but I do remember sitting outside on the, we were sitting on a, um, like a wooden table, you know, and, and again, like, I didn't know how to, I didn't know how to react. I didn't know what to say, you know, what

• 30:53Speaker 02

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

• 31:36Speaker 02

  like. And, you know, I could tell that, you know, he was hurt. And, you know, I know he won't get upset about me talking about this, you know, because this is real, right? This is what happened. And, um, you know, I hope, I hope he's good now, you know? That's all I pray for. Yeah. But, um, so we did, we did that. Um, you know, we hung out, um, and I believe he was going back to the States. If I, again, if my, my, my mind, my, my memory serves me correctly, we went back, uh, to Stuttgart and got our gear ready and deployed. And, uh,

• 32:16Speaker 02

  we had a, you know, we had to fill half a platoon because they just lost half a platoon.

• 32:24Speaker 02

  And we got there and I remember it was the middle of the night and you know my other my one of my best friends in the teams.

• 32:33Speaker 02

  Matty Roberts, he uh.

• 32:37Speaker 02

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

• 33:14Speaker 02

  You know, again, um. I just, I just didn't know how to react, you know, I just felt like I had to be there. For my brothers, you know, to be there for my buddies.

• 33:27Speaker 02

  And whatever it took to, you know, whatever it took to get through that situation, like I was prepared to do that and I was prepared to. To lend a hand and help and you know, I was ready to fight. Right? And then that's all that mattered. And so it was good, it was good to see him. You know, kind of embrace, high five. You know, all right, what are we doing here now? And you know, then. You know, then we got to work.

• 33:57Shawn Ryan?

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

• 34:14Speaker 02

  Did you um. Were you were you the platoon that had the the bad humvee wreck?

• 34:18Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 34:19Speaker 02

  Hurt the FBI?

• 34:21Shawn Ryan?

  Yep.

• 34:21Speaker 02

  Well, Adam, Adam lost his fingers. Oh, yes. You were.

• 34:23Shawn Ryan?

  Yep.

• 34:23Speaker 02

  Dom and. You were Dom and Eddie?

• 34:27Shawn Ryan?

  I was with Eddie, Dom wasn't there.

• 34:28Speaker 02

  Joe?

• 34:29Shawn Ryan?

  Eddie Penny. Uh, Joe.

• 34:32Speaker 02

  Was Joe in that group? Maybe not.

• 34:35Shawn Ryan?

  There was only a couple of guys that surged over from their platoon to mine, but um, and then we all got kicked out of Afghanistan and went to Iraq, but.

• 34:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, somebody should have told Adam Brown, like, he shouldn't have kept his hand on top of the humvee when it flipped.

• 34:49Shawn Ryan?

  But uh.

• 34:50Speaker 02

  I love Adam. I went to, I went to green team with Adam, so.

• 34:53Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, man. What a solid guy, you know?

• 34:57Speaker 02

  Amazing.

• 34:58Shawn Ryan?

  But um.

• 34:59Speaker 02

  Amazing dude.

• 35:00Shawn Ryan?

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

• 35:10Speaker 02

  Um, we did not. We worked.

• 35:16Speaker 02

  We do, man, we worked a different part of the country. Um, that was real busy with Taliban fighters. And we were working directly with um, the Kiwis. So the New Zealand SOF, um, they were awesome, older, made us feel like kids.

• 35:37Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 35:37Speaker 02

  They had big beards and they wore too much gear. And um, we worked with the Canadian SOF. Um.

• 35:49Speaker 02

  And they also made us feel like kids, those guys. I think those guys were shooting more fucking testosterone than I've ever seen.

• 35:56Speaker 02

  They all looked like six foot four middle linebackers. Um, big burly beards and, and they wore too much gear too. It's funny, we had to, we had, we had to teach some of those guys to strip off some of the weight they had. I mean, they were, they were going out in the field and we were, and I was carrying a saw or Mark forty, uh, excuse me, Mark forty six with two, four, like six hundred rounds. Um, but my, my, my gear is really trim. Like I, I was like, I was a gear nut and um, you know, I used to really just try to trim it down. So I was already two and a quarter, two thirty. Um, and I drank probably ten times as much water as anybody else. And so, you know, I kinda, I went out heavy, so I tried to trim where I could, but I loved that thing. These guys were going out with like.

• 36:41Speaker 02

  I mean, we're talking about humping, you know, in valleys and up, in up mountains with like, six pistol magazines, like on their belt. Oh damn. Yeah, it just, you know, stuff that I, they were built more for, it seemed like to me, like, you know, CT, right, like counterterrorism, you know, fast rope on top of a building, you know, blow the door in, you know, rescue the princess. But, you know, here we are, we're, we're patrolling, you know, in, in like real rugged terrain, like, bro, I know you're like, you've, you've been here maybe 10 years longer than me, but you, you need to, you need to trim your, trim your shit down, otherwise we're gonna be waiting for you.

• 37:20Speaker 02

  So anyway, those guys though, um, they were tough as nails and, um, we did a lot of joint operations together with the Canadians and with the New Zealand. The New Zealand guys had their mobility down really tight. They were doing long range patrols for, you know, they're doing month long patrols out in the field, not coming back. A lot of recce work, I mean reconnaissance. Um, and the Canadians, uh, were doing more stuff that we were doing, which is, you know, kinda, you know, land, set a perimeter and then go patrol out on foot. Um, we were only, we were staying out for, you know, maybe a couple of days at a time. Um, on foot? On foot, yeah, we were on foot.

• 38:40Speaker 02

  You know, we got in country and within the first couple of days, we actually, um, we had a really cool, um, DA, you know, direct action mission that, um,

• 38:53Speaker 02

  I don't, I don't think we, we thought we were gonna do something like that, but it was, you know, it was right out of the movies that you would think about, like, you know, two Black Hawk helicopters, like, you know, came flying in right next to the target, you know, fast ropes go out, we go out, you know, I'm a breacher, right? So if, if anyone listening doesn't know what a breacher is, it's an explosives expert, but that takes that explosives and then surgically, you know, places on a door or a window or a car, you know, and, and blows that thing in to make entry, for the rest of the guys to make entry. And so, you know, I was a primary breacher for that platoon and for that, that op. And so, you know, it's dark, we just got in country, still trying to figure out

• 39:37Speaker 02

  where all my gear was, you know, fast roping, gloves, weapon, demo, like, I felt like it was a complete shit show. I'm like, you know, if anyone starts shooting at us right now, I'm just gonna like fucking suck my thumb into the mud, because I don't know where anything is on my body. Um, but anyway, we figured it out, get on the ground, and there was a big gate there, you know, we threw, I threw a big charge on the gate, blew the gate in, and then we assaulted the compound. And, uh, nobody got injured, uh, it was relatively, I don't call it easy target. Um, but super high speed for us. I mean, it was the first time any of us has ever seen any combat. Was that your, uh, first deployment? That was my second deployment, my first combat deployment. Okay.

• 40:19Speaker 02

  And so, um, yeah, it was, uh, you know, I think we have on, on video, the guy we were going after, we have him on, uh, on the FLIR. Oh, nice. He came out on the rooftop like this, like as the fast ropes were like getting deployed. And so, like, he knew. Yeah. Um, and I think he was related to the local whoever ran that area. Yeah. Of course, it was like his brother or something that we're going after. Yeah. But, uh, I remember specifically on that target, I'll never forget this. We're clearing rooms, and now it's daytime. So it was like, we weren't allowed to do nighttime raids at the time. Mm-hmm.

• 41:04Speaker 02

  So first light, when you can see everything. And I remember entering a room and there was like, you know, women and children and whatever. And we, you know, we round them up. And I remember, I don't know if it was a terp or something, saying, hey, there's, there's a baby inside. I was like, okay, well, fucking, you know, what do you want me to do? It's like, tell somebody to go get them, right? The, to the, their, their people. So they come out, the guy comes out like this with the baby.

• 41:34Speaker 02

  And I'm looking at the baby, it's naked and it's got a fucking wooden dowel. Like probably this thick, maybe that long, sticking out of its ass. What?

• 41:50Speaker 02

  No idea, no idea why. Damn. Yeah, it was like, one of the most disturbing things I've ever seen. Like, I don't know if that was a medical thing. Somebody would probably laugh, listening to this and say, well, it's, it's this and this idiot. I had no idea. Yeah. Um, but you know, to see a baby, I mean, this was like a newborn. Yeah, maybe like within a year old. Um, with a, with a wooden dowel, literally shoved up its ass and hanging out probably four inches. Damn. You know, like, I'll never forget that. Like I, I tell that story because it's just so, it's like haunting. You see a lot of strange shit. Like, what the fuck are these people doing, right? Yeah.

• 42:34Speaker 02

  So anyway, um, so I thought that was a great, you know, great op. And then from there, that was like our only, I would say urban kind of direct action mission. And then from there, we, we, we, we went in the mountains and we started patrolling daily and going after this, this, this Taliban line. Um, I was, like I said, I carried a saw. Um, I was the team in the valley, clearing the valley while everybody else was, had, you know, fucking long guns and. Oh, nice. Yeah, it was great. They were like, oh, we're just gonna hang out up here and you guys, you guys. Go see what you can get into. You know, but the crazy thing, how our mindsets were back then was like, no, no, dude, I, I wanna be down in the valley. Yeah. Like, fucking, I'm down there. So.

• 43:20Speaker 02

  We're patrolling the valley. Canadians had the high ground, the New Zealand, uh Kiwis had the high ground. And our guys had the high ground.

• 43:30Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, so there were three different, three.

• 43:33Speaker 02

  It was big. We had like big operations going on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there was a lot. It was like, we were chasing a group of, I think it was like forty Taliban. Um, and we were watching them on, like, we were, we were actually, you know, watching them bound and leave us and we, we'd move forward. And this happened for a couple of days. They left all their shit, you know, we were going through all their shit as we were walking through the valley. But I remember the first contact we had in that valley. A couple of them went to bush. And I remember, um, I remember engaging them with my saw. And once I started, like, it was like the whole world just lit up in this valley. And

• 44:17Speaker 02

  next thing you know, like, we're bounding forward.

• 44:22Speaker 02

  And I swear to God, this is like, I tell, I, I remember telling this story after. It was literally like I was, saw this in a movie because I hear from behind me, I just hear, do, do, do, do, do, do, do. I'm like, the fuck is that? Like, it was close. And I turn around and the valley was, um, it wasn't flat, like, it was, it was, it was super steep. It was only big enough to say to put no shit, maybe like three or four guys, like, in patrol. And the other guys kind of had to, like, walk. I mean, it was, it was like that. And there's a fucking, uh, army Apache, literally like this,

• 45:07Speaker 02

  in a full-on gun run, coming straight at us. What do you mean, straight at us? Straight at me, because I was in the middle of this thing. And I'm looking at it and it was like slow motion and. I mean, like, picture this right now. You see, like, I could see the pilot. Two of them. I think it was two pilots. And it's the birds like this, and all I see in the sand is this. Right? Is the, like you said, like you see out of a movie, you see like the gun trail? And it was coming straight at me. And I'm going, what the fuck? And so, I'm there with my chief. And you see all this in slow motion, I'm telling you, but this all happened really quickly.

• 45:54Speaker 02

  Everybody dives, right? Because they're trying to kill us. There's no doubt. They were trying to kill us. And we all dive into some rocks, right? And the gun run, the actual bullets go screaming past the sand. And then the helo goes screaming past, right? But this is how they worked then. They were shooting with guns, and then behind it, Dash Two, the second helicopter that they rolled with, was following up with rockets. Oh, man. So,

• 46:35Speaker 02

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

• 47:08Speaker 02

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

• 47:34Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 47:35Speaker 02

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

• 47:45Shawn Ryan?

  So were you guys taking fire from Taliban?

• 47:48Speaker 02

  And our guys.

• 47:49Shawn Ryan?

  U.S. Apaches?

• 47:50Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 47:52Shawn Ryan?

  And everybody just?

• 47:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, my chief got hit in the face.

• 47:55Shawn Ryan?

  Who did?

• 47:56Speaker 02

  Blood, my chief got hit in the face. He was, you know, spitting like, not spitting blood out, blood was spitting out. He, he, he dove the other way. I dove this way. Um, he actually got fragged.

• 48:08Speaker 02

  And yeah, so like I said, so somebody cleared them hot. And thank God, somebody, um, not the same person, uh, you know, called a ceasefire. Thank goodness. Um, because the, those, those two point fives would have fucked us up.

• 48:24Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, it'd be over.

• 48:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, depending on how good we were covered, you know what I mean? Like, uh, like I was trying to hunker like in between these rocks, knowing that, all right, if, when the frag comes, like if I can just get behind some rocks, like, you know, the frag will hit the rocks and maybe I'll get hit, you know, with some frag, but like my head's not going to come off, right? Or, you know, so that's, that's all I was thinking at the time.

• 48:49Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 48:50Speaker 02

  And so, yeah, and then I remember watching my, my chief pop up behind a rock and like his whole face was like, like squirt out blood and I'm like, wow, this, again, this is real. Like this is not, this is not a joke. So, um,

• 49:06Speaker 02

  yeah, it was exciting. It was fun shit, right?

• 49:09Shawn Ryan?

  Sounds like it.

• 49:10Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, I'll tell you what, I couldn't wait to get back to the fucking, uh, the base there, the siege of Sotif, I think it was, find out, like,

• 49:20Speaker 02

  What motherfucker just tried to kill me? You know, and I like wanted to like just choke somebody. I feel like I never found out, like we never were able to get back there and still to this day, it's foggy.

• 49:31Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 49:32Speaker 02

  So.

• 49:33Shawn Ryan?

  So did you guys continue on mission after that? Or was that?

• 49:37Speaker 02

  Uh, that was, uh, for a full day. Um, we cleared a bunch of caves, called in, um, you know, about, you know, we, a lot of, uh, you know, close air support, um, to, to knock out some of those caves. And then I believe we went back, regrouped, new mission, and then we went out for a couple of days.

• 50:05Speaker 02

  You know, and same, same, same stuff though. So like my group, we were clearing the valley floor, my platoon and fire team.

• 50:14Speaker 02

  Canes off, Kiwis were watching our backs. Um, we had a lot of support there. We were working with the ANA at the time. Um, did you work with them at all?

• 50:24Shawn Ryan?

  No, we didn't, we didn't work with any of them.

• 50:28Speaker 02

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

• 50:46Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 50:49Shawn Ryan?

  Did you find them to be pretty motivated back then?

• 50:53Speaker 02

  Not, not really. No, we were like, like, we were fucking telling those people what to do and where to go. And, you know, I'm probably chopping up a lot of this story and, you know, guys are out there and listening. If I'm, if I'm messing up some of these like, you know, critical details, it's just because I, I don't fully remember them, you know what I mean? So I'm trying the best I can, what I remember. Um, but I do remember, uh, I do remember we got engaged by like a pillbox almost. Like it was like a, it, we, we came around and kind of were just hanging out in the open. Like it was not, not a good thing to do.

• 51:32Speaker 02

  And, um, there was like a PK or two PKs in this like, you know, in a really nice bunker, elevated.

• 51:45Speaker 02

  And I'm like sitting out in the middle and the ANAs are behind us on this rock, this huge rock and there's a bunch of them, like thirty of them. They engage us, we engage them, but then the the ANA starts engaging them. And this was our, like, our, our, our SOPs were, you guys don't fucking fire when we're in front of you. Like, you're not allowed to, you're not allowed to pull the trigger if we're anywhere near you or in front of you. Like, you're allowed to pull the trigger if you're like, ahead of us and pointing in that direction. That is it. Well, these guys, they lost their mind because we're, we're, we're taking contact. They start shooting over our heads

• 52:26Speaker 02

  at this bunker. And like, me and like a few other guys were like caught in the middle of it and there's like nothing for us to do. Oh, shit. We're like, we're like, fuck, you know? Um, we're going, we got these idiots behind us that are literally, and we're watching them. And we're out in the open trying to figure out where the fire is coming from, where can we, you know, where can we engage, what can we do? And these guys were watching them behind the rocks and going like this.

• 52:52Speaker 02

  Oh, man. Right? So I'm screaming at them to like, seize fire. Um, trying to figure out how to get the, the, the, the two guys that are shooting at us, the PKs, you know, the Afghans are behind us shooting over our head, God knows where these bullets are going. You know, it was again, just my fucking hair was just like, standing up going. What was it, like, an old Russian bunker or something? Um.

• 53:18Speaker 02

  I don't know if it was a Russian bunker or makeshift bunker, but it was like, it was beautiful, right? It was like, perfect, that you come around the corner, patrolling, and they're like sitting right there. And you couldn't see them. All you could see is the, um, the muzzle flash. Yeah. And the smoke. Um, and so, yeah, I mean, it was, wow, what a wild initial, like, introduction to, like, hey, this is war. Yeah, no shit. This is what it's like. It was great to talk about afterwards, love it, right? Because. It's already done.

• 53:48Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 53:49Speaker 02

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

• 53:51Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 53:52Speaker 02

  You know, definitely a little scary.

• 53:54Shawn Ryan?

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

• 54:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:01Shawn Ryan?

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

• 54:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:08Shawn Ryan?

  But what kind of, did you guys find anything in the caves or were you finding a lot of?

• 54:12Speaker 02

  No, we just blew all the caves. Like, so we didn't even, if there was a cave, we just called in, um, you know, called in some, some smart bombs to, to, to level them. We weren't like trying to really look for anything. We, we rolled up on some of their personal stuff because they were, they were sleeping out.

• 54:31Speaker 02

  You know, that was scary too, kind of walking up in their stuff, you know, thinking, are you booby trapped? Like, are they, you know, are they, are they looking at us right now?

• 54:42Shawn Ryan?

  Were they? Did, were they, did they know you guys were?

• 54:45Speaker 02

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

• 55:18Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 55:20Speaker 02

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

• 55:34Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 55:35Speaker 02

  Um, and like I said, that's when I really felt like we were not invincible anymore. That, that's when I, when I knew, like, we gotta be really smart here. We're not, this is not a game. You know, we, we gotta, we gotta really know our shit. We gotta, we gotta tighten it up and, and make good decisions and not be stupid and so, you know? And you want to run so fast, right? Like, you want to get in the fight. And that's when you started realizing when, I think that's when, for most of the guys, when, when, when people started getting shot at. You know, one thing is getting, getting hit, but ju- just getting shot at that. That's um, that's not gonna tickle if it hits you. So maybe you should slow down a little bit

• 56:19Speaker 02

  and you know, do things you know differently. So it's a difference between your training and wartime and that experience that you just till you experience it, it's it's different.

• 56:31Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Yeah. Man, that was eventful. We didn't do anything. We did a couple of like bullshit ops there after we relieved you guys, but not much. And then, and then they kicked everybody out and we went to Iraq and that was a lot more exciting.

• 56:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. But you know how it is. I mean, it's like luck of the, you know, luck or the unluck of flipping a coin, right? I mean, you never know. I mean, you know, all the, you know, all the older guys always say, you know, be careful what you wish for, or people have been in that situation, be careful what you wish for because you know,

• 57:08Speaker 02

  people do, right? You join the teams to go to war, most of us.

• 57:15Speaker 02

  And then, you know, you get stuck in a sticky situation and you realize like, this sucks.

• 57:22Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 57:22Speaker 02

  You know, so, but it's luck, you know. I had a buddy of mine

• 57:29Speaker 02

  who I worked with when I went, became an instructor. And I'll never forget it. And I use it now because I think it's so true.

• 57:39Speaker 02

  You, you, you have to earn the right to go to war. Like you don't, you, you're not entitled to go just because you, you signed up and you put the uniform on and you know, you checked a box or whatever like, that's a, he said, he said, that's, that's what he said. He said, going to war is a privilege. Right? It's a, it's a privilege to be there. You know, you gotta work your ass off to get there. And so some people, you know, complaining that they, you know,

• 58:07Speaker 02

  They weren't, you know, they were deployed to a certain area, they're doing PSD work or whatever, and they weren't getting to fight, but I'll never forget when he said that and I, and I tend to agree with him and I, I just, I like that, like, yeah, it was a real privilege to go to war. I look him back now, like, I don't, I don't ever take that for granted, just because I signed up and got through BUDs and, you know, now I should go to war, but like, no, we, we had to earn that shit.

• 58:31Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 58:32Speaker 02

  You know, we had to earn it. Yeah.

• 58:35Shawn Ryan?

  So you wrapped up that deployment, come back home, what happened?

• 58:40Speaker 02

  Come back home, um, you know, it was, uh, it was a nice homecoming, you know, because it was a really rough, you know, beginning of 2005, you know, um, or say summer of 2005.

• 58:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, when we got back, um, Amber, my wife, threw a big ass party. Um, she was happy to have us back, you know, um, she bought me a kegerator.

• 59:10Speaker 02

  It was great, you know, had, had everyone over and, and, um, you know, celebrated that we came back. But, you know, we're still, you know, humbled that we, you know, we lost a lot of friends.

• 59:24Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 59:25Speaker 02

  On that deployment. And so, um, but that's what we did, right? In the teams, we, we celebrated,

• 59:34Speaker 02

  celebrated loss, celebrated victory. We, we still, you know, we drank hard.

• 59:38Shawn Ryan?

  Yep. Deal with everything in the exact same way.

• 59:41Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 59:44Shawn Ryan?

  But, yeah, I remember those days. But, uh, so where, where did you go next? Did you continue on with ten, with, uh, Team 10 or?

• 59:53Speaker 02

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

• 1:00:26Speaker 02

  Proper planning prevents piss poor performance. Him and I really focused on getting ourselves ready for for selection. And so we worked out together, we shot together, we did many trips to all the all the CQC trips that other platoons were going to like, you know, we just we wanted to be good. And I would say we were better prepared than anyone like we really, really focused on that for a while after we got back from from, you know, the, you know, oh, five deployment.

• 1:00:59Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:00Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. And then I went, you know, went to went to selection in 2006. I don't know how much, you know, you want to go into that or?

• 1:01:12Shawn Ryan?

  Well, did you find out?

• 1:01:16Shawn Ryan?

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

• 1:01:26Speaker 02

  Um, you know, it's funny. Oh, man, what I have trouble with. We almost froze to death like on towards the end, like we we were doing like winter warfare or we're doing like mobility in elevation change. And I remember like taking off in in like a T shirt and like, like, three hours later, like a couple of guys were like, hey, make sure make sure Marcus doesn't freeze to death because he's like talking gibberish and he can't tie his shoes like I just I didn't have that experience of being in that environment. Like I just never did it before. And it was kind of funny because, yeah, I was fucked. Like, you know, I thought I had it and whether it like

• 1:02:08Speaker 02

  got cold, it snowed. And thank God I had some really good people around me that took care of me. That was like the I would say the only like really tough part I had in Green Team or other than that. And, you know,

• 1:02:22Shawn Ryan?

  So you were very well prepared.

• 1:02:23Speaker 02

  I was prepared, you know, I, I, I wanted to be there, you know, and, um, I, I, you know, I did, I did real well, you know, I did, I did very well and I, I, that's all I cared about. Like, nothing mattered in the world, ever, you know, that, that was it. And I tell people, though, I really struggled shooting a, um, like a long gun, like, uh, not a long gun, but, uh, you know, a, you know, M4, which we were going through training with, or, I'm trying to think, I think we had, we may have had four sixteens at the time, HK. I know we got them, but, um, you, you get rated on your, um, every day, it's, it's like wide open, it's very transparent, which I love. Um, you know, it's not anymore about how tough

• 1:03:08Speaker 02

  you are, it's like how good you are. So you would get ranked in your shooting, your, your time and stuff. And I remember initially on the, the HK, like, I think I was, after the first couple of days, maybe, or the first week, I forgot what it was, I was like dead last in, in, in my scoring.

• 1:03:27Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:03:28Speaker 02

  Of the whole class, like, and there's some people there, like, you know, you, you lose fifty percent of the class. But I was first in the pistol. So like, the pistol, I don't, for some reason, when I came, I never shot a weapon, by the way. I grew up playing ball. I didn't even know fucking, how to turn a wrench before I got in the teams. I grew up in Long Island, like, you know, lifeguarding, playing ball and whatever else. Um, wearing tight shirts and, and, you know, gold chains.

• 1:03:56Speaker 02

  Jersey Shore, right? Um, no, so like, I, I never shot. Um, but for me, a pistol, it was completely natural. Um, I was a very good pistol shot. Uh, matter of fact, in my first platoon, uh, like, I think, I, well, I learned, you learn how to shoot a pistol in BUDs, but like, how much? Not, not a whole lot. But we go to our CQC block of training, and I remember like, I remember beating some of the instructors in like, in like, uh, metal mania and some of the other stuff. And like, who the fuck is this new guy? I was the only new guy in my first platoon too, which was this whole nother story. Uh, but I remember beating some of the instructors that had been in the teams for like 10 or 12 years. Like, hey, guys, I don't know, this, the pistol thing comes natural to me.

• 1:04:41Speaker 02

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

• 1:05:22Speaker 02

  But once I learn, I'm a very good learner, like I shoot past a lot of people, you know, because like I got it now. But getting there sometimes takes me a while and that's how it was with the rifle, man. It was like, I'm like, what am I doing wrong with this thing? Like, can't hit shit, you know? But then, you know, and then I wound up being okay, you know, I, I, an average, um, shooter with that.

• 1:05:44Shawn Ryan?

  How many guys did you start training with?

• 1:05:46Speaker 02

  Um.

• 1:05:49Shawn Ryan?

  Roughly?

• 1:05:49Speaker 02

  Eighty?

• 1:05:50Shawn Ryan?

  Eighty?

• 1:05:50Speaker 02

  Seventy, seventy or eighty, yeah. And we'll lose about half.

• 1:05:53Shawn Ryan?

  You lost, you lost half?

• 1:05:55Speaker 02

  Great guys too, you know?

• 1:05:56Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:57Speaker 02

  Um, just for whatever reasons, you know, unprepared or maybe, you know, safety issues. Um, maybe some personality issues. But this is great, you know, you think, you know, we were, we were super aggressive, but I feel like also very reserved too. You didn't really have to, there's no reason to have a,

• 1:06:20Speaker 02

  an ego, even though there's a lot of ego.

• 1:06:22Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:06:23Speaker 02

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

• 1:06:51Shawn Ryan?

  So you wrap up training, you make it, you go over to dev group. For those of you that don't know, dev group is SEAL Team Six, which is the most elite SEAL Team on the planet.

• 1:07:04Speaker 02

  I'm glad you said it, because, you know, I still am uncomfortable saying those words, but like, I get it, you know, I get it. You know, the first time I started using that word more is when I separated from the teams in 2013. My first real, like, business mentor and, you know, friend, he was a Royal Marine investment banker for 30 years. And he was cleaning up my resume. And he goes, Marcus, he's like, what the is a dev group? I'm like, what do you mean? He's like, that's where it worked. He's like, yeah. He goes, if you went to Harvard, would you put that in your resume? I'm like, duh. He goes, okay.

• 1:07:48Speaker 02

  He's like, how am I supposed to get you a job? When you kind of went to the Harvard of what you did in your military career, but you don't put it on your resume? I'm like, that's a good point, Damian. He's, okay, well, like, I need to clean this up for you and just like, okay? I'm like, yeah, that's fine. So that's kind of how I kind of understood it where here I am trying to compete with everybody in the private sector now, military guys and whatever. And he said, hey, man, you gotta, you gotta like, put something out there to try to separate yourself from others.

• 1:08:28Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:29Speaker 02

  And if you didn't go to Harvard and you've never done this before, like, how am I supposed to get you a job?

• 1:08:35Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:36Speaker 02

  You know, and that's, that's kind of how that started. So I get it.

• 1:08:41Speaker 02

  You know, it's, it's what I did and um I, I, you know, I don't love talking about it, but I understand. You know, if I don't give, you know, tactics away, I don't talk about friends that have been there or still there.

• 1:08:58Speaker 02

  You know, really, I try to, I try to do my best job of not beating my chest and um. Not breaking the code, you know, in a way, but I feel like, you know, if I could talk about what I did in my prior life, you know, that helps others. And what we're doing here is just tell my story, then I, you know, I, I'm good with that.

• 1:09:21Shawn Ryan?

  It's just humility, you know, but you, you do, and I, I, you know, the code is, you know, you don't talk about it or you don't, but you do it very tastefully. And um, you know, you're definitely not a chest pounder. And I knew if I didn't say that, you sure as hell weren't going to and.

• 1:09:39Speaker 02

  I despise, I despise those types.

• 1:09:43Speaker 02

  So. As you do, so.

• 1:09:44Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, but so what did it feel like getting over there finally?

• 1:09:49Speaker 02

  No, it was, it was good. I was, you know, super excited, um, ready to work with, you know, good people. Not, not that I didn't work with good people. I worked with fucking incredible people. Amazing people. Um, it was just different, you know, it was just, it was the next chapter, right? And, and uh, very busy, right? From two thousand and six to ten, it was just, it was fucking busy. Um, and, and uh, but it was awesome.

• 1:10:12Shawn Ryan?

  So you're there for four years?

• 1:10:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was there four years.

• 1:10:15Shawn Ryan?

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

• 1:10:18Speaker 02

  Um.

• 1:10:22Speaker 02

  Trying to see what I can say. I mean, we were deploying, uh, I'd say.

• 1:10:28Speaker 02

  You know, multiple times throughout the year. And, you know, stay overseas anywhere from, you know, three to nine months. And. You went out as much as you can fucking physically go out.

• 1:10:44Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:44Speaker 02

  I mean, it was, yeah, it was, it was so busy, um.

• 1:10:49Speaker 02

  You know, the target deck, every night, there's someone bad that you can go after. You know, we shared a lot of, you know, we shared a lot of targets with, you know, other units, um, you know, Rangers and any unit guys and SF and it was just, it was busy. And so, but that was fun, right? Like, that's 100% why we're there. Um, I remember the first night I went out.

• 1:11:16Speaker 02

  I was, uh, I was on point and I called myself a new guy and I just got out of training and someone threw, well, what I thought were fucking, you know, someone was engaging someone really rapidly. And what I didn't realize is someone just threw like a nine banger.

• 1:11:35Speaker 02

  And I'm like, holy shit, is this what it's like? It was like literally the very first night we went out. Um, you know, that was again, that was another wake up call. Yeah. Like, like dude, you signed up for this and like you're getting, you're getting everything you wanted. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:12:33Speaker 02

  And so, yeah, like I said, it was, it was busy.

• 1:12:37Speaker 02

  It was busy, uh, in. In oh seven, um, we lost, you know, we were talking about one of my best friends, Josh Harris. And, uh, man, he, he tried to cross a river and just, you know, you could Monday morning quarterback it all day, but shit just went sideways. And, uh, you know, we didn't find him for ten, ten and a half hours later.

• 1:13:03Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 1:13:03Speaker 02

  Sun came up and it was terrible, you know, going out like that.

• 1:13:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was just, uh, he was, he was a shocker, man. He was, you know, he was, he was like our, like our four horsemen, like our, our crew of four. He was, he was one of them, you know?

• 1:13:21Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 1:13:22Speaker 02

  And, um, you know, I always say, you know, good things happen from, from, from bad things like that, but we, um, me and a, another, uh, one of my other best buddies, um, I won't mention his name just because he's doing some work. Um, we, you know, we brought his body back to his parents and his family, really, in North Carolina and, uh,

• 1:13:45Speaker 02

  his loss, um, connected us to his family. And so, you know, we lost Josh, but we became best friends with his mom, his dad, his brother, who's like my brother, his sister, his twin sister, who he kept away from team guys on purpose.

• 1:14:05Speaker 02

  Um, she's just amazing, beautiful, just like energetic and happy. And he was like, yeah, you're coming nowhere near these, these guys. Um, and then, you know, aunts and uncles and like, you know, so we lost Josh, but we became like, we, we grew a new family. And, uh, that was pretty awesome. So we hung out with them for a week, um, in, in North Carolina and just kinda celebrated his life, you know?

• 1:14:36Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. I never had the pleasure to meet him, uh, but you know, I've heard, uh, I just, you sound like,

• 1:14:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:44Shawn Ryan?

  A real pleasure to know.

• 1:14:46Speaker 02

  The dude could do nothing wrong. Even if he did something wrong, like he did it so cool. You're like, um, yeah, it doesn't matter. You just, you looked really cool doing it, so.

• 1:14:58Speaker 02

  You know, it was really cool. He was a, I always loved his story because we didn't know a whole lot about his history prior. Just like a lot of guys, you know, this guy's come from all different walks of life. He was an art major and he has, he has his masters in architecture and went over to Prague. And I just thought it was fascinating. We never saw really any of his work, really, till after he passed. And I can't even tell you the amount of insane work that he has all over. It's incredible. He was so creative, so creative and uh.

• 1:15:32Shawn Ryan?

  What was it, like paintings or?

• 1:15:33Speaker 02

  Everything, paintings, sculptures, he did it all.

• 1:15:37Shawn Ryan?

  Like no shit, like he's really talented?

• 1:15:39Speaker 02

  Super talented. Um, I'm sure that's why we were, we were friends because you're like, I really like this guy because he'd give a shit about conforming to, you know, jeans, sandals, black t-shirt.

• 1:15:54Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:56Speaker 02

  G-Shock watch, you know what I mean? Right? And so, um, he just had a way about him. And when you, when you, when you went in his room at his house, like he was a Renaissance man. So he had like Catcher in the Rye. And um, you know, To Kill a Mockingbird and um, oh gosh, what are all the others? Uh, Lonesome Dove and like, he just had, he had all the classics in his room. And like, he was just that, you know, type of individual. Um, I thought it was just so cool.

• 1:16:30Shawn Ryan?

  Sounds like a deep thinker.

• 1:16:31Speaker 02

  A total deep thinker. Yeah. Until you, you know, until you're walking down the hallway with your water bottle and you walk by you and you'd smack it out of your hand. Just because.

• 1:16:44Shawn Ryan?

  So when you got over to Dev Group, what would you say some of the major differences are between, you know, Dev Group? And you know, the rest of the SEAL teams?

• 1:16:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. Um, you know, one, experience. Um, so, you know, everyone over there is older, right? You can't go over there unless you've proven yourself in the teams. And so, you know, you got, you have to be good in the teams, but you're young. And then if you prove yourself there, you get to go over there and you get to learn from guys that have been around for 10 or 15 or 20 years. And so. Those are the guys with like the who looked like they were six foot four and two hundred and fifty pounds with beards and muscles, right? You know, because they're older and mature and and the mission was a little bit more focused and so got really good. Really, really good at a few things.

• 1:17:37Speaker 02

  You know, you can shoot every day.

• 1:17:41Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:41Speaker 02

  Like, I remember.

• 1:17:45Speaker 02

  I remember making a making a stink when we're at the teams that I didn't even see my. I didn't even see my weapons for like over six months, didn't even touch them.

• 1:17:58Speaker 02

  You know?

• 1:18:00Speaker 02

  I don't know. I mean, how do you become a good shot if you don't?

• 1:18:03Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:04Speaker 02

  You know? So you got, I mean, you know, you got you got the ranges, use them, you know, you can shoot shoot every day, shoot all different types of guns. You know, nobody told you what to do is more kind of a big boy program. You want to take out MP seven one night, go ahead. You want to take out.

• 1:18:22Speaker 02

  You know, a fucking mark twelve, go ahead. Four sixteen, four seventeen, doesn't matter, you know, it's like it's up to you what you think you needed that night.

• 1:18:33Speaker 02

  So that that that was, you know, that was a big difference, you know, get treated like an adult. Until you didn't act like an adult and then you got treated like a kid again.

• 1:18:43Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:45Speaker 02

  And, you know, more resources, more money, and so, you know, better.

• 1:18:53Speaker 02

  I guess access to training if you needed it.

• 1:18:58Shawn Ryan?

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

• 1:19:08Speaker 02

  I think you're always competing, but I think it depends. I mean, things change all the time. When I worked there, like, we seemed to have everything we needed. Right? We always had AC one thirty gunship, always had some fast movers that we could, we can call.

• 1:19:31Speaker 02

  You know, always had a good supporting element, whether like, you know, Ranger blocking positions that, you know, were just, you know, that you needed, you know, that, that kind of, you know, protected our backs when we did stuff. And so,

• 1:19:46Speaker 02

  yeah, I, but, but I still think, you know, I think you always had to compete. I don't know if I saw it at my level. Um, but probably as you go up, some of the leadership definitely were probably in, in the scrum, fighting for, you know, work and, you know, but again, times are different. So if you had, if we were, if we had an AO that we were working for a certain amount of time, like that was it. That was our AO. We can go out whenever we want. We can do whatever we want. Um, maybe if we went to another AO, we'd have to de-conflict with that battlespace owner, whoever that was.

• 1:20:19Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:20Speaker 02

  Um, you know, we used to do stuff in Iraq. We would have to ask the Marines for permission to come into their area that they just, they've just been building a relationship for like the last year. Um, and then we'd come in and just fuck it all up by like, you know, you know, blowing every car up, every house, killing a bunch of people and then, uh, and saying, hey, you guys deal with it. We're out. We're gonna go hit the next target in somebody else's AO.

• 1:20:48Speaker 02

  You know, but, but again, like, there's a specific job and a specific mission that we did and, and we did that. And so, like, we were allowed to do that because we were going after certain really bad, you know, um, cell leaders.

• 1:21:02Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:03Speaker 02

  And so, there was no, there was no pussyfooting around that stuff.

• 1:21:08Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:09Speaker 02

  Um, yeah. And, and so then we'd say, you know, we'd say sorry and pay some money and, and move on.

• 1:21:16Shawn Ryan?

  So you spent what sounds like about four years over there?

• 1:21:18Speaker 02

  Four years there. Um, yeah, four years there. And, you know, I'd say by, You know, when Josh passed and we lost, you know, two other really fucking amazing individuals on that deployment. You know, it just, the tide started turning at that time. It just, I'd say personally, you know, it just, um, I think I, I saw my first psychologist when I got back from that deployment. I was just like, I needed somebody to talk to. Um, like really talk to, say, dude, what the fuck is going on? Like, I'm, I'm not like I used to be. Like, I used to be Superman and courageous and,

• 1:22:02Speaker 02

  and there's like something going on, you know, I'm, I'm depressed, I'm not.

• 1:22:09Speaker 02

  This is not the same like it used to be. Like, this used to be not a job. And now it's becoming a job.

• 1:22:15Shawn Ryan?

  How, how long were you there before maybe you started feeling?

• 1:22:18Speaker 02

  Just like, probably, I was like,

• 1:22:22Speaker 02

  end of third year, maybe.

• 1:22:26Shawn Ryan?

  That's pretty fast.

• 1:22:28Speaker 02

  It was quick. I mean, I envy, you know, I envy the guys that are still there. Um, you know, my roommate, my bud's roommate's still there, best friend of mine. You know, I envy that guys can keep going. Um, I love that, you know? Um, I joke with people, I was like, yeah, and I quit at thirteen years.

• 1:22:50Speaker 02

  But, you know, I don't know, man, my body was not good.

• 1:22:55Speaker 02

  My back is all fucked up.

• 1:23:00Speaker 02

  And it was just time, like, I was not, my kids, the last two deployments, when this tide started turning a little bit, they were hysterical crying when I got out of the car to leave, like, bawling, and so was Amber.

• 1:23:16Speaker 02

  You know, and I just thought, I said, you know, I, I don't, I'm not sure I can do this much more. Like, it's weighing, it's like, really started weighing on me, like, really bad mentally, you know, that.

• 1:23:30Speaker 02

  My kids are now being affected too. And they know what I'm doing. Before they didn't, they were too young, but you know, they're starting to get affected by me deploying.

• 1:23:41Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:41Speaker 02

  So you know, a couple of that, a couple, you know, the job, which I loved, of course.

• 1:23:50Speaker 02

  And I was just like trying to figure out, like what's going on, what's next?

• 1:23:57Speaker 02

  Do I do this forever? And

• 1:24:02Speaker 02

  I'm trying to think of like what the real turning point was. Well, the CEO asked me to go to, um, go to OCS. Oh. And I was just like not in a good place. It was like, I think that's seven combat deployment and I was just, or before that was B six. And then

• 1:24:23Speaker 02

  I thought, I don't know, is that a good idea? Is it not a good idea? I think if I stay in, of course it's a great idea, but I'm, you know, I'm not, I don't know what's going on right now. So I decided to go to OCS.

• 1:24:37Shawn Ryan?

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

• 1:24:42Speaker 02

  Right. And again, I, I just, I didn't know, you know, I didn't know what was going on at that time. I was just like, I was a bit lost, really starting to get lost. And I went and I remember,

• 1:24:59Speaker 02

  I remember calling my best friend up, you know, in the teams and saying, hey, like, I, I can't go. Like I can't get on this flight. Like I'm, I'm not, I'm not in a good place, you know? Uh, we just got, I just got off, um, our last deployment. And he's like, you gotta go.

• 1:25:20Speaker 02

  I said, yeah, but I said, man, I'm like, I'm not good. You know, like, I it's not gonna, it's not gonna be good. Like, I'm not good.

• 1:25:32Speaker 02

  And I don't, I'm not sure if you understood that. And I don't know if I understood it.

• 1:25:38Speaker 02

  So funny story. So I show up. Of course, got all these fucking ribbons and medals, all this crazy shit. And you show up to OCS with like, kids out of college. Like, it's the stupidest thing for team guys to go to be in the same place as them. Like, that that's dumb. But there is a way around that. I found out afterwards. So I show up. You know, like, I don't want to be there. I had fucking pounding headaches at that time. So like, really bad headaches. And you couldn't,

• 1:26:11Speaker 02

  you couldn't have anything. It was like going to boot camp. So, like, I couldn't just go take ibuprofen because the only thing that works for my headaches is 800 milligram ibuprofen. Not 200, not 400, 800. Not Tylenol. Like, I have to take at minimum 800. Couldn't get that, right? So here I am now. It's like my first day out, I'm, I have a pounding migraine, started getting migraine. I started getting migraines around that time, right before that. And I'm like, hey, I can't function right now. Like, I'm fucking, like, my head is screaming. And they're like, well, you know, you put in a, here, fill this shit out. We'll get you some, we'll get you something like next four to six hours. I'm like, oh, gosh, okay. So then,

• 1:26:56Speaker 02

  we go in our rooms, we get our rooms, whatever, and they make us sit on the floor, not in a chair, on the floor, and start reading the, was it the 11 general orders of the century? Is that?

• 1:27:09Shawn Ryan?

  Are you serious?

• 1:27:10Speaker 02

  Yeah. And so first off, like, my lower back is like, just crushed. And I I'm trying to sit on the floor. I'm like, hey, can I, like, get a, can I sit in a chair? Or can I lean up against the wall? Like, no, you know, type of thing. So here I am on the floor. I got fucking migraine headache. My back is killing me. I cannot sit still. Can't read these fucking general orders of the century. And I remember literally taking the book, flinging it across the room. I'm like, okay. Who's in charge here? It was looking at me like, who the fuck is this guy like? Like, no, I need to speak to who's in charge. Some lieutenant, whatever. And once I'm like, yeah, so I was like, I'm gonna go back to the last command I was at.

• 1:27:56Speaker 02

  And they're like, oh, we should talk about this. So.

• 1:28:01Speaker 02

  We start talking and he goes, you know. Most people, we have to keep them here for like 12 to 14 weeks. I'm like, yeah, but I was like, I don't need to do that. Like, I need to like, that's do that for like the college kid. Who is just entering the military. Like, I've been in for 10 years. I've been, I've had seven combat deployments. Like, I don't need to be here. Like, I just need, I need to go somewhere. So within two days, they got me out of there, sent me back. And I remember, you know, sitting down amber when I got back to Virginia Beach and going like, like, I need, like, I need a break. You know, like, I'm not, I'm not doing well. And she's like, well, let's, yeah, let's go figure something out. Like.

• 1:28:41Speaker 02

  Why don't we go out to California, become an instructor, you know, we'll figure out what's up. We'll try to reconnect. Be good for the kids. And that's what kind of started me, you know, got away from operating and, and I went out. I was a first phase instructor for a year, which I didn't, I didn't love. I was lost there.

• 1:29:00Shawn Ryan?

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

• 1:29:17Shawn Ryan?

  So I just wanna say, you know, it's not quitting, dude. That's just

• 1:29:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I appreciate it.

• 1:29:22Shawn Ryan?

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

• 1:29:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:29:34Shawn Ryan?

  And that leads, you know, I mean, you know where that leads and I know where that leads and, and, and that sucks, you know?

• 1:29:41Speaker 02

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

• 1:29:54Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:55Speaker 02

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

• 1:30:08Shawn Ryan?

  So you move over, you go to San Diego, you become a first phase instructor

• 1:30:11Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:30:12Shawn Ryan?

  To try to get your mind right. And um, that sounds like that is kinda where things really started getting bad.

• 1:30:20Speaker 02

  Things started, things right, right away went sideways. I didn't, um, I didn't mix well. I don't wanna say I didn't mix well with the first phase instructors, but I was just angry. I got, I was fucking pissed off. Why am I here? Should be back on the east coast with my buddies. Should still be operating. You know, um, finally someone was like, dude, you need to go, go see the west coast, like, dive medical officer. You, you should. You're having like some, these like, these symptoms that, you know, you should just go see him. So I went to see him. I think he put me on, if I remember right, he put me on the first antidepressant.

• 1:30:55Speaker 02

  And um, and I started seeing him once a week. Um, just, he's like, hey, he's like, what you're experiencing is,

• 1:31:05Speaker 02

  he goes, not that it's normal, but he's like, he goes, I'm starting to see this a little bit more than I'd like to.

• 1:31:13Shawn Ryan?

  What year is this?

• 1:31:14Speaker 02

  This is two thousand and ten, eleven? Two thousand and ten, maybe.

• 1:31:23Speaker 02

  Eleven, two thousand eleven.

• 1:31:27Speaker 02

  But he ju- he just said that.

• 1:31:31Speaker 02

  Everything I was telling him is exactly what he's experiencing the last, he said, couple of months. So this was like, right when I think guys started, you know, it was very busy from, say, oh, four to ten, or oh, five to ten. And so he started seeing this wave of guys come to him for the same exact issues, right, whatever they were. And now we're finding out what they are, but.

• 1:32:00Speaker 02

  And I don't think he knew, he's called a SEAL syndrome.

• 1:32:04Speaker 02

  Which, which is, which is true, because they, you know, they did that, that, that, um, published a study called Operator Syndrome, so, like, he was, he was on to something, just didn't, or didn't have it then. But that's when all this shit start, started happening, you know, and, um, I got sent to Niko Clinic. Uh, it's the brain center that's connected to Bethesda, do you know it at all, or?

• 1:32:31Shawn Ryan?

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

• 1:32:34Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:32:37Speaker 02

  And bear with me, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna try to remember all this, Amber's gonna do a much better job of the timelines. But,

• 1:32:45Speaker 02

  you know, there, you're hoping to get better, but really, they're just doing a lot of testing. And it was cool, because they found out, like, you know, I had arthritis both my hips, and like, my shoulders were torn, and,

• 1:32:57Speaker 02

  you know, a bunch of other, bunch of other things, found out I had some,

• 1:33:03Speaker 02

  some, I don't know what you call them, like, I don't know, dead spots on the brain, but like, some, some minor, like, TBIs?

• 1:33:12Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:12Speaker 02

  Subconcussion blows, right, parts of the brain that didn't like, blood flow and things like that.

• 1:33:18Speaker 02

  So I got put on some more drugs there. Uh, I think maybe Wellbutrin, I think something for nightmares. I had really bad nightmares, like,

• 1:33:30Speaker 02

  a lot of killing nightmares, so very, like, violent, you know, knife and guns and, you know, the fucking magazine pops out, and like, weapon breaks, and like, you forget my combat shoes, and you're fighting, like, you know, thirty guys, hand to hand, like, that was a very common dream I had. Often, it was shitty. And Amber, you know, she said I used to wake up like, she's like, like this loud, like whimpering and fucking, you know, she says it was just odd.

• 1:34:01Speaker 02

  So I got put on, it was like a anti, like nightmare drug. I haven't written down somewhere, I don't know the name of it. So that with some SSRIs, antidepressants. I think, I'm not sure if it was there, I think I got put on a focus medication. Cause I was having trouble just like focusing on anything, like, like, yeah. It was a provigil, individual. And then Ambien, of course, to go to sleep. So it was just like started, I started that whole.

• 1:34:31Shawn Ryan?

  So you just listed off like five or six pills, just like that?

• 1:34:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was like, that was the SOP. That was a concoction of, of drugs. And so, um, I stayed on those for seven years.

• 1:34:46Speaker 02

  And, uh, yeah, I just, it just, it just declined after that, you know? It, um, I went from there over to SQT and I, um, it was great. Got, got to work with really close friends there. And, um, you know, I thought I was fine, but you know, I wasn't, I was, I was just mentally like, just, I was checked out.

• 1:35:12Shawn Ryan?

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

• 1:35:17Speaker 02

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

• 1:35:36Shawn Ryan?

  How many bottles a night?

• 1:35:39Speaker 02

  I mean, I probably go through at least half a bottle a night.

• 1:35:47Speaker 02

  Always, you know, bourbon, brown, brown water. But it didn't matter, I'd drink anything.

• 1:35:55Speaker 02

  But really just didn't have a connection with the kids, didn't have a connection, you know, with Amber. Just a lot of fighting.

• 1:36:04Speaker 02

  Had a friend come over once, late night, I had. I got real drunk, I had like, had my gun out and, you know, I was just like. Ranting about stupid stuff, you know. Stuff that happened in the past and, you know, he was really concerned because like, I was drunk. And it was loaded and.

• 1:36:27Shawn Ryan?

  And Ambien?

• 1:36:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, Ambien, we used to take Ambien and then, and then start drinking. That was like.

• 1:36:36Speaker 02

  And, you know, that wasn't good, of course. You know, so it just. Just too many things that were just happening that were just not, not normal.

• 1:36:47Shawn Ryan?

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

• 1:36:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I feel like I was a ghost at work.

• 1:37:00Speaker 02

  You know, I. I mean, I sort of, I mean, I ran the cell, but like, the guys ran the cell. You know?

• 1:37:10Speaker 02

  You know, I was trying, I was, you know, I decided to go to school at that time too, I was like, why not? I mean, it's just like. Just one thing after the other, or just constantly like. For like, just put shit in the way that.

• 1:37:22Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:22Speaker 02

  Didn't make sense at the time, you know, how would just like work on you for a while?

• 1:37:26Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:26Speaker 02

  You know?

• 1:37:29Speaker 02

  You know, I got through that, but like, I look back and like, I really didn't get through it, like. Barely got through it. I think, you know, it was, uh, it was just, it was just time to leave. You know, it was time to leave and I tried to, um. You know, I was, I went in to the doctor to separate. And the psychologist, he said, hey, man. He's like, I can't let you leave like this. I'm like, what are you talking about? He said, like, you got a lot of shit going on right now. Like, your, your medical package is huge. Like, your, uh, my medical records were big. Um, you know, I had, I was on a bunch of medications. Was clearly not in a good place.

• 1:38:13Speaker 02

  Um, you know, he could tell I was like running, basically, like just running, hide, trying to run. Hide. And he's like, I'm not letting you get out. He's like, I want, um, I wanna, you know, I wanna look at this for a little while. I was like, okay. So I stayed in, um, for probably an extra eight months. And what he did at that time was he pushed for me to get med board. Because he said, like, you're, you're gonna be really bad when you leave. Like, you're gonna have none of this support. Yeah. And like, you're gonna fucking spiral. And so he got me med, he got me, he got, basically got like my, my medical stuff together.

• 1:38:57Speaker 02

  Was able to get me med boarded and I got medically, actually medically retired. Which, you know, at the time, I didn't give a fuck. Honestly, like, I was trying to get out as fast as I could. Yeah. I literally tried. I was like, no, I don't want to do that. Like, that doesn't make any sense. Like, I'm, I'm good. You know, now I look back like, holy shit. You know, what if I just would have, like, taken off without, you know, any of that? Yeah. So he really fucking hooked you up? Dude, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's good. Sometimes you should listen to doctors. Yeah.

• 1:39:36Speaker 02

  Um, yeah, so I got out, uh, two thousand thirteen, was medically retired. Um, went to work up in LA. And, you know, it just kept, just from there, you know, from, you know, the last part of the years in the teams, just kinda just kept. Nothing was good. You know, sleeping was terrible, nightmares stayed.

• 1:39:59Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:59Speaker 02

  Headaches were bad.

• 1:40:01Shawn Ryan?

  Um. Just, uh, real quick before, before we move on to.

• 1:40:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:40:06Shawn Ryan?

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

• 1:40:20Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, sure.

• 1:40:21Shawn Ryan?

  Is that why you moved?

• 1:40:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, that's a great, great point. Um, do you want to hear the incident or you want to just hear why?

• 1:40:26Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I want to hear the incident.

• 1:40:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, um, the first, you know, first, I, I didn't want to be there. First off, like I said, I didn't know what I wanted to do. Um, so I was already, I was, I was already angry, uh, super angry. And there was, uh, there was an evolution. And I was out on the beach, I think it was the, I might've been running the evolution, like the evolution chief or safety officer or something. And kept watching the student, you know, but I was like, really, it was just like, I was just locked on to this person, like it didn't matter. And his name was Harris. You know, he had the name tag.

• 1:41:06Speaker 02

  And I just kept watching him and he was like sandbagging everything and it was just, he was just turning up the beach. And guys were running out of the water all like slow, whatever. And he was like one of the slower ones. And I just kinda like walked past the instructors. And I grabbed him and I literally lifted him up off, off his feet. And slammed him onto the hard sand as hard as I could. And I put my knee in his chest like I was gonna like, you know, almost like a, you know, like knee and chest and, and ground a pound. And I just started screaming at him, like grabbed his collar and I was just screaming at him, like fucking cursing at him.

• 1:41:48Speaker 02

  I don't even know what I said, but it was just like, you know, motherfucker, like spit was coming out of my mouth. You know, and I was talking about how he can, how he would, he's degrading the Harris name.

• 1:41:58Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was, uh, that's tough.

• 1:42:06Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:07Speaker 02

  And I remember some of the instructors and then one of the GSs, oh, one of the, I think it was GS, you know, one of my good friends was like, kind of grabbed me. It's like, hey, man, like, the fuck. Like, we were right in front of the flagpole. You know, anybody could have been watching. And here I am slamming a student, um, and then just getting really violent, you know? I don't remember ever seeing that kid again, um, but it was not like, that shit's not supposed to happen.

• 1:42:36Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:36Speaker 02

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

• 1:42:45Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:45Speaker 02

  You know, I just wasn't, obviously, I wasn't right. Um, so I just, I didn't like being there. I didn't like, um, being like a, like a drill sergeant in a way. I wanted to teach tactics. I thought I was better teaching tactics coming from where I came from. And so finally, they got me over to, to, to SQT and I ran the, um, CQC for two years. And that was, like I said, it was great. Got to be around good guys that I really liked, that I worked with, uh, over at a dev group, um, teach some tactics.

• 1:43:18Speaker 02

  But yeah, that's the, I don't think the beach incident is why I went over. You know, looking back, maybe I was so blinded that that's why I got, maybe I got sent over there.

• 1:43:32Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:33Speaker 02

  I don't know. Could be.

• 1:43:34Shawn Ryan?

  Maybe a good possibility.

• 1:43:36Speaker 02

  You know, yeah, it could be, um, could very well be.

• 1:43:40Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:41Speaker 02

  So.

• 1:43:42Shawn Ryan?

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

• 1:43:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:43:51Shawn Ryan?

  And, uh, and the reason I want to cover that a little bit more extensively is because, uh, the amount of explosions that you've been, uh, that you've been, that you've initiated.

• 1:44:02Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:44:03Shawn Ryan?

  I'm sure plays a tremendous part in, in your downward spiral and, and getting into the, uh, the alternative medicine and, and that kind of stuff. So, you know, you said, you know, you were a breacher at 10 and you guys were going out all the time. You did one DA, it sounded like. Uh, but then when you went over to development group.

• 1:44:30Shawn Ryan?

  You know, it got a lot busy.

• 1:44:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was.

• 1:44:32Shawn Ryan?

  First training.

• 1:44:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:44:33Shawn Ryan?

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

• 1:44:46Speaker 02

  I'd say.

• 1:44:49Shawn Ryan?

  We're talking thousands?

• 1:44:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I'd say several hundred to a thousand.

• 1:44:52Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:52Speaker 02

  You know, I'm, I'm trying to be conservative.

• 1:44:54Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:55Speaker 02

  Um, just because of the multiple trips, the training trips, you know, being an RSO, Range Safety Officer, so then, you know, being the safety officer for guys that are, you know, blowing, breaching charges, and then blowing them myself, um, you know, it's definitely a lot.

• 1:45:10Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:11Speaker 02

  Definitely a lot. Um, because we're learning, right? Subconcussive blows, um, are, are actually worse than, you know, concussions, full-on concussions. So, you know, we've, I think we've all had a lot of those. And again, I always tell people, you never know who it's gonna happen to, so people can, yeah.

• 1:45:31Shawn Ryan?

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

• 1:45:34Speaker 02

  Sub, subconcussive blows?

• 1:45:36Shawn Ryan?

  I did not know that.

• 1:45:37Speaker 02

  So, sub, yeah, and, and again, I, I hope I'm getting this right, but I'm, I'm almost positive that the subconcussive, the repeated subconcussive blows is what are causing, you know, what is going on right now with special operations community and why guys are having this quote-unquote operator syndrome, what I obviously was experiencing, is the constant, um, you know, the, the, um, the, you know, charge goes off, blast wave goes through you, charge goes off, blast wave goes through you, minor subconcussive

• 1:46:16Speaker 02

  blows, maybe not, you're not fully knocked out, um, but your bell is rung, or you, you know, you eat that charge, you feel it, um, just like in football, when you get your, your bell rung, those are, does an impact, these are, um, you know, blast.

• 1:46:33Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:34Speaker 02

  A little bit different, but, um, but similar, what they're, you know, what the end result is at, at the end, at the end game, which you're hoping not to get, which is CTE. Right?

• 1:46:44Shawn Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:46:44Speaker 02

  Um, but all these mild TBIs are, you know, they're adding up. You know, the body keeps score. I think there's a book on the body keeps score.

• 1:46:52Shawn Ryan?

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

• 1:46:59Speaker 02

  Sure, sure, sure. Um, so standard target, um, say I was carrying, you know, multiple breaching charges from, you know, tiny little, little explosives that could just blow a small lock to, you know, heavy, uh,

• 1:47:19Speaker 02

  you know,

• 1:47:21Speaker 02

  I'd say he, you know, heavy, heavy demolition charges that, you know, can blow a, um, uh, uh, reinforced, you know, steel like door on a compound and blow that thing and like cut it in half.

• 1:47:38Shawn Ryan?

  Well, how much or is it C four?

• 1:47:40Speaker 02

  Uh, s- s- I don't know if I want to get into the, the, uh,

• 1:47:46Shawn Ryan?

  Or maybe a haversack? Would be comparable.

• 1:47:50Speaker 02

  Haversack, haversack, you're going to go through a wall. So, you know, if we blew, if we blew a haversack, we, you know, blown through a wall. Um, so I, I wish I had the numbers or I remember the pounds, you know, poundage, but, you know, say we thought, say we thought we blow a pound charge or half a pound, um, on some of these door, on some of these like, you know, big steel gates. And we were doing that every night.

• 1:48:14Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:14Speaker 02

  And then, again, if I go back to training, we may be doing that all week, like hundreds of times over.

• 1:48:23Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:23Speaker 02

  Right? And in training, we'd always make sure we got the, the standoff that we needed. Um, there's minimum safe distance.

• 1:48:33Speaker 02

  In combat.

• 1:48:35Speaker 02

  We didn't, there was no, there was no range safety officer.

• 1:48:38Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:38Speaker 02

  You know, like you are breacher, like you're in charge of making sure everybody gets back. Everybody's out of the way. Nobody's looking at the charge. If you look at the charge, you could eat, you know, something. Bolt, a nut, you know, something that'll basically go through you.

• 1:48:55Speaker 02

  But really, all we cared about is not seeing the charge. So as long as we could not see it. Like, we felt like a lot of times we were good. So we would be well inside mean safe distance as long as we're out of the blast zone.

• 1:49:07Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:07Speaker 02

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

• 1:49:15Shawn Ryan?

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

• 1:49:17Speaker 02

  Uh, it's, it's all figured off. It's, it's ma, it's ma, it's math, it's easy math. Like, so whatever the charge was, again, this is, this is gonna be wrong math. But if it's a pound charge, say I need to be seventeen feet. Again, those numbers are off. But, um, so instead of seventeen feet, I'm at like eight.

• 1:49:35Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:35Speaker 02

  Right, but there's a reason for that mean minimum safe distance. Because there was, you know, really smart guys, engineers years ago, that calculated all this and said, "By the way, if you're in this distance, like, you're probably gonna have brain damage."

• 1:49:47Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:47Speaker 02

  Right, so.

• 1:49:49Shawn Ryan?

  We won't quote you on the minimum safe.

• 1:49:51Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:49:51Shawn Ryan?

  Safe distance.

• 1:49:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't, I don't have, I don't know the numbers. Like I said, I've been, I've been out of the game for a while, but.

• 1:49:55Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:55Speaker 02

  You know, we knew them at the ti, knew them at the time, of course. And you could just see what your standoff is. But, but many times we were within, excuse me, inside that mean safe distance. So that blast wave, it is really fucking you up. It, it is, it is jacking you up. And there's sometimes, I've had buddies tell me that, "Hey, man, you remember that charge you set off? Remember, you know, multiple times that where we were in an enclosed area? So like corners and walls? And now that concussive blow.

• 1:50:25Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:25Speaker 02

  Is just exasperated.

• 1:50:27Shawn Ryan?

  It's amplified.

• 1:50:28Speaker 02

  Two times, three times, who knows? Right?

• 1:50:31Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:33Speaker 02

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

• 1:51:16Speaker 02

  Why our hormone, you know, why our testosterone is down below three hundred now when we get back from deployment? Um, why guys can't sleep? Um, why guys are gaining weight? Why guys are drinking so hard? Why they're depressed? Why they have anxiety? You know, doctors want to throw, you know, the military wants to throw this PTSD diagnosis, but like.

• 1:51:43Speaker 02

  I don't even know what PTSD is, you know, if it's depression, anxiety, okay, yeah, I had PTSD. But it's, it's, it's a brain thing. This is, this is definitely a brain thing. We, we, we, me, you, maybe, maybe you're not feeling it. We have traumatic brain injury, mild traumatic brain injury. That may not be, that may not be seen by other people, but it's affecting us on a regular basis. Yeah. You know, and some days we feel good and some days we don't.

• 1:52:14Speaker 02

  But again, looking back at the, the history of events, it's obvious what happened, like I most likely started seeing some of those things early. You know, and then it just slowly, slowly declined. Maybe it took, you know, maybe it took a while. I don't.

• 1:52:31Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. I just want to go through that because I want, you know, I just want people to be able to visualize exactly how close you are, especially as a breacher.

• 1:52:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:52:43Shawn Ryan?

  Done, you know, give or take a thousand, you know what I mean?

• 1:52:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:52:47Shawn Ryan?

  It's.

• 1:52:48Speaker 02

  And again, I, you know, I commend the ones that I did a thousand. What about the guys that are in there for twenty five or thirty years that have done two thousand, three thousand?

• 1:52:59Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:00Speaker 02

  What, what do our brains look like or what, what are they, what are they going to look like? How fast are they going to decline?

• 1:53:08Speaker 02

  You know, explosives happen like, you know, when you see it like it's done. That's how fast they are, right? It's just like boom and you see the concussion, you see the smoke, you know, you, you eat that whole energy.

• 1:53:20Shawn Ryan?

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

• 1:53:30Speaker 02

  Which is awesome, by the way.

• 1:53:31Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, it's fun as shit, right? But you can feel like, um, like a lot of times you'll feel like your sinuses almost feel like they're clearing out your ears if they're clogged, they feel like they've just been drained like.

• 1:53:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. Our master breacher, I felt, you know, terrible for, he, again, he's that guy who had two or three thousand charges and we'd do a trip and he'd, um, you know, he'd, he'd bleed from the nose and the mouth and cough up blood. And I'm like, I don't think that's good. You know, and again, I'm telling you like, I'm, right now, what I'm doing is I'm seeing the bag of gold and I'm telling you it's fucking heavy and I don't want to carry it instead of saying there's a lot of money there and we're going to be rich, right? Like, I loved doing everything I did, like, don't get me wrong, every, you know? But there was just some, you know, I loved all of it, but there was a price that, you know? There's a price at NFL players.

• 1:54:29Speaker 02

  You know, when they stop playing at thirty five, if they're lucky enough to, to get to thirty five, like, they're really, they're jacked up. You know, they're jacked up, but they'll never say they, they wish they never did that.

• 1:54:39Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:40Speaker 02

  Right?

• 1:54:42Shawn Ryan?

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

• 1:54:49Shawn Ryan?

  Transition and where did you work was it Goldman Sachs or Morgan

• 1:54:53Speaker 02

  I started out at Merrill Lynch. Then I got hired by Fortress Investment Group and then.

• 1:55:02Shawn Ryan?

  I'm sure that was interesting, but.

• 1:55:04Speaker 02

  Fucking. In Beverly Hills, are you kidding me?

• 1:55:09Shawn Ryan?

  But we'll talk about that after the break.

• 1:55:53Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Ben, we're back from the break and. You're in the finance industry.

• 1:56:01Speaker 02

  Yes, so we uh. So separated in two thousand thirteen. San Diego, we sold our house, we moved up to Calabasas. Outside of LA. And I went to work for Merrill Lynch on a pretty substantial private bank team. So I started commuting from, you know, Calabasas to downtown Beverly Hills every day. Which is probably, I don't know, thirty to forty minutes in the morning, five AM. Uh, because you have to be there before the market opens on the East Coast.

• 1:56:35Shawn Ryan?

  What were you doing? Were you like a stockbroker or?

• 1:56:37Speaker 02

  No, well. So that industry used to be stockbrokers and and all the good stockbrokers who had good clients, they transitioned into like a financial advisory role. So that stockbroker wind up taking their book of business and just managing those individuals from a financial advisory perspective, meaning they'd help them.

• 1:56:58Speaker 02

  They'd still, you know, brokerage, they made their money off of making trades. But the, the fees for trades went, you know, now it's at zero.

• 1:57:11Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:11Speaker 02

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

• 1:57:37Shawn Ryan?

  So like a CFP?

• 1:57:40Speaker 02

  Uh, CFP was part of the team. So the CFP, they were the portfolio managers. So they actually, um, they actually did the trades. They knew when to do the trades. They, they, they did the, they did the difficult work. My job, uh, they called Rainmaker. I go out and find the money.

• 1:57:58Shawn Ryan?

  Oh.

• 1:57:58Speaker 02

  So it was my job to go out and.

• 1:58:01Shawn Ryan?

  So you're a networker?

• 1:58:02Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:58:03Shawn Ryan?

  So you went from.

• 1:58:06Speaker 02

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

• 1:58:18Shawn Ryan?

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

• 1:58:30Speaker 02

  Yeah. Um, it's probably why I'm not doing it anymore.

• 1:58:37Speaker 02

  No, I mean, I got, you know, I got lucky enough to, to get hired onto a good team. Um, through, you know, through, through my network. Um, you know, I, I wish I had a little bit more mentorship there. I think they expected me to, you know, oh, you're a Navy SEAL. You can, you can just go figure this out.

• 1:58:54Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:55Speaker 02

  And then I did to a point, if I was doing that job now, like, life would be easy. Um, what I know, but I didn't know anything when I got out, right? And so it was very difficult. I mean, I didn't understand that. I, I really had to grind at that probably for. A good three years, maybe three to five to like really kinda turn the engine on. And you know, after eight months, I was just pulling my hair out.

• 1:59:23Speaker 02

  And but you know, I did set up. I set up a few very good meetings, one in particular that they were looking to to bring in about a hundred and eighty million dollars. From from my um. From my network, my connections and the team couldn't close it. But that's what I was there to do. I was there to open doors and it's funny.

• 1:59:47Speaker 02

  A mentor of mine now, who I work with, still says, Marcus, you're a breacher. Even in the private sector, you will always be a breacher. Unless you wanna do something else, but he's like, you're that's what you're really good at. You're really good at networking, you're really good at building relationships with people. You're very transparent, you're honest, and that's why people like you. You're a breacher, you open doors, right? You should continue to open doors in the private sector for that. So I would open the door. And expect, you know, the team behind me to come in and and finish it. Yeah. And so that was that was kind of the job. But I got frustrated. Like I said, I started drinking like super heavy. I was working ridiculous hours, you know. I wasn't seeing the kids, you know, activities.

• 2:00:32Speaker 02

  I wasn't really hanging out with Amber. My time's off, I'd go surfing in Malibu. I mean, this sounds amazing, right? Yeah. Like, it wasn't like I was fucking, life was shitty, right? Like, I was depressed, you know, I was anxious that I wasn't gonna succeed.

• 2:00:50Speaker 02

  And, you know, I was getting frustrated. I got a phone call from a friend, another friend, business mentor. Who asked me to to build a startup with him on the East Coast. And they had raised money that time at Fortress Investment Group. So I got hired into Fortress Investment Group as a vice president, got paid really well. And we built a couple of portfolio companies and I did that for a couple of years and that was a little bit better. Granted, the things we were doing at the time was a little bit early. So like, didn't hit the market yet, so we were, it's one of those things that we just had to. We just had to keep grinding every day, keep the lights on and eventually, you know, it would stick.

• 2:01:35Speaker 02

  But it just got a little, you know, I was commuting, I was doing the, the red eye from LAX to Raleigh Durham.

• 2:01:43Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, wow.

• 2:01:43Speaker 02

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

• 2:01:57Shawn Ryan?

  Well, not to stereotype.

• 2:01:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:01:59Shawn Ryan?

  But generally, when team guys leave the teams, the social skills are not, you know,

• 2:02:06Shawn Ryan?

  quite up to par.

• 2:02:07Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:02:07Shawn Ryan?

  What people are used to.

• 2:02:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:02:08Shawn Ryan?

  I just find it really.

• 2:02:10Speaker 02

  No, it took.

• 2:02:10Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting.

• 2:02:11Speaker 02

  It, it took a while. It took a while. It definitely took a while. Um, I think I had a natural knack for, you know, someone said, Marcus, you don't, yeah, it'd be great to go take some sales classes, but people need sales classes when they don't have that kind of X factor, that it factor, and like, you don't need the sales classes, like, you can just be you, and you'll naturally sell whatever it is. Um, but again, I, I didn't give things enough time to like matriculate, to like, you know, and I'm learning that now, like, you have to, you just gotta put in your time. I feel like I was digging a lot of shallow holes, not just digging one really deep, and just keep going, and keep going, and keep going, and eventually, you know, it catches on. And so the frustration was just through the roof.

• 2:02:56Speaker 02

  Um, I'm like, three years out now, two thousand sixteen, you know, drinking heavily, getting behind the wheel, not giving a fuck about anything. Um, not really having any friends that I hung out with.

• 2:03:13Speaker 02

  Amber started me at that time, started looking at some brain clinics because like, I was just really like, struggling with everything, like.

• 2:03:21Shawn Ryan?

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

• 2:03:39Speaker 02

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

• 2:03:41Shawn Ryan?

  Getting lost, taking your daughter to volleyball.

• 2:03:46Speaker 02

  Forgetting to pick up the kids from activities, friends would have to pick them up. I'd be too drunk. All of it. Doing simple tasks at the house, you know, putting lights on the trees or simple like problem solving. I just couldn't couldn't figure it out, get super frustrated, throw shit, be impulsive.

• 2:04:10Speaker 02

  You know, we we wind up moving to Dallas for a number of reasons and it didn't get any better.

• 2:04:18Speaker 02

  You know, I, you know, I freaking like choked out the bartender at the country club we belong to in in Dallas and got on top of him and was like slapping him like in the middle of like this, you know. It just, just real stuff that, you know, most private sector folks look at you like, what the fuck is wrong with this person, right? But we, to me, I thought that was just normal.

• 2:04:42Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:42Speaker 02

  You know?

• 2:04:44Shawn Ryan?

  Well, it's normal to

• 2:04:45Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:04:46Shawn Ryan?

  To us.

• 2:04:46Speaker 02

  Right. And, uh, man, I just, I I just wasn't, I just wasn't functioning, you know, I just wasn't doing it. And, um, the kids started getting real distant from me because I was just being, you know, I was being, like you said, I wasn't present, I was angry. Uh, nothing was right, nothing anybody can do was good enough.

• 2:05:08Speaker 02

  You know, I was, Amber and I were just not good, like we were talking about before. You know, the the badgering, the back and forth, condescending conversations. You know, we never did anything for ourselves.

• 2:05:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was, uh, man, it was a, it was a struggle. And and again, the lack of any type of network of of people I wanted to hang out with. And some of the ones that I did hang out with was You know, shallow.

• 2:05:38Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:38Speaker 02

  It was shallow.

• 2:05:42Speaker 02

  So I, I think it was, I was fifteen or sixteen. It was fifteen. It was fourteen that started going to like other brain clinics. So I went to the one. And I went to a second one in Dallas. I went to a third one in Southern California. And I went back there. I was just trying to get answers like what, you know, what's going on? Like, am I supposed to live like this for the rest of my life? You know? And I really wasn't getting any answers. I was just getting like they would change my meds like, oh, you're on bupropion now. Let's put you on Lexapro. Or, you know, Cymbalta, or, you know, you're on ProVigil, let's put you on NewVigil. You know, and, oh, you're taking five milligrams of Adderall, let's put you to ten and go, Ambien's not working, let's do the other one.

• 2:06:27Speaker 02

  And like, it was never like, let's just take you off this and figure out what's wrong. Let's just keep putting Band-Aids on everything and try to figure out. I don't know, just to get you normal. I don't even know what that means.

• 2:06:40Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:40Speaker 02

  Right?

• 2:06:41Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I never went to a brain clinic. I, I had signed up for several of them. And then I, and then I always, just, I don't want to know because there is no cure.

• 2:06:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, that, that's the scary part is when they tell you like, you know, by the way, we, you know, here's, here's a volume of your brain and like, see this part over here or over here, like, it's not, you know, it's not working like it's supposed to. And these are, you got all these, you got all the biomarkers for major depressive disorder, alcoholism.

• 2:07:15Speaker 02

  Bipolar two, uh, got diagnosed with, um, you know, just, it was scary, scary shit.

• 2:07:22Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:22Speaker 02

  Because like, then you start, you know, you start reading more and you start understanding that you're forty years old, thirty-nine, and you're having problems with your brain.

• 2:07:33Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:34Speaker 02

  Um, what's gonna happen when I'm fifty?

• 2:07:39Speaker 02

  So it was really frustrating and I think it even made it worse because I wasn't getting any answers. I just kept getting This is what's wrong with you. This is what we do. Thirty thousand dollars, you know, fifteen thousand dollars. You know, you go there for a couple of weeks. I did the, was it the magnets or I forgot what it was. I think it was called Mert. That's definitely helping some people. I think I think it made me worse. Like I walked out of there. I stayed for twice as long. I mean, I walked out of there just fuck the world. You know, it was, it hurt every time I did it. Like I feel like they did something wrong to me. I mean, I just had rage, you

• 2:08:24Speaker 02

  know, I don't want to talk about some of the physical implications I got into. You know, our son starting to act up a little bit at that time and probably because I wasn't present. And we had so many issues with him and, you know, I had, you know, several occasions where I had to like put him to sleep, literally. Damn. Once at the house, once at the police station. Just, it was just fucking nightmare. Everything, everything happened. There was like nothing was falling into place. Everything was like wrong. You know, my relationship with my wife was wrong. Relationship with

• 2:09:01Speaker 02

  my kids were wrong. My business, business life was wrong. Like nothing was right. And when I say wrong, not wrong, it was just, it was bad. It was just not, nothing was clicking. Everything was, you know, I felt like, like why am I doing this? Like what the fuck is the purpose for all this? Like, you're supposed to be good now. Like, you're not. And why? You know, and I always ask that question is, you know, is it my brain? Is it just transitioning? Am I just depressed that I don't have teams anymore? You know? But if you're just depressed,

• 2:09:44Speaker 02

  you wouldn't have all these other fucking things that are going on, right? Like there's a reason that there's different, I guess, diagnosis. And so.

• 2:09:57Speaker 02

  Um, I think the, the, um, the met, the, the, the mertrain, the, the brain magnets, or whatever they were doing. I think that was like the straw that broke the camel's back. You know, and, and I just, Amber, I'm tired. Like, I, I can't, I can't do this anymore. Like, I'm, like, I don't, I don't want to be here. Like, you know, there's no hope. Nothing's working. You know, life sucks.

• 2:10:24Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:24Speaker 02

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

• 2:10:56Speaker 02

  you know, then, and then everybody wins.

• 2:11:00Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:01Speaker 02

  And, and, and that's how I felt for a while. And Amber was like, honestly, she was like, fuck that. She said, you know, I've never quit on anything, and I'm gonna figure this out.

• 2:11:13Speaker 02

  She didn't tell me that, but that, that's, that was her mindset. And so she just did her, she just, she just dug in, you know, she just started figuring out, all right, what, what, what else can we do here? And, you know, I'll let her tell her side, you know, her story, but in a nutshell, um, there was, there was a seal that went, spent, um, who, who, who was really bad, like, struggling bad. Went to the jungle for a couple of weeks and did, um, multiple sessions of ayahuasca therapy.

• 2:11:54Speaker 02

  Completely changed his life, became an amazing human being. I freaking love him to death. He's like, the coolest person you ever want to hang out with.

• 2:12:04Shawn Ryan?

  Is this who we were talking about last night?

• 2:12:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:12:07Shawn Ryan?

  That's insane.

• 2:12:07Speaker 02

  It's amazing.

• 2:12:09Shawn Ryan?

  To even hear that come out of your mouth is, is insane, but...

• 2:12:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I don't, I don't like, you know, I, I didn't ask him for permission to talk about him, so I, I don't think I should. Um, but...

• 2:12:27Speaker 02

  He owes his life to psychedelic assisted therapy. And his introduction to it was ayahuasca ceremonies down in Peru. Like, you know, where they've literally been doing these for thousands and thousands of years safely. Yeah. He went from being, literally, probably in the worst place ever to the best place ever. And then he had to take that back with him to the States. And he learned Kundalini Yoga while he was down there. And that helped him just continue on the success he's at now. And now he's in like, now he's an amazing individual, helping like everybody.

• 2:13:05Speaker 02

  And so, I guess, in a roundabout way, he had funded another guy to go get similar treatment. Except it wasn't ayahuasca, it was Ibadine, what they did the Time article about. And Ibadine was initially studied and used for addiction. There's nothing else on the planet, nothing else on the planet that can cure, curb addiction overnight like Ibadine. You know, that's why I want to hear about Gabe. Like, it upsets me because I know if we could have got him an Ibadine treatment, he'd fucking be here today with us, you know?

• 2:13:48Speaker 02

  It's unbelievable. And the reason it's not here is because it's that good, right? Yeah. Little bit of risk to it, but if you do all the proper screening, like, there's no risk. You know, the ones that there's, it's risk, you screen out and you can't do it.

• 2:14:07Speaker 02

  And this individual got better overnight. Same thing, same story, except he didn't spend time in a jungle. He went to a retreat center that administered Ibadine. So Amber was working with him and a doctor at the time. And, you know, behind the scenes, they basically got the money together. And they were able to get me to one of the retreat centers.

• 2:14:33Speaker 02

  And I went kicking and screaming, uh, because like probably like you, I, I grew up, you know, kid on Long Island, went to Catholic, all boys Catholic high school, drank some beer, you know, never did, never did, I never did drugs, didn't even know what really they were. Yeah. Um, and so for me, all drugs were bad psychedelics were psychedelics, they're crazy, right? Counter culture, sixties, you know, Woodstock.

• 2:15:05Speaker 02

  So when I, when I heard about this, I mean, I was like, this is nuts, like, like most, most of the guys, you know, that are, that are going through this treatment are the same way, a lot of them that haven't done the research. They hear about it and they go, this is fucking crazy. But what they do is they trust that like 10 of their other friends went and gotten better. So they say, well, I trust you. So like, I'll go.

• 2:15:29Speaker 02

  So I did my research, it took me about a year. No, no, it was less than a year. I think Amber was working on this for a year, but by the time it got to me, you know, there's a couple of months, like, I'm not doing that, that's crazy. I wind up finally saying yes, because I was tired. Yeah. And nothing else worked, nothing else worked. And I remember, I remember going, you know, don't expect this to work, like nothing else has. I don't know how you expect taking some psychedelic is supposed to like free me or clean me up or, or save me. And so, you know, I went, went to this retreat center.

• 2:16:14Speaker 02

  And you, uh, the, uh, the medicine is prescribed per your body weight. So what I would take is different from what you would take.

• 2:16:25Speaker 02

  You take a, they call it like a handshake dose to make sure your body doesn't react. It's about 45 minutes. It's just a light dose. It's like a microdose. Um, it's like drinking, you know, half a beer, you don't feel it. It's just, they just want to see, you know, is your body good? My body was good. Uh, they gave me the flood dose. And, um, you know, within.

• 2:16:49Speaker 02

  Like an hour, two hours, you start hearing some buzzing. And again, ibogaine, so what ibogaine is? Ibogaine is an alkaloid of the iboga root, iboga plant, shrub. It's grown in West Africa.

• 2:17:04Speaker 02

  I think the plant has thirteen alkaloids, similar to like, you know, cannabis has two hundred

• 2:17:09Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:09Speaker 02

  cannabinoids, and you pull THC and CBD and CBN. Iboga and ibogaine are the same. Iboga has thirteen different like alkaloids in there that, you know, scientists can pull and do experiments. Well, ibogaine is like, is the big daddy. And it's the one that really curbs addiction.

• 2:17:30Shawn Ryan?

  So ibogaine is the most powerful?

• 2:17:34Speaker 02

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

• 2:17:36Shawn Ryan?

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

• 2:17:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:17:52Shawn Ryan?

  But before we break real quick, I just, I'm curious. And I think I know the answer, but everybody talks about the symptoms, you know? Rage, anxiety, depression, insomnia.

• 2:18:07Speaker 02

  Impulsivity.

• 2:18:08Shawn Ryan?

  Impulsiveness.

• 2:18:09Speaker 02

  Nightmares.

• 2:18:10Shawn Ryan?

  Nightmares. But do you

• 2:18:15Shawn Ryan?

  do you, do you forget what the hell you're talking about a lot of times in mid-sentence?

• 2:18:24Shawn Ryan?

  Well, it'll happen to me. It'll happen, it happens to me all the time. It happens to me when I'm interviewing.

• 2:18:29Speaker 02

  It used to. It used to.

• 2:18:32Shawn Ryan?

  On the phone.

• 2:18:34Speaker 02

  I'm

• 2:18:35Shawn Ryan?

  In, in, in.

• 2:18:36Speaker 02

  Is it happening now?

• 2:18:38Shawn Ryan?

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

• 2:18:55Speaker 02

  Maybe we need to get you treated.

• 2:18:58Shawn Ryan?

  Well.

• 2:18:59Speaker 02

  But that, I mean, that's the thing, yes, and that is the, uh, that's the awareness, being present, being focused. You know, like you're talking, but maybe your, your mind's going somewhere else. So now you're mid-sentence and you forget the second part of your, you know, when you're focused and you're talking and you're, you're in it, like you should be able to, to go. So if, if you're not, there's, there's some kind of disconnect going on in your, in your head, right? Like it's, that's your mind. There's, that's nothing else but something going on in your mind. I'm not a doctor to tell you what that is. But that's a symptom.

• 2:19:35Shawn Ryan?

  That, I was curious if you experienced that.

• 2:19:38Speaker 02

  Absolutely is a symptom.

• 2:19:39Shawn Ryan?

  And this got rid of that?

• 2:19:41Speaker 02

  This gets rid of, we're gonna talk about what this does. I mean, this is,

• 2:19:47Speaker 02

  it,

• 2:19:49Speaker 02

  it works on a few different levels. Um, physiologically, meaning, and this is what they're gonna do, um, so what Stanford's gonna do their study on through vets. Um, they think that not just I D gain, maybe, maybe all psychedelics.

• 2:20:09Speaker 02

  Actually physiologically heals the brain, helps the brain, repairs the brain. Again, I'm not gonna tell you what it does.

• 2:20:19Speaker 02

  But think of the volume of your brain potentially maybe um, increasing.

• 2:20:25Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:26Speaker 02

  Instead of like a degenerative brain disease, dementia, Parkinson's, you know, decreases the volume of your brain, right? Like basically dies. This is like helping you. Um, so it works on the physiological level, it works on psycho-spiritual level, meaning trauma. Like that's where, you know, that's where psychedelics really go to work is there is no hiding from psychedelics.

• 2:20:51Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:52Speaker 02

  When you take it in a, in a hero dose, they call it a flood dose, big dose, where you, you can't walk around, like you have to be in a bed monitored by a therapist, doctor.

• 2:21:04Speaker 02

  You can't hide from the medicine.

• 2:21:08Speaker 02

  Whatever you experienced, the shit that's holding you back.

• 2:21:13Speaker 02

  What may be causing your depression.

• 2:21:16Speaker 02

  May be causing everything in your life to be full of turmoil.

• 2:21:23Speaker 02

  It could be buried in your subconscious. Maybe it's stuff that you you've compartmentalized and you you put away because we're really good at that. What I begin does really fucking well. And what other psychedelics do, psilocybin, LSD. Ayahuasca. It goes down there. And it just fucking rips it out and it shows you. It just puts it right in front of you and says, here, deal with this right now. Fucking deal with it.

• 2:21:50Speaker 02

  Are you good? Like it shoves it in your face. I begin really shoves in your face compared to ayahuasca. I I begin they call like the grandfather, the father. Masculine and then ayahuasca is more like the grandmother feminine, but they both. They both do what they're supposed to do.

• 2:22:08Speaker 02

  Ayahuasca, they say is a little bit more gentler. You know? I've again is more like.

• 2:22:16Speaker 02

  And that's why. It's so good for us. It's why it's so good for team guys. And more than team guys, but we need it. We're like fucked up on multiple different levels, right? Yeah. Trauma, childhood, trauma, wartime, trauma, wartime TBIs.

• 2:22:34Speaker 02

  Transition, trauma.

• 2:22:37Speaker 02

  What's my purpose in life? Like just all of it, right?

• 2:22:42Speaker 02

  I begin just seems to just fucking get to the root cause of all this. And. Put you back to normal like you used to. When Amber saw me for the first time. The morning after I did my experience, woke up finally, I was like after. You know, thirteen hours of puking and getting my ass kicked, literally. She was like. Dude, that's Marcus from when I met him in college. Like he's the. He's the the the fucking happy-go-lucky quarterback, larger-than-life, like. Cool. Not angry, not judgmental, just like. Hey, hey, I'm here. Yeah. She said it literally like rewound years before I got to the teams.

• 2:23:24Shawn Ryan?

  That's amazing. That's amazing.

• 2:23:27Speaker 02

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

• 2:23:52Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 2:23:52Speaker 02

  You know, like their life was put back together before they went through this mess. And so whether it's a brain thing, or a psychological thing, or transition thing, like I don't think that matters. You know, I think I had a little bit of all of it.

• 2:24:11Speaker 02

  But we're getting guys that have really bad brain issues or really bad trauma. And it's just fixing. It just works, you know, it just, it just works and but it's rough.

• 2:24:25Shawn Ryan?

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

• 2:24:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:24:29Shawn Ryan?

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

• 2:24:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, shoot.

• 2:24:35Shawn Ryan?

  So this is still illegal.

• 2:24:39Speaker 02

  In the US.

• 2:24:40Shawn Ryan?

  In the US.

• 2:24:40Speaker 02

  Is Schedule One, so which means.

• 2:24:44Shawn Ryan?

  No, it's a narcotic, you know, or people are, you know, it's illegal, you're going to get arrested if you do it.

• 2:24:51Speaker 02

  It's a Schedule One, meaning there's no medical benefit.

• 2:24:54Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Do you think that maybe

• 2:24:59Shawn Ryan?

  it's there because Big Pharma's running a sixteen billion dollar a year antidepressant industry? And this would disrupt that?

• 2:25:11Speaker 02

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

• 2:25:38Shawn Ryan?

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

• 2:25:56Speaker 02

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

• 2:26:37Speaker 02

  That, I mean, that's obviously why we're here today is because we are trying to educate what is actually working, what is really working.

• 2:26:46Shawn Ryan?

  Well.

• 2:26:47Speaker 02

  We don't have time to study this for ten years.

• 2:26:49Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:26:50Speaker 02

  We're gonna have, we're gonna have the next wave of not killed in action that you and I had to spend all our fucking time in those memorials and funerals. You know, now we're gonna spend our time there for suicides because we can't get this shit right. We're just gonna keep giving pills that the, on the label, right? If you read that there's a high, a, a chance for suicide by using this drug to individuals that are potentially thinking about committing suicide. How, how the hell is that right?

• 2:27:27Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:27:28Speaker 02

  How is that even, how does that even make sense to most people? And I think. You know, I think it might be just the big machine, right? I don't, I don't think it's individual. I think if you talk to people individually, they get it. But as you know, changing laws, it takes work. It takes time. And so we're, we're trying to do best we can with that.

• 2:27:51Shawn Ryan?

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

• 2:28:38Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Amber, welcome.

• 2:28:40Speaker 05

  Thank you.

• 2:28:40Shawn Ryan?

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

• 2:29:16Speaker 05

  I'm sure Marcus went over how we met and the fact that we've been together for so long. So I knew him before he was a SEAL. And then, of course, I got pregnant, um, which is what kept us together as he entered the SEAL teams. And then nine 11 happened, so everything was very unexpected for us in a very short amount of time. He had gone from being, um, a larger than life. I mean, he was just everything to me. He was so easygoing. When I met him, I had never met anyone like him. And... And when he went to Bud's, I think I stupidly thought like, we just have to get through this.

• 2:30:02Speaker 05

  And then nine eleven happened and it was like, well, we just have to get to get to a SEAL team. And we just have to get through this deployment. And I was losing him little by little this whole time. When he went over to development group, those deployments got really, really difficult. And he lost one of his best friends in two thousand eight. He was actually supposed to do the swim that Josh was killed doing. And so when he came home from that deployment in particular, it was a very, very fast downward spiral. He was drinking a lot.

• 2:30:48Speaker 05

  But he was also, the tempo was so high that we really didn't have time to get our bearings.

• 2:30:58Shawn Ryan?

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

• 2:31:03Speaker 05

  Yeah, we were never together, you know, I I just. He was gone for up to three hundred days a year. And so I didn't really know if he was suffering or how he was suffering because we weren't together. So when Josh died, it's just like something in him shut off. And he probably had, you know, some guilt that he wasn't dealing with because he was supposed to be on that swim. But um, he also started drinking very heavily. And Josh was not the only death that happened. You know, even during that deployment, two others from his squadron were killed.

• 2:31:47Speaker 05

  And it seemed like those deployments, there was at least one person not coming home every deployment. And so it felt like. Russian roulette. It felt like at any given point, this could be him. I know I felt like that. I know and a lot of my girlfriends felt like that. Everyone had their funeral dress picked out. Everyone had the photos ready to go because we had seen so many of our other girlfriends that weren't prepared. And so you learn over time, you know, ten, twenty, thirty funerals, what to possibly expect.

• 2:32:31Speaker 05

  And I think we were all just like living this surreal existence of thinking this really could be us next.

• 2:32:41Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:32:42Speaker 05

  And I could feel Marcus coming unhinged because it was very difficult to be at home, you know, dreading a knock out the door. But I can't imagine what it was like, you know, to be on a deployment.

• 2:32:57Speaker 05

  And he was really coming unraveled. Um, we thought that leaving Virginia Beach would solve the problem. And it really escalated it.

• 2:33:12Shawn Ryan?

  Was he self medicating at all or?

• 2:33:14Speaker 05

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

• 2:33:34Shawn Ryan?

  How much alcohol?

• 2:33:37Speaker 05

  Again, I really don't know because I wasn't with him, but I, I was very concerned.

• 2:33:45Speaker 05

  When I, when I was with him and how much he would drink and um, how frequently he would drink.

• 2:33:53Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Um, I mean, so you, you two were basically nonexistent to each other during, uh, during the.

• 2:34:06Speaker 05

  You know, during the time when he was deploying.

• 2:34:12Speaker 05

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

• 2:34:40Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:34:43Shawn Ryan?

  So, so you guys went, well, somebody identified a problem, correct? Because

• 2:34:48Speaker 05

  We had, yeah.

• 2:34:49Shawn Ryan?

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

• 2:35:01Speaker 05

  We went through a very difficult point in our marriage in two thousand eight. And at that time, he was halfway through the minimum commitment. I thought Marcus would do twenty years in the teams and I thought he would never, ever leave the command. And I didn't give him an ultimatum, but he knew that it was time to focus on the family. And that if I, you know, could, could

• 2:35:29Speaker 05

  somehow find a way to fulfill the, the final two years of his minimum commitment, then he would then focus on the family. So I respected his commitment to the command and he respected my willingness to fulfill it. And the intention was always as soon as he was done with that commitment, then our family would come first. So we left Virginia Beach. And we went to San Diego and he was an instructor. That's when the wheels really started to come off because he loved what he was doing. He loved the command. He loved his teammates. And even though it was very unhealthy,

• 2:36:14Speaker 05

  just the tempo and the, his mindset at the time. I think we knew how to live in that dysfunction and we did not know how to be normal people.

• 2:36:23Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:36:26Shawn Ryan?

  What are some of the things you started seeing when you say the game really started coming unhinged? You know? What was the life? What was, what was going on in the home front? Cause we heard about, you know, kinda some of the stuff that was happening at work. We didn't talk a lot about what was happening on the home front.

• 2:36:52Speaker 05

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

• 2:36:58Shawn Ryan?

  He did.

• 2:37:00Speaker 05

  So he was, you know, on the heels of that. It was, um, he was very ashamed of that and he was not in a headspace to ever go there. That was the worst idea ever. And so it added to the shame. It added to the confusion. It added to his feeling of being a failure.

• 2:37:20Speaker 05

  And so by the time we got to San Diego, he was just lost. He didn't wanna be

• 2:37:28Speaker 05

  deploying anymore. In some ways, but in other ways, he did.

• 2:37:35Speaker 05

  He didn't wanna be a family man. But in some ways he did. So he was just really conflicted during that time. He was drinking a lot and, um, it was also very difficult for him to fit back into the family because he had been gone for so long.

• 2:37:53Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:37:54Speaker 05

  And, uh, the family dynamic was really difficult. It was hard to co-parent and

• 2:38:01Speaker 05

  you know, live under the same roof with someone twenty-four seven that you're used to seeing for five day spans.

• 2:38:09Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. You had mentioned, uh, you had mentioned in another podcast that I believe it was your daughter that came to you and said, you know, how much longer are we gonna live like this?

• 2:38:23Speaker 05

  Well, that was, uh, that was several years later, actually. So, um, he,

• 2:38:31Speaker 05

  there were two events that happened in NSW Naval Special Warfare that kinda piggybacked on one another. The first was the killing of Osama bin Laden, which he was not at the command for. And there was this, this, um, real regret, like, oh, I, I wanna go back there. And then on the heels of that, there was um the helicopter crash extortion which killed thirty one.

• 2:39:03Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:39:03Speaker 05

  Um, many, many of those were friends of his, friends of ours. And so then it was like, okay, all of the hype from May was replaced with sorrow and reality in August. And we decided not to do that, not to go back to Virginia Beach. Um, at that point, I was just longing for some sort of um normalcy. And normalcy to me was being a single parent, living away from my husband, who was deploying to war, training for war, drinking his face off, and I didn't have to see it.

• 2:39:38Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:39:39Speaker 05

  When we were living under the same roof, um, I just, I I became very concerned about, is this sustainable? This isn't a good example to set for our kids, for him or for me, to stay in a situation like this. And I think that we ignorantly just tried to run from it um time and time again. First by leaving Virginia Beach, then by getting out of the military completely, then by moving to Texas, which a year after he he got out um of the SEAL teams, we ended up in Texas. And he may have told you the beach is a huge part of his life. He was raised across the street from it.

• 2:40:23Speaker 05

  So being landlocked for the first time, more or less, uh, really, it was really difficult for him. And the wheels really started to come off in Texas. So we, he tried to replace surfing and going to the beach with golfing. We joined a country club and, of course, you know, so many regular civilian guys are just like mesmerized with team guys.

• 2:40:53Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:40:53Speaker 05

  And so he started hanging out with a few guys that supported his drinking habits, unfortunately.

• 2:41:05Shawn Ryan?

  I think there's probably some stuff that you just don't want to talk about uh when it comes to the drinking. Cause you know, along with that, obviously comes a lot of, you know, other stuff. But um I'm curious and um.

• 2:41:22Shawn Ryan?

  You guys went to Bud's or he went to instructed Bud's basically to work on a family life and then when you got there. Were you and when you got when you got there and you realized oh shit like this isn't really kinda what I was thinking was gonna happen. And it seemed like that was the start of the downward spiral and then you know when he was having regrets of you know leaving the command over at development group. By the time that he kind of felt conflicted, were you starting to think?

• 2:41:57Shawn Ryan?

  Were you conflicted? Was it so bad that you were conflicted that maybe you thought maybe the best thing to do would be him going back into an operational role?

• 2:42:07Speaker 05

  Oh yeah.

• 2:42:08Shawn Ryan?

  In deploying again?

• 2:42:09Speaker 05

  Oh yeah, yeah, but of course I knew instinctively that was kicking the can down the road. It felt like a gang. It felt like at the time, you know, it's so bad for you, but you know that it's it's a belonging and a community and a purpose that is is really fulfilling in many ways and so we were just very conflicted and I I definitely thought he's either got to go back into an operational role or he's got to get out. You know, this middle ground wasn't working for him.

• 2:42:46Speaker 05

  Getting out was I mean, in hindsight, I really can't say getting out was not the right choice because it put us on this path that is now helping so many others. So he's kind of like he needed to go first, but

• 2:43:01Speaker 05

  the years following him deciding to get out were hell. Sheer hell.

• 2:43:08Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:43:10Shawn Ryan?

  Is that when you started looking into the psychedelic therapy?

• 2:43:15Speaker 05

  No, this was when he was Bud's instructor.

• 2:43:18Shawn Ryan?

  It was that early?

• 2:43:19Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:43:19Shawn Ryan?

  And it got worse?

• 2:43:20Speaker 05

  Yeah. So.

• 2:43:24Speaker 05

  I think in my initial conversations with him were like, you really have a drinking problem. Um. Which, when you compare yourself to others in the community, you really don't.

• 2:43:36Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:43:37Speaker 05

  But when you compare yourself to typical people, or you go through an alcohol assessment, I think one time I did an alcohol assessment for him.

• 2:43:48Speaker 05

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

• 2:44:34Speaker 05

  And I was hoping that that was the answer. I wasn't a fan of medication, but also wasn't a fan of living like I was living. So he gave it a shot and processed out medic, he was medically retired. We went to LA and, um, he was in a completely new environment. He wanted like to just forget about the SEAL teams.

• 2:45:00Speaker 05

  He wanted to pretend like that never happened, didn't want to deal with any of the residual fallout and just start a completely new life with a completely new career path. And, um, with around completely new, a new type of people. It was a disaster.

• 2:45:18Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:45:20Speaker 05

  The drinking was escalating. And I just thought.

• 2:45:28Speaker 05

  I'm not doing this for the rest of my life. He was gone. The person I met, the larger than life person

• 2:45:37Speaker 05

  that I met was gone and he had been replaced by like a monster. And so I just thought I can't live my life like this. I can't be a single parent in California.

• 2:45:56Speaker 05

  I

• 2:45:58Speaker 05

  wouldn't want to meet and marry someone probably from California. Like I need to get to Texas. And so I was able to convince him to give Texas a try, live on a golf course.

• 2:46:12Speaker 05

  At least just get out of the state, get out of California.

• 2:46:15Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:46:17Speaker 05

  There was just stability in Texas for me. I felt it was closer to my family.

• 2:46:23Speaker 05

  My dad had just taken a coaching job down in Texas or at Texas. And I just felt like I need to get there.

• 2:46:33Shawn Ryan?

  So you guys went to Texas. It doesn't sound like things got any better.

• 2:46:39Speaker 05

  Oh, no.

• 2:46:39Shawn Ryan?

  They got worse.

• 2:46:40Speaker 05

  Believe it or not, they got worse.

• 2:46:42Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 2:46:45Shawn Ryan?

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

• 2:46:52Speaker 05

  We got to Texas and things are actually pretty good for about a year. He was golfing. We joined this country club. He started drinking more. And he started hanging out with a group of people that

• 2:47:09Speaker 05

  you know, drank as much as he did. And so I was I just didn't want to be in that sort of environment, you know, around around this. I wanted to be there for my kids. And that caused a lot of division between the two of us. So he was out, you know, drinking several nights a week. Whether it was Bloody Marys with golf in the morning or Happy hour after golf in the afternoon or just out until two AM. And I just thought, you know, he's, he's either going to drink himself to death or he's going to wrap his truck around a tree because he would be driving.

• 2:47:54Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Damn.

• 2:48:00Shawn Ryan?

  So you found, you found the psychedelic treatment and.

• 2:48:10Speaker 05

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

• 2:48:50Speaker 05

  They were causing so many other symptoms that there was a medication for this symptom and a medication for that symptom. And he was forgetting everything, so he was not able to take his medications correctly and that would cause a symptom. I just felt instinctively like this is not just PTSD. Because I was seeing his cognitive functioning decline to a point of, it, it was terrifying. I remember watching him try to wrap a Christmas tree with lights and he couldn't figure out where the ends plugged in.

• 2:49:26Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, man.

• 2:49:27Speaker 05

  Where you start and where you stop. It was pitiful and he was forty. He would, he got lost driving our daughter, um, to a volleyball car pool that, you know, we did two, three times a week. He couldn't remember people's names. I found a write up that he did as he was exiting the military and it said, I'm frequently forgetting my teammates' names.

• 2:49:55Speaker 05

  It just wasn't clicking neurologically. It was something just not right. He was not making connections. And during the height of our struggles, another one of his teammates took his life. And luckily, the the brain autopsy was released to the community. And it was the first time that I had heard about blast injury. And I also heard about

• 2:50:19Speaker 05

  another degenerative brain disease called chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE. It's what professional athletes, NFL players, MMA fighters are frequently diagnosed with postmortem. So you can't find out if you have it until after you're dead. But in my mind, suddenly, everything made sense because Mark has had a history of fifteen years of tackle football, thirteen years working as a breacher, multiple combat deployments, multiple losses of consciousness. And all of the symptoms fit. So he had the history and he had the symptoms. And I just realized pretty quickly that this could be a death sentence. And times of essence, there's not a whole lot of information about it. There's it's still, you know, very, very new.

• 2:51:07Speaker 05

  But I started getting into brain clinics and I just thought, if this is a brain issue, surely brain clinics will know what to do. And he went to several of the top brain clinics.

• 2:51:18Speaker 05

  But he was getting worse. And he's getting worse because he was investing all this time and really wasn't making any sort of significant progress. And he was very frustrated. He was like a loose cannon. I was calling

• 2:51:35Speaker 05

  charitable organizations to arrange for him to go away, to to do a a brain center that was in California.

• 2:51:48Speaker 05

  But I didn't just want to stop there. I wanted to hit it as many angles as I possibly could. So a couple of other charitable organizations were able to get him into hyperbaric oxygen, magnetic brain stimulation. And so he was doing like three things at once. And I went to visit him. And the first five days were pretty good. But I was there for a week. The last two days.

• 2:52:16Speaker 05

  Unbelievable. It was.

• 2:52:21Speaker 05

  I left thinking, I just was hopeless. I went home. And that was in July. He had gone in June. In September, I went back. Um, it was my birthday, so I went to visit him. My mom came and watched the kids and I went to visit him in California. And we were in his truck on the five. And I said to him, something like, "Oh babe, you're better than that." And he lost his mind. And he started barreling down a five, like hundred miles an hour. And I thought if I live through this,

• 2:53:08Speaker 05

  I am going, I, this is it.

• 2:53:13Speaker 05

  And so, um, I didn't say anything else the whole ride. We got back to where he was staying, went to sleep. The next morning, I called an Uber. I went to the airport and I just flew back without even telling him.

• 2:53:30Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 2:53:32Speaker 05

  And my mom was there with our daughter and our son. And I conference called my dad, who was his football coach and.

• 2:53:42Speaker 05

  Just, you know, my dad's influence in my life of, of just never quitting and really just being super brave, no matter what.

• 2:53:54Speaker 05

  I told my dad that I had decided to quit, like, I just couldn't do this anymore. And I said to my parents, I'm pretty sure Marcus will be dead in two years. Like, he just needs, he needs me. I know he needs me. I know he needs his family.

• 2:54:15Speaker 05

  But I started putting, you know, the plans in place to leave him.

• 2:54:19Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. I feel like a lot of civilians

• 2:54:24Shawn Ryan?

  will, like,

• 2:54:26Shawn Ryan?

  almost instigate an incident with, uh, with, with guys like us because they wanna see,

• 2:54:36Shawn Ryan?

  they wanna see what happens. And then, and then they see it. And, uh, but, and I, I started noticing that a lot. Have you ever noticed that?

• 2:54:47Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, I've absolutely noticed that. I've noticed the instigation. I've also noticed, you know, just how much guys want to hang out with guys like you guys and, you know, like, beat their chests or feel like a man and if that, a lot of times that looks like round after round after round after round of drinks.

• 2:55:17Speaker 05

  And I think everyone thought like, oh, this is Marcus. He's this big, you know, Navy SEAL. They didn't realize that the hell that that was causing on his family back at home. And I tried to tell this particular group, like, listen, this is a real problem here.

• 2:55:35Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:55:36Speaker 05

  If you're his friend,

• 2:55:39Speaker 05

  please take me seriously.

• 2:55:42Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:55:44Shawn Ryan?

  Did they?

• 2:55:46Speaker 05

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

• 2:55:57Shawn Ryan?

  Well, how did you find out about the psychedelics?

• 2:56:01Speaker 05

  So, when I had decided, you know, to leave, I was really grappling with the weight of that.

• 2:56:11Speaker 05

  I reached out to a couple of the other women who had, who were widows of suicide in the community, fairly recent widows. And it was textbook. The struggles were textbook.

• 2:56:27Speaker 05

  The behavior was textbook. And I was just preparing myself for

• 2:56:34Speaker 05

  what my life would be like as a widow of suicide.

• 2:56:41Speaker 05

  Because I felt like it was inevitable. He was a ticking time bomb. And I reached out to

• 2:56:50Speaker 05

  the highest levels of support within the SEAL community and said, "I'm going to lose him."

• 2:57:02Speaker 05

  And there was nothing. There was no help. Not meaningful. I mean, I think everyone's doing the best they can. But for me at that time, there was really not a lot.

• 2:57:16Speaker 05

  And so,

• 2:57:19Speaker 05

  I'm just a fighter by nature.

• 2:57:22Speaker 05

  I didn't want to quit. I never really wanted to quit. But I felt like I had to do that for my kids. And then it hit me, "My kids will live with this for the rest of their lives." And their kids. And we had this friend, the same one who I mentioned earlier,

• 2:57:49Speaker 05

  who had also been in a situation that, you know, this therapy was beneficial.

• 2:57:58Speaker 05

  And so he and his wife had reached out to me because they knew Marcus was struggling. And that's just how the community is like, just, you know, you know, someone needs help, just help. And they um told me about psychedelic therapy, which was completely foreign to me.

• 2:58:19Speaker 05

  I tried to talk to Marcus about it a year prior to him actually receiving it. But he didn't want to hear anything about it. He was like, that's weird. That's crazy. I'm not doing drugs like the mm mm. No, I'm not going to Mexico. No. And that guy had was telling me consistently, and he was right. Like, he's got to want this. He's got to be ready for it. He's got to choose this. You can't make him do it. And so he was running out of funding at the brain clinic. I knew that we couldn't afford to live in two separate households.

• 2:58:58Speaker 05

  And that that meant he really, I mean, financially, we needed him to come back. We couldn't afford anything else. But I there was peace in my house for the first time in years. And I thought, I just cannot have him back at this house.

• 2:59:14Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:59:17Speaker 05

  I had also really been on my own journey at that time.

• 2:59:24Speaker 05

  Where I was just, I had nothing at that point, it felt. Marcus was, I I I had, well, let me let me rephrase this.

• 2:59:39Shawn Ryan?

  It sounds like you're just surviving.

• 2:59:41Speaker 05

  Oh, is that a hundred percent just surviving?

• 2:59:44Shawn Ryan?

  Like just straight survival mode?

• 2:59:46Speaker 05

  Yeah, because our teenage son, who during these years,

• 2:59:53Speaker 05

  fifteen, sixteen, seventeen.

• 2:59:56Speaker 05

  He was chronically ill, but he was also chronically pissed. And

• 3:00:05Speaker 05

  he was causing a lot of, he was acting out a lot. Which was causing a lot of stress and conflict between Marcus and me. And a lot of division in our household. On top of what was already, you know, so, so challenging. So between Marcus spiraling and our son spiraling.

• 3:00:29Speaker 05

  I, I just felt so pulled between the two of them. And then Marcus was taking so much time away from work. Really, you know, there wasn't work. So financially, we were devastated. Our son was chronically ill, so I had to step away from my very successful career as a real estate agent. To take care of him. Um. That, not much else could have gone wrong during those years. And I just thoroughly surrendered to whatever was to come, whatever. I, I surrendered to my faith. I really dug in.

• 3:01:11Speaker 05

  I sat, I sat, I cried, I screamed, I journaled, I prayed, I spoke. I declared, I just completely submitted to what was happening because I really, even though I love solving problems, this was way too big for me.

• 3:01:28Speaker 01

  No.

• 3:01:28Speaker 05

  And the more I submitted, the more things spiraled out of control, but the more peace I had internally. And I came to just all of these amazing realizations during this time. I wouldn't trade that time. Like, sitting here today, I wouldn't trade that time. It has given me so much perspective, wisdom. So much strength and purpose.

• 3:01:59Speaker 05

  During that time, you know, I'm sitting with, all right, God, if this is where we're going, like, this is the end of the road, then I completely trust that.

• 3:02:11Speaker 05

  And I just felt like, no, there's more, there's more. And I remember the therapy that our friend had told us about. And I thought, what if I just approach him in a completely different way?

• 3:02:29Speaker 05

  I felt like my heart was supernaturally changed and I was able to see him through eyes of grace.

• 3:02:39Speaker 05

  I would have never been able to do on my own. I just, I saw him for the struggles that he was facing. And I realized that no one wanted to be different more than him.

• 3:02:51Speaker 05

  And I was, I would, I became so full of compassion for him. Whether his struggles were psychological, physiological, spiritual, and manifesting in the form of, you know, alcohol abuse.

• 3:03:10Speaker 05

  I just approached him completely different. So he came home, he said, you know, what do you want me to do? I don't, I can't stay here. And I said, you can come home. But when you get home, like, I want to have a serious talk. And so he got home and um, I sat him down and I just said, listen, I will fight for you every day for the rest of your life. But you've got to fight with me. And I will never leave your side. I just stopped shaming him, guilting him, threatening him, all of these things that I had done for so many years that weren't working, it was just perpetuating bad behavior.

• 3:03:54Speaker 05

  I just came alongside him and met him where he was at. Not where I wanted him to be. I was just standing in the middle of the road saying, get to me, you know, get to me. And I'm going to shame you and threaten you the whole way here. And he, he was stuck, you have it coming. So I just met him where he was at and he agreed to go. He agreed to go to Mexico. And I had no idea if this would be, if anything, it was for me to know that I had tried everything.

• 3:04:25Shawn Ryan?

  So you were pretty skeptical?

• 3:04:29Speaker 05

  I was probably less skeptical because I just trusted this one other seal.

• 3:04:37Speaker 05

  And. I, yeah, I, I thought we have nothing to lose.

• 3:04:44Speaker 05

  So even if it buys us a little bit more time, because I was way more comfortable with a, a Western approach. Where's the lab coat? Where's the stethoscope? Where's the prescription pad? If you can't, you know, bring my husband into your office and he sits in a waiting room and then gets better, then it can't work. So I trusted this one other SEAL and um, I trusted God. And I just went for it.

• 3:05:15Shawn Ryan?

  So he went down there?

• 3:05:18Speaker 05

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

• 3:05:43Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:05:44Speaker 05

  And so the date kept getting pushed back and he was getting more and more just despondent. He was just like practically fetal position on the couch.

• 3:05:57Speaker 05

  And every time the date would get pushed, he would lose hope. And he's like, I, I said I'd do this, this is not happening. And I was just begging him at that point to hold on.

• 3:06:06Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:06:12Speaker 05

  I think our entire.

• 3:06:16Speaker 05

  Everyone felt it in our household.

• 3:06:20Speaker 05

  I remember one time our son called and said, Mom, are you home? And I said, no, I'm not. Why? He goes, I need to borrow a shirt from Dad, but your bedroom door is closed, your bathroom door is closed, and even your closet door is closed. He goes, I'm afraid to open it. I don't want to find him hanging.

• 3:06:37Shawn Ryan?

  Oh shit.

• 3:06:39Speaker 05

  Yeah. We could feel it. It was palpable.

• 3:06:44Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 3:06:46Speaker 05

  Yeah. And there are a lot of kids living like that.

• 3:06:53Speaker 05

  You know.

• 3:06:55Speaker 05

  The SEAL community.

• 3:06:59Speaker 05

  Does a lot for the children.

• 3:07:06Speaker 05

  But we could definitely do more because there are a lot of kids who've lost dads. Uh, but they live with them. They see them every day. They still have a heartbeat. And, um, you know, they they've lost their dads too.

• 3:07:26Speaker 05

  Because they're living with a shell of a human.

• 3:07:29Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:07:35Shawn Ryan?

  Well, let's move to some good stuff. How about that?

• 3:07:38Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 3:07:39Shawn Ryan?

  So he did. He went down to Mexico. He got the treatment and it sounds like that was like a light switch. So what was it like? How long was he down there?

• 3:07:52Speaker 05

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

• 3:08:35Speaker 05

  I am a conservative Christian. Like, what am I doing here?

• 3:08:39Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. So you were down there too?

• 3:08:42Speaker 05

  Uh, the day after.

• 3:08:43Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 3:08:44Speaker 05

  The day after. Um, and I just thought, I mean, I tried to convince her, like, I don't want to go. No, no, like, I do not want to see him right now. I was scared. I was scared. To be disappointed. I was scared that he would be completely normal and that would freak me out. I was scared that he would be completely different. And so she was like, he's asking for you. You have to go.

• 3:09:11Speaker 05

  And I'm very grateful that she made me go. Um, because when I saw him for the first time, it was like I saw him for the first time. I saw him for the first time I ever met him. His entire countenance and demeanor was a hundred percent the guy that I met. It was like all of the darkness, all of the anger, the rage, the despondent, despondent. Just it was gone.

• 3:09:44Shawn Ryan?

  Damn, it was literally just like that.

• 3:09:47Speaker 05

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

• 3:10:05Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 3:10:07Speaker 05

  Yeah, and but they're just the way you remember them. Um, his eyes looked different. His eyes were lighter. His spirit was lighter. He was like free of everything that had been weighing him down.

• 3:10:25Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 3:10:28Shawn Ryan?

  And that just continued on? I mean, was.

• 3:10:31Speaker 05

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

• 3:10:41Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:10:42Speaker 05

  But, um, yeah, it it's like a stock market ticker. Like, it's just like this. But if you're generally trending upward, then like those downs are actually serving a purpose because you're learning how to pull yourself out instead of like going on the complete descent. So he was, he went from like eighty twenty bad, good to eighty twenty good, bad days. And if he had a bad day, he was learning something. He was present again. He would look out the window and remark about how, look at the beautiful

• 3:11:21Speaker 05

  clouds in the sky, like just things that he wasn't even, he wasn't even present. He was in his own head so bad. There was a whole world going on around him that he didn't even know existed.

• 3:11:33Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 3:11:34Speaker 05

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

• 3:11:41Shawn Ryan?

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

• 3:11:48Speaker 05

  So I left the clinic on Saturday night and went back on Sunday. When I saw him on Sunday,

• 3:11:55Speaker 05

  he hugged me and he said, babe, this is exactly what all the guys need. And that was ironically on Veterans Day. His treatment had been pushed, pushed, pushed all through October into November. And he was treated on Veterans Day. And the following month, in December, we were contacted by what would become our first donor. She said, could you recommend a charitable organization that supports veterans? I wanted to do end of year giving. And Marcus said, you know, I actually have a friend. I just had a treatment and it saved my life. And I have a friend who's struggling. We can't give you a tax write-off, but you could actually save someone's life.

• 3:12:39Speaker 05

  And I can tell you a little bit about him. And she was like, yes. So that's how all of this got started.

• 3:12:49Speaker 05

  She was the first donor. Her donation was big enough to help several. And so at that point, we were just telling our story, raising money, giving it to the treating physician. And at that point, you know, I didn't really want to have too much to do with this. I felt good about helping for sure. But I really, you know, I had a very successful career in real estate. I was not looking to pivot.

• 3:13:23Speaker 05

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

• 3:13:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:13:58Speaker 05

  So before we put our names on anything, we wanted to make sure that it worked. So the first goal that I set was 12 individuals in a 12 month period. Because we didn't know, is this a temporary fix? Is this a long term thing? It seemed too good to be true. And I was actually going through a very difficult phase myself after this. Because I didn't know, what did we just get into? This, we were so desperate. Like when you're desperate, you will do anything. And when we had done it, the deed was done, it was like, what just happened? So I was going through my own whole, you know, come to Jesus like with this thing. What is this?

• 3:14:41Speaker 05

  And so we're like, all right, let's just very cautiously go about this. And so 12 guys, 12 month period. At the 11 and a half month mark, one of my best friend's husbands took his life. And it was, he was truly the last person anyone ever would have thought would do something like this. It was devastating.

• 3:15:07Speaker 05

  I, we flew back to Virginia Beach to his funeral, which was at the chapel at Little Creek. And it was the first suicide funeral that I had been to. And I had a visceral reaction on the pew of the chapel that I was in. And the whole pew started shaking. I was just overcome, like I couldn't control it. It was like, there's a whole thing about releasing trauma, trembling, like it happened to me at his funeral. And I just had this like download of this is gonna be the next wave to hit this chapel? If you don't do something about it, like.

• 3:15:48Speaker 05

  I'm sitting next to Marcus who, you know, I I'm feeling like we just averted this sort of crisis. And I can't believe I'm sitting in Chad's funeral. Like, it was just, I looked around and I just saw all the faces of so many of the guys and their spouses that I had seen at countless other war funerals. And I was just like, you know what? We haven't wanted to put our names on this. We haven't wanted to share about this. We haven't wanted to come out and stand on a stage because of the stigma, because of the, these therapies are so misunderstood, especially almost four years ago.

• 3:16:27Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:16:29Speaker 05

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

• 3:16:37Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:16:38Speaker 05

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

• 3:16:46Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:16:49Shawn Ryan?

  Well, you've saved a hell of a lot of lives so far, it sounds like, so.

• 3:16:54Speaker 05

  Thank you. I I cannot take any credit, honestly.

• 3:16:58Shawn Ryan?

  Well, you may not want to take credit for, you know, all these people that have gone through the treatment, but I'll bet it feels pretty damn good to see the results when your organization is, you know,

• 3:17:15Shawn Ryan?

  you guys funded it. You led the way. You sent them down, you know, and they're coming back and and it's working. And that's, that's, I mean, it's gotta feel amazing.

• 3:17:25Speaker 05

  It does feel good. It is very humbling.

• 3:17:33Speaker 05

  I

• 3:17:36Speaker 05

  this is gonna sound crazy. I was on a run in two thousand sixteen. Things were about as bad as they could get. You know, Marcus's treatment was twenty seventeen, twenty sixteen to seventeen, indescribable. And I had headphones in and I heard, I literally heard a voice, this is gonna sound nuts. And it said, I'm going to ask big things of you. And.

• 3:18:04Speaker 05

  I stopped and I looked around and there was nobody.

• 3:18:10Speaker 05

  And so I just, I put my hands on my knees and I just put my head down.

• 3:18:19Speaker 05

  And I just said like,

• 3:18:22Speaker 05

  if I can be of service, use me, if this pain can be of service, use it. And um, that's exactly what I've tried to do. And so I have literally just been in the passenger seat. I have got to give all of the credit

• 3:18:42Speaker 05

  to God, I do, because um, you know, he created me a certain way to have the, I guess, ability to be the driver, a driver behind this on the funding side. But um, this has just happened. It's just happened and we've just been willing participants. And we are just one spoke on the wheel at this point. There are a lot of people making this happen. Um, it might have started with us, but there, there's a lot of people get credit for this. So after Chad's death, it was just like, we're doing this. And um, the next goal I set was one hundred special operators beyond the SEAL community,

• 3:19:24Speaker 05

  along with IRB-backed research. So um, if all that looked good, then we would really get serious about uh, founding an organization to take this mainstream. So of course that happened and in 2019, we founded Vets. We provide uh, funding for veterans that are leaving the United States to seek psychedelic therapies, just like Marcus did. Many of them are truly on the brink. They have tried several things that haven't worked and um, they're really suffering. So we don't wanna, there are a lot of barriers to access. First of all, these therapies are scheduled in the United States. Um, so they're illegal and furthermore,

• 3:20:12Speaker 05

  Veterans in many cases are struggling financially, so we exist to pay for the the treatments, but we also realize that this is a very unique opportunity to collect research so that we can advocate for change to veteran healthcare, to the scheduling, drug law, whatever. These therapies got a really bad rap in the sixties and of course Nixon with the Controlled Substances Act in nineteen seventy shut down all research and banned all of these substances in the US. So, you know, you have guys with and gals with ten, twenty combat deployments, thirty,

• 3:20:56Speaker 05

  thirty-five years in the military that can't get access to meaningful care in the United States. The average number of medications that most of our grant recipients are on are like between seven and nine. So we just give them an opportunity to have an experience with a medicine that actually works and is working across four key areas of suffering in the veteran community. Psychological, dealing with past traumas, whether it's childhood trauma, war trauma. Physiological, there's a real brain connectivity element that needs to be further researched with psychedelics.

• 3:21:37Speaker 05

  Addiction, there are many of the substances, especially the one Marcus did, are very anti-addictive. And then spiritual, so there's a lot of darkness that has infiltrated, I think, just the military community, special operations community, SEAL community, so there's a real spiritual cleansing happening as well. And nothing has this much of an effect in these four key areas of psychedelic assisted therapies. So the success rates are just off the charts and everyone that gets funding from us knows two to five others that need help immediately. So.

• 3:22:16Speaker 05

  We've funded to date over three hundred and fifty special operations veterans and some of their spouses in seeking these therapies.

• 3:22:25Shawn Ryan?

  Three hundred and fifty?

• 3:22:27Speaker 05

  In like less than four years.

• 3:22:29Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 3:22:29Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:22:30Shawn Ryan?

  That's amazing.

• 3:22:31Speaker 05

  Thank you.

• 3:22:32Shawn Ryan?

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

• 3:22:41Speaker 05

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

• 3:23:19Shawn Ryan?

  Wow. So that's a, that's, that's the only thing and that's.

• 3:23:26Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:23:26Shawn Ryan?

  That's only if you

• 3:23:30Shawn Ryan?

  happen to go through, happen to not go through the screening and maybe have a heart condition.

• 3:23:35Speaker 05

  Right.

• 3:23:36Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 3:23:37Speaker 05

  Yeah, there, I mean, many of these things grow from the earth. So this was part of my whole like reconditioning of my belief system was when did I believe that something manufactured by an industry that caused the opioid epidemic is a cure? But something that God put on earth that grows freely in the ground is a drug?

• 3:24:06Speaker 05

  You know, I, I had to completely flip flop that.

• 3:24:10Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Well, I'm in big pharma, you know?

• 3:24:15Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:24:17Shawn Ryan?

  Big Pharma, they can't, uh, I mean, when I was looking this stuff up, they run a sixteen billion dollar a year business just in antidepressant. In the antidepressant market, that's just antidepressants.

• 3:24:34Speaker 05

  That's insane.

• 3:24:35Shawn Ryan?

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

• 3:24:39Speaker 05

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

• 3:24:42Shawn Ryan?

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

• 3:24:50Speaker 05

  It is a shame because I feel like, you know, you, Marcus, so many others that were the prime fighting age when nine eleven happened. Even the rest of your life before you, half your life before you.

• 3:25:05Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:25:05Speaker 05

  Most likely. So I didn't want Marcus to be beholden to a bunch of prescription medications for the rest of his life. Because the, you just keep adding, you know, there's just every year that goes by, there's another, another, another. He's not on anything now, and that's the case with most of our grant recipients. They have to titrate off all their medications to have, you know, the, the experience and then they don't get back on. And they're going back to psychedelic therapy as needed, which might look like once a year, twice a year, quarterly at most. And they're doing great.

• 3:25:46Shawn Ryan?

  That's awesome.

• 3:25:46Speaker 05

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

• 3:26:01Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, you know, we're researching that, it sounds amazing, it's, I mean.

• 3:26:09Shawn Ryan?

  The fact that it's disrupting the, uh, what do they call it? The

• 3:26:14Speaker 05

  Default mode network?

• 3:26:15Shawn Ryan?

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

• 3:26:42Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, it's fascinating.

• 3:26:44Speaker 05

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

• 3:27:29Speaker 05

  Yes. Did it save Marcus's life? Yes. Did it save my marriage? Yes. Did it save my family? Yes. How is that bad?

• 3:27:41Shawn Ryan?

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

• 3:27:54Speaker 05

  So we're in a partnership with Stanford. Um, the, the Stanford portion has an angel funder and then we are going to be funding the treatments of 30 veterans who are receiving Ibragaine. And the hypothesis is that Ibragaine may create some sort of, um,

• 3:28:14Speaker 05

  A benefit for blast injury or CTE, any sort of degenerative brain disease. Ibogaine is known to be the only substance that promotes glial cell growth in the brain. So in a degenerative brain disease, glial cells are slowly dying off and the brain's at atrophying. In this study, Dr. Nolan Williams will be assessing whether the brain could actually, I guess, I don't even know how to properly, increase in volume, maybe for, for after Ibogaine.

• 3:28:52Shawn Ryan?

  Heal itself?

• 3:28:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. So I'm clearly not a scientist, but the idea would be to see if Ibogaine could be a potential treatment for TBI or blast injury, CTE, and possibly other diseases like ALS, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, where the brain is slowly dying. And Ibogaine creating, having the ability to create new glial cell growth, could that stop it? Could it slow it down? Could it reverse it? You know, I don't know.

• 3:29:26Speaker 05

  So it's very exciting. And the, the study has been postponed due to COVID, but I'm hoping that we can get that started June, July of this year.

• 3:29:34Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, that'll be interesting.

• 3:29:36Speaker 05

  I know.

• 3:29:37Shawn Ryan?

  That'll be really interesting.

• 3:29:38Speaker 05

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

• 3:30:15Shawn Ryan?

  Right on, man.

• 3:30:16Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 3:31:00Shawn Ryan?

  So now we're gonna get into the actual process of doing the psychedelic down in Mexico and kinda what that looked like, but uh

• 3:31:09Speaker 02

  Mexico, Costa Rica, Peru, Canada. Yeah, it's really anywhere these drugs are either unscheduled or, or legal. And so we have, uh, you know, we have vetted partners, uh, really now around the globe that, um, are, uh, are dying to help our guys. So.

• 3:31:33Shawn Ryan?

  How are you, uh, if you don't mind me asking, you don't have to answer, but how are you making these connections?

• 3:31:41Shawn Ryan?

  In all these different countries?

• 3:31:44Speaker 02

  Not sleeping much at night.

• 3:31:45Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 3:31:47Speaker 02

  Working through the weekends, um,

• 3:31:49Shawn Ryan?

  A lot of research?

• 3:31:50Speaker 02

  Uh, just everything. So, research, the network, um, the initial success we had of helping guys, you know, funding, um, finding them opportunities to go get these treatments.

• 3:32:06Speaker 02

  Word of mouth spread pretty quickly because these industries are, I'd say the psychedelic space is not huge. Everybody knows kinda everybody in a way.

• 3:32:21Speaker 02

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

• 3:33:04Speaker 02

  Like I said, we've funded now over 350 individuals, guys and girls. Spouses, we're starting to fund now.

• 3:33:16Speaker 02

  And we have a waiting list of over 100.

• 3:33:18Shawn Ryan?

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

• 3:33:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:33:52Shawn Ryan?

  We've got a big problem coming.

• 3:33:54Speaker 02

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

• 3:34:02Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:34:03Speaker 02

  And nobody knows what's gonna happen. You know, and we need to get in front of it. Like, we're not, like, why would we wait? Why, why are we gonna wait for like this shit to hit the fan? Like, like, we need to get in front of it right now. Like, we need to, we can't continue sending guys anti-suicide suicide pills. You know what I mean?

• 3:34:27Speaker 02

  It doesn't work. Or to centers that are just collecting shit ton of money and guys are just walking away, scratching their head. We can't do that anymore. You know, so a lot of that stuff does work, but we need a tool. We need more tools at work. This works. There's no doubt. I will go head to head with anybody that doesn't believe in this. Anybody in the world and show them the proof. That there's nothing on the planet that is working better for mental health problems than, than psychedelic therapies.

• 3:35:00Shawn Ryan?

  That's amazing.

• 3:35:01Speaker 02

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

• 3:35:20Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Well, let's go into your, your experiences, but just real quick before we do that, I kinda wanna just educate uh, the audience on how this works, how I understand this works. I did a lot of research on this before uh, you guys got here, because I wanna know.

• 3:35:38Speaker 02

  Perfect.

• 3:35:38Shawn Ryan?

  I wanna understand what the hell you're talking about.

• 3:35:40Speaker 02

  You can tell us then.

• 3:35:40Shawn Ryan?

  But um, so, basically,

• 3:35:47Shawn Ryan?

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

• 3:36:19Speaker 02

  Maybe ten percent of your brain.

• 3:36:20Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, it's a very small percentage of our brain, which is the default mode network. Now, the default mode network is internal thinking, it's your ego, it's, it's, it's self-critical, it's

• 3:36:37Speaker 02

  Protects you.

• 3:36:37Shawn Ryan?

  Judging others. It's basically the, if you're thinking about the past, if you're thinking about the future, if you're judging somebody, if you're self-critical, you know, all that's ego, that is the default mode network.

• 3:36:51Speaker 02

  It's what we've been taught.

• 3:36:53Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. And

• 3:36:55Speaker 02

  When you're growing up, and you, you go to do something, your parents say, "Don't touch that."

• 3:37:00Shawn Ryan?

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

• 3:37:15Speaker 02

  It's because we're free. We haven't been, we haven't been uh, institutionalized yet.

• 3:37:22Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:37:22Speaker 02

  We haven't been told no.

• 3:37:23Shawn Ryan?

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

• 3:37:28Speaker 02

  And that's why as you get older,

• 3:37:31Speaker 02

  Ryan, I mean, it's just, you get more and more.

• 3:37:36Speaker 02

  Institutionalized because you're not, you're not resetting that.

• 3:37:39Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:37:40Speaker 02

  You're just, that default mode is just going, it's on, it's on autopilot, it's on repeat.

• 3:37:46Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:37:46Speaker 02

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

• 3:37:54Shawn Ryan?

  So apparently what happens from, you know, from the sources I researched from is basically when you take one of these psychedelics, it disrupts that neuron highway on the default mode network. And so there is no more information being passed in between. And if you take

• 3:38:19Shawn Ryan?

  antidepressants, benzos, you know, those kinds of, you know, Valiums, Xanax, whatever it is, it's, it's basically slowing the neurons going back and forth in the default mode network. Now, when you take the psychedelic, it disrupts the default mode network, or maybe even, you know, shuts it down, which forces your brain and the, and the neurons in your brain to, to communicate with other sections, sections of your brain, making the neurons more efficient. So.

• 3:38:58Speaker 02

  Allows you to wake up.

• 3:39:00Shawn Ryan?

  Sorry.

• 3:39:01Speaker 02

  Allows you to wake up.

• 3:39:02Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. So it, it literally, you know, I was very skeptical of this stuff too, you know, and until I started hearing more and more guys talk about it. Now you, you've a hundred percent sold me, but you know, I used to think, you know, oh, this shit is for hippies, you know, I don't do that. And now I'm like, shit, maybe these hippies were, maybe they were on to something.

• 3:39:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:39:25Shawn Ryan?

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

• 3:39:41Speaker 02

  Makes you more creative, makes you, makes you be able, makes you smarter, right? Like if you're using 10% of your brain and now using, I'm gonna make up a number, even 11%, 12%. Yeah. Like you just, right now you're using more of your brain power. What a doctor explained to me is what you're talking about. The brain's really good at talking like linear. Psychedelics, it like opens up the highway, right? So if you have like a two lane highway, it just turned it into like a 12 lane highway. Yeah. And it allows different parts of your brain to interact with each other that were not talking to each other before. And it's like a baby, right?

• 3:40:21Speaker 02

  Like babies, you know, or kids have such incredible creative minds, right? They're like, hey, you know, what if, you know, what if I, you know, took this and, you know, right? Kids are like coming up with all these great stories and ideas, and you're like, that's nuts. And that's because they're not, they're not brainwashed, they're not institutionalized to think of this way that that doesn't work. They're just thinking, right? Like, of course, a lot of it is, you know, is babble, but they're be, they're able to creatively think outside the box. We've been put inside the box by constantly be told, no, don't touch that, you know,

• 3:41:04Speaker 02

  take your shoes off when you go to the house, make sure to eat all your vegetables. Some of that stuff is good, but you're seeing where I'm going where a lot of that stuff is not good. Yeah. You know, we can get into all types of things that have institutionalized us to think a certain way. All this is doing is, you know, it's, it's, you know, it's the matrix for your mind, like think outside the box, right?

• 3:41:33Speaker 02

  Unconventional thinking.

• 3:41:36Speaker 02

  Is what we try to do in the teams. Think outside of this institution of the military that, you know, keeps thousands and thousands of soldiers doing things a certain way. But we need to think a little bit outside of that box. Otherwise, we're just like everybody else. So just think of you being able to be more creative.

• 3:42:00Shawn Ryan?

  Well.

• 3:42:00Speaker 02

  More ways that you could potentially pursue something better and more efficiently than what you were maybe told from somebody.

• 3:42:09Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:42:10Speaker 02

  I don't know if I did a good job of trying to explain that, but it's, that's what you're talking about with the default mode network. It's disrupted and it just allows your brain to interact in different ways that it hasn't or that it hadn't since it was a child.

• 3:42:25Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:42:25Speaker 02

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

• 3:42:42Shawn Ryan?

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

• 3:43:15Speaker 02

  That's why people call, you know, a lot of people experience what they call an ego death.

• 3:43:19Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:43:20Speaker 02

  You know, depending on each person's different, but you know, high dose, a lot of people see themselves just like, they call, is this what death is? Like, it just died, their ego just died. That, that whole self, that protecting mechanism just went away. And they're able to look at life now as like, holy shit, I never even looked at this stuff before. You know, I was so drilled into what I only learned over and over again. Now I'd actually see a tree.

• 3:43:49Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:43:50Speaker 02

  And it's green. You know, we, some individuals will come out and say, you know, I'd been eating, I forgot what it was. It was like apples or something for like my whole life. And I looked at it and didn't even realize like the damn color of it. Until I took a psychedelic, because it it it rewired my way of thinking, like made me like think a little bit, be more aware of actually what's going on. That's why people say a lot of times like now I can see stuff. You know, as it's happening or before it's happening, or when two people are acting a certain way, like when two spouses interact. I mean, it's so obvious now. I could tell that's a good relationship, that's a bad relationship.

• 3:44:35Speaker 02

  Off of what I what I personally got off of the medicine.

• 3:44:41Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:44:43Speaker 02

  It's well, man, I could go on about this all day, but um. It's great.

• 3:44:49Shawn Ryan?

  And I want to.

• 3:44:49Speaker 02

  It's great. You know, I do want to say. Like everything else.

• 3:44:56Speaker 02

  It can be abused.

• 3:44:58Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:44:59Speaker 02

  Abused like it was in the past. But the great thing about psychedelics is they're not habit forming, they're not addicting. And that's good. Because that's what I think some people get scared of like, oh, no, you're addicted to drugs, you're addicted to drugs. They don't have addictive qualities. Ketamine. Ketamine does, it's a bit of a different psychedelic. Ketamine is really amazing for depression, major depressive disorder. Again, probably one of the best things they can do immediately for suicidality. So someone's really struggling, you can get them. You can kind of get them out of that that mindset pretty quickly with a ketamine protocol. Um, that's the only one that has the potential for abuse. Um, the other ones.

• 3:45:45Speaker 02

  I mean, yeah, you can abuse it like. You can abuse alcohol. Except alcohol is highly addictive. Opioids are highly addictive. Psychedelics are not highly addictive.

• 3:45:54Shawn Ryan?

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

• 3:46:10Speaker 02

  If you like ibogaine, you have other you have other issues to work through.

• 3:46:13Shawn Ryan?

  It's.

• 3:46:14Speaker 02

  No, I mean, this is again, this is going to hell and back. You're you're you're seeing you're you're visiting the demons, right? And that's not fun. But you have to do that to get better, right? You have to, you know, you need, you need some pain to get better. You, you work out hard so you can be stronger, you know, you, um.

• 3:46:37Speaker 02

  Nothing in life is easy, right? Like it's, it doesn't, life doesn't work like that. Well, I began is like that. It, it, it kicks your ass so you can be better, so you can lift the rocks out, you know. One of the doctors we work with told me, Marcus, this is like, this is pulling all those heavy bricks out of your backpack. If you have a thousand pounds of brick, bricks, when you're done with your treatment, as you're going through your, your, your experience, the bricks are just falling out. It's just, you're just, you're, you're just getting lighter.

• 3:47:06Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:47:06Speaker 02

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

• 3:47:17Shawn Ryan?

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

• 3:47:28Speaker 02

  Where do I want to go?

• 3:47:29Shawn Ryan?

  Well, how long is the?

• 3:47:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, let's just, let's just go, we'll go to the, we'll go to the experience. You, um.

• 3:47:36Speaker 02

  You do, you do a few weeks of therapy prior to going, and this is the way it's supposed to go. And this is the way that the model needs to work for this to work. You need to do, you know, at the minimum days, but more like weeks of, of integration prep. Because again, you're doing, you're going somewhere that is tough and you should prepare to go there. They always say with psychedelic set and setting, you have, that has to be right to go in there. Because if it's not, you can have a really rough time. So you want to go in there with the right mindset. You want to be in the right setting. You want to understand what you're getting into. That's what the therapist is for.

• 3:48:18Speaker 02

  They've been doing this for, you know, they've been doing it for hundreds of treatments or thousands of treatments. They know how to prep you to go into your experience.

• 3:48:26Shawn Ryan?

  So is this, is the couple of weeks with the therapist?

• 3:48:30Speaker 02

  We, we cover that too.

• 3:48:31Shawn Ryan?

  Or is that?

• 3:48:32Speaker 02

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

• 3:48:53Shawn Ryan?

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

• 3:48:59Speaker 02

  It's a lot of talk therapy, but it's a lot of talk therapy around what the medicine's going to do, what it's going to open up. What are the issues you may be having? What do you think you may be having? What was your childhood like? What's your time right now? What do you think you're going to experience in there? What kind of traumas did you have? Like, it, it's kind of like a, an intake. With, with the coach though, so the coach could understand and help guide you and prepare you for when you go in there. If you did have childhood trauma or you did have wartime trauma, like that's what you're going in there to get better. Like to go in that mindset of, you know, I want to forget or I want to deal with, I should say forget.

• 3:49:44Speaker 02

  I, I can't get past seeing my buddy killed. It's affecting my whole life. I want to deal with that during this experience. And so you prepare yourself to deal with that specifically. And then there's other stuff that's just gonna, it's just gonna, like I said, the medicine finds the things that are wrong with you. So there's stuff that will just, you know, pop up in there. I mean, I had, I talked to my dad. You know, my dad had passed that year and, and, you know, it, it's, it's like a, the experience is an awakened dream state. So you put eye shades on, put like noise cancelling headphones on, nice music. The music, as it runs through your body, it brings out emotions. So as the music may get more intense, you may get more.

• 3:50:31Speaker 02

  Darker, you know, deeper images, disturbing, you know, and then if it gets lighter, I would see visions of like happy Amber and happy Kayden and Maggie, you know, our kids and like we're, we're in a good place, we're in open field and we're happy and we're singing and whatever, you know, and then the music would get intense again and the intensity, you know, brings out emotion and it brings out like dark, you know, demonic. For me, my first experience, the therapist said, Mark, because I've been doing this for 20 years, I've never seen anybody struggle like you did. Like, I've never seen anybody puke for as many hours as you did, um, and just have such a

• 3:51:10Speaker 02

  tough time through it. But because of that, like I said, it fucking just, you know, it changed my life.

• 3:51:18Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. So you go, so you go down there, you did a couple of weeks with a therapist.

• 3:51:22Speaker 02

  You go, you do a couple of weeks with a therapist and then, um, you, uh, you have to get off meds, alcohol, you can't take, you know, you have to get off all your, your antidepressants if you're on them. Like, there's a weaning off period.

• 3:51:38Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:51:39Speaker 02

  For some, that's really difficult, as you know. Um, but you, you can't, you know, there's some contraind- contraindications, uh, you know, with some pharmaceuticals. So you have to be clean.

• 3:51:50Shawn Ryan?

  For how long?

• 3:51:51Speaker 02

  Uh, whenever they're at, like, just for them to be out of your system. So whatever the half-life is or whatever, you know, they just have to be out of your system. So we, you know, not we, but the, the treatment team, which is completely separate entity from us, you know, they, they do a whole intake, screening, stress tests, blood work, EKG, piss test right before you go down, like to make sure the person is good.

• 3:52:14Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 3:52:15Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. And then, um, then when they're there, they get, they get, um, they get hooked up to heart rate monitor, they get a port put in, just the unlikely event, something happens. It's medically, it's done, like, it's so professional, it's perfect. Um, there's a, you know, Stanford-trained doctor that's there, uh, emergency medicine doctor, one of the best, um, and then, uh, psychedelic, um, trained nurses. So it's, it's just amazing staff. And then, um, and that's all of them. And, um,

• 3:52:53Speaker 02

  So you have the, the, the, uh, pre-integration, I guess, you wanna call it pre-care to get them ready. And they go, they go to their experience and, and during their experience, therapist is there. So therapist can be there to answer questions and help them if they need it.

• 3:53:09Shawn Ryan?

  In the room?

• 3:53:10Speaker 02

  Yeah. Uh, mine was there the whole time, slept at the foot of the bed, like, you know, my heart rate is sometimes were up, you know, it was racing at like one forty, one fifty.

• 3:53:18Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, wow.

• 3:53:19Speaker 02

  And that's just from what I was seeing.

• 3:53:22Shawn Ryan?

  Just lying there.

• 3:53:23Speaker 02

  Affecting me, yeah. Others, there's some guys that their heart rate doesn't get above forty beats a minute, you know, like it, it, everybody's different. Um, but that individual helped me, helped guide me through like, why am I seeing this? Why am I seeing that? Why am I talking to a dead buddy? Why am I talking to my dad? Why am I seeing toys?

• 3:53:42Shawn Ryan?

  So you, so, so you're, yeah, so you're talking, you're actually conscious. You take the pill, you're actually conscious while you're on it?

• 3:53:54Speaker 02

  Uh.

• 3:53:55Shawn Ryan?

  And having a conversation with the therapist?

• 3:53:57Speaker 02

  You're in, with the eye shades on and the music, you're, you're in the movie.

• 3:54:04Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 3:54:05Speaker 02

  You're in the movie. You don't know, you know, you don't, you're, you're kinda, you're separated from reality.

• 3:54:11Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 3:54:12Speaker 02

  Yeah. Thing about I begin, you could take off the eye shades and you kinda come out of it. It's different than like, um, psilocybin LSD where it's more of an, uh, awaken experience. Even though, um, you also can put the eye shades on and the music and you still have this, have similar experience.

• 3:54:36Speaker 02

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

• 3:55:05Shawn Ryan?

  No shit.

• 3:55:06Speaker 02

  People talk about, you know, they see a defrag of their brain. I watched it happen. Watched it happen and you'll hear that that's very common.

• 3:55:15Shawn Ryan?

  So is it in chronological order?

• 3:55:17Speaker 02

  Uh, it could be every, it could be anything. It could be a little bit jump around. Some people have had very focused missions of theirs.

• 3:55:28Speaker 02

  Everybody's different.

• 3:55:29Shawn Ryan?

  What was yours?

• 3:55:31Speaker 02

  Mine jumped around. Uh, mine, you know, and again, I think it's because I, you know, I talked to you about like, you know, my mind chatters, so it, it, it, uh, it talks too much and I, you know, I, I jumped around all over the place.

• 3:55:49Speaker 02

  I also thought I experienced, you know, like a, like a spiritual type of part of my experience where it was very like peaceful and white light and, you know, is this God? And, you know, so you, people see that, people even have more profound visions of that.

• 3:56:10Speaker 02

  That's why it's very personal. You know, at the end of the day, it's your brain. What's going on in your mind and drug's gonna fix it. The medicine's gonna fix it. And again, these things have been used for thousands of years for rites of passage and for healing, really for.

• 3:56:24Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. It's said, uh, they've been using them for up to six thousand years. Six thousand years ago, they were using this stuff.

• 3:56:32Speaker 02

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

• 3:57:06Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:57:06Speaker 02

  I'm a big proponent, they have to be taken correctly.

• 3:57:09Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:57:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:57:10Shawn Ryan?

  I can tell.

• 3:57:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:57:13Shawn Ryan?

  Are you, I mean, how like, how vivid? How vivid is it? How realistic is it? Are you, are you?

• 3:57:20Speaker 02

  But.

• 3:57:20Shawn Ryan?

  In the Time Magazine article that I read that you're in, uh, it said you talked to your father. You talked to friends that you lost on the battlefield. You talked to God.

• 3:57:30Speaker 02

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

• 3:57:33Shawn Ryan?

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

• 3:57:35Speaker 02

  Full on conversation. Your therapist there, she might tell you like. So what was that thing about X, Y, and Z? You know? So I heard you say, you know, this, this and this to your wife or. Are, you know, so. Yeah, I mean, you're, you may be acting out some of those things, or you may be thinking you're talking, but you're whispering them. Or maybe you're just not whispering or saying anything, you're just having the conversation. So it's all different things. Some you may be vocal, some you may be whispering, some you may be doing nothing. Some you may be doing a lot of hand gestures, like touching things or grabbing stuff or clearing rooms or. It's, it is so.

• 3:58:19Speaker 02

  Indi- it is so individualized, right? It's personalized medicine, works for you or what you experience. It's gonna be different from what I experienced. But we're gonna, we're gonna come out with. Similar lessons learned. You may, you may stop drinking, you may stop using your opioids. You know, you may be more aware, you may understand that you're, you know. You, you're good with yourself, you, you love yourself, you're good. You know, you don't have to hate yourself anymore or.

• 3:58:48Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:58:49Speaker 02

  You know, I mean, the, the stories are similar. And.

• 3:58:54Speaker 02

  There's something going on, right? There's something, there's something happening there.

• 3:58:57Shawn Ryan?

  How long is this last?

• 3:58:59Speaker 02

  Ibogaine's another challenge, it's, it's long, uh, anywhere the peak is four to six hours and then the, the back part is, you know, six to 12 hours. Um, iboga, the root. Twenty-four to thirty-six hours. Wow.

• 3:59:16Speaker 02

  Talking about a cleansing, I mean, come out of there, life is good. You're, you have no issues.

• 3:59:26Speaker 02

  You have no ego. There's just, you could just walk in a room and just not worry about anybody or anything, or put on a display, or, you know, put on a face mask to act like, mm-mm. You don't need any of that. You're, you're, you're just good.

• 3:59:42Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:59:42Speaker 02

  When you're done.

• 3:59:45Shawn Ryan?

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

• 3:59:52Speaker 02

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

• 3:59:57Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:59:58Speaker 02

  Because for me, it was just, it was a lot of, um, you know, shotgun images and like short, short stories, or, you know, me talking to dad for a little while, but I don't remember what we talked about, you know, and then me, you know, I do remember, I do remember some of the high points. I remember very vividly me, like with Amber and the kids, and we're all like, you know, we're all like in arms, you know, like as a family.

• 4:00:21Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:00:21Speaker 02

  It's because we did that. It's always fun. And like, we would just like, just kind of like hug around, you know, as a group. And it was very uplifting. And for me, that just showed me that dude, everything you think you're searching for, it's like, here it is. Like you, you got them right in front of you. And like, that's what it was showing me was that, you know, that you're constantly on this, this path to searching for, you're not even sure what, but you need to just stop and look what you have and be happy with that, be satisfied with that. And I think that's what that was trying to tell me was that, you know, you have everything you need. Like you don't, you don't gotta

• 4:01:04Speaker 02

  go searching for other things. And, and that's what I took away from that piece. That's kind of what the therapist had talked about. So trying to understand like, what does this mean?

• 4:01:17Speaker 02

  You know, I don't know what to talk to my dad about. Um, he, you know, I have some, I have some great memories growing up. And he definitely stopped his life to like train me and teach me and play ball. And like, that's all I did is play ball. But the other side of that, it was like,

• 4:01:34Speaker 02

  If I didn't, you know, throw a touchdown, hit a, hit a homerun, like, there was, I didn't, I wasn't loved. Like, I was like beaten, you know? Like, it was all about success. Like, you had to succeed, you had to win, you had to do right, you know?

• 4:01:52Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:01:53Speaker 02

  Otherwise, like, they were in a bad mood, him, my mom, I sucked, you know? And so that's how I grew up, was you had to do well if you wanted, like, love and attention. So, trying to reset that many years of that type of mindset. Um, and, you know, it's probably what drove me to, it definitely drove me to do certain things I, I did.

• 4:02:22Speaker 02

  But that's not healthy.

• 4:02:25Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:02:26Speaker 02

  You know?

• 4:02:30Shawn Ryan?

  Were you ever worried that it wa, I mean, when you went down there, how many times have you done this?

• 4:02:36Speaker 02

  So I've done it three now.

• 4:02:38Shawn Ryan?

  Three times?

• 4:02:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, the second time, second time was bad. Um, there was a, there was a fire at the, um, the house we were at. Um, something happened with the wiring of like, uh, a, um, one of the dryers. And this is terrible. I was in the peak, peak of my experience. And it, what I remember was, I got woken up

• 4:03:08Speaker 02

  being told that I was going into open heart surgery and that it cut me open immediately because I was going to cardiac arrest.

• 4:03:15Speaker 02

  But that, that wasn't happening. Like, that's what I perceived happening. So that, that was my memory of it. So it was like, it was really bad. And that's where, you know, the medicine can be, you know, that's what I remember. But what really would happen was caught on fire, they were just trying to get us out of the room. But again, I'm in the middle of a fucking strongest psychedelic on the planet. And I'm feeling the heat because it's real heat. So I'm in hell.

• 4:03:42Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, man.

• 4:03:42Speaker 02

  You know, like, right? So it was terrible. Um, thank goodness, I went back like six months later, a year later.

• 4:03:52Speaker 02

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

• 4:04:32Speaker 02

  an anxiety and, because it's, you know, you're, you know, it's, it's a tough, tough medicine. But again, it's not something like, you're like, oh, let's go do ibogaine. No, but this was a more pleasant experience. I was, you know, I was more prepared. I meditated throughout the whole experience. I repeated mantra throughout the whole experience in my mind. So I didn't have those prolonged, tough, demonic, you know, cutting of throats and shooting and, and knife fighting and blood and guts and like, just bad, you know, shit that I had

• 4:05:13Speaker 02

  in my very first experience that basically, in my, you know, kinda cleansed, cleansed the demons, right? Like, just kinda lifted all that weight off my shoulders. The last time I didn't have that. And it told me when I got out of there, like, dude, you're good. Like, you're, like, you won. Like, life is good. Now I just go, now I just go figure the rest of it out. So that was really rewarding to have that the last time.

• 4:05:41Speaker 02

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

• 4:06:16Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:06:17Speaker 02

  You know, it's not, when you, you stay in the day, you know, you stay in bed days at a time. Don't get up, don't answer the phone, don't answer your texts, don't want to see anyone, don't want to do anything, tired. Like, that's bad. And that's where I was before, you know, and now. Still have the depression, but able to literally fight, fight out of it quickly.

• 4:06:45Speaker 02

  I owe it to my experience. I owe, I owe it to that first time.

• 4:06:51Speaker 02

  That was such a hard struggle. Like I needed to see that. I needed to go through that.

• 4:06:55Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:06:57Speaker 02

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

• 4:07:12Speaker 02

  You gotta do something about it. So.

• 4:07:15Shawn Ryan?

  This stuff just sounds amazing. You know, I was, I was reading. Some of the stuff that not just traumatic brain injury and PTSD that is. Known to have amazing results in, but it's all, they're also seeing results in autism, cancer patients, OCD, depression, anxiety. Um, ADHD and I even read something that might be helping a little bit with Alzheimer's.

• 4:07:42Speaker 02

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

• 4:08:27Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 4:08:28Speaker 02

  It's crazy, right?

• 4:08:29Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, it is.

• 4:08:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:08:31Shawn Ryan?

  So you come back home and it's like somebody flipped the white.

• 4:08:35Speaker 02

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

• 4:08:57Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, it worked so well on you that you started a nonprofit, that's.

• 4:09:04Speaker 02

  And the first thing I said to Amber, aside from when I come out of my experience and, you know, we hugged and cried. And the first thing I said, I'm like, how can, oh, I turned to the doctor and I said, how many, I mean, there must have been tons of guys that have done this, right? Before me, like now, you're like, the second.

• 4:09:23Speaker 02

  And with the second, like, are you kidding me? Like that, that's what got me. I said, okay, Amber, we have to, we, we, we have to start like immediately. Like all our friends who are struggling need this, like this is a no brainer, like they need to do what I just did.

• 4:09:43Speaker 02

  And how are we gonna do that? All right, well, we gotta go, we gotta go, gotta go find some money. So we'll go raise some money. Well, but we have to start a nonprofit. So it's like, that was the conversation. And it was kind of a grassroots effort. We just wanted to fund a few individuals to prove the concept that this stuff works. And that turned into like a hundred, like that.

• 4:10:02Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 4:10:03Speaker 02

  You know, and then, you know, the more people that get better, easier it is to raise money, still difficult to raise money. Because it's, you know, schedule one and, but, I mean, we spent over a hundred thousand dollars in attorney fees, setting this up correctly, so we can do it correctly. You know, it's been difficult, it's not easy.

• 4:10:22Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:10:23Speaker 02

  And what we talked about, you know, people are, people are trying to, trying to do their own thing.

• 4:10:28Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:10:29Speaker 02

  That's fine. We'll support where we can, but we have to stay on the path of what we're doing, not worry about anybody else.

• 4:10:37Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, damn dude, that's, that's amazing, you know?

• 4:10:41Speaker 02

  Good shit.

• 4:10:42Shawn Ryan?

  Are you doing any other type of, uh?

• 4:10:48Shawn Ryan?

  Natural medicines?

• 4:10:50Speaker 02

  You mean like uh?

• 4:10:51Shawn Ryan?

  Marijuana?

• 4:10:53Speaker 02

  I, you know, I'm not huge in cannabis. Um, I do take a ton of CBD. So like, a lot. In the morning, in the evening, after a workout, like anything I can do to reduce inflammation, like I just, I take, I take supplements for that, I take CBD for that, take cold baths, cold showers. Um, regularly, anything I could do to reduce brain inflammation, body inflammation. Um. CBD cannabis, I mean, sometimes I have, I definitely have trouble sleeping still. Um, I wish I could sleep better. So I do sometimes do a little bit at night before I go to bed. Um, sometimes I sleep, sometimes I don't. Uh.

• 4:11:37Speaker 02

  I usually just fucking end up in the pantry eating a lot of, like cookies and chocolate at night.

• 4:11:45Speaker 02

  Um, but yeah, I mean, I'm not for against it, like I just, it's, it's okay. You know, it's okay. But I feel like I'm, I'm busy and I like to do, you know, and for me. It's not, you know, I'm, I'm too busy to like, sit around and smoke pot, you know, yeah. You know, but like I said, I definitely, I definitely use it to try to go to sleep.

• 4:12:08Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:12:09Speaker 02

  And I wanted to be eating too much after that.

• 4:12:11Shawn Ryan?

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

• 4:12:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, you can get it, yeah.

• 4:12:28Shawn Ryan?

  And, you know, I had that, I'm not doing that shit, that's for hippies. I don't do that. I don't want to turn into a fat turd and smoke pot all the time. And then I finally, I finally tried it and, and I, I.

• 4:12:43Shawn Ryan?

  I can't say enough good shit about it.

• 4:12:44Speaker 02

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

• 4:13:03Shawn Ryan?

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

• 4:13:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:13:25Shawn Ryan?

  Or um, or vape or whatever, you know, whatever I had, but man, it like, I just, I can't say enough good stuff about it. I mean, it just, it, it, I, I gotta be honest, like really fucking pisses me off that it's still illegal because I know how many people it's helping and it helps me and

• 4:13:44Speaker 02

  Got it.

• 4:13:45Shawn Ryan?

  and what's, what's, what's the alternative?

• 4:13:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, the alternative is

• 4:13:49Shawn Ryan?

  Go back to benzos and

• 4:13:51Speaker 02

  is mu- mu- much worse, uh, heavy drugs. Yeah. You're, you're right about that. So I, you know, I, I should learn a little bit more, you know, I have some gummies and I use like small doses of that and I think that's good. I like that too, cause it doesn't like,

• 4:14:06Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:14:07Speaker 02

  you know, it doesn't affect like my um, um, my breathing or anything like that. Um, so I, you know, I kinda like that.

• 4:14:16Shawn Ryan?

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

• 4:14:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, um, so right now, you know, we've stayed underground for about, you know, close to three years because we wanted to do it right. We didn't want to, um, we didn't want to, um, One caused an issue in the community because we knew that we had fun guys in our community and what the worst thing that could have happened was, you know, some, some bad article publicity put out that, you know, veterans or SEALs or other special operations forces are like running wild on psychedelics or drugs and, and that would be detrimental to what we're doing. And so we just took everything really slow, kept it quiet, built

• 4:15:07Speaker 02

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

• 4:15:47Speaker 02

  on HB 1802 in Texas, which is going to be in Texas of all places, just passed the House, passed the Health Committee 11 to 0, passed the House, like 100 and, I don't know what the number is, 124 to 12. Now it goes to the Senate. It'll be the first bill in the US to do a clinical trial with the Houston VA and Baylor Medical. And if, it'll be, we'll be testing psilocybin, MDMA, and ketamine. Wow. Yeah. Yep. And so we're, I mean, everybody we talked to is confident that it's going

• 4:16:32Speaker 02

  to pass. Governor Perry is like, leading the charge on that with us. He's a Republican. He's seen what it's done to the individuals that he knows. And so he's 100% behind it. And I think that's great because the it's a bipartisan bill. So Republicans and Democrats are working together. So we're right in the middle of all that, helping them testifying, you know, speaking out, doing panels to educate, you know, the politicians, the lawmakers. We co-sponsored the bill in California. It was a decrim bill, but it was heavy into therapy and we had to because of the therapy piece. We didn't

• 4:17:17Speaker 02

  really have a choice. We just did a panel yesterday for Connecticut lawmakers. I just got a phone call from New York, Florida, like, so they're all reaching out to Amber and I to kind of be the voice for them to help start passing some of this legislation. So that's where we're at on the state level. Federal level, it's got to get descheduled or however it works, you know, from the FDA or excuse me, from the DEA. Because at the federal level, if they figure it out, then the states are going to have an easier time being able to, you know, to research all these different medicines. So I don't

• 4:17:59Speaker 02

  know. I don't know how that's going to go. So treatments, funding for treatments, advocacy, speaking out like this, podcasts, articles. I don't know where else. I don't know where we're going to go from here.

• 4:18:16Shawn Ryan?

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

• 4:18:37Speaker 02

  It's crazy. You know, they said in Texas, they can't even, they can't agree upon where a stop sign is placed. You know, they'll split, they'll split their vote, you know, it should be on the right side of the street. No, it should be on the left side of the street. It should be this, you know. But this bill, unanimous, 11 to 0, came out of that, the health committee. And then the House voted, like I said, there was only 12 nays. And I'm assuming the 12 nays probably just didn't understand, like, they probably didn't even look at this. They didn't even know what it was. They just heard psychedelic and they're like, nay. You know, but that's still a large.

• 4:19:12Speaker 02

  It's a large amount that voted yea in Texas. And we're talking about a state that's history of conservative Republican Christian. You know, so I think if Texas leads the way in this, like, the rest of the country is gonna lead the way. That's what I feel. If Texas could do it, because you figure it's gonna be done in California, or New York, or Illinois, right? Or some, you know, Washington, Oregon, but in Texas? Come on, that should like, like, tell people.

• 4:19:42Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, a hard right state.

• 4:19:43Speaker 02

  Guys, just like, do a little reading, do a little research.

• 4:19:48Shawn Ryan?

  So, moving forward, how can, how can we help? How can, how can the viewers help? Donations, getting the word out, what, how do we find you? All that good stuff.

• 4:19:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, so, um, vetsolutions.org. We got a beautiful new website, there's a donation link. We always need resources, we always need funding. We're putting together some programs, we have an amazing advisory board. Five of them are on the top five most influential, uh, or influential individuals on the, in the psychedelic space. We have five of those individuals on our advisory board. I mean, you know, we get, we have some real people involved. We always need resources if people have, you know, uh, ideas for fundraising. You know, we haven't done any like the big dinners.

• 4:20:42Speaker 02

  And, you know, some of the things that, you know, you and I might have, you know, gone to, you know, golf events, things like that, that raise money. Um, we've done a pretty good job, you know, up until this point, we've got some really good, um, individual backers, you know, that are keeping this thing afloat. Spread the word, you know, uh, be a part of what Amber and I are doing. Um, we just want to, we wanna grow this, you know, maybe, maybe we develop a, an international chapter. Uh, same thing, maybe in like, you know, England, or somewhere else in Europe, or in Australia, where, you know, they're having the same type of veteran issues, 100% we heard, maybe somewhere even worse.

• 4:21:27Speaker 02

  They can do the same thing that we're doing here, and maybe we collaborate.

• 4:21:34Shawn Ryan?

  Well, Willie will post all the links, social media links.

• 4:21:39Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 4:21:39Shawn Ryan?

  You know, down in the description along with your time article, because it was a really good article.

• 4:21:44Speaker 02

  Awesome.

• 4:21:45Shawn Ryan?

  And very informative. And, uh, man, I just want to say, um,

• 4:21:52Shawn Ryan?

  this is, this is amazing. Like, what you guys are doing and how much you've accomplished, uh, in such a short period of time is just, it's, it's, it's incredible.

• 4:22:02Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 4:22:03Shawn Ryan?

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

• 4:22:11Speaker 02

  Definitely is. It's, it's, uh, it's still tough. I don't, uh, I don't love it at all. It's, um, it's not fun talking about your vulnerabilities and the things that you failed at or that you sucked at. Um, but I think it's really helping folks. And every day that everyone I want to quit because it's so fucking tough sometimes with, uh, you know, like we talked about people coming after you and some of the laws and, you know, sometimes when you hit roadblocks. And then we get a letter from somebody that went through treatment and they're like, you saved my life. And that just keeps us going, you know, and knowing the fact that we have really good, close friends and, and brothers that I worked with that I just want to,

• 4:22:55Speaker 02

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

• 4:23:22Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I don't know how much, I don't know how much feedback you're getting, but I can tell you, you know, looking from the outside, you guys are making a tremendous impact on, on the Combat Veteran community and, and, uh, and it's making some big waves and it's just really cool to watch. So, um, and I, I want to thank you for coming up here and, and giving me your time and

• 4:23:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, thank you.

• 4:23:47Shawn Ryan?

  to share your story. And I know some of that stuff isn't, isn't, uh, isn't.

• 4:23:53Shawn Ryan?

  Isn't the funnest to go back to.

• 4:23:56Speaker 02

  No, but honored, so honored. Thanks for the gummy bears.

• 4:24:01Shawn Ryan?

  You're welcome, man.

• 4:24:03Speaker 02

  I had the best.

• 4:24:04Shawn Ryan?

  Best of luck to you.

• 4:24:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, thank you.

• 4:24:15Speaker 06

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