217. DJ Shipley: On Psychedelics, Discipline, PTSD & Rebuilding the Mind After War

Can a 24-hour medicine experience break through trauma that decades of therapy couldn’t touch? Navy SEAL Veteran DJ Shipley opens up about his transformative Ibogaine journey in Mexico that saved his marriage, eliminated suicidal ideation, and revealed the unexpected source of his PTSD. His honesty about his Navy SEAL experience and the cost of elite performance offers hope for anyone struggling with mental health challenges that seem insurmountable. Join the Ultimate Human VIP community for Gary Brecka's proven wellness protocols!: https://bit.ly/4ai0Xwg Connect with DJ Shipley Website: https://bit.ly/4qQ7Ahn YouTube: https://bit.ly/4nLSqac Instagram: https://bit.ly/3WJdGCt TikTok: https://bit.ly/47xIADV Facebook: https://bit.ly/4973B9N X.com: https://bit.ly/49K4VQ6 LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/47yKUe2 Thank you to our partners H2TABS: “ULTIMATE10” FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/4hMNdgg BODYHEALTH: “ULTIMATE20” FOR 20% OFF: http://bit.ly/4e5IjsV BAJA GOLD: "ULTIMATE10" FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/3WSBqUa COLD LIFE: THE ULTIMATE HUMAN PLUNGE: https://bit.ly/4eULUKp WHOOP: JOIN AND GET 1 FREE MONTH!: https://bit.ly/3VQ0nzW AION: “ULTIMATE10” FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/4h6KHAD A-GAME: “ULTIMATE15” FOR 15% OFF: http://bit.ly/4kek1ij PEPTUAL: “TUH10” FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/4mKxgcn CARAWAY: “ULTIMATE” FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/3Q1VmkC HEALF: 10% OFF YOUR ORDER: https://bit.ly/41HJg6S BIOPTIMIZERS: “ULTIMATE” FOR 15% OFF: https://bit.ly/4inFfd7 RHO NUTRITION: “ULTIMATE15” FOR 15% OFF: https://bit.ly/44fFza0 GOPUFF: GET YOUR FAVORITE SNACK!: https://bit.ly/4obIFDC GENETIC METHYLATION TEST (UK ONLY): https://bit.ly/48QJJrk GENETIC TEST (USA ONLY): ⁠https://bit.ly/3Yg1Uk9 Watch the “Ultimate Human Podcast” every Tuesday & Thursday at 9AM EST: YouTube: https://bit.ly/3RPQYX8 Podcasts: https://bit.ly/3RQftU0 Connect with Gary Brecka Instagram: https://bit.ly/3RPpnFs TikTok: https://bit.ly/4coJ8fo X: https://bit.ly/3Opc8tf Facebook: https://bit.ly/464VA1H LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/4hH7Ri2 Website: https://bit.ly/4eLDbdU Merch: https://bit.ly/4aBpOM1 Newsletter: https://bit.ly/47ejrws Ask Gary: https://bit.ly/3PEAJuG Timestamps 00:00 Intro of Show 02:32 Growing Up in Military 07:44 Mindset, Training, and Culture-Building 19:22 Heroic Experiences in the SEAL 24:33 Witnessing (and Being Part of) Real Combats 30:00 What is a Typical SEAL Mission? 33:10 Gnarliest Missions Experienced 44:16 Managing Family Life while at SEAL Service 56:44 Transition from Navy SEAL to Civilian Life 1:02:39 Importance of Having Daily Routines 11:13:16 Showing Up as the Best Version of Yourself 1:20:09 Ibogaine Experience 1:40:04 What does it mean to you to be an Ultimate Human? Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational purposes only and does not provide medical advice. It is not intended for diagnosing or treating any health condition. Always consult a licensed healthcare professional before making health or wellness decisions. Gary Brecka is the owner of Ultimate Human, LLC which operates The Ultimate Human podcast and promotes certain third-party products used by Gary Brecka in his personal health and wellness protocols and daily life and for which Ultimate Human LLC and / or Gary Brecka directly or indirectly holds an economic interest or receives compensation. Accordingly, statements made by Gary Brecka and others (including on The Ultimate Human podcast) may be considered promotional in nature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  I had my best friend get killed on a hostage rescue, December 8, 2012. That was a tough thing to go through, man.

• 0:06Gary Brecka?

  There's no greater bond than just you 100% knowing that the guy beside you is willing to give his life and you are willing to give your life for the mission.

• 0:16Speaker 00

  I mean, you've been in some that are just, you're pinned down, feel helpless. Your buddy's dying in your arms. This guy's shooting at us. I've got to save him while not getting shot at. And you can't take out the human aspect of it. You've spent so much time together.

• 0:27Gary Brecka?

  You'll never reach that level of culture in the civilian world because people are not willing to do what you guys had to do to develop that culture.

• 0:35Speaker 00

  What is the culture? 1% better every day, be a pro, be even better than you found it. Don't be an asshole. At the end of the day, how do you want to be a good Navy SEAL? Be a good dude.

• 0:43Gary Brecka?

  And one of the things I really identify with is that you are not afraid to be selfish with the first part of your day so that you can be selfless and give the rest of your day away.

• 0:53Speaker 00

  I'm trying to live to be 105. I'm trying to be an asset to my family as long as humanly possible. And there's a big physical component of that. I'm exhausting everything I can to be there and be present on the moments where they really need me.

• 1:03Gary Brecka?

  What about the mindset of having been a SEAL? What did you draw out of that culture and that career that's now just a part of who you are, not what you do?

• 1:10Speaker 00

  I think ultimately, and somebody who really good is.

• 1:27Gary Brecka?

  Hey guys, welcome back to the Ultimate Human Podcast. I'm your host, Gary Brecka, human biologist, where we go down the road of everything, anti-aging, biohacking, longevity, and everything in between. Today is a really, really unique podcast. Not only is our guest a former member of SEAL Team 10, but he's a father, he's an entrepreneur, he's a husband, and his advice, I've actually, I told him today, I actually take some of your advice, I started following your morning routine. And if you know anything about me, like my morning routine is sacred, but welcome to the podcast, DJ Shipley. You invaded my morning routine and now. I'm actually taking, taking some advice from you. Um, you know, it's astounding, you know,

• 2:09Gary Brecka?

  you've been here for, for a few hours and uh, I always end up running a podcast before the podcast with my guests. Um, but it's been great getting to know you, brother. We, we had an awesome order. We're both freezing right now because we just got out of a cold plunge, but we did uh, hyper barracks and then we got in the sauna. Um, and then did a little cold plunge. So we're both, the lights are on.

• 2:29Speaker 00

  Oh yeah. Fire in all eight cylinders, man. Thank you very much for having me.

• 2:32Gary Brecka?

  So you, you know, there's so many avenues that we could go down with this podcast, but you know, what, what I found um, really unique about your story, I feel like you were kind of like the uncommon Navy SEAL. I mean, you, you come from a long line uh, of, of military in your family, you know, your fathers, your uncles, um, even, even your mother, um, and grandparents, World War II, um, your father was a SEAL.

• 2:59Speaker 00

  Father-in-law too.

• 3:00Gary Brecka?

  Your father-in-law was a SEAL. Your mother was, um, she was in the military.

• 3:06Speaker 00

  She was in the Navy.

• 3:07Gary Brecka?

  She was in the Navy. So my father was in the Navy too. So you kind of have no choice, right?

• 3:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 3:13Gary Brecka?

  I find that there's a kind of a common theme that runs through my podcast and I feel like the people that are the most impactful in this world, um, the people that are the most passionate, passionate, like purpose-driven are, are people that solved the problem, something in their life. And that became the foundation for greatness. And for you, was that how you were shaped as a Navy SEAL? I mean, because you were, you were actually 17 when you went in, right? So, um, and I found it really fascinating that you said, you know, today's day and age, I probably wouldn't have made it. Um, just because the, the qualification, not that the qualifications have changed, but the caliber of the people coming in.

• 3:58Speaker 00

  There's so much more educated and well-prepared, more than I was. You know, it's 2025, the internet's infinite. They can, they can download a David Goggins and Jaco and all these other people. They can read about the pipeline. They can see it on. You know, Discovery Channel, we didn't have any of that.

• 4:13Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 4:14Speaker 00

  The human potential has grown so much. I mean, the bear for entry, if you look at the screen test and what it takes to get in, it's not a very hard thing to do, but the numbers these kids are producing now, they wouldn't have even looked at me.

• 4:25Gary Brecka?

  Really?

• 4:26Speaker 00

  Bottom of, yeah, good enough to get through, good enough to make it through. But now the scores are all based off of physical push-up, push-up, uh, sit-ups, pull-ups, running, swimming, all of those things. The numbers are so much greater than what I was able to produce in 2002. It just shows the, you know, the human potential. It's really climbing fast.

• 4:45Gary Brecka?

  Yeah. Did you go in because your father sort of gave you no choice? I mean, one of the interesting things, and I want you to tell this story, but um, is when I hear you talk about your story, I mean, you really grew up in this SEAL environment. He actually, he didn't take you on missions, but he took you around those guys a lot growing up. Not just because they were over at the house, but you know, you went out to the base.

• 5:07Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm. I grew up there.

• 5:09Gary Brecka?

  Grew up there. And so, so it was like, kind of like this environment that you were in. And, and I recall you talking about how you never really around a lot of normal people.

• 5:19Speaker 00

  Never.

• 5:21Gary Brecka?

  So what was that like, you know, being a young kid, you know, father's a Navy SEAL, high achiever, coming from a long line of military families and then sort of growing up around this base? Cause I don't think a lot of people really are in tune with what that kind of youth is like.

• 5:37Speaker 00

  When people think growing up in military, they think um, major dad, right? Flat top haircut, he comes in blouse, uniform, you know. SEAL teams are very, special operations is very unconventional. So they never felt like they were in the military. You'd see the uniforms and you'd see all the stuff, but it felt like more like a professional sports team than anything else. But it was the culture, the way they were, the. Living out of fifteen passenger, fifteen passenger vans in and out of hotels, always going on the road, dropping off dirty laundry, but just, you know, the humor, the dark humor, just the physicality. When these guys would come over, I mean, I can remember being a tiny, tiny child and watching the guys pour into our house and just,

• 6:21Speaker 00

  they all looked like superheroes.

• 6:23Gary Brecka?

  They're specimens.

• 6:24Speaker 00

  And they were freaks and I just, I always wanted to be one. I really wanted to be a veterinarian, like in the back of my mind, I loved animals, I loved being around that. So I'd always say that I want to be a vet, I want to be a vet. And they would just, you don't want to be a vet.

• 6:39Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, well, I mean, you had like chickens, goats.

• 6:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:42Gary Brecka?

  Like every animal in the world when you're growing up. So you're, you know, you're in that farm lifestyle. I grew up on a three hundred acre tobacco farm. So I know what it's like to be in that urban environment, you know, skateboarding was your outlet, you know. And then you used to bust yourself up a lot skateboarding. It's kind of funny.

• 7:01Speaker 00

  I've been hurt.

• 7:03Gary Brecka?

  And so, you know, was your dad around a lot? I mean, at that time he was always on deployment, right?

• 7:10Speaker 00

  Always, just gone.

• 7:14Speaker 00

  I kind of rough averaged it out, two hundred fifty, three hundred days out of the year gone.

• 7:18Gary Brecka?

  Wow.

• 7:18Speaker 00

  And that's continuous the entire time.

• 7:20Gary Brecka?

  But when he was back, he put you in that lifestyle, you know, you're on the base, you're around his guys. Did you, did anything strike you? Like, did you notice that culture where like, were you young enough to grasp it like, these guys, I mean, they, they're messing with each other. They have a funny language. They joke a different way. They all look like physical specimens, but could you feel that culture like as a child?

• 7:44Speaker 00

  You could taste it. It was palpable. And, you know, now that I've, I've been on the other side, I could see where his frustrations coming back and trying to assimilate normal life. There's always a friction point because he'd never heard the words no. And now I think back to all the small things like, hey, guys, everybody's got to come up to my house. You know, we had a hurricane. We've got fourteen trees falling down. And sixty dudes show up at the house with. Cases full of beer and chainsaws and they chop up every single tree. No one complains about it. They do it. They burn it. They haul it out. That's just what you do. You've never heard the word no. Or I can't do that, or it's too heavy. It's too long. We can't make it. They always just did it. So you get used to that being the performance anxiety like they've never said no.

• 8:27Speaker 00

  They've never said, we can't do it. They're always going to find a way because the collective is always trying to solve that problem together.

• 8:32Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 8:32Speaker 00

  And I think that's what makes it so infectious. Cause everybody deals with stress and problems all day long. Nobody has a group where everybody goes, I'm going to stop everything I'm doing right now and we're going to solve it together right now.

• 8:43Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 8:43Speaker 00

  And that's what the essence of that culture is.

• 8:45Gary Brecka?

  I think it's so unique because you know, how do you take a, you know, young farm kid? Cause you go into the seals at 17 years old. So you don't know what combat's like. You probably don't even know what buzz is like. You have no idea what to expect. I mean, you have a little maybe idea of the culture from being around your father and all of his buddies. But I always find it fascinating. I think it's just such a metaphor for life. It's a metaphor for culture, for families, for businesses. How they take these disparate guys that don't know each other. They're young, probably can't find your ass with both hands at 17 years old, right?

• 9:25Gary Brecka?

  It's not like you have this vision of being on this team and you know, you know how to build culture. Those are not things that are just inherent to you. And you go into this program, uh, which is really designed to weed you out. I mean, it's really designed to fail you, to break you.

• 9:45Gary Brecka?

  And the shocking fact that you're not broken leaves you with a unit that's tight. But then talk to me about like the, the culture building because lots of people do hard things. And lots of people do hard things in groups, right? It's one of the reasons why I think CrossFit was so successful, for example, because it was the first time, you know, for most of the people in that class that they pushed themselves to absolute exhaustion. I remember after CrossFit Wides, everybody's laying on the floor sweating. And but there was that unity, you know, the conversation afterwards where you're just dripping off sweat. It didn't matter if somebody was a school teacher, another dude was a firefighter, another guy was a, you know,

• 10:29Gary Brecka?

  he was there from SWAT team from the, from the county. You were all on the same. Level for 50 minutes, you know. So how does that culture evolve? I'm really interested in, because there's, there's an intentionality to it. You're bringing in these guys from all over the country. You're putting them through a battery of tests. But all that battery of tests is doing is saying, who's the hardest? Who's the most determined? Who has the greatest willpower? Who has an unbreakable ability to deal with suffering? But at the end of that, you don't just magically get culture.

• 11:08Speaker 00

  No.

• 11:09Gary Brecka?

  Can you talk about the shared suffering?

• 11:11Speaker 00

  And then a lot of it is the unknown. It's the fear of the unknown. Nobody knows what's coming next. You've never done it before. And some of the evolutions you do, I mean, I'll say it to everybody. There's a point where your mind will take over and it'll tell yourself, you're going to die right now. They don't realize how cold you are. They don't realize what stage hypothermia you're in. And you're going to die if you don't say something. And you'll look to your left and right and nobody's throwing their hand in the air and you go, I'm not going to say anything. I don't want to get pulled out of here. I don't want to get the pro because if my core temperature does drop and he kicked me out of here, that's not what I want. I'd rather, I'd rather die right here in the surf zone. Close out the whole chapter knowing I did everything I could.

• 11:51Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 11:52Speaker 00

  And I think people hit that when the collective hits that same point. It's new different than CrossFit.

• 11:56Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 11:56Speaker 00

  At a certain point during that walk, during that workout, you think your heart's going to explode.

• 12:00Gary Brecka?

  You do.

• 12:01Speaker 00

  And no one else is stopping and you just keep going. Like there's a little internal governor inside of your body. You just override and go, one more, one more. Like we've all done these crazy runs where you're like, my heart's going to stop right now. Like I have to stop. And yet you don't.

• 12:15Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 12:15Speaker 00

  Once you do that so many times and you see everybody else do the exact same thing, it builds this internal strength that nobody else can feel but you. But you get stronger as it gets harder. People start to leave. They're all quitting and you see guys show up to special operations like they look like Dolph Lundgren in Rocky IV. You're like, really? I can't believe that kid grew up and looks like that and wants to do the same thing I do. Like, why aren't you on the cover of Men's Health? And they quit in five minutes.

• 12:40Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 12:41Speaker 00

  How? That cold water changes everybody. Like, they don't want to be here. And I think that's where a lot of my success was is that was a barrier for entry. I have to do all of these things in order to do that.

• 12:54Gary Brecka?

  Mm hmm.

• 12:54Speaker 00

  And I've been around it. So I see what the end state is. Everybody who I've ever met has gone through this exact same thing. They picked up that same boat, the same logs, been in the same water. You have to do it.

• 13:04Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 13:04Speaker 00

  If you want a college degree, you gotta go through college. This is my college.

• 13:07Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 13:07Speaker 00

  I have to make it through.

• 13:08Gary Brecka?

  And you know, we talk a lot about mindset. And I remember you telling the story about how you're, you know, you're in California, you're in, you're in the, um, you're in the surf, you're in the water, water's cold as shit. And you guys are all linked up and you're doing whatever calisthetics and you're going through the program in the water. And, um, you're suffering and you feel like you're gonna die. And then you look over and you see like a kid with a inflatable, like pink flamingo of like floating in the surface. You're like, how is this fourteen year old boy, ten year old boy floating next to me? I feel like I'm gonna die.

• 13:45Gary Brecka?

  So that's, it's gotta be where the mindset comes in. And so during, during BUDs, which has gotta be the hardest thing you've ever done in your life. I don't know if that is or not.

• 13:57Speaker 00

  At the time it was for sure.

• 13:58Gary Brecka?

  Okay, at the time.

• 13:59Speaker 00

  At the time it was for sure.

• 14:00Gary Brecka?

  Cause we're gonna get into that too.

• 14:04Gary Brecka?

  And at that point, you're not a unit yet. You're just, you're just suffering as a group. Right? So they, that camaraderie, that culture has not started. This is the weeding out process.

• 14:17Speaker 00

  You can feel the culture in the cadre. And I think that's one of the things that nobody ever gets to see unless you're, if you'd be exposed to it early, you can watch the subculture inside of it. So you can see the clash is getting pounded. And you can watch the instructors. They'll go off to a little corner, they're drinking coffee, they're dipping Copenhagen, they're talking smack. But you can see how much they love each other because they've all been through this before. And it's like, man, I really wish I had that cup of coffee I was over there. Well, if I ever want to have it, I gotta get through this. Do you get to see the culture from a distance? And the closer you get to graduating, the more you feel like you're connected to it.

• 14:51Gary Brecka?

  Really?

• 14:51Speaker 00

  You gotta go through all these steps, but. They bring out the best and brightest to be button structures. They're all physically fit. They represent what the essence of being a SEAL is so well. So when they come out there and they're leading PT, they're a freak.

• 15:04Gary Brecka?

  Really?

• 15:04Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 15:05Gary Brecka?

  And they're in it with you a lot of times too, right?

• 15:08Speaker 00

  They're leading the PT. So you get a guy that'll drop down. I mean, you'll do a 500 push-up workout. That's

• 15:14Gary Brecka?

  500?

• 15:16Speaker 00

  And I mean, wide grip, close grip, diamonds, all kinds of crazy stuff. You go mount a bar and they'll have a guy that'll hang on that bar for five straight minutes doing pull-ups. And guys are cycling through and he's not dropping. And you're looking at him like, how is he able to do that? He's been prepping, but he sets the bar so high, you think you'll never be able to get there.

• 15:35Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 15:36Speaker 00

  He's been right here with me, falling out after his first set of 10. Like he can't hang on the bar anymore. He's so exhausted. But they always give you this pinnacle, like if you just keep going, you'll get to that spot. Just don't take your foot off the gas. I think you do a really good job of showcasing that.

• 15:50Gary Brecka?

  Yeah. And I mean, a lot of the culture is based on, we talked about this in the sauna today. Like, I mean, your training has got to be as difficult as the combat situations that you're going to go into. So that you're not shocked by the exhaustion, the temperature change, you know, the environmental shifts. You're prepared because your training was so difficult. That the missions become, as you said earlier, routine, right? I know exactly what I'm going to do at this second, at the next second, at the next second. And, you know, when you, when you, when you graduated, or you, you know, you, you completed this.

• 16:31Gary Brecka?

  Is that where the culture really began? Is that where you really, because at some point, a SEAL has got to be willing to exchange his life for his, for his comrade, right? And I think there's no, like, greater risk, there's no greater bond than just you 100% knowing that the guy beside you is willing to give his life and you are willing to give your life for the mission. That level of trust must be something that's really difficult to emulate in the civilian world.

• 17:11Gary Brecka?

  Right? I mean, the mediocrity and averages of life after you've done something like that, and then taken those skills, deployed them in combat, which I want to get into too.

• 17:25Gary Brecka?

  Coming back from that, doesn't life seem like very mediocre?

• 17:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, most people have never had an opportunity to sacrifice themselves for something they couldn't take with them. Like you'll sacrifice for a hundred million bucks, but you won't sacrifice for 70 grand a year, right? Knowing you can't take the pinnacle of that profession, you can't take it with you once you're gone. At a certain point in your career, you realize that and you just don't care. You just want to play another game, right? Think about Tom Brady a lot.

• 17:55Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 17:56Speaker 00

  He could have wound that thing up and retired early and still been the greatest ever.

• 17:59Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 17:59Speaker 00

  He wasn't done. He wanted to play one more game.

• 18:02Gary Brecka?

  That's very much for him and not for anyone else. Yeah.

• 18:06Speaker 00

  Yeah. It's like for the group.

• 18:08Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, and for his team.

• 18:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, you gotta be willing to sacrifice it for the group.

• 18:13Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 18:14Speaker 00

  Once you see people how far they're willing to push, you'll do evolutions. You're like, there's no way I can do that. There's no way I can do it. And then as soon as you get through it, it's like a little confidence boost. You're like, well, if I got through that, well, I can get through this. I can get through this. Somebody said it the other day, like, if you change the entire, the entire selection, in order to do that, you had to run the Moab 250. If you want to be on this team, you have to run the Moab 250. Every single person would run the Moab 250.

• 18:41Gary Brecka?

  Really?

• 18:42Speaker 00

  Everyone. If that was the new selection process, everything else is out. Get through this evolution, you can do this job. Everybody would do it.

• 18:49Gary Brecka?

  Wow.

• 18:50Speaker 00

  The attrition rate would still be the same. Training protocols would be the same or be different, but you'd still get through it.

• 18:57Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 18:57Speaker 00

  If everybody had to climb Everest, you'd have a lot less people, but they would still climb Everest.

• 19:02Gary Brecka?

  When did it first click for you? Like, when, when did you decide, I am in the right place? This is the right time. This is what I'm meant to do. Like, when did that, when did that culture snap into reality for you? Was it after BUDs? Was it after you actually performed a mission? Was it like?

• 19:23Speaker 00

  It's probably, probably halfway through my first deployment. I was in Iraq, 2005. We had Operation Red Wings in Afghanistan happen with Marcus Luttrell. That was the other half of my SEAL team.

• 19:32Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 19:33Speaker 00

  When that thing happened, that shock was our own little private 9/11.

• 19:37Gary Brecka?

  That's when the publicity, I think, of the SEALs just, just started. I mean, you were in it. It was very much a, I, I feel, just this very secretive organization beforehand. I mean, a lot of people didn't even know that we had them.

• 19:50Gary Brecka?

  The movies didn't really start coming out till like 2002-ish.

• 19:54Speaker 00

  I mean, we had Charlie Sheen, Navy SEALs back in the day, the greatest Navy SEAL movie ever made.

• 19:59Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 19:59Speaker 00

  You had Tears of the Sun with Bruce Willis. You had a couple of things.

• 20:02Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 20:02Speaker 00

  I mean, it wasn't, I mean, kids made fun of me in high school. What's your dad do? He's a SEAL.

• 20:09Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 20:09Speaker 00

  No, he's a commando and they're like, what's up? Oh, God, nobody knows.

• 20:13Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 20:13Speaker 00

  You say it now, everybody knows.

• 20:15Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 20:15Speaker 00

  It's a household name now, but it wasn't back then. Like you were doing it for something that nobody else could, would ever see.

• 20:21Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 20:21Speaker 00

  I've said it before, like, I've seen 12 people do the most amazing things you'll never get to see. I can't explain it to you, you'll never understand.

• 20:30Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 20:31Speaker 00

  But the juice is totally worth the squeeze.

• 20:33Gary Brecka?

  It is.

• 20:34Speaker 00

  And I think that's really when you get, invest in the culture, when you watch that group of people do the most heroic things you've ever seen and no one else will ever witness it outside of us 12.

• 20:44Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 20:44Speaker 00

  And never even talk about it.

• 20:45Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 20:46Speaker 00

  Some of the things that have humbled me the most is I, I have seen things that almost haunt me with how heroic they were and they don't even talk about them. They don't even debrief it.

• 20:56Gary Brecka?

  Wow.

• 20:56Speaker 00

  It's like, what?

• 20:58Gary Brecka?

  That was just on a mission.

• 20:59Speaker 00

  One of my very first times I brought it up in debrief, like, are we not going to address this incident that happened? And he looked right at me and he goes, when you get in the end zone, act like you've been there before. And walked out.

• 21:10Gary Brecka?

  Really?

• 21:11Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 21:12Gary Brecka?

  Wow.

• 21:14Speaker 00

  I've seen quite a few things up until that point, and that was definitely the most heroic thing I had ever seen. You don't even want to talk about it.

• 21:19Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 21:20Speaker 00

  Okay, wow.

• 21:21Gary Brecka?

  Okay.

• 21:21Speaker 00

  That's the bar. Kind of need recognition. Indeed, not the glory.

• 21:25Gary Brecka?

  What was the first time that you ever saw real combat? Because, you know, before we, just to preface this, when we were in the sauna, we were talking about how I've had this fascination with not just professional athleticism, but like a professional athlete that can dominate their sport over a really prolonged period of time. You know, like a Lance Armstrong, seven Tour de France, you know, a LeBron James, or Michael Jordan, or Tom Brady, who's not just excellent or excellent once, but is excellent over a prolonged period of time, which means they were able to block out all the other noise, right? All the pleasures of the flesh, all the fame, all the fortune,

• 22:05Gary Brecka?

  you know, all of a sudden going from virtual obscurity to fame, which has its own set of challenges, and block all that out and stay excellent for a long period of time. That's always fascinated me. And I described to you how a former wide receiver from the running back that had won multiple Super Bowls was telling me that he described this moment where he would break off the line, and he would be barreling down the field, giving exactly 100% of every ounce that he had in his body. He knew that he did not

• 22:44Gary Brecka?

  have one more ounce of energy or effort to give. And he would tell me, like, at that moment, there'd be 70,000 people in a stadium, and I could, like, hear a single voice, right? I could hear one person saying, "Go, Billy!" And he would, like, queue into that one voice. And he knew, you know, 25 yards later, that the trumpet player was standing too close to the sideline, and that's where he was gonna go out, and he was gonna wipe out that trumpet player. And what he told me was, he's like, I could feel the ball snap. Like, I actually knew the ball was in the air, even though I hadn't looked back to see that it was in the air. I could feel the defender coming across the field to hit me. And at that moment, just giving 100% effort, and I would put my hands up, I would

• 23:29Gary Brecka?

  grab the ball, I would get hit, would end. But he said there was that period, he would just chase that moment like a rat to cheese. And...

• 23:39Gary Brecka?

  I have to imagine, because I know nothing about combat, by the grace of God, I've never been shot at. So, and I'm never shot at somebody. But I have to imagine that when you're in a combat situation and, and the risk is not whether you win or lose a game. The risk is whether or not you go back or, you know, you go home in a coffin or you, you come back to maybe see your family. Like the, the level of risk, the stakes in a game like that, the level of trust and confidence that you've got to have on the people around you, you can have zero doubt, not just in yourself, but in whether or not the people that are on your flank are going to do exactly what they're supposed to do.

• 24:22Gary Brecka?

  Like, where does that come from? And can you talk about like, what was the first time that you saw real combat? And you came back and you're like, this was worth it. This is for me.

• 24:33Speaker 00

  Fortunately for me, in that first deployment, you got to see a face full of combat the entire time. But it skewed over the years. You got more violent, more violent, more violent. In 2007, it really uncorked in Fallujah. You really got to see some, some really serious combat in your face, close proximity. It can't be ignored. And then all the things that would freak out normal people, they no longer freak you out. And it's because the training has been ingrained so much and they've taken it so above and beyond what's necessary to normal people. That nothing phases you anymore. Like, you're walking up to a door, you're under night vision, there's not an ounce of starlight, there's no moon. It's jet black. And as you're walking up, all you're seeing are infrared lasers. I mean, a foot off your head, covering everything around you.

• 25:17Speaker 00

  And if that door opens, as you're touching it, they're going to take a shot right past your head and you don't move, you don't, you don't need to. He's going to make that shot every time and you just trust it because you've been exhausting all the resources. And the boys are training.

• 25:30Gary Brecka?

  Those are your boys behind you with the?

• 25:31Speaker 00

  They're training 52 weeks out of the year. I mean, they're exhausting everything they can. Mentally, physically, spiritually, emotionally, tactically, to make sure that we don't ever have to say no, or I can't do that. Can always make the shot. We can climb up and over the mountain. We can jump out of the plane. We can do all the things. And you build that trust through time. Like I've seen you show up every day. You're in here at 5:00 AM, you're in the gym, you're at Fight Club, you're on the range, you're in the kill house, you're jumping, the wind tunnel, everything you have to be great at. You're really committed to greatness in all those areas. Unfortunately for us, there's not a whole lot of room for anything else.

• 26:07Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 26:07Speaker 00

  So all the external stuff, you kind of got to block out and really be good at departmentalization.

• 26:12Gary Brecka?

  Here's something most people don't realize. Salt isn't just about flavor. It's about biology. Your cells need minerals to make energy, hydrate properly, and function at their best. That's why we created the new Baja Gold Shakers. Naturally harvested, straight from the Sea of Cortez. Unrefined, lightly air dried, and loaded with essential trace mineral. This isn't table salt. It's nature salt. The taste is richer. The mineral profile is unmatched. And you can use it every day in your kitchen, on your table, and every single recipe. And now, you can pick it up at Walmart. Make the switch to Baja Gold. Your taste buds and your biology will thank you. Now, let's get back to the Ultimate Human Podcast.

• 26:53Gary Brecka?

  When you're in that moment, like a real combat situation, how much of your confidence comes from planning and that you're confident that you know what to do, even if the situation shifts?

• 27:08Speaker 00

  No plan ever survives first contact.

• 27:11Gary Brecka?

  It doesn't.

• 27:12Speaker 00

  It's like Mike Tyson. Everybody's got a plan to get punched in the face. It's like, for us, because you're so diligent in the debrief and all the planning, you're so meticulous. All the operations kind of stack on top of each other. You can draw information from this one and apply it to this one. But when it rapidly changes, everybody just adopts a different tactic right now. Can't do that, gotta do this. And you don't even call an audible. You just do the audible. It just naturally transitions into it. But that's because you've only been thinking about that one thing the entire time. Like, Tom Brady's not thinking about pickleball.

• 27:46Gary Brecka?

  No.

• 27:47Speaker 00

  He's not thinking about his golf swing. He's watching game film and just studying this one thing so he can, when he gets on the line of scrimmage, he can read it in real time.

• 27:54Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 27:55Speaker 00

  I mean, all the little micro moves that are happening, he's just processing information. Everybody on our team's the exact same way. Their just processing speed is so fast compared to the opposition. That unless you just get us in a mudsuck and... Get really lucky. We're going to solve that problem really, really fast regardless of whatever you're going to have to do.

• 28:12Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, I mean, I remember you talking about the amount of preparation that you went through. You know, phones, emails, patterns, you know, you know, a hit on a, on a target that was going to be watching their favorite football game that day, football by soccer. That day, you knew if you took out the satellite, he would get up from the football game, go to check on the satellite. And that's where contact would be made. The amount of preparation and, and investigation and, and intelligence that you would do beforehand. Was that a lot of the confidence that you had going in? So when you got out of that, when you jumped out of that plane

• 28:57Gary Brecka?

  and you were on your way to the ground, you technically never been there before. I mean, maybe you had a model city that you had used or a model compound that you had used.

• 29:07Gary Brecka?

  But you'd never been there before. You don't know how prepared they are. You don't know if something's changed in the plan that you had hoped would be executed. I find that fascinating because it's such a metaphor for life, for business, for families. You know, that people are not adaptive. They, they crumble and they get stressed from, from change. I think it's our expectation that we set. And then we're constantly disappointed that things don't meet our expectation. Our spouse doesn't meet our expectation. Our, our business partner doesn't meet our expectation, our competition, our partners. So when you're a SEAL, how much of that planning

• 29:48Gary Brecka?

  is giving you the comfort when you're in that zone and your life is on the line? Like, what does a typical mission look like? Building up to that moment when it's go time?

• 29:59Speaker 00

  A lot of it depends on.

• 30:02Speaker 00

  Your currency, right? In the height of the global war on terror, I mean, sometimes, depending on where you are, sometimes it's two times a day. You hit a daytime, you hit a nighttime. Sometimes it's three or four a night, back to back to back. And sometimes it's a dry spell. It might be a bigger target. You know, you've been after this guy for a while. You think you have a group of intelligence folks. All they do is build a target package on this guy. They have watched every move he has ever done for the last six months. No blinking coverage. They know everything about him and they're just spoon feeding to you. So you go in there, you're eating lunch and you're just watching the ISR feed, watching the satellites. Where does he go? Where doesn't he go? Right-handed, left-handed. Oh, he's kicking a soccer ball at 2:00 PM with his kids. It's 6:00 PM, he's walking next door and he's coming back with an RPG.

• 30:47Speaker 00

  Like, okay. He's got a motorcycle, stage two houses down, his wife doesn't know about, blah, blah. This is how he's doing all this. So you really get to see a real picture. When you drop down on the floor of it, it always looks different. But if you've done your homework, I know how many doors, how many windows inward opening, outward opening, is there a storm door? Is there, is there tint on the windows? I mean, you can tell everything, how high the walls are, how many sections of aircraft ladder we have to bring, all the different things. When you get there, I have gone through every possibility, every contingency we've been through. So this happens. Option two, here we go.

• 31:23Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 31:24Speaker 00

  Option two's not gonna work, go to three. Three's not gonna work, go into four. Boom, boom, boom. Four's not an option. Make one up, here we go. And, I mean, it happens so fast because everybody's an individual thinker. You might be looking at this gate going, I don't know how I'm gonna get through this. And he comes over and he's like, we're going up and over the top. And we are, up and over the top.

• 31:42Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 31:43Speaker 00

  I mean, like, you don't even have time because everybody's on the same page as you. Some people are just farther in the Ooloo process than you are.

• 31:49Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 31:50Speaker 00

  So that's where the strength of the team comes. And I know a lot of, a lot of different organizations, they put so much pressure on developing the individual. And there's nothing wrong with that.

• 31:58Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 31:59Speaker 00

  For us, it's a strength in the group.

• 32:00Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 32:01Speaker 00

  We don't do solo missions, that's not our jam. We do everything as a group. And that's really where the source of strength comes from, because I know you were just as committed as I am. If you weren't, you wouldn't be here.

• 32:10Gary Brecka?

  Yeah. What's an average team size that, that you would do a deployment with, a mission with?

• 32:17Speaker 00

  It all depends on the target size, but no more than... Let's say more, no more than typically 20 guys. And that's, it's all the supporting assets. I mean, it's everybody. You do it in very small teams.

• 32:29Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 32:29Speaker 00

  Like a typical assault team is five to seven people.

• 32:33Gary Brecka?

  Really?

• 32:34Speaker 00

  I mean, hopefully you have two assault teams. I mean, you run out of bodies really, really quick. I mean, we have done some really complex stuff with nine guys, 10 guys.

• 32:43Gary Brecka?

  Really?

• 32:44Speaker 00

  You get done at home, you're doing debriefing, like.

• 32:48Speaker 00

  I'm glad we didn't have 50 people.

• 32:49Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 32:50Speaker 00

  Had 50, it would have been a nightmare.

• 32:51Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 32:52Speaker 00

  What about 25? Like 25 would have been a zoo too.

• 32:54Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 32:55Speaker 00

  Sometimes less is more.

• 32:56Gary Brecka?

  Cause you gotta get, you gotta get in and get out.

• 32:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:59Gary Brecka?

  Right? If you don't mind me asking, what was the gnarliest mission that you ever went on?

• 33:05Speaker 00

  Anytime you introduce water, it's always gnarly.

• 33:07Gary Brecka?

  Hmm.

• 33:10Speaker 00

  That ocean is big, black and scary and it's unforgiving. He doesn't care who you are, doesn't care how much you've prepared. One slip up and now you're soaking wet, you're freezing cold and the surf zone is just consuming you.

• 33:22Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 33:22Speaker 00

  So we did one in, we did one off the coast of Africa that was very dicey. Shark infested waters and the whole thing. And the reason that thing became so complicated is because they didn't want us to kill him.

• 33:35Gary Brecka?

  They wanted you to capture him?

• 33:37Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 33:37Gary Brecka?

  So you had to put hands on?

• 33:39Speaker 00

  That becomes the issue because if you don't want to be captured and you have an AK and grenades and suicide vest, it's very hard to capture you.

• 33:45Gary Brecka?

  Mm hmm.

• 33:46Speaker 00

  So if anything goes wrong, any early warning network, dogs are barking. He happens to walk outside to smoke a cigarette. He usually doesn't do that after midnight. And now it's one o'clock in the morning. He's standing on the front porch smoking a cigarette. Hmm. Very dicey, very different. So all those different things. Anytime where you are. Anytime where you're kind of hamstrung, like you have to bring him home alive.

• 34:08Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 34:08Speaker 00

  What if he doesn't want to come alive? Like now I've, I basically assumed all this risk to put myself in a position to put hands on him and now it goes lethal. Like I still have this thing in the back of my mind. I don't want to have to say no. You told me not to kill him. I'm going to exhaust everything in my arsenal to not kill this guy.

• 34:24Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 34:25Speaker 00

  But at a certain point, we're going to have to do something because now we can't get out of here.

• 34:29Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 34:29Speaker 00

  Now we're pinned down. Somalia is very unforgiving.

• 34:33Gary Brecka?

  Why was Somalia so, I, I think, you know, I, I don't have a good reference point, but I think, you know, people think of Somalia and they're like, okay, it's, they're, they're chucking spears and rocks. I mean, but apparently not.

• 34:49Speaker 00

  You seen Black Hawk Down?

• 34:49Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 34:50Speaker 00

  It's exactly how it is.

• 34:51Gary Brecka?

  Really?

• 34:51Speaker 00

  That is one of the best movies.

• 34:53Gary Brecka?

  And these guys are, yeah.

• 34:55Speaker 00

  It's one of the best war movies ever made in.

• 34:58Gary Brecka?

  How, how, how accurate of a depiction do you think that was? Pretty accurate?

• 35:02Speaker 00

  I mean, you have to ask Tom Saturday and the boys that were on the ground, but from my experience, I went there exactly 20 years later. To the day, our operation was 20 years after Mogadishu in the Beltway was so concerned. They don't want anybody to go into Mogadishu.

• 35:16Gary Brecka?

  Really?

• 35:17Speaker 00

  Very gun shy over that helicopters getting shot down. That's not what we want. Americans getting drugs to the streets. We're trying to avoid that at all costs. So they had to assume a lot of risk for us to be able to go and do that. But I mean, I tell people, my very first time I ever drove into Mogadishu in broad daylight, you know, we're in this big convoy and there's a dog.

• 35:35Gary Brecka?

  Very visible. Yeah. I mean, yeah.

• 35:38Speaker 00

  I'm a white dude. I, I stay in Mogadishu. I'm not the whitest dude you'll make. You know what I mean?

• 35:43Gary Brecka?

  Tatted up.

• 35:43Speaker 00

  Yeah. We're driving through here and we've got a bunch of Ethiopians wearing MRAPs. We're doing the whole thing in right in the center of a car market. There's, I call it a loose traffic circle and there is a dog sitting there with a human arm hanging out of its mouth.

• 35:57Gary Brecka?

  No.

• 35:59Speaker 00

  Oh, wow. There's no police. There's no red lights. It's whatever you want. Everybody's walking around with AKs and machetes and you just don't know what they're doing. You don't know what they're, you don't speak the language.

• 36:09Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 36:09Speaker 00

  It's violent.

• 36:10Gary Brecka?

  And it's not, it's not organized enough that you really have, I would imagine, like a specific hierarchy. If we wipe out this hierarchy, then they're all disjointed. They're sort of this loose band.

• 36:21Speaker 00

  It's all tribal.

• 36:22Gary Brecka?

  Oh, yeah. Very, very tribal. What was, what was the mission there?

• 36:27Speaker 00

  We were going after a.

• 36:31Speaker 00

  Going after a bad guy who had done a bunch of bad stuff. He did a, he did a mall attack, killed a bunch of people and yeah, we were, we were supposed to swim in, grab him, extract him, get him out to a vessel and then prosecute him later for crimes against all the things he'd been doing. And everything was going great. The swim in was great. Everything was in approach and we got contacted on the roof. So three story building and all the intel that we're getting is this is beachside bungalow. Like this is a place he goes with the family to chill out, to kind of rest and regroup. And that's we were talking about the football game. I'm like, okay, we're gonna go there, twist off the satellite, he'll walk outside, wrap him up, peel him over the third story, swing him out, the whole thing will be over.

• 37:17Speaker 00

  How do you just swim somebody out that doesn't wanna, doesn't wanna go? That's one of the things we talk about physical readiness. Like sometimes you have to,

• 37:25Speaker 00

  you have to seduce people and you have to force them to do something against their will physically. And that's a superhuman feat. So you have to be able to overpower them. We had a bunch of things we were trying to do and we got guys set on the roof. The whole thing was getting ready to commence and a guy came out of the third story, cracked, looked out. Our guys don't shoot him because he can't see a gun yet. And next thing you know, AK comes around the corner. He's shooting at you. Skipped off one of the boy's helmets, shot a strobe off his helmet and the whole thing cracked off when it did. All three fours lit up. Really? Sustained gunfire, belt fed machine guns, AKs, everything going off, all in one shot. He was that ready? Yeah. So what they didn't tell us is we had a gap in coverage. So we weren't seeing

• 38:07Speaker 00

  everything and they were hauling dirt out all day long. They were digging out bunkers the entire time, sandbag positions in there, getting ready for a fight. I don't know how they knew, if they knew, if it was just bad coincidence, but when it went, it went all floors. Shooting out all the windows, throwing grenades out the front door, right in front of you. But you can't kill him. So at a certain point, you have a right to inherent self-defense. I have to be able to shoot back. But in the back of your mind, the last thing he said was don't kill this guy.

• 38:38Speaker 00

  But I.

• 38:38Gary Brecka?

  You can kill everybody else, though.

• 38:40Speaker 00

  You don't know who they are. You can't see them. They're just, they're shouting in, they're shouting Swahili and a mix of English and it sounds like Arabic. You don't speak the language. You don't know who he is. And you can't see him. It's not like I walk into a room, three of you are sitting here and I'm like, I'm not going to shoot you. I'm going to shoot everybody else. It's not like that.

• 38:56Gary Brecka?

  Ah.

• 38:57Speaker 00

  So it puts you in this weird shift of now I feel like a failure. Like, what are we going to do now? Well, now we have to get out of this place.

• 39:04Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 39:04Speaker 00

  Now we've got technicals massing, the whole city's coming alive, just like Black Hawk Down. They're going to surround us and we're all going to die.

• 39:09Gary Brecka?

  As soon as that starts happening, it starts calling in other assets, right? They start coming to that site.

• 39:13Speaker 00

  Yep. His wife's on the phone, springing up everybody and they've got all these little tribal pockets that are all over the city and here they come.

• 39:20Gary Brecka?

  Oh, boy.

• 39:21Speaker 00

  So now you're getting the updates.

• 39:22Gary Brecka?

  How deep were you at that time? How many guys?

• 39:24Speaker 00

  Uh, about twenty, twenty guys in.

• 39:26Gary Brecka?

  Hmm.

• 39:27Speaker 00

  And now we've got technicals that are massing, they've got dish guys, they've got belt feds, they've got RPGs and they're all closing in on you. So we've got to get out of here. We got to get out of here right now.

• 39:37Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 39:37Speaker 00

  Well, we're blocked off. They're shooting out of every corner of this place.

• 39:41Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 39:41Speaker 00

  And the only egress is right in front of the front door, right in front of the gate where he's shooting. It's like. Now you're lobbing grenades back and explosive charges, trying to get a little bit of gap in coverage and it. It never stopped. It felt like that Hollywood, that Rambo belt fed machine gun, just fuff, fuff, fuff, and it never ends. It was like that.

• 40:01Gary Brecka?

  Wow. And you only have so much ammunition because you brought what you brought.

• 40:06Speaker 00

  You don't take a whole lot and that's the difference in special operations. You watch a lot of guys, you know, if you've ever seen the documentary Restrepo, those guys are running out with nine, 10, 12 magazines.

• 40:15Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 40:15Speaker 00

  We're running out with four.

• 40:17Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 40:17Speaker 00

  Because, you know, you shoot what you kill. Like, I don't need to have 12 round magazines. That's not the gunfights we're trying to get in. That's not typically what happens. And yeah, I mean, it, it got dicey really, really fast. Now guys are blown up, massive concussion, bleeding out of your ears, bleeding out of your nose. It's a nightmare.

• 40:36Gary Brecka?

  And then you gotta get those guys out. Were there any guys that were injured? I mean severely?

• 40:42Speaker 00

  Injured, I mean, I was injured, a bunch of the guys were, but it was a lot of TBI, a lot of concussive stuff. And then, you know, torn shoulders, torn hips, just from the surf zone, very unforgiving. Boats flipping over and just.

• 40:54Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 40:55Speaker 00

  A lot of bad stuff happens.

• 40:56Gary Brecka?

  And then, so you retreated from that and went back out and took back off. Did everybody make it?

• 41:02Speaker 00

  Everybody made it.

• 41:02Gary Brecka?

  That's where camaraderie comes from.

• 41:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I mean, I mean, but I mean, you've been in some that are just, you're pinned down, feel helpless. Everybody shot up, you know, your buddy's dying in your arms essentially, and you're like, oh my God. This guy's shooting at us, I've gotta save him while not getting shot at, what are we gonna do here? And you can't take out the human aspect of it. You've spent so much time together.

• 41:27Speaker 00

  My best friend now, you know, Cole Fackler, started all these businesses with him, we've done all these deployments together, went through BUDs together. Like I spent more nights consecutive sleeping next to that dude than his wife ever will.

• 41:37Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 41:38Speaker 00

  A hundred and eighty days at a shot, like no break.

• 41:41Gary Brecka?

  Really?

• 41:41Speaker 00

  Every breakfast, every lunch, every lift, every op, for years.

• 41:45Gary Brecka?

  Now, why is that? Is that so that you know everything about them?

• 41:50Speaker 00

  You do.

• 41:50Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, so I mean, and the, and the trust level, by the time you're in business, I mean, trust is not an issue.

• 41:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:58Gary Brecka?

  Right? I mean, because, you know, you get back into that civilian life and that's, that's what I'm so fascinated about. Like, how does this culture evolve to the point where everybody knows that everybody else will take the same level of risk with their life that you will? And there's never, you never second guess that, right?

• 42:20Speaker 00

  It's because you never hear no.

• 42:23Speaker 00

  Never hear it.

• 42:23Gary Brecka?

  In what, training?

• 42:25Speaker 00

  Anywhere. Hey, come over here, help me do this. Yep. Come over to my house at Saturday, six o'clock in the morning, help me move. Yep. Everybody, they just do it always. You never hear no.

• 42:35Speaker 00

  You naturally just build trust through that.

• 42:37Gary Brecka?

  Wow.

• 42:37Speaker 00

  I need you to do this physically. They're in the gym every day. They can pull it off easily. Hey, I need to make this shot. They make the shot. Hey, we gotta do this jump. They make the jump. You've never failed so far, and that's because you're exhausting all the resources and the training. You're not missing a day. You're living this like it's your only thing. If you look at the work ethic, it's like he's putting in the work. He's showing up. He's a true believer. He's bought in. I can see it.

• 43:00Gary Brecka?

  Listen, there's what I share on this podcast, and then there's what I share with my inner circle. If you've been following me for a while, you know how I hold nothing back here. But my VIP community, that's where the real magic happens. Picture this, you're struggling with energy crashes, brain fog, or just feeling like you're not operating at your peak, and you don't know where to get real answers. But here's what really sets this apart. You're not just getting my insights. When I have incredible guests on the podcast, VIP members get to submit questions for a private podcast segment. So that world renowned expert we just interviewed, you get exclusive access to their knowledge tailored to your specific situation. This section is under the private podcast section in the Ultimate Human Community. And speaking of exclusive, you're getting my personal protocols,

• 43:45Gary Brecka?

  the exact tools I use for water fasting, gut optimization, and morning routines that have taken me decades to perfect. This isn't theory. This is what works in the real world. The community launches challenges throughout the year where you get direct access to me and my network of experts. It's like having a personal health advisory board for less than a hundred dollars a month. Your health is your wealth, and this investment pays dividends for life. Join the VIP community at theultimatehuman.com/vip and step into your ultimate potential. Now, let's get back to the Ultimate Human Podcast. How do you manage a family, or even if you're not married and have kids, God forbid at that time you do,

• 44:25Gary Brecka?

  how do you manage a family? How do you assure your family when they're hearing all these stories that it's not going to be you? Because there's not a whole lot of communicado going on. I'm sure there are dark periods, dark meaning no communication periods.

• 44:45Gary Brecka?

  I can't imagine what it's like for a spouse to go through something like that. Were you married during this time?

• 44:52Speaker 00

  I was. I got married in 2009, so I'd already been a SEAL. I'd done three or four rotations. My wife's first husband was a SEAL, got killed with Marks-Luttrell on the ground. Operation Red Wings.

• 45:05Speaker 00

  Her dad's a SEAL, so she was already in Oh, okay. She was a veteran herself. She's a little conditioned, okay, so. She was, but, you know, that's the hardest lie you'll ever tell. Yeah. It's not gonna happen to me. Right. So she could see the transition. But why, I mean, you know.

• 45:21Speaker 00

  She could see the transition from starting at Team Ten and then transition over to the National Mission Force, Tier One Element. You have to change, and that group becomes smaller, more intimate, and now you don't leave it. Now, you know, you're up, you're out of the house at 5:00 AM, you're not coming home till 11, 12 o'clock at night, training all night, always with the boys, everything you do is with a group, even on weekends, you're all doing it at somebody's house, you're eating brunch, you go to the normal place and three or four guys in the team are in there. Sliding all tables together, everything becomes one big community. Yeah. And you can feel the resentment build up, like you're spending so much time with them, and that's your justification. Do the best in the world. Yeah. If I want to elevate, they're all better than me, they're gonna drag me up with them.

• 46:02Speaker 00

  But I've gotta be there, I've gotta be in that van, I've gotta be on that airplane, I've gotta be in that hotel room, I have to be at his house. We have to all be together, that's the only way, because there's so much non-verbal communication, there's so much buy-in. And if you're running a nine-to-five schedule with us, you're not a true believer. Yeah. So a lot of guys just sacrifice the household. Wow. It's not the thing you want to do, it's the thing you have to do. But the divorce rate in special operations is over 100%. It is. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It's just. I'm a unicorn, like, the fact that me and my wife are still married, and we shouldn't be, she should have divorced me multiple times. She should have, you ever heard my story, like, I burned a candle at both ends and. Yeah. But, I mean, most guys have been divorced two and three times, my first, my first troop chief, her second one, I think she'd been married six times.

• 46:48Speaker 00

  Really? I mean, they're not used to it, so guys, you know, they graduate high school, you've got your girlfriend, she goes off to college, you join the Navy, you come back together, she has no idea, she's gonna be sitting at home in a city she's not from for 300 days solo. She doesn't know what that's like, she doesn't want that life. So she leaves you, what do you do? Collapse on the team. Take it, take it and run. Yeah. I've got my boys, I'm good. You keep doing that same thing until you retire, until you get forced out medically or whatever, and then you have nothing left.

• 47:18Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 47:18Speaker 00

  So that's not what I tell guys now, but in the moment, I wouldn't change it.

• 47:22Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 47:22Speaker 00

  You have to be able to sacrifice everything else, cause and that was my big turning point when I really started to isolate and wall myself off from my family. Cause I saw the risk. I had my best friend get killed and he was a true believer. Like Nick Check was one of the greatest Navy SEALs that has ever walked this planet. There is no denying it. Everybody knows it.

• 47:42Gary Brecka?

  Really?

• 47:42Speaker 00

  And he got killed on a hostage rescue, December 8, 2012. When he got killed, it crippled my wife.

• 47:49Gary Brecka?

  And where was that?

• 47:50Speaker 00

  Afghanistan.

• 47:52Gary Brecka?

  He was shot?

• 47:52Speaker 00

  Yep. Crippled my wife, crippled me.

• 47:56Gary Brecka?

  Cause she knew him.

• 47:57Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 47:58Gary Brecka?

  Very well, cause he was one of your boys that was in that sphere constantly.

• 48:01Speaker 00

  I went to Bud's with him. We did our first platoons together. He went over to the tier one command right before I did, pulled me in. Now we're in the same team. I mean, before his first deployment with that organization, he re tiled my entire kitchen floor, him and my wife together. Like he left there covered in soot from cutting tiles and jumped straight on C-17 and flew to Afghanistan.

• 48:19Gary Brecka?

  No.

• 48:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, he is one of the greatest humans that's ever lived.

• 48:22Gary Brecka?

  Wow.

• 48:23Speaker 00

  And when he died, I was, uh, I actually had my, both my uncles, one was an Army Ranger, one was a Marine. They were in town in Virginia Beach and we were eating at Yard House. And I got a phone call from one of my friends and he goes, where you at? I was like, I eating dinner with my uncles. Walk outside.

• 48:40Speaker 00

  Walk outside and he's like, hey, man, um, Nick got shot. Okay. How bad is it? There's a long pause and I could feel my anxiety start to build up. I could feel the goosebumps coming and you could tell by the whimper in his voice. He's like, he didn't make it. And I fucking crushed. Like my, I'm, I'm so surprised I didn't throw up.

• 49:00Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 49:01Speaker 00

  I mean, I walked back in there. I sit down at that booth and I could feel my wife staring at me cause she saw the number. She knew it was one of the guys from the team. And my hands were shaking and I'm staring right in between my two uncles and I could fear burning a hole in the side of my head. And she goes, what's going on? Nothing. I have to go to work and she grabbed me and spun me and I looked at her, made eye contact and I just started convulsing, just

• 49:22Gary Brecka?

  No.

• 49:23Speaker 00

  ugly crying at that table and I was like, he's gone. She's ugly crying, we drive into work and do the whole thing and that was the hardest thing because he was the reason, or one of the reasons, he was one of the things I used to justify how much time you spent at work. Showing up early, staying late, training on weekends, Christmas morning, New Years, everything everybody was doing. That wasn't me. That was a cultural thing that everybody did. Cause it buys down the risk. And she looked at me and she goes,

• 49:52Speaker 00

  if it buys down the risk, how is he dead?

• 49:54Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 49:55Speaker 00

  It's a dangerous game, honey. It's a dangerous game. But right now I have to exhaust all the resources to buy down as much risk as humanly possible. At the end of the day, you run into an eight foot room with people belted that machine gun shooting at you.

• 50:07Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 50:07Speaker 00

  It's dangerous.

• 50:08Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 50:08Speaker 00

  And that's what happened.

• 50:09Gary Brecka?

  Now, why weren't you on that mission with him? Were you not?

• 50:12Speaker 00

  So we had extortion one seven happen when all the guys got killed in the helicopter crash.

• 50:16Gary Brecka?

  I remember that.

• 50:17Speaker 00

  August sixth, two thousand and eleven.

• 50:18Gary Brecka?

  All the bullshit that came out in the media about that. That had to be so frustrating. I've heard you talk about it, but it frustrated me. It frustrated my father, who's in, he was a Navy captain. He was a Navy SEAL, but

• 50:29Gary Brecka?

  it frustrated the hell out of my father. He was like, I don't believe in, you know, banning free speech with these people.

• 50:35Speaker 00

  Dude, I, I have goosebumps thinking about it. I, I've never been so mad, never been so disgusted with people for saying the things they were saying.

• 50:41Gary Brecka?

  People that have absolutely zero inkling into what's going on there. They have no line into it at all. Probably never even served in the military. Just on there, there's just the keyboard warriors, you know?

• 50:54Speaker 00

  And even some of the family members. Those guys came out like it was an inside job.

• 50:59Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 51:00Speaker 00

  Not an inside job. Anyway, that happens and every other team had to cough up some bodies to refill all those people. So Nick got put over.

• 51:07Gary Brecka?

  And that was the best of the best of the best on there.

• 51:10Speaker 00

  If you look at them, I mean, the amount of combat experience was on that helicopter will never be recreated. Never. I hope we never go to a conflict that long, but I mean, you had guys in there with fourteen, fifteen, sixteen combat rotations. So think about that in the Vietnam. Guys come back and like, I've got three tours in Vietnam. That's substantial. This dude's got sixteen to Afghanistan.

• 51:30Gary Brecka?

  Wow.

• 51:31Speaker 00

  The amount of experience in between that dude's two years, you're never gonna understand.

• 51:35Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 51:35Speaker 00

  The, the amount of things he's forgotten about hunting humans, you'll never even understand.

• 51:40Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 51:41Speaker 00

  You lost them all in one shot. Well, we gotta backfill them. You backfill them and that's what happened to him that next deployment. Got killed in a hostage rescue and you know, I looked at her and I was like.

• 51:52Speaker 00

  Wasn't for a lack of preparation. It wasn't for a lack of commitment.

• 51:56Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 51:56Speaker 00

  His number got called.

• 51:57Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 51:58Speaker 00

  And he went through it with no hesitation and that's what happens to me. That's what happens to me.

• 52:02Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 52:02Speaker 00

  You gotta exhaust all the resources, but that was a tough thing to go through, man. I just, I walled that up and I just, I never wanted to think about it again. So I keep a picture of him in my refrigerator. I see him every day, but I haven't processed it all. I keep that in a special little box buried way down deep. And every now and then it'll uncork and come out and.

• 52:19Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 52:20Speaker 00

  It sucks, man.

• 52:21Gary Brecka?

  And the reality of it all.

• 52:22Speaker 00

  Reality of it.

• 52:23Gary Brecka?

  Reality of it. But you went on after that. I mean.

• 52:26Speaker 00

  I mean, that happened 2012.

• 52:28Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 52:28Speaker 00

  I didn't retire until 2019.

• 52:30Gary Brecka?

  Wow. So you were deployed after that too?

• 52:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, right after.

• 52:33Gary Brecka?

  Yeah. Um, and were there other guys deployed with you that, that were also very close to him that, yeah?

• 52:40Speaker 00

  Never talked about it.

• 52:41Gary Brecka?

  Never talk about it?

• 52:42Speaker 00

  Nope.

• 52:43Gary Brecka?

  Just one of those unwritten risks of the job?

• 52:46Speaker 00

  You don't wanna think about it.

• 52:47Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 52:49Speaker 00

  It sucks because in the military, when people die, there's only one or two things. It was either a freak accident. Or that guy wasn't really as good as we're gonna make him seem during his eulogy, right? You're always gonna paint him up like, oh, he was the greatest. He was the greatest. No, he wasn't.

• 53:04Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 53:04Speaker 00

  He was C average at best. He was a nine to fiver. Yeah, he did a very hard job, but was he exhausting all his, absolutely not. No, he wasn't.

• 53:12Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 53:13Speaker 00

  Thirty pounds overweight, blah, blah, blah. This dude was a phenom in everything he did. Everybody knew it.

• 53:19Gary Brecka?

  Really?

• 53:20Speaker 00

  If you take a, you take a hundred people.

• 53:22Gary Brecka?

  You didn't wanna be on the other side of him in other words?

• 53:24Speaker 00

  No. You take a hundred people that work at that organization, 96 of them are absolute true believers. Couple guys swig by. But even them, they're so good that it doesn't really matter.

• 53:35Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 53:35Speaker 00

  It all kinda averages out. But when you lose a guy like that, and that was like extortion, every single dude they lost was like that.

• 53:43Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 53:44Speaker 00

  All of them, you're like, oh.

• 53:46Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 53:46Speaker 00

  You just see the families, you see everybody else and you see all of us.

• 53:51Speaker 00

  Well, I never thought that would happen to us. I never thought that would be a reality. The same thing for June 28th, like my father was in the military. There was no combat going on back then. A little bit of skirmishes, Grenada, Panama, Somalia, but not that he was involved in. So I wasn't going to funerals this entire time.

• 54:08Gary Brecka?

  Ah, so that was not a part of the culture?

• 54:10Speaker 00

  No, Navy SEALs getting killed was a freak accident. Guys falling off the back of a truck and hitting their head. Guys dying in a parachute accident, drowned, like randomness, not like that. And getting shot out of the sky with the best pilots in the world, which is not something that I ever thought was going to happen. Even though you get numb to the risk, because you're so successful, like, ah, that'll never happen. That's an anomaly. Then it happens to you and you're like, oh my God. Have I just been lucky this whole time?

• 54:39Gary Brecka?

  Were you ever deployed when you lost somebody close to you on a, on a deployment?

• 54:45Speaker 00

  Not lost. Nope.

• 54:47Gary Brecka?

  No.

• 54:48Speaker 00

  Came really close. Should have lost.

• 54:49Gary Brecka?

  Banged up.

• 54:50Speaker 00

  A bunch of, oh yeah.

• 54:51Gary Brecka?

  Because I've heard you talk about IEDs and, and the danger of that and how you were in a convoy multiple times. And it was either the one in front of you, the one behind you, or it was delayed when it went off. Um, but for whatever reason, your number just didn't come up. I mean, and that, that's, I mean, how that doesn't play in the back of your mind when you're on one of these missions. We, we were talking a little bit in the sauna earlier about where mindset sort of integrates with training. And this is, this is where I want to bring this back down to, to the every person. Because I think so many people can, can benefit from the, not just the mental toughness, but the mindset that you developed and the mindset that you still have today.

• 55:34Gary Brecka?

  I, I feel like you apply a lot of your, you know, your military training to your life.

• 55:42Gary Brecka?

  Still today. So, you know, back in, let's just call it civilian life. Father, husband, father of two. You're, you're, you're seven and 10?

• 55:52Speaker 00

  Twelve and seven.

• 55:53Gary Brecka?

  Twelve and seven. Um, and so, you know, 12 and seven year olds.

• 55:58Gary Brecka?

  Wife, you're in the real world now. You know, so what about the mindset of having been a SEAL? And having been such a part of a team like that? The ability to set that kind of culture outside of a SEAL team? It's impossible. I mean, you'll never reach, and correct me if I'm wrong, but you'll never reach that level of culture in the civilian world because people are not willing to do what you guys had to do to develop that culture. So what do you, what do you take away from that, you know, building a business? Raising a family? Being a husband? Like, what did you draw out of that culture and that career that's now just a part of who you are, not what you do?

• 56:44Speaker 00

  I think ultimately, and somebody to do really good is you'll have a guy who is the exact representative of what you're trying to mass produce. It could be your boss, it could be a dude who's three or four guys down the team, but he's the guy. If you close your eyes and imagine what you think a Navy SEAL looks like, open your eyes and he's standing right there.

• 57:03Gary Brecka?

  Okay.

• 57:04Speaker 00

  Close your eyes, what is he gonna say when he opens it? Opens his mouth and he says, and you're like, okay. Get him on the flat range. He does the thing. Get him in the shoot house, he does the thing. Jumping out of airplanes, he does the thing. He represents the best of what it's supposed to be.

• 57:17Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 57:18Speaker 00

  What, my job is to emulate that. My job is now, there's 50 of us sit in a room, I need one representative to stand up and be the example. I should be able to just, you, Brian, get up. You're our guy. If everybody represents what we think the essence is, then we said it. It's really hard to do that or ask for it if you're not representing yourself.

• 57:37Gary Brecka?

  So that's the first thing?

• 57:39Speaker 00

  The guys I really modeled myself after, they lived and breathed it. They woke up, they did fitness, they did Fight Club, they were on the flat range, they did all the core things they had to be, and they represented the group really, really well. And they would always say, it's like, the culture is not going to morph to you, you have to morph into the culture. And if you don't, you can't be part of it. We don't take half timers, part time, beat it. You gotta live it at full value. And it's like that in everything.

• 58:02Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 58:03Speaker 00

  It's really hard for me to talk about mental health if I'm drinking a 12 pack every night, posting hateful stuff on social media. It's really hard to talk about physical fitness, I'm 50 pounds overweight.

• 58:11Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 58:12Speaker 00

  But if you live it and they see it as the example, I'm not a unicorn. I'm doing the same thing I've been doing my entire life.

• 58:18Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 58:18Speaker 00

  Do it too. So we started G B R S. We did the same thing. First thing, I need a gym. We had a squat rack, a 70 pound dumbbell and a barbell.

• 58:26Gary Brecka?

  I've seen it dude.

• 58:27Speaker 00

  I mean, that's what we had.

• 58:28Gary Brecka?

  It's nasty in there dude.

• 58:29Speaker 00

  Now, now we've built the whole thing up. Now it's hyperbaric chambers and a whole thing, but the routine is the same.

• 58:35Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 58:36Speaker 00

  Like when I say I'm training five days a week, I don't mean kinda.

• 58:40Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 58:41Speaker 00

  I mean, five days a week. I got up this morning, 5 a.m. Got a lift in next door, came over here, did morning routine with you.

• 58:46Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 58:46Speaker 00

  I'm not missing it for anyone.

• 58:48Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 58:48Speaker 00

  Not my 20 minute walk, not my diet, not just what I eat, but what I consume. If I just live it and you're close in proximity, you'll naturally have to pick it up.

• 58:56Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 58:57Speaker 00

  If you and me are on board.

• 58:58Gary Brecka?

  You'll naturally have to.

• 58:58Speaker 00

  He's on board, the three of us, she's on board. Everybody will just start to adopt it.

• 59:03Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 59:03Speaker 00

  Before you know it, you look around, everybody's living the same routine. We're all living the culture.

• 59:07Gary Brecka?

  Mm hmm.

• 59:08Speaker 00

  What is the culture? 1% better every day, be a pro, leave it better than you found it, don't be an asshole, be a good dude. At the end of the day, how do you want to be a good Navy SEAL? Be a good dude.

• 59:17Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 59:17Speaker 00

  What's that require? Be good at all your jobs and represent the group before yourself.

• 59:22Speaker 00

  Just do that.

• 59:22Gary Brecka?

  Dude, I love that man. God, that's such a great metaphor for culture.

• 59:26Speaker 00

  It is.

• 59:27Gary Brecka?

  You know, I'm big on culture too, and, and I, I'm the same. I believe in lead by example, you know, my, my wife and I just did eight, uh, 14 cities, 18 days. The, the team was with me on, on a lot of that. What I've noticed too is we're doing so much more on our team with less people. Because we've got people managing work, not managing people. When I first started the company, we just hired somebody for everything. You know, oh, we need a marketing director, let's hire a marketing director. We need to do a media buy, let's hire a media buyer. You know, we need a social media director, this buyer, somebody from social. Oh, we need somebody to answer emails, let's have people answer emails. And then as the, as the team actually started to shrink. We started to produce more outcome.

• 1:00:12Gary Brecka?

  And, and in this space, you know, which just in this social media space, I mean, everybody is bought into the mission. We have meetings, I'm clear about the culture, I'm clear about where is this company going to be in? And where's the ultimate human platform going to be in three months? Where's it going to be in six months? Where it's going to be nine months? What are the big things that we're going to do next year? We're going to do a lot more than, you know, like we're going to, we're going to try to put 20,000 people, we're going to put 20,000 people in the stadium.

• 1:00:41Gary Brecka?

  You know, we're going to host a live event for a million people online. We've never done it. But I know that we can do it. And I think what you've done fostering this culture, so this lead from the front, it's, it's more about, it's like when you're raising kids, they learn more from observation than they do from what you tell them to do. This whole do it because I told you, not do as I say, not as I do. They learn more from what you do. And one of the things I, I really identify with is that you are not afraid to be selfish with the first part of your day, so that you can be selfless and give the rest of your day away. Can you talk a little bit about that? Like,

• 1:01:24Gary Brecka?

  you know, because I've actually borrowed some of your, believe it or not. And my, my, my morning routine is sacrilege, man. That's like, it's my time. My, my wife knows it, the team knows it. My assistant knows you schedule meetings and travel around sleep and exercise. Sleep, exercise, everything else. And that has been such an incredible mind shift for me. Right? Because the most entrepreneurs have that mentality. You wake up, start to grind.

• 1:01:57Gary Brecka?

  But if you, if you do that, eventually you just start putting yourself in the backseat.

• 1:02:03Speaker 00

  Nothing to women, you're used to self-sacrifice because you're mothers. That's what you do? I don't like that approach.

• 1:02:09Gary Brecka?

  It's also eighty-two percent of all autoimmune diseases in women because they have this, it's called caregiver syndrome. They just put the needs of everyone else before the needs of themselves and they don't realize how detrimental that is. They think that that's being very selfless. It's actually being selfish because you, you don't care for yourself. There's only so many withdrawals you can take from a bank account before you make a deposit, right? And we're no different. So how, how do you structure your day? And what is a typical day for you, you know, look like?

• 1:02:39Speaker 00

  In a perfect world, in one where I control all the variables, there is nothing that's going to stimulate me on that phone or an email before ten AM. My answering text messages, not on social media.

• 1:02:50Gary Brecka?

  What time are you up?

• 1:02:51Speaker 00

  Five AM.

• 1:02:52Gary Brecka?

  Five, wow, five hours.

• 1:02:53Speaker 00

  So in a perfect world, in a perfect world, it's five. Realistically, because I started doing the math, I'm not having enough time with my kids to make a positive impact. So I was waking up at five, I was out of the door before they woke up. Knowing that no matter what, I am unwracking at seven AM. That's what time the workout is, that's what time my trainer comes in. We used to do it at six AM. Now he's getting, he doesn't have time with his kids, my business partner does and I don't. Now when we come home, you know, you know, the grind as an entrepreneur.

• 1:03:23Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:24Speaker 00

  You're coming home at six, I may be coming home at nine. Now I'm not seeing him for weeks on end.

• 1:03:28Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 1:03:29Speaker 00

  I don't want to keep having that. I have to have a shut off at some point. But I'm getting pulled in so many different directions. If I don't make time for myself, I'm not going to find it later.

• 1:03:37Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 1:03:37Speaker 00

  And I hear these guys like, I'll get a workout and drive home. No, you won't.

• 1:03:41Gary Brecka?

  No, you won't.

• 1:03:41Speaker 00

  Not five days a week, you won't. So for me, I've always been accustomed to sacrificing sleep. I know that's not what the doctor wants. I know that's not what I'm supposed to do, but that's what I'm used to doing. So if I come in on the red eye, like tonight, I land at twelve thirty in Norfolk, twelve thirty AM. I'm still getting up at five AM and I'm still doing my entire routine. I don't care, I'm not sleeping until eight. Well, I'll skip a workout, all because of jet lag, I don't do that. I wake up, I knock it out, but I'll wake up at five. I've got my whole evening routine where I do, I lay out my clothes the night before, I've got a brand new bottle of water sitting next to my bed, my phone's at a hundred percent charge.

• 1:04:16Gary Brecka?

  Change your man.

• 1:04:17Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:04:17Gary Brecka?

  After the human podcast, I started doing that.

• 1:04:20Speaker 00

  But if you look at it, the majority of people, my wife included, I'll throw her under the bus right now. She'll wake up, her phone will be at sixteen percent. At what point is your phone gonna sit on the charger for two and a half hours to fully charge that you're not gonna be on it? It's not. So now you're running around with your primary system of communication already almost dead.

• 1:04:38Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:38Speaker 00

  I don't want that. But if I have it right next to my bed, that's where people lean over. They hit the snooze and lay back. I've got mine stretched all the way over. I have to get out of bed. I just carry the momentum with me. I swing feet out of bed, grab the bottle of water, unplug my phone. I've already got the water. I've already got the cellphone.

• 1:04:53Gary Brecka?

  Phones at a hundred percent.

• 1:04:55Speaker 00

  Phones at a hundred percent. I don't check to see text messages. I don't roll over and scroll on IG for an hour. I'm up, I'm out. Toothpaste on toothbrush, get it wet, put it in my mouth, go to the bathroom. By the time I spit out toothbrush, pills go down, drink with a bottle of water that I had the night before, get dressed, left sock, right sock.

• 1:05:11Gary Brecka?

  I like your pissing and brushing your teeth at times, compressing time.

• 1:05:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:05:14Gary Brecka?

  I got that.

• 1:05:15Speaker 00

  Because I'm trying to get out of there as fast as humanly possible because if not, I'm gonna make more noise, gonna wake the wife up, gonna wake the kids up. That's why I don't have, you know, I've got a big Getty Tumblr. I don't want that with all the pots and pans and the cups. Now I'm rummaging around, making noise. She calls it the orchestra.

• 1:05:30Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, so is my wife.

• 1:05:31Speaker 00

  If you stop putting my stuff away at night, I've laid it out for a reason.

• 1:05:36Speaker 00

  Machine goes on, coffee goes in, I'm standing next to my red light, I've got my methylene blue, I've got all my stuff. I just took that perfect timeline and I shifted it now. But I mean, I've gotta do a cold plunge, I've gotta do a hyperbaric session, I've gotta do all that before seven AM. So now I'm on this teeter totter schedule where if I wake up at six, I'll be able to get my morning routine. I can leave the house at six forty-five, walk in, I'll unrack and then I'll shift it. So I'll do hyperbaric at the end of the day. I can make time for that. At the end of the day, it's just me, everybody's powered it down.

• 1:06:06Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 1:06:07Speaker 00

  But I'm really trying to give my kids and my wife a positive introduction first thing in the morning and then in the evening. If I come through at six o'clock, most people have their kids in bed, shower in bed by nine, nine thirty.

• 1:06:17Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:18Speaker 00

  I've only got three hours.

• 1:06:19Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:20Speaker 00

  Right? So for me. It's about sacrificing my time just for me. So it doesn't inhibit anybody else. I'm not asking my wife to wait. I'm not asking my kids to hold on for me. Hey, we have to shift this. I'm knocking out everything that makes me better right now. The things that are in control, I'm controlling. Because once 10 a.m. heads, you know the deal. You're a slave to the masses. But I have to be able to teleport and become the person I need to be. That little representative. Every door I walk through. So if I go into this meeting, what's the version of DJ needs to walk through that door?

• 1:06:53Gary Brecka?

  Wow.

• 1:06:53Speaker 00

  Right?

• 1:06:53Gary Brecka?

  That's a great way to think about it.

• 1:06:55Speaker 00

  So if you ever watch the content I do, I always do the clap. The guys in media made me do it for the sound bites. Like, get the clap. I clap before I do everything because it tells me whatever version of me right now, I have to switch it into this mode. They don't need an operator right now. They need a kid to come through and play Barbies for an hour. I've got three hours for bed. My seventy wants to play Barbies. Sister, we're playing Barbies. Here we go.

• 1:07:17Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, yeah, here we go.

• 1:07:18Speaker 00

  You know what I mean? Right? I'll do it. I'll do the tea party. I'll take them on a 20 minute walk. We'll do a bike ride, but it's so hard to do if I feel bad about myself because I didn't do fitness.

• 1:07:26Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:26Speaker 00

  I didn't do any time for me right now. I feel slow. I feel lazy. I've got brain fog and now I'm not present anyway. I might physically be there, but mentally I'm not there.

• 1:07:35Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 1:07:35Speaker 00

  If I get my fitness in first thing in the morning, I'll do whatever you want to.

• 1:07:39Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:40Speaker 00

  We can watch movies all day. We can do Netflix and chill. I've already got my fitness.

• 1:07:43Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:43Speaker 00

  I can't compromise on that. I watched a thing with Michael Phelps the other day and he talked about his schedule. Swimming twice a day, 52 weeks out of the year, never missing a session for five consecutive years. That's brutal. That is what it takes. I just do a more realistic approach for me. I don't need to be Michael Phelps. I don't need to be Data Gogans. I don't have to run the, you know, the bad water, 250 or whatever.

• 1:08:08Gary Brecka?

  The MOHAD 250.

• 1:08:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, right? I don't need to do all that, but I need to do something that makes me better than I was the day before. And sometimes that's just the consistency of doing the same thing over and over. Does it hurt me? No. You know, I'll talk to guys, they're like, oh, you do too much. Like, you'd grow more, you'd be healthier if you only lifted three days a week. I'm, I'm doing that workout more for my mental health than my physical health. Cause I know what happens. Those two for me are really tightly intertwined. And if one goes, the other ones are right behind.

• 1:08:36Gary Brecka?

  Hey guys, let me tell you about one of my favorite new hydration drinks. Now, this is for distance athletes, HIIT cardio exercisers, people that sweat a lot or exercise intensely. And A Game is a hydration drink. It has eight essential vitamins. It has all of the electrolytes, the entire suite of B vitamins. Before you freak out and read that it has 21 grams of sugar, which it does, the sugar is coming from natural cane sugar and honey, my preferred mechanisms for getting glucose into the blood during intense exercise. It also has natural flavors, but these natural flavors don't come from bacterial fermentation. They actually come from real citrus fruits and the color is from vegetable juice, not artificial dyes. So next time you're looking for a great hydration drink and you're exercising

• 1:09:17Gary Brecka?

  intensely, A Game is your choice. Now let's get back to the Ultimate Human Podcast.

• 1:09:23Speaker 00

  I've had some really bad injuries and when I can't get up and move, I'll lay there and my mental health just declines so fast. And that's not good for me. It's not good for the group. It's not good for my family. So that's how I justify it. I'm sacrificing what I want to do right now, which is probably sleeping and be lazy. I'm doing this because it makes me better for everybody else. I said it with Andrew. It's like, everybody says they'll, they'll take a bullet for their kids. Like I'd jump out of a building for my kids. You won't get on a treadmill for them. You seen a bunch of 80 year olds running at 300 pounds? I haven't. I'm trying to live to be 105. I'm trying to be an asset for my family as long as humanly possible. And there's a big physical component of that. We're training VO2 max for longevity. Like I've got some kidney stuff going on right

• 1:10:06Speaker 00

  now. I'm exhausting everything I can to be there and be present on the moments where they really need me to be. I just live a normal routine for me. It's no, I watched a thing with Schwarzenegger. You work out today?

• 1:10:17Gary Brecka?

  Yep.

• 1:10:18Speaker 00

  You gonna work out tomorrow?

• 1:10:19Gary Brecka?

  Uh huh.

• 1:10:20Speaker 00

  Brushed my teeth last night. I brushed them this morning. I'm gonna do the same thing tonight, same thing tomorrow morning. It's part of my routine and I never plan on breaking it.

• 1:10:26Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 1:10:27Speaker 00

  Why would I? I've been doing roughly this routine my entire life, especially since I was seventeen. Why break it?

• 1:10:33Gary Brecka?

  Dude, and we're such circadian creatures, we're such creatures of habit, we're creatures of of routine, the body craves routine. You actually, there there are a lot of studies that support this too, that the more

• 1:10:45Gary Brecka?

  regimented you are about your routine, you know, even when you travel, you know, if you take it with you like you did today. When you, when your routine is portable, the more grounded your body is, the more you are capable, it's, you know, when you levy these hormetic stresses on your body, the more you're capable of adversity and change and and, you know, dealing with like, you know, trauma and problems because they don't have a tendency to overwhelm you, you're strong enough to to to meet those. So your first ninety minutes, two hours of the day, you're you're up, you're still at the house when the kids are up. So you see them in the morning? Okay.

• 1:11:21Speaker 00

  I'm trying to now. Now with this hyperbaric chamber, because I just did stem cells, they didn't want me to jump in the chamber right away, wanted to give it a time, so it was really a six AM to six forty-five and then I'd cruise in, I know the exact time.

• 1:11:32Gary Brecka?

  We got one in today, so.

• 1:11:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, like cars, cars filled up the night before, there's nothing that's gonna derail me so I don't have to be late, because I hate being late. The anxiety builds up in me and it's like, I'm not setting the example, I'm twenty-five minutes late.

• 1:11:45Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 1:11:45Speaker 00

  I've got to be a master at time management. It doesn't have to be, I don't have to be a Nazi, but I need to be able to justify everything. So when my wife says, oh, it'll only take us ten minutes to get there. I already know it's gonna take us twenty-five.

• 1:11:58Speaker 00

  I already know it. It's like, but I'm really good. And like, she'll ask me, she's like, how far are you out? I'm like, twelve and a half minutes.

• 1:12:03Gary Brecka?

  And you're twelve and a half minutes.

• 1:12:03Speaker 00

  Twelve and a half minutes out.

• 1:12:05Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:05Speaker 00

  Barring a wreck or a red light that I just missed, like, I'm sub thirteen minutes out from being home.

• 1:12:11Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:12Speaker 00

  I understand the timelines, I know exactly where I'm at, but it makes you accountable and it's the small things. So I talk a lot about micro wins. If you look at my entire routine and micro wins, maybe we could break it down by the minute. By the time I leave that house, I've done twenty-five, thirty things under my control every single day. You get accustomed to being successful. So now when you get to that meeting and it doesn't go your way, when you look at it over the course of your days. It's a rounding error.

• 1:12:37Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:38Speaker 00

  It's one thing out of eighty-five things I did were positive day, under my control and I controlled them. It builds confidence in you and when everybody else sees it, you're doing the same thing as me. Now we've got twenty-five people in this room, everybody stacking up micro wins all day long. You're used to being successful, just continue it. So now when you hit a blip on the radar, it's a blip on the radar.

• 1:12:57Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:58Speaker 00

  Back on track, back on routine, keep going. I'm not OCD. If you look at my, you look at my general area, there's, it's chaotic. It makes sense to me. I know exactly where everything is. You don't need to understand my system.

• 1:13:09Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:10Speaker 00

  Just take the broad, you know, the broad concepts. I'm controlling the controllables and I'm trying to be one percent better than I wish yesterday.

• 1:13:16Gary Brecka?

  Yeah. It's funny, man, I've had a lot of lawyers over the years and when you walk into a lawyer's office, the more shit is just stacked up everywhere that looks like random haphazard nonsense. The better lawyer they are. That guy's got everything tucked away as one piece of paper sitting on his desk and the pencil's perfectly lined up next to it. Like, yeah, you don't have a lot on your mind, man.

• 1:13:34Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 1:13:37Gary Brecka?

  So I love the routine you have to be like where you, you cause these little breaks so that you say, who's going to show up right now? I'm about to show up for my family and you talked about the technique that you use when you, when you're popping the garage door. Checking my phone. You know, I'm intentionally setting my, my next phase of what I'm going into. Like I'm walking into this house with the intention of being present for my kids. I think that is just phenomenal because I think so many times, and I'm a huge victim of this myself, is that,

• 1:14:16Gary Brecka?

  you know, your work day never kind of really ends. You're kind of always on your phone, you're kind of always distracted, you can kind of get to emails anytime. And you're not thinking intentionally about who's showing up right now. You're still at work, even though you're at home, you're sort of half there. But you have this intentional way, I want you to talk about that a little bit about, you know, you have this routine that you go through. I think a lot of this has to do with, very like your military training, but you know, you have a routine that you go through so that you're like, okay, I'm going to show up. This is their time with me. I'm going to be a dad.

• 1:14:49Speaker 00

  You know the deal, you're so stressed throughout the day. All the little connections you have to have, all the sidebar conversations, the social media, the business, the finances, everything else. Is that the person they need for a seven year old? No. Does she need a Navy SEAL to come to the door? Absolutely not. Right. But my whole life, it's only been that. So I talk about dials, not switches. I flicked that Navy SEAL switch at seventeen and I never unflicked it until it almost cost me my marriage in my life. Right? When I went down to Mexico and did the IBA experience, that's what it showed me was the dials, not switches. So when I came back, I'm like, I've got to strip out everything else. What are the only two things that really matter? Well, I've got the business and I've got my family. What can I do to support both of those things? And I can't do them simultaneous.

• 1:15:34Speaker 00

  To me, multitasking is a falsehood. You can't do them both. Right. I can't be on here two-hand texting and have a normal conversation with a twelve year old about navigating seventh grade. I can't do it. Why would I lie to her and why would I lie to myself and say I could? Right. I can't. So when I leave work, we'll call it five o'clock. I'm rolling out of work at five o'clock. I sit in my car, I have it in park, start the whole thing. I put on Chris Stapleton pretty much every day. That's awesome. I love Chris Stapleton. Puts you in a good mood. It does, man. It settles me down and that's what we talk about. You know, diet, not just what you eat, but what you consume. If I'm blaring, and there's been times, Metallica, Megadeth, that kind of energy is not what I need to go home and be the best version of myself for them. So I put on something that calms me down, puts my heart rate at forty-two, nice and

• 1:16:19Speaker 00

  chill, and I pre-rehearse everything I'm going to go through. So before I put it in drive, all my texts are cleared, I respond to everybody I need to. If I need to mark them unread, I mark them unread, check social, do not disturb. I've got a twelve minute drive home and I start to pre-rehearse everything. So if my kids had a doctor's appointment, if they had parent teacher conference my wife went to, what do I need to check in with and what's the version of me they need to see right when I come home? Hmm. Super stressful day, my wife had a medical appointment, my father's sick in the hospital, all these different things. I don't need to come in here blaring on all eight cylinders, ramping everybody up. I've got to meet them where they're at and the shared energy across the board. So if I come in super hostile, like you won't believe what happened, it spikes everybody up. Yeah.

• 1:17:04Speaker 00

  But if I come in Switzerland, nice and easy, where's everybody at? Hugs and kisses to everybody. Nice positive interaction. How was school today? Great. I'm actually there. I'm not on my phone. Yeah, how was school? Uh huh, uh huh. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, hold on one second. This is my favorite. Yeah, yeah, yeah, hold on. I can't do this anymore to the twelve.

• 1:17:22Gary Brecka?

  Oh, dude, yeah.

• 1:17:24Speaker 00

  You're more important than this phone. You're more important to me than business. And I actually mean it now.

• 1:17:28Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:29Speaker 00

  I'd leave the whole thing right now if I had to for the family. And I was never like that before. When I was in teams, that was the only thing that mattered. I'm not proud to say it, but if she would have taken the kids and left, I would have let her. I wouldn't have left teams for that. I would now because now I really realize the strength of that family. That's really what I want. That's really what I'm trying to hold on to. But I've got to be able to give them the best version of myself. And if I'm outside of that routine, they're never going to get it. Now I'm thinking about, I didn't get my fitness in. I'm not leading by example. The culture's failing. I'm failing. Now I go home and I feel like a suboptimal version of myself.

• 1:18:03Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:04Speaker 00

  I can control that. I can control that with just a routine. And it's not OCD. Like, I don't have to move pencils around. This doesn't have to be there.

• 1:18:11Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 1:18:11Speaker 00

  The small, low hanging fruit.

• 1:18:13Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:13Speaker 00

  Just a little bit of structure. Just bring it in.

• 1:18:15Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:15Speaker 00

  And now I'm accountable for every minute out of my day. Where are you at 2:15? Right here.

• 1:18:20Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:21Speaker 00

  I can. You can justify everything you're doing because it's not for me.

• 1:18:25Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:25Speaker 00

  It's for you. It might look like it's selfish right now. Okay, you came in on the red eye, spend the morning with the kids. Can't.

• 1:18:32Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:33Speaker 00

  Because one day will turn into two. Two will turn into five. A week turns into a month really, really fast. I haven't been inside the gym in a month. I've been so busy.

• 1:18:39Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:39Speaker 00

  I'm about to get back on the train. No. I'm not. I'm not taking phone calls, not a Zoom call, nothing before 10 a.m. I'm not doing it.

• 1:18:47Gary Brecka?

  That's so legit, man. I think there's, I think that level of discipline and structure, just that level of organization, routine, is so important, so important to your circadian rhythm. It's so important to the success of your business. It's so important to your ability to be regarded as a leader. It's even important to your ability to handle and be resilient to stress. Because you, you talk about, um, you know, mental illness and the mental struggle, struggle PTSD quite a bit.

• 1:19:16Gary Brecka?

  You had an experience with it yourself. And I'm really interested in your Ibogaine experience.

• 1:19:27Gary Brecka?

  Because, you know, I know lots of people that have done Ibogaine, ayahuasca, ketamine. They're not really mixed stories. They're different stories, but they have, in most cases, very similar outcomes. Where this was like the life-changing for them. Like, literally, life-changing. And I'm talking to, you know, badass men like yourself that are not gonna make shit up, that are not trying to sell some Ibogaine journey. And they're not froofy about things. You, what made you make the decision to go and try that? Did you know people that had done this? Okay, you knew people that had done this journey?

• 1:20:09Speaker 00

  I had a former teammate, Marcus Capone. Him and his wife, he was the quintessential Navy SEAL. He's six foot five, built like a brick shit house. I mean, he is the dude. When you see him, like, you're surprised he's not carved out of granite or Mount Olympus. I mean, that's the way he looks. And I watched him, you know, he was at SEAL Team Ten when I went there. And when he checked in, he was larger than life. He represented everything you wanted to be, just, you know, how you wanna be the best basketball player. Way out Kobe Bryant's routine or just live it. Right? It's the same thing, just follow in his footsteps, he'll lead you to the promised land. And that's what he did. And when he went over to the tier one side, very busy, very hectic, a lot of combat, lost a lot of friends, and you watched it slowly but surely morph him. Eyes got jet black, drinking too much.

• 1:20:56Speaker 00

  Family finally said it was enough, he was gonna transition out of it, and you watched him death spiral. You heard the rumor mill, like, he's drinking a lot, his wife's gonna leave him, like, I think he's suicidal, all these different things. And he kinda goes dormant for a while, and he kinda loses track of him. And his wife, Amber, in the background, she was done. They tried to talk therapy, stellate, ganglion blocks, all the neurobehavioral, everything you could have tried, they've already tried, and nothing was working. He's actually getting worse, especially with all the medications. Now you had an alcohol, no sleep, insomnia, and he became a shell of who he was. And she found Ibogaine and sent him down to Mexico to do it. So a combination of five MEO and Ibogaine. They made this little infomercial on social media. It's basically like his story.

• 1:21:41Speaker 00

  He looked completely different. I, I couldn't believe it was him. And I was at the exact same point. My wife was gonna leave me. I was gonna let her. And we watched that thing and she's bawling. She slides the phone over. I watch it. I'm bawling. Cause I see the change in him.

• 1:21:57Gary Brecka?

  For the better.

• 1:21:59Speaker 00

  For the better.

• 1:21:59Gary Brecka?

  Wow.

• 1:22:00Speaker 00

  He looked like he was reborn. But he wasn't foo foo. Like he wasn't, you know, grounding beads in his hair, doing the whole thing.

• 1:22:08Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 1:22:08Speaker 00

  You know, you hear guys go out to the west coast. Now they're doing, they're licking toads and they're doing all this weird stuff. I'm like, typical west coast. Oh my god.

• 1:22:15Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:16Speaker 00

  You claimed another one. But he was better. He was the same guy, but you could see the dial in him. He was the same dude. He can roll a ten really, really fast, be the most violent person you've ever seen.

• 1:22:25Gary Brecka?

  Really?

• 1:22:26Speaker 00

  But he can hover to two all day.

• 1:22:27Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:28Speaker 00

  That's what I couldn't do. That's what none of my friends could do. We were always at an eight, nine, 10 intensity, always. I just wanted a break. I wanted to be able to power it down. I didn't know how. And she's like, if you love me, you'll go. And I went down there with some really, really heavy hitters.

• 1:22:43Gary Brecka?

  From your guys that you were?

• 1:22:45Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 1:22:45Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:46Speaker 00

  And that medicine is the only thing I've ever found stronger than the ego.

• 1:22:51Gary Brecka?

  Wow.

• 1:22:51Speaker 00

  But you've built yourself in this, this vessel you think is the essence of your craft. And you need something to break through it. You're like, well, I pride myself. Nothing can break me. Not physically, not mentally, not spiritually, emotionally, nothing. Like I'm very resilient up to this point, but I needed something to hammer through me and break me down to bare metal. And that's exactly what it did.

• 1:23:12Gary Brecka?

  How, how was it administered? What was the setting like? Like what was the procedure like?

• 1:23:17Speaker 00

  Very therapeutic. I mean, they've got counselors. You're in a, you're essentially a four-story villa. You've got nurses, EMTs, chefs are there. I mean, people just taking care of all your needs, everything. They give you a drug test when you get there. They confiscate all your medications, make sure you're not on Adderall, any kind of stimulant. There's no nicotine, caffeine, nothing. So you are fully sober for the first time, for a lot of the guys, first time in decades. I mean, I was taking 60 plus pills a day. So when I went down there, I was the worst I'd ever been.

• 1:23:49Gary Brecka?

  Wow.

• 1:23:49Speaker 00

  Mental health was the worst. Physically, I was the worst. I just, I didn't want to play the game anymore.

• 1:23:53Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 1:23:54Speaker 00

  And if I'm being honest, I had no intention of coming back from Mexico.

• 1:23:58Gary Brecka?

  Really?

• 1:23:58Speaker 00

  I, I was so suicidal. I just wanted to die. I didn't care. And. I think in the back of my mind, I kind of hoped I was gonna kill me. So I wouldn't have to go home and face the music and all of that kind of stuff. Everything I thought I was gonna see is not what I saw. I thought I'd see Nick Chek. I thought I'd be in the back of helicopters. I thought I'd see tall grass and all the stuff we lived through. And I didn't, when I say zero, not a singular memory of military. It gapped it from the day I joined to the day I retired. None of it. No. I've done that again four times. And never once. Never once. Not a singular bit of it.

• 1:24:36Speaker 00

  Maybe because that's not where your regret lies. It's not my trauma. That's not your trauma. I love to answer that. Even the stuff that's bad, even the stuff that I thought was giving me nightmares, it's not. It's a bunch of childhood stuff. And then it's a realization that I'm doing the same thing to my kids. And I don't want to be like that. I don't. Like, I have regrets on the way I've treated my wife, conversations we've had, infidelity, the whole thing. It's like, I did all that. And it's so hard to realize that's what you've done. So when you wake up the next day, they call it the gray day. It was like I had a 300 pound noose around me. My posture was broken. I didn't want to go home. At the same token, that was the first time I'd ever been homesick.

• 1:25:18Speaker 00

  Like, if Elon Musk would have had a teleportation machine right there, I would have jumped home. Right. But I still had this reservation, like, I still don't want to go home. It's this weird, it's weird shit that you find yourself in. But everything you've been suppressing your whole life is now at the very top of your throat. Now it's coming out of your mouth. You sit down this big school circle and, okay, let's talk about your experience last night. And everybody just looks at each other. I'm Chatty Cathy, like, I want to send it. Right. And I start talking and everybody else starts piping up. I start talking about wanting to kill myself and suicide ideation, dependency and all this stuff. And everybody else is like, me too, me too, me too. Really? And then I get pissed. I'm like, really? What do you mean you too?

• 1:26:03Speaker 00

  Like, I've known you for 20 years. You're my best friend. What do you mean you too? He's like, yeah, I'm in the same boat.

• 1:26:10Speaker 00

  You were gonna let me sit in my guest room and shoot myself in the head and you weren't gonna say anything? You knew I was suffering.

• 1:26:14Gary Brecka?

  Hmm.

• 1:26:14Speaker 00

  Nothing? You're just gonna watch it happen?

• 1:26:17Gary Brecka?

  Hmm.

• 1:26:17Speaker 00

  And I made that decision right then. I was like, I am never going to sit here and mum's the word. I'm not doing that.

• 1:26:22Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:23Speaker 00

  Next day, we do five M E O D M T and it, it must be what finding religion is truly like.

• 1:26:30Gary Brecka?

  Wow.

• 1:26:30Speaker 00

  When it happens, you set up and you're like, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my, I mean, you're freaking out. You feel interconnected to everybody. Like, it's so hard to describe until you've done it. You can't believe you feel that good. You can't believe you feel that grounded, that balanced, that interconnected, that much empathy in your life.

• 1:26:50Gary Brecka?

  Really?

• 1:26:50Speaker 00

  But it's controllable. It does make you a pacifist and that was my biggest concern. It's like, I don't wanna run around here with flowers and beads in my hair.

• 1:26:57Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:26:58Speaker 00

  Sorry for all the things I did. It's not like that a bit. It gave me a full dial. I can roll it to ten so fast, but I can set her to two and be the coolest student in the world. Like, I'm the most normal dude you'll ever meet.

• 1:27:09Gary Brecka?

  Hmm.

• 1:27:09Speaker 00

  I wasn't like that a couple of years ago.

• 1:27:11Gary Brecka?

  Really?

• 1:27:11Speaker 00

  I was wound so tight. I mean, I wouldn't leave my house. I, I always thought I was gonna be under attack. I'd have blades and guns and all kinds of tools on me because I thought I was always under attack.

• 1:27:22Gary Brecka?

  Hmm.

• 1:27:23Speaker 00

  I'm not. Like, I can control all these different things and it made me such a more well-rounded person than I was before.

• 1:27:29Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:30Speaker 00

  And it's all because of that medicine. And now, once you're off all those pills, my headaches are away.

• 1:27:34Gary Brecka?

  Were, were you cold turkey off of all that?

• 1:27:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, to wean off. Cause I was on Simbala Adderall. I mean, it takes a while to get off of them. But man, once you're stone cold sober, no booze, no nothing in you.

• 1:27:46Speaker 00

  I can't believe I feel this good. I mean, I dipped Copenhagen for twenty something years. Cold turkey, one shot, completely done. And I didn't wanna quit. Every ounce of addiction in your body is gone. So addicted to women and chaos and everything else, it's gone.

• 1:28:00Speaker 00

  You had this this whole time. So I told Marcus and Amber when I came back, you know, they meet you on the other side of San Diego and, you know, hugs and kisses and whole thing. And I grabbed them both and I was like, I'm gonna get on the nearest building. I'm gonna scream from the rooftops, I promise you. And I went on Sean Ryan, unblurred my face and told my story and I became an advocate for the medicine.

• 1:28:19Gary Brecka?

  I remember that.

• 1:28:20Speaker 00

  If you have, if you think you've exhausted everything, you haven't gone down there and done that, there is still room left on the table. You can still make progress.

• 1:28:28Gary Brecka?

  Really?

• 1:28:29Speaker 00

  You get a bunch of guys like, I've done the immersion, I've done this, I've done that, I've done talk therapy, stellate, ganglion blocks, all the medications and they provide a little bit of relief, but it's not the entire thing. And I was suffering so bad. And I could see all my friends suffering too.

• 1:28:45Speaker 00

  I'm so sick of putting friends in caskets for self inflicted stuff.

• 1:28:48Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 1:28:49Speaker 00

  We can't do it anymore. Get the message out. That has been the greatest thing that's ever happened to me and my family.

• 1:28:55Gary Brecka?

  And when you, how many days was it?

• 1:28:59Speaker 00

  The original one was a three day protocol. Now they do a five day. So they do Reiki massage, breath work. They do it all. Sweat lodge. I mean, it's a full, it's a full protocol.

• 1:29:08Gary Brecka?

  Wow.

• 1:29:09Speaker 00

  It is perfect. We do, through Ambio Life Sciences, they run the most amazing clinic.

• 1:29:15Gary Brecka?

  Really?

• 1:29:15Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:29:16Gary Brecka?

  And so when you were getting ready to leave there, you had clarity maybe for the first time in, in a very long time.

• 1:29:23Speaker 00

  Stone cold sober. And it was the clarity that I didn't even want. Like I knew I had to go home and confess my wife about all the infidelity and all the things I'd been doing. But I had such a clear picture of how it happened.

• 1:29:36Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:37Speaker 00

  And not a lot of people ever have that. They just.

• 1:29:40Gary Brecka?

  They just think it was an impulse. Yeah.

• 1:29:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, I was so hung up on the job that I had to set up these walls and these different barriers. So I couldn't let my family get inside to cloud my judgment. Cause you have to be able to self sacrifice right now. It's so hard to do when I'm thinking about my wife. I'm thinking about those two kids. I'm gonna make her the first two time widow in NSW history. I'm gonna orphan my two kids. Like, I'm not doing this. Like, there's a hesitation.

• 1:30:04Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:04Speaker 00

  That I can't have. So what do I do? I block them off. I don't put pictures of them up. I try to limit how much we FaceTime. We won't talk for days on end. Like, I'm trying to keep you on the back burner. So I can focus on the task at hand, limit your options, narrow your focus. Nobody cares for my 63% husband.

• 1:30:21Speaker 00

  Nobody cares. It's not, it's not what they care about. They need me to perform right now. And if it calls for sacrifice, I have to be able to sacrifice. So we'd go on these trips and I'd live these alternate lives. We'd go on jump trips and dive trips and, you know, I'm not just running around, but because I'm not thinking about them. There's that internal governor that's no longer there. It's like normal people would lean on religion, strength of their family, all that. I didn't have any of those things. I was just living this singleton life. We're on the road 300 days out of the year. And it's so much easier to compartmental, compartmentalize completely and not think about them when I'm fully single. So in my mind, I'm fully single. Wherever I'm at outside of this house, I can be a completely different person. Now I come home, I snap back into it. Am I really present?

• 1:31:06Speaker 00

  No, physically I'm there, mentally I'm there, not there, emotionally I'm not there.

• 1:31:10Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 1:31:10Speaker 00

  That's all the time that I regret. So to everything I've done for my life up to the 40 years on this planet, there's a stretch of four years I absolutely hate myself for. I can never get that back. And we came back through, I mean, I can't believe we made it through it. All the stuff I put her through. But I told her, I was like, I'm gonna re-earn my seat at this table every single day I'm left on this planet. You will see a positive change in me every minute I'm alive because I owe it to you. And if you ask me today, I wake up every day with that on the forefront of my mind. I'm gonna re-earn my seat at this table by whatever means necessary. And the other thing is we cut out toxicity out of my life. I sat down at the edge of my bed with her. And a lot of it's personal relationships.

• 1:31:54Speaker 00

  Went through my phone, started A and rolled all the way to Z. This person, this person, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, about 150 people. Block and delete, all of them.

• 1:32:04Gary Brecka?

  Really?

• 1:32:04Speaker 00

  Never going back. I've known you for 25 years. Every interaction's been toxic. I mean, family members included. I can't do it anymore. I owe these three people everything right now and I'm gonna give you both barrels right now because you deserve it. Cause I've been absent for our first 15 years of marriage. It's a G what took you, it took me from you. Now I've gotta give it back and for me, it's totally worth it, but it is so hard. To go down there and let yourself go.

• 1:32:30Gary Brecka?

  And is this, is this over several days that you come to this, or is it, how is it administered?

• 1:32:37Speaker 00

  Pill form. So they grind it all down. It comes from a root in West Africa. They grind it down to the capsule form. Take three or four pills. Take one. 20 minutes later, take another one. And you'll slowly start to feel the effects come on. Nothing crazy. You get a little bit of trace error and then you take the fourth or the fifth final pill, banging on the rock as you're staring at yourself in the mirror and then all of a sudden, am I feeling it? You'll shake back and forth and everything will drift. You're like, oh boy, here we go.

• 1:33:03Gary Brecka?

  Here we go.

• 1:33:04Speaker 00

  You'll hear like bees buzzing in your ear and you put on the eye shades and whatever happens, happens. Some guys don't see anything. Some people, you just feel emotions. You can, you can feel memories. You're not even.

• 1:33:17Gary Brecka?

  But you're conscious, you're awake, you're in charge, you're in charge of your choices. It's not like, you're not on like a weird acid trip where it's okay. Where you feel out of control.

• 1:33:26Speaker 00

  You get up and go to the bathroom. It's very hard to walk. You don't have your sea legs. They're assisting you. But I mean, you know, you're in Mexico. I know I'm laying on the bed. I know that that guy is mad. I know that that's cold.

• 1:33:35Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:36Speaker 00

  Put on the eye shades and then whatever your feelings, what you feel.

• 1:33:39Gary Brecka?

  How long are you in that zone from that?

• 1:33:41Speaker 00

  About 24 hours.

• 1:33:42Gary Brecka?

  24 hours?

• 1:33:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, 12 to 24.

• 1:33:44Gary Brecka?

  So you don't actually sleep through it?

• 1:33:45Speaker 00

  Oh, no. No, you're awake the entire time. So that gray day, you can't sleep either. So I mean, you're just up. Process, guys journal, they'll take audio notes, all this. But that medicine's in your body for probably six months. So you'll be sitting in a red light and all of a sudden, a picture or an emotion that you felt from six months in the past during treatment, it'll click. All the dots will connect and you go, that's why I did that. And you'll go home to your lady and you're like, do you remember in 2012, this? And she's like, uh huh. It's like, this is why. And she'll look at you and go, that makes sense. That makes sense. It'll take you so long to process it, but that's what a lot of the guys do wrong is they'll go down there, they'll have this amazing change. They'll come back and be reinvented

• 1:34:28Speaker 00

  and they'll go straight back to that same toxic lifestyle.

• 1:34:31Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:33Speaker 00

  You know, you gotta quit booze because it's consuming you. You go to Mexico, you come back, but your wife's drinking six, seven glasses of wine a night. It's not going to help you. Eventually, you're gonna have one. And one's gonna turn to two, and you'll go straight back into it. If, you know, your buddies at work are hitting strip clubs, you know, every weekend, now you go back with them. You're back on the same path. You have to, you have to scrub out all the toxicity out of your life and reinvent yourself. But once you do, my God, it's like a superpower.

• 1:35:00Gary Brecka?

  Really?

• 1:35:01Speaker 00

  Everything is more vibrant, colors, the edges are crisp and clean. You feel interconnected to everything. It is, it is truly amazing.

• 1:35:09Gary Brecka?

  That is wild, dude. I mean, you know what's amazing is I've had multiple people that I, some that I hold in very, very high regard, tell me almost identical stories.

• 1:35:25Gary Brecka?

  I still don't quite understand the mechanism of how it allows you to break through your ego, because I feel like when you're in that state and you're not in control, you know, you're not conscious enough to process it and make a reasonable choice out that'll lead to a life-changing outcome. But that's not what they report.

• 1:35:45Speaker 00

  So when you come into Ibogaine, that's not the ego death. That conjures up everything else you've been suppressing? The five MEO is what kills it. They call it the ego death for a reason.

• 1:35:55Gary Brecka?

  So good. And the ego is so dangerous.

• 1:35:58Speaker 00

  It is. You think it's a source of your strength.

• 1:36:00Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:01Speaker 00

  But for us, when you get in there, I did six rounds of five MEO my first time through.

• 1:36:05Gary Brecka?

  Wow. How long were you there?

• 1:36:08Speaker 00

  Each one of those is, it's different from everybody else. Mine were probably four to six-minute rides. You kind of have a loose trap. You can kind of track a little bit of time, but it's so hard to describe. It feels intraveal, I'll tell you. If it feels like you're gonna explode, explode. Feels like you're drowning, just drown. Feels like you're dying, just die. Whatever it's gonna do, don't try to fight it. Just open your arms and just breathe and let it happen. And I was probably five rounds through, and I wasn't having that breakthrough moment. My ego wasn't dying. I was holding on to it. I would scream and cry, and I'd ball it up. And then I'd come out of it, and I'd look at the practitioner and go. Hit him again. This last one, and I don't know, because we used to go down there with nothing but seals. So they would hold space for you.

• 1:36:51Speaker 00

  You'd look around the room, you're like, okay, I'm gonna take this medicine and put these eye shades on this foreign country and they're gonna protect the house, make sure nothing's gonna happen. So it gives you that piece of calm.

• 1:36:59Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:00Speaker 00

  And that very last time, I don't know if it was a practitioner or a team guy that was there. They knew how bad I was struggling. And they were like, you wanna kill yourself, right? Yeah, and he goes, then do it. I changed my intention in the, the sixth time I smoked that medicine, I did it with the intention to kill myself. And that is what broke me open. It felt like my whole soul went into my sternum, it cracked open and shot out of me. I mean, just laying there, just, I mean, you got the eye shades on it, it feels like every ounce of your soul is leaving your body in one shot.

• 1:37:30Gary Brecka?

  Really?

• 1:37:31Speaker 00

  Screaming.

• 1:37:32Gary Brecka?

  It's that profound.

• 1:37:33Speaker 00

  When we get done, I'll show you a video of my, of me screaming, it sounds like a Viking death.

• 1:37:36Gary Brecka?

  They have a video?

• 1:37:37Speaker 00

  Screaming, and you don't know what's happening, that's just what your body's doing. And when you wake up from that, it's the most sobering thing you've ever had, like. Everything in the world is right, every wrong I've ever done, I can fix. You're like, I'm good. Like, I don't have to close this out. Like, I gotta go home and I gotta confess right now and I gotta rebuild this bridge, brick by brick, right now. It gives you motivation.

• 1:37:58Gary Brecka?

  On your seat at the table, yeah.

• 1:38:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, like, I can totally come back from this. I can totally do it. Without that medicine, there was no coming back for me.

• 1:38:05Gary Brecka?

  Wow, that is so profound, man, because I know so many people are struggling from what they feel is insurmountable mental illness.

• 1:38:13Speaker 00

  Everybody's got it.

• 1:38:14Gary Brecka?

  And, to some extent, yeah.

• 1:38:17Speaker 00

  So we're doing a documentary, it's launching on Netflix, November 3rd in Ways and More.

• 1:38:20Gary Brecka?

  Is it really?

• 1:38:20Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 1:38:21Gary Brecka?

  Oh dude, I'm gonna light that thing up for you, man, that's awesome.

• 1:38:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, November 3rd.

• 1:38:25Gary Brecka?

  About your journey?

• 1:38:26Speaker 00

  My journey, Marcus Capone, and then if you heard me talk about, um, on the Sean Ryan podcast, Matt Roberts. Gets shot through the arm, doing that whole thing. It's, it's essentially Marcus saving me, me going down to get treatment, us coming together and going, we gotta save Matty.

• 1:38:41Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:41Speaker 00

  Now it's me convincing Matt to go down his whole treatment protocol and then all of us going down to Mexico together, it films the entire procedure. Simultaneously, Stanford.

• 1:38:50Gary Brecka?

  Sean's doing it too?

• 1:38:51Speaker 00

  Um, Sean did it too.

• 1:38:52Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:53Speaker 00

  But, um, Stanford did a study on Ibragaine and what it's doing for the brain. It's unbelievable.

• 1:38:58Gary Brecka?

  I gotta dig into that.

• 1:38:59Speaker 00

  It's killing addiction, it's repairing all the, um... All the neural pathways in a brain, I mean, guys that are really, really jammed up, it's curing it in one shot.

• 1:39:08Gary Brecka?

  Don't start fucking with big pharma's pockets.

• 1:39:10Speaker 00

  Big pharma's gonna hate this.

• 1:39:11Gary Brecka?

  There's gonna be some missing Navy SEALs here.

• 1:39:14Speaker 00

  Because it's working, man.

• 1:39:15Gary Brecka?

  That's worse than any enemy you ever fought. But yeah, it's amazing that, you know, empowering the body to just heal itself. I'm such a huge, huge believer. Dude, this has been amazing, man. I, first of all, I'm really thankful that you came down and came onto the podcast. And before we wind things up, I have a VIP group. These are my most loyal followers. They're a community that I've built that are really on the same journey with me. They're gonna, they knew that you were coming on the podcast. They've got some questions for you. I want to take you into that room and answer their questions. But before we go, I wind down all my podcasts by asking my guests the same question.

• 1:40:01Gary Brecka?

  And that is, what does it mean to you to be an ultimate human?

• 1:40:04Speaker 00

  I mean, for me, being an ultimate human,

• 1:40:08Speaker 00

  it's a realization you're on a consistent progression throughout life. The person you are at 18, you're progressively getting better through your 20s, through your 30s, through your 40s, and I'm going to continue that exact progression, understanding there's no finish line. There's no gold medal to win where I just hang it up and I go, and I'm not going to do anything else. I am going to live this exact same path, knowing there's still room to go, still room to grow the entire way through. Different modalities, you've got a different pill that makes me better, give it to me. Different drink, different sleep hygiene, whatever it is. I am adopting everything positive in my life to make me better than I was the day before. And I'm trying to push that out to everybody, and I'm just trying to live it. To me, that's the ultimate human. Am I better than I was the day before?

• 1:40:48Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:48Speaker 00

  I am.

• 1:40:49Gary Brecka?

  I will tell you, man, I'm around a lot of people, a lot of great thinkers, a lot of very successful, unique individuals. You have an energy about you, brother. I mean, you really do. I feel like I've known you all my life. And I'm not saying like I feel like you're my best friend. No, I just feel like I've known you all my life. I can tell that you're a very genuine, very intentional, very humble person. And I really enjoyed the last couple of hours with you, man. I truly have. I mean, this has been, it's been an awesome engagement. And like I say, I meet a lot of people, a lot of high achievers. But you have that special chord, like that authentic energy that I don't feel very often. So. Maybe it was the Abigail and it worked.

• 1:41:30Speaker 00

  I appreciate it. I appreciate the opportunity.

• 1:41:32Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, I'm excited to go in and meet some of the VIPs and get their questions answered. But wow, what an amazing podcast. I'm going to have you back because I want to see how your journey continues to go. Guys, until next time.