#263 Steve Bunting - Inside the World of MARSOC Medics and Real-World Combat Medicine

Steven Bunting is a former U. S. Navy Chief Petty Officer and Special Amphibious Reconnaissance Corpsman (SARC) / Special Operations Independent Duty Corpsman who spent over a decade embedded with Marine Recon and MARSOC Raiders. He delivered advanced trauma care and operational support on the front lines of combat, direct-action raids, special reconnaissance, foreign internal defense, and Joint Combined Exchange Training (JCET) missions worldwide. After leaving active duty, Steven continued high-threat work as a Global Response Staff (GRS) contractor, providing protective security, tactical support, and emergency medical expertise to U. S. government personnel in some of the world’s most dangerous and volatile regions. Transitioning from the battlefield to the cutting edge of mental health and human performance, Steven became a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. He has worked in addiction treatment, community mental health, neuropsychiatric research, and psychedelic-assisted therapy with leading organizations including The Mission Within, Heroic Hearts Project, Kadima Neuropsychiatry Institute, and MAPS. Today, as Head of Coaching at Sharp Performance, Steven leads a national team that delivers elite performance coaching and resilience training to first responders, military veterans, and high-risk professionals. Drawing on special operations leadership, clinical expertise, and performance psychology, he helps America’s protectors heal from the cost of service, rebuild identity, and reach their highest potential. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors:https://bubsnaturals.com – USE CODE SHAWN Go to https://PatriotMobile.com/SRS or call 972-PATRIOT, and use promo code SRS for a FREE MONTH of service! When you buy gold or silver through https://ShawnLikesGold.com, you’ll get up to 10% FREE SILVER OR GOLD on qualified purchases from my partners over at Goldco. Steve Bunting Links: Sharp Performance – https://www.sharpperformance.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:29Speaker 01

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• 0:46Speaker 04

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• 1:04Shawn Ryan?

  Steve Bunting, welcome to the show, man. Yeah, thanks, brother. It's an honor to be here. It's an honor to have you. So we got connected, we got connected with Sharp, the company that you're involved with through Catherine Boyle. Oh, yeah. Who's on the show earlier this year and,

• 1:25Shawn Ryan?

  you know, A16C. And so she kind of told me a little bit about what you guys are doing. And it's Sharp. And I just think this is like really important. And I mean, as you know, we talk about, you know, military careers, special operations in particular, more than anything else. And, you know, we talk about, you know, the, we do whole life story, you know, but we talk about the effects of war trauma. All the stress that comes with a traumatic brain injury, all that shit, the downward spiral, what it takes to get out of it, recovery methods, addiction, infidelity, all the fucked up stuff

• 2:09Shawn Ryan?

  that we go through. And, um, and you know, I did that because I want to show, I think it's important for people to see what that downward spiral looks like and how ugly it gets after service. And, you know, the people that I bring on, they, they have all these different avenues of, you know, what got them out of that, you know, whether that's entrepreneurship or, or therapy, or psychedelics, or starting a nonprofit, find a new purpose, all these different things. And, um, and many of them have started different nonprofits. But what I think is really unique about Sharp is you guys are for profit. And I'll be honest, when I first, I was like, yeah, it's kind of like for profit. But then thinking about it, I'm like, they don't have to fucking

• 2:53Shawn Ryan?

  worry about fundraising. They don't have to worry about all that shit. And so many nonprofits, especially in the military space, start off with a great mission and a great mindset. And then greed, greed gets in the way and it goes awry. And then the entire, the entire focus is how do we get bigger and raise more money. And, um, but you guys don't have to deal with that because you're starting off with for profit right off the bat. And, and, uh, I think that's, I think that's really cool, man. And so I didn't even talk about what you guys are doing, but you guys are, you're sending in counselors, counselors or therapists.

• 3:32Speaker 06

  Well, they're coaches by trade. Some are providers, but we're not working under any licensing, which is kind of a unique space to be in the coaching space. Opens up more when it comes to self-disclosure. I feel like we really get to show up in a, in a different way. So we're not diagnosing, not assessing. So they're coaches by trade.

• 3:49Shawn Ryan?

  So it's somebody, it's somebody to lean on and coach and about things that people that have high stress jobs, that experienced a lot of trauma, firefighters, police, military, first responders, you guys are integrating in and.

• 4:07Shawn Ryan?

  It's awesome and it sounds like you guys are growing at a super rapid pace. So yeah, but anyways, so we're going to talk about your story and kind of how you got involved with all this. And I think this is a really unique interview because I have not talked to a Marsoc medic on this show yet. So this you're first. Yeah. So this is pretty fucking cool.

• 4:30Speaker 06

  Yeah, thank you.

• 4:31Shawn Ryan?

  But everybody starts off with an introduction here. So Steve Bunting, a former Navy Chief Petty Officer, Special Operations Independent Duty Corpsman, assigned to Marsoc during the global war on terrorism, left the Navy and then worked as a CIA contractor, GRS in the world's most dangerous hotspots like coast Afghanistan. You then became a marriage and family therapist with deep expertise in addiction treatment, community, mental health, neuropsychiatric research and psychedelic assisted therapy. Now you're the head of coaching at Sharp Performance, leading a nationwide team that empowers first responders, military personnel and high risk professionals. And I also found

• 5:15Shawn Ryan?

  out that you are really good buddies with my friend, Prime Hall. And so a quote or something that he had written that credits you with him finding basically getting clean. So Prime's an awesome dude.

• 5:32Speaker 06

  I love that guy.

• 5:33Shawn Ryan?

  So are you on deployment with him?

• 5:34Speaker 06

  Yeah, we were actually in Delta Company together and I helped him during his transition out, which is really difficult for him. He had a lot of pushback. You heard the story and it was really messed up. But I had the opportunity to show up for him in a powerful way during that process. And dude, I love him so much. So it was my, the honor was all mine.

• 5:52Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, man, what a, that guy's just an awesome human being.

• 5:56Speaker 06

  He is, dude.

• 5:58Shawn Ryan?

  He is a, he is a one of a kind person and I just fucking love that guy.

• 6:03Speaker 06

  Oh yeah, me too.

• 6:05Shawn Ryan?

  But a couple of things to get through here before we start. Everybody gets a gift.

• 6:12Speaker 06

  Thank you, man. The iconic gummy bears.

• 6:14Shawn Ryan?

  Good joints, Lee. Gummy bears, legal in all 50 states, made in the USA. And then we have a Patreon account. It's a community. It's a subscription service. And we've turned it into quite the community. And they're the reason that I get to sit here with you today. And so, one of the, one of the things we do is we offer them the opportunity to ask every guest a question. So, this is from anonymous. What's the biggest gap you've seen between the military's existing mental health support? And what veterans actually need post-service?

• 6:47Speaker 06

  Yeah. Well, I think the biggest thing is gonna be that PTSD easy button, man. And we've been slapping it for 30-plus years now, and it seems like it's been the go-to. Or if there's been any significant event in your life, and you're having any of this list of things, and it has to be PTSD. And that's a psychology-related thing. It's a psychological issue. But what I'm seeing, what I've noticed in my own journey and others' experiences, that there's so much more physiological stuff that's not being addressed. Right? Things like our testosterone levels, like our sleep. Like, there's a lot of basics there that we gotta get in check. And I think when we slap a psychological diagnosis on something that has a lot of physiological implications, we miss the, we miss the mark there. And I think that's a big reason why we're not seeing a lot of success solving this PTSD thing.

• 7:30Speaker 06

  Because there's so many physiological things that we're just not addressing at all. Something as simple as trying to get TRT from the VA. When you have testosterone levels in the hundreds, right, like 100, 200, and they don't want to address it. But they want to give you psychotropic meds for your PTSD. There's a big issue there, man. And I think it's undeniable that that line's there. And as long as we continue to ignore those things, I think we're not gonna get any headway on this PTSD stuff, no matter what cool stuff we bring to the table.

• 7:56Shawn Ryan?

  Geez, they're still not doing testosterone TRT therapy at the VA? I mean, it's, it's every fucking major doctor out there is talking about the lost, like, declining testosterone.

• 8:10Shawn Ryan?

  I don't even go to the, I still don't go to the, I even had the Secretary of the VA on early this year. I still, I still don't fucking go. But you go there?

• 8:19Speaker 06

  No, I'm guilty as well, right? I would like to say that the last time I tried was in probably twenty, probably twenty eighteen. I tried and I finally did get a prescription, but they wanted to give you one shot every three weeks. And it was just gonna be an endocrine system roller coaster that I wasn't willing to participate in. So they weren't willing to manage it. They wouldn't give me a consultation to an endocrinologist, a specialist who could actually like, build it out and knew what they were talking about. Unfortunately, it was like a nurse practitioner at the VA. And I didn't want to risk it, right? Trying to play that game, even if it meant that I didn't have to pay out of pocket. I was willing to work with a professional and pay out of pocket.

• 8:53Shawn Ryan?

  Man, man. Well, let's move in. So what I'd like to do is I would like to do a life story on you, just like every other military guy that comes in here. I think that's, I think that's the most important part.

• 9:04Speaker 06

  I don't want to interrupt you before you start. I got a couple of gifts for you.

• 9:08Shawn Ryan?

  Love gifts.

• 9:08Speaker 06

  Yeah. First, I wanna give you a gift here from my boy Jig Cervantes, who got out, who's a Marsoc Raider. And he started a watch company called Sangin'. They call it the Raider Rolex, the beautiful piece. He's my element leader in Afghanistan and um, he's actually local to this area.

• 9:24Shawn Ryan?

  I just met this guy. I literally just met this guy at the gun shop.

• 9:28Speaker 06

  He's salt of the earth, such a good human being. The green bezel on there is only for SOF operators. So you have to present certificates and things like that. So you can't just buy that. Um, yeah.

• 9:39Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you. This is awesome.

• 9:43Speaker 06

  Yes, it's sapphire crystal, all the good stuff, anti-magnetic. I mean, a quick research of Sangin' instrumental, see it's, he didn't, he didn't pull any stops out on that thing. It's a really nice piece.

• 9:52Shawn Ryan?

  Damn, thank you, man. This is awesome.

• 9:55Speaker 06

  Is a gift from your boy Beto. It's a half-based plate. And he was, uh, when he heard I was coming on here, when I said, and he said, he wasn't sure if he had a close scout yet, so he wanted to make sure he hooked you up with that.

• 10:06Shawn Ryan?

  Damn, dude.

• 10:06Speaker 06

  Yeah, Beto's the man. Does a lot of work with the Recon Foundation and things like that, so.

• 10:10Shawn Ryan?

  Look at that. It's got your guys' s got sharp performance. Dude, thank you.

• 10:14Speaker 06

  Yes, sir.

• 10:15Shawn Ryan?

  This is awesome, too. Yeah, man.

• 10:19Speaker 06

  Yeah, sorry to interrupt you. I just didn't want to forget.

• 10:21Shawn Ryan?

  Dude, thank you.

• 10:22Speaker 06

  Yes, sir.

• 10:24Shawn Ryan?

  All right.

• 10:27Speaker 06

  You ready? I'm ready. Where'd you grow up? Yeah, so the beginning was a little bit shifty, right? And it's gonna show you kind of a life of chaos from the beginning. Um, but I was actually born in Oceanside, California, right? Born Oceanside, had a beautiful family, right? Lots of loving grandparents and parents. My mom and dad, you know, loved me very much. But, um, not long after I was born, probably around, I was three years old, they separated. Right, so they ended up separating and, uh, my brother and I and my mom, um, moved to Alabama. So my mom, uh, my mom's dad had a prior marriage and she had a half sister and her sister was from Alabama. So every summer she'd come out and visit. And I guess once my mom and my dad dissolved, she said, you know what?

• 11:12Speaker 06

  Maybe if I take the boys and we go to Alabama, it'll be an easier life. Right, maybe it'll be an easier way. She can kind of find her own new way. And, uh, she loaded me and my brother Mitch up. We got on a Greyhound bus with a bag of sour cream and onion chips and we rode across the United States. Holy shit. Yeah, to Birmingham, Alabama. Older or younger? Say again? Older, older sibling or? My brother's younger than me, yeah. Younger, so you're the oldest? Yes, yep. So we, uh, moved to Alabama and I got to grow up there, kind of cut my teeth in the South. And, uh, to be honest with you, I'm very grateful for it. All right, I think I would have been better at surfing and skateboarding if I stayed in Cali. But I got to, you know, catch crawdaddies in the creek and go hunting and just do some of the good old southern stuff that I think is a little bit harder to come by in Oceanside. Nice, nice.

• 11:55Speaker 06

  How do you know that you came from a loving family if you were only three? Yeah, well, you know, I was able to reconnect with them once I joined the military. And then little things like going to my grandparents' house for the first time and seeing my, my height still etched on the wall, right, of when I was there and visiting. Holy shit. They still had my same original pictures of when I was a young boy on their mantle. Wow. Right, and just the amount of love I felt when I reconnected with this side of the family out in California was just like, it was undeniable. Plus, there's pictures, there are pictures where I got to see, it's like, everyone was happy. And, you know, it seemed like I was surrounded by love. Do you know why your parents split? Yeah, it was infidelity. You know, my dad is the bunting curse, I guess, and just, you know, couldn't couldn't keep it to himself.

• 12:40Speaker 06

  You know, he's out there in the streets just trying to find his way. Unfortunately, yeah, my mom wasn't going to stand for it and good for her. She's a saint and a good woman, deserved better. She wasn't, there was just no negotiation. She wasn't going to tolerate it and raise her kids in a house like that. Yeah, yeah. So, how was it growing up in Alabama? It was rough, man. It was rough. Um, you know, I'm very grateful for everything that I went through. You know, it made me who I am, but it was very tough. You know, initially, when we first got to Alabama, we went to stay with my aunt. And I guess the promises that were made just weren't going to be fulfillable. You know, um, her and her husband weren't doing well. We showed up to a really like unstable situation and my mom realized that she was going to have to figure it out on her own. So in the beginning, we lived in like government housing.

• 13:25Speaker 06

  I think we finally, we got like some HUD housing apartment complexes that had just opened up. It was decent enough and that's where we, our first place that we lived. Do you remember this stuff? Yeah, I do. Obviously, it's like, it was more of a, of a bad dream. Um, at this age. But yeah, when we were there, probably, you know, three to four age. And you know, I remember living in that apartment complex and some pretty crazy things happened to me while I lived there. So it made it even more memorable. What happened? Yeah, so, uh, you know, we're kind of there. We're new to the situation. I remember being pretty confused about where my dad is. I remember being very young and not understanding why we're going on such a road trip and why we'd even go to a place like Alabama. You know, I remember like kind of missing my family and just wondering what was up. But as we got there, my mom, she didn't really have any higher education.

• 14:10Speaker 06

  Right? She tried to be a, a airline stewardess prior, and I think things just kind of washed out. So she showed up there with real, no real skills and kind of had to do what she needed to do in the service jobs. Once she got there, she started working at Denny's. And, you know, they gave her the graveyard graveyard shifts. She had to kind of pull her weight being the new person. And somewhere along that case, um, she had met some guy, right? Her boyfriend and, um, had invited him into our home. And along the course of that, like, you know, uh, we were abused in that process. How were you abused? Yeah, well, you know.

• 14:45Speaker 06

  The main situation that comes to mind was a particular night where, you know, he sexually sexually abused me and my brother. Yeah, he had been probably doing some drugs. I remember the smell of smoke and in the apartment and um, you know, I remember being very confused that night and really sad. Um, but yeah, he definitely, um, he sexually abused my brother and I. How old were you? Yeah, probably three, three, four years old. Yeah, probably four years old by this point. Yeah. And you remember this shit? Do you remember it vividly? Yeah. So, you know, for the majority of my childhood, it was, it was kind of like a bad dream. Right? It was a little bit blurry for me and um, you know, which I learned later is like probably it's a condition of trauma, like that disassociation.

• 15:26Speaker 06

  And a little bit of that amnesia. But I do remember, you know, uh, the situation. I ended up having to go to the hospital due to the injuries I sustained from that night. Are you serious? Yeah. Yeah. So he, after he did what he did to me and my brother, right, which included like putting cigarettes out on our genitalia and things like that. We, he sent- Are you fucking serious? Yeah. Real, real evil shit, man. Real evil stuff. You know, and I remember he sent me and my brother to bed. And um, you know, I was happy that it was just over. So me and my brother go upstairs and we go to bed. My mom came home from her shift and um, she came upstairs to check on us. You know, we're young, so she didn't want us to wet the bed. And she did kind of her routine where she woke us up to take us to the bathroom to go potty. So we didn't, you know, pee in the sheets.

• 16:10Speaker 06

  And I remember when we went into the bathroom and she pulled my pants down. She started crying and um, I was real confused, Sean. I didn't know what was going on. And um, she started crying and she got very mad. She pulled my brother in there and she looked at him too and she started crying again. And um, I didn't know what was going on, man. So next thing I know, she goes downstairs and she's, she starts assaulting this guy. Starts assaulting this guy. She tries to get the cordless phone. That's back when the cordless phones were like huge, the metal antenna. And she starts trying to fight with him over it. And she starts trying to fight with the phone and she's screaming. And she tells us to go get our babysitter. We had a babysitter during the daytime, lived up this hill. And I remember being a kid and I remember that hill being like a thousand miles long, trying to run up it in the middle of the night, beating on the door till they wake up.

• 16:54Speaker 06

  And finally, they woke up and called the cops. The cops came and they arrested the guy. But unfortunately, they ended up having to take me and my brother. Right? So first they took us to the hospital. Right? And I went there and I remember them checking me out and the things I remember about that is they had to strap me to a spineboard because I wouldn't let them touch me down there. So I ended up having to strap my arms down and my feet down. And um, a lot of that, those memories are foggy because I just don't, I don't know. Right? It was a lot of bright lights, a lot of confusion, me crying. But I do know that once they were done doing whatever they were doing. Um, I ended up having to go to kind of foster care for a little while, me and my brother.

• 17:30Speaker 06

  Holy shit. Yeah.

• 17:39Speaker 06

  I don't know what to say to that, man. Yeah.

• 17:44Speaker 06

  It's tough, man, because you hear this story a lot on this show. I do. Yeah. I hear a lot with the people I work with, man, which is really sad. It's very, very, very common.

• 17:56Speaker 06

  Fuck, man, I'm sorry, dude. Yeah, thank you.

• 18:01Speaker 06

  How long were you in foster care? Probably around six months. No, it wasn't. Six months? Yeah, it was, my mom had to petition to the state and show that she's a good mom. And there was a lot to be questioned on that one, right? It's like, you know, from the outside looking in, it's like, dude, that who would leave their kids with a stranger? Right? Who would put their kids in this type of position? And you know, all I can say is that my mom's a very good woman. Right? I love her tremendously and I think she was just doing her best. And obviously she would have never voted for any of this to happen to us. But she got put under question, I think rightfully so. And she had to show that she was, you know, fit to be a mom. And it took a little bit of time. Do you remember foster care? Yeah, I do. I do. I remember they were very nice to us. I do remember they had a nice house with some property.

• 18:45Speaker 06

  And it's like, I remember a little bit, man, like, kind of not feeling too satisfied to stay there. Yeah, they treated me and Mitch really well. And I was like, it was, it was actually nice, dude. Because when my mom, even though she tried her best, it was really unstable, man. It's really unstable. And um, there it felt real stable, felt loving, felt like, you know, something that I would want, want to have as a young boy. What was it like going home? I was happy. I do remember to be back with my mom like this, you know, no matter what the situation is, I think a kid really wants, there's something, there's like so much compassion in a kid's heart and forgiveness that they're capable of. Even in some of the darkest evil things that they can experience and I was very happy to be back with my mom.

• 19:28Speaker 06

  I was, but you know, unfortunately, things didn't get better for, for a long time.

• 19:33Shawn Ryan?

  They didn't get better?

• 19:35Speaker 06

  Yeah, it was just real chaotic where she just didn't have a stable job. I think she ended up becoming a cashier at a gas station. And it was just really living check to check. A lot of poverty, just, you know, we really had no money. And then a lot of instability when it came to where we lived, we're always kind of jumping around places, trying to find the next place to live, the next place to kind of harbor up. It was just a lot of chaos in that, in that regard. Just not knowing where the next meal is going to come from. Not knowing like, you know, how long we're going to be staying somewhere. You know, you never know when mom's going to come home and tell you that we got to shove all our stuff in a trash bag and get out of there, which seemed to be a routine for, for a long time.

• 20:15Shawn Ryan?

  How long, how long was that your entire childhood?

• 20:18Speaker 06

  Yeah, up until fourth grade, you know, fourth grade, we, we gained some stability. So from kind of kindergarten through fourth grade, I was in the inner city Birmingham area, which is kind of a rough place to kind of grow up. A lot of fighting, just a lot of violence, just a lot of instability. And then you're growing up around people that are very, in the very similar situations. So it's kind of exposed to a lot of that type of stuff early on. But in fourth grade, my mom's boss decided that he needed her to be stable as well to kind of be, he wanted to make her a manager. And he ended up buying us a trailer in a trailer park. It was right on the edge of Birmingham city, next to a nice town. So that kind of changed my life there by us getting to go into that trailer park. It was still a trailer park. It wasn't perfect, but we were zoned for a different school.

• 21:02Speaker 06

  And I'd have to say like that shifted everything for us.

• 21:06Shawn Ryan?

  Damn dude.

• 21:09Shawn Ryan?

  I, I, uh,

• 21:12Shawn Ryan?

  I just can't get over that, um.

• 21:16Speaker 06

  Wow.

• 21:19Speaker 06

  Do you know what happened to that guy? Yeah, he ended up going to prison. But I remember, you know, when me and my brother, we'd always ask my mom, like, hey, when when's he getting out? Because we knew it was like something like 10 years. I think he got 10 years in prison. And there was like a little timer in our heads where we were always scared. You know, I'd always ask my mom, it's like, hey, is he gonna come hurt us when he gets out? Like, are we safe? And, you know, it's kind of slowly became the dirty secret of our family where we just didn't talk about it too much. My mom would be like, what are you talking about? Like, why are we talking about this again? She's like, just stop. It's okay. Like, he's not gonna hurt us. You're okay. But for a long time, me and my brother were scared. He was gonna get out of prison and and come and, you know, you know, um. Yeah, try to pay us back for throwing him in jail.

• 22:04Speaker 06

  How's your brother doing today? Yeah, he didn't make it.

• 22:08Speaker 06

  Yeah, he was a Marine Corps veteran, you know, and um, he got blown up. And uh, one, there was two 155s buried in the ground and he he got blown up. But then he came back and um, he actually survived that by the grace of God. But uh, got a traumatic brain injury, ended up taking his life in uh, 2017.

• 22:31Speaker 06

  Damn.

• 22:35Speaker 06

  Yeah, his his whole life was rough, man.

• 22:39Speaker 06

  He never, he never shook it from that day, I don't think. His whole life, he was trying to make it back. She's just a poor kid, man. Poor kid, he tried his hardest and I just don't think he ever came back from that situation. She caused a lot of issues for me. Because I really wanted him to be strong. You know, our relationship growing up was rough. I was abusive to him, man. I was. And I had a lot of shame about that, but deep down inside, I didn't want anybody to ever hurt him again. But he was such a sweet person, such a sweet guy. And um, just everything in me wanted to see a fight in him. Like, I wanted him, like, dude, you gotta fight, like, you can't, even when we were out and just going to school, he would get jumped. People would steal his Walkman and stuff, and I'm like, Mitch, you can't let them do this stuff.

• 23:21Speaker 06

  But he was just such a sweet human dude, such a pure human that he just became the victim of a lot of stuff. You know, we had some abusive stepdads along the way as well. And it always seemed like they went towards him. I don't know why. He was always the whipping boy, man. Always the whipping boy where it's like, I would get my fair share. Of uh whippings, but he would always drew more fire and it wasn't fair. And it was just something about his life where he suffered greatly, man.

• 23:48Shawn Ryan?

  Jeez dude.

• 23:50Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 23:53Shawn Ryan?

  So we haven't even, I mean, we haven't even gotten into your military career or your career at CIA and.

• 24:03Shawn Ryan?

  I feel uncomfortable saying this, but you're like the fucking perfect guy for what you're doing.

• 24:08Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 24:11Speaker 06

  Very grateful to be here.

• 24:12Shawn Ryan?

  Jeez.

• 24:13Speaker 06

  Very grateful, I'll tell you that.

• 24:14Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit. So we, so you find some stability in fourth grade.

• 24:19Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 24:20Shawn Ryan?

  And then

• 24:23Shawn Ryan?

  more abuse, more abusive male figures in your life.

• 24:28Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 24:28Shawn Ryan?

  They all male?

• 24:29Speaker 06

  All male. Yeah, my mom just kind of, you know, there'd be the, the guy at the gas station that would be like kind of the new, the new guy. And I say this with all respect to my mom. I want to keep saying I love her so much. She's such a good woman, but she was just trying to make it. Right? We could barely make it and it makes sense that you would do things to try and double income, right? And get some type of support. But these guys that she'd bring in were just, just had their own stuff. They were toxic human beings, right? And um, you know, we uh, this one guy that she ended up marrying that was a fellow cashier was just, he was raised in a Christian boys home. And it was, you know, uh, spare the rod, spoil the child type mentality. And we would, we would be beat for any, you know, infraction in the house.

• 25:12Speaker 06

  You know, one thing I am grateful about that is it gave us deep roots in church. Right? So I grew up in the South and we were at, at church every Wednesday and Sunday. To be honest with you, that got me through a lot of stuff, just having that stability. The church supported us a lot and giving us food and helping us get clothes. A lot of the clothes that I wore for the majority of my childhood was from either donations or the thrift store. But once this guy came into the house, we could actually shop at Walmart. So I remembered even though he was abusive, I was like, dude, at least like we're kind of upgrading a little bit. And I've, I have Walmart clothes on and not used clothes. And um, but it was just very abusive and he infraction had to be, you know, disciplined. He made a paddle out of like a pallet. He worked at this place after he worked at Chevron and he pull a piece of wood off the pallet.

• 25:57Speaker 06

  And he grinded out hand a handle in it and wrapped it in duct tape. And that's what he would hit us with. And um, like I said, my brother just got, he got the majority of the beatings.

• 26:07Shawn Ryan?

  My shit, Steve.

• 26:08Speaker 06

  Yeah, it was tough, man. It was tough, it was hard because I wanted to be grateful, right? But it was just still like the abuse was too much and you know, I just did not like this guy very much at all. Crazy thing is, is um, when I was in eighth grade, um, my brother, we were having dinner. And my stepdad was sitting in the living room. And I guess my brother had drummed on the back of his chair with some butter knives when they were gone. I didn't know about this. My stepdad came in, he ran his hand across the back of the chair and he was like, what is this? And my brother looked at me and I'm like, ah Mitch, like dude, like I knew. I wasn't gonna rat on my brother and say it was him, so I knew we're about to both get it. And he just kinda gave me that look and I gave him that look back like, bro, come on. And I'm like, I don't know.

• 26:50Speaker 06

  And he asked my brother and he's like, I don't know, he's like, stand up, go to the living room. And we go in there and he make us bend over and touch our toes and we'd have to stay there until he got the paddle. And we'll come in and, and, and you know, hit us with the paddle. But um, so I go in there that day and I remember I leaned over. I was just kinda looking at him waiting, but I was just no way I was gonna rat on him. There's no way he was my ride or die. We'd been through so much and we, I just ate it. I took my lashings and he sent me back to the table and I sit there with my ass on fire. Trying to eat my hamburger helper or whatever we had to eat that night. And then he fired Mitch up and he fired him up worse than me. Mitch came back and sat down and he's crying and I just looked at him. I was mad at him, but I wasn't gonna rat on him.

• 27:31Speaker 06

  And right about that time, dude, I'm sitting over and I look over and my stepdad starts flopping like a fish on the floor. And me and Mitch are like, what's going on? Like we thought he was messing with us or making fun of us or something. And we realized that he was having a seizure. So he screamed for my mom, she was in the back room. It's a single wide trailer, right? It's not a lot of room. I ran back and got hurt and ended up calling 911. And he ends up going to the hospital and he found out he had brain cancer. So over the course of that next, probably it was about a year and a half, we watched this guy just slowly die from brain cancer. And um, yeah, he ended up dying, you know, the end of my, my eighth grade year, ninth grade year.

• 28:08Shawn Ryan?

  You watched that whole process?

• 28:10Speaker 06

  Yeah, I watched the whole process, yeah, from the seizure to him being pretty much normal after surgery, to not being able to walk and just watching him go into hospice and he died right there in that trailer.

• 28:22Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit dude.

• 28:24Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 28:28Shawn Ryan?

  Did you have any feelings when he died? I mean, what is that, what is that like to see your mom's abusive partner? Was he, was he beating on your mom too?

• 28:37Speaker 06

  No, no, I didn't.

• 28:38Shawn Ryan?

  Just you guys?

• 28:39Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 28:40Shawn Ryan?

  Did he show any love to you guys, or was it all just?

• 28:43Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 28:44Shawn Ryan?

  Wait to beat you?

• 28:45Speaker 06

  I think, you know, he was abandoned by his family and raised in a boys' home, and I think he struggled. He didn't have that either, and I think he would try to love on us his best way. I think him like providing what he could was his love, but there was no love there, man. There was no love there. I was relieved when he passed. I hate, you know, I hate to say it, but it's the truth. I was relieved. I was tired of that chaos. I was tired of the beatings and, um, yeah, I was, I was relieved.

• 29:12Shawn Ryan?

  Would you and your brother talk about this stuff?

• 29:14Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah.

• 29:14Shawn Ryan?

  Stuff? What would you talk about?

• 29:16Speaker 06

  Yeah, we'd just talk about, like, we, I mean, obviously, we joked around about it. Humor was our thing. Like Mitch was hilarious and we would, we would just talk crap about everything, right? We'd just talk smack and we'd just, we made light of everything, even no matter how dark it was. We, we developed a dark sense of humor really early, where we, we found our ability to laugh about things and joke about it. And it just became just kind of jokes, but we definitely, we definitely talked about it.

• 29:42Shawn Ryan?

  What happens after eighth grade?

• 29:43Speaker 06

  Yeah, so, you know, along this way, um, I realized like my house wasn't safe, right? Lived in the small trailer and, um, oftentimes there wasn't even heat in the trailer. So it would just be very cold in there a lot of times, not a lot of food. So I would find my own way, man. I would, I was out in the streets as much as I could be, especially once my stepdad passed and he couldn't rule, like, kind of rein me in anymore. I would just had different friends and I would pick different friends' houses to go stay with. And one of these friends that I became best friends with in fourth grade was my best friend Brandon. So he became like my proxy ride or die and, uh, Brandon's mom had horses and they, you know, stayed really busy. So I would just go spend time with him and we'd go work at the, the farm and feed the horses.

• 30:26Speaker 06

  And I just got to learn about those different things and I became best friends with him. Um, they owned a company called Dial-a-Pony where they would bring these horses to these kids' birthday parties in the middle of the ghetto. It's kind of crazy.

• 30:39Speaker 06

  We're in the middle of the hood, right? And I'm walking, like putting kids on the horses and we're walking around and it's just like, it was surreal, man, just.

• 30:46Shawn Ryan?

  Right on.

• 30:47Speaker 06

  Yeah, walking on broken glass and things like that. And that just became my thing and that became my escape. I really love this guy. He's my best friend and his mom, he, he didn't have a dad either. So Sandy kind of proxy raised me, would take care of me and get me food. But, um, going into my 10th grade year, um, he was going to the farm. And I was supposed to be with him, but it was raining and I told him I wasn't gonna go. And a tree ended up falling on his truck and killing him. So, yeah, and then I did kind of go through that, man, like.

• 31:15Shawn Ryan?

  Holy fuck, Steve.

• 31:17Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 31:19Speaker 06

  Now, when, that's where things changed for me, man. I think that's when whatever was, whatever little heart of any sensitivities I had at that point, it was, it was fully scarred over. And I started building a hu- up a wall around my heart that was not gonna be penetrable for a long, long time.

• 31:36Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, so.

• 31:38Speaker 06

  I remember like even from the beginning, like I wouldn't even cry. There was no more tears. I remember I, I stopped crying pretty early. I remember I made a conscious choice to stop crying. It's like, I'm not crying no more. Remember this rock would just develop in my throat where I couldn't even swallow. And this pain in my heart where I thought it was just gonna break, like it was just gonna explode. And I just would start burying stuff really deep, man. Really deep. I would just eat it and it would just became my life. And I just kind of knew nothing good was gonna ever happen for me. Right? And that the suffering was just gonna be it for me. And that that's all I was gonna have. And it's just, I kind of just, that's, that's the way I felt about it.

• 32:17Shawn Ryan?

  Damn, man.

• 32:21Shawn Ryan?

  We've had a lot of childhood trauma talks in here.

• 32:25Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 32:25Shawn Ryan?

  And, uh.

• 32:28Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit.

• 32:34Shawn Ryan?

  That

• 32:37Shawn Ryan?

  That is fucking rough dude.

• 32:39Speaker 06

  Yeah, it was tough, man. It wasn't fun, I'll tell you that. It wasn't fun at all. But I think I started like learning how to disassociate really early. Right. I found that little special spot that no one could touch me. Right. Which served me really well, you know, throughout later parts of my life. Where I would be in situations where I just needed to bury stuff and I knew exactly where to bury it. I had my little special spot inside that no one could touch me. And um.

• 33:07Shawn Ryan?

  Is your mom still alive?

• 33:08Speaker 06

  Yeah, she is.

• 33:10Shawn Ryan?

  Are you guys close?

• 33:11Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, she's, yeah.

• 33:13Shawn Ryan?

  How's she doing?

• 33:14Speaker 06

  Dude, she's doing good. She's doing good. Yeah, we ended up having a little sister along the way. My mom really just leaned into her and really taking care, you know, taking care of her and showing up for them in a big way. And um, it's been a part of my healing journey too, being able to see your parents even just as human beings. Right. As being a parent and me misstepping and I haven't been perfect, like being able to look back and see her as a human. And seeing all the variables that she was trying to overcome. You know, giving her a lot of grace and a lot of forgiveness and yeah, I love her tremendously.

• 33:44Shawn Ryan?

  That makes me happy to hear, dude.

• 33:47Shawn Ryan?

  What

• 33:50Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, growing up like that, one thing I always do is I ask, you know, there's a lot of, just I didn't grow up like that. And I had a really good childhood and, and so for me, like starting the show and hearing all this

• 34:07Shawn Ryan?

  childhood trauma come up unexpectedly and realizing how fucking common it actually is, I mean. One thing that I like to do is I, you know, because we have a lot of kids that watch the show. And um, right now they're all pissed off at me because we just, uh, we

• 34:24Shawn Ryan?

  We uh, we brought up Roblox. I don't know if you know about how that's going, but uh, we brought up Roblox with uh, a really good friend of mine, Ryan Montgomery, about all the sexual exploitation that's going on. So anyways, all the kid, all the eight, nine year old kids throughout the country hate me right now because uh, none of them are allowed to play Roblox and we took a six billion, uh, Roblox took a six billion dollar cut uh, in one day because of that show. But what I want to ask is um, a lot of kids are going through childhood trauma, sexual trauma, abuse. You know, what do you, and a lot of these kids, and we're not, not

• 35:07Shawn Ryan?

  three and four years old, but eight and nine teenagers, a lot of kids watch this.

• 35:14Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 35:14Shawn Ryan?

  What advice do you have for a kid that's going through something like that?

• 35:18Speaker 06

  Yeah. One thing is, there's zero tolerance for that. No one's allowed to touch you. No one's allowed to do anything to you, right? Your body is sacred. It's your body and no one's allowed to touch you or make you do anything that you don't want to do, right? And you always have that right and you should always have the courage to speak up immediately and tell somebody. Don't keep it a secret. The second thing is that it's not your fault. It's not your fault. You're a victim. Like these adults, they're predators. They're evil people, right? And um, it's not your fault. You know, part of my, my journey was like I held a lot of shame about that dude. We'd go to church and I remember they would tell us about like, you know, homosexuality is a sin and that you were gonna go to hell. And I remember me and my brother

• 36:03Speaker 06

  looking at each other confused because this happened to us. We didn't get a vote, but a guy did stuff to us that classified as the things they were teaching in, in church. And me and him would be like, dude, we're going to hell, right?

• 36:15Shawn Ryan?

  You serious?

• 36:16Speaker 06

  Yeah, man.

• 36:16Shawn Ryan?

  You thought you were going to hell because somebody had sexually abused you?

• 36:20Speaker 06

  Yeah, man. Cause there's zero tolerance there, right? It's like very, it's Pentecostal hard south. It's black and white. There's no wiggle room. And it caused me a lot of distress, man. I would pray every night before I went to bed, begging for forgiveness because I thought like I was gonna burn in hell because of what happened to me. And I, you know, beat myself up. It caused a lot of issues for me. A lot of insecurities affected my relationships. That's what I want to say. Like if anyone's experienced this or they're experiencing it, it's not your fault. Right? It's not your fault at all. It doesn't have, say who you are. Like it doesn't have any, any bearing on that. It's not your fault.

• 36:54Shawn Ryan?

  Shit, man. Thank you.

• 36:57Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 36:57Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you. You want to take a break?

• 37:00Speaker 06

  Sure.

• 37:01Shawn Ryan?

  Let's take a break.

• 37:02Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 37:05Shawn Ryan?

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• 37:46Shawn Ryan?

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• 38:07Shawn Ryan?

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• 38:51Shawn Ryan?

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• 39:20Speaker 01

  Mr. President? My company for me of the explosion on our rig.

• 39:23Speaker 02

  On October 2nd.

• 39:24Speaker 01

  Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me.

• 39:29Speaker 02

  Tom Cruise is.

• 39:31Speaker 03

  Digger got us into this mess. And Digger's gonna dig us up.

• 39:34Speaker 02

  From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 39:37Speaker 04

  What would happen if I stopped doing it? You stall, you freeze to death, that's what.

• 39:41Speaker 02

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 39:44Speaker 04

  I'm not the first man.

• 39:45Speaker 02

  Digger, see the trailer online, only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R, under 17, not a minute without parent.

• 40:28Shawn Ryan?

  That's the quickest I think I've ever taken a break. Yeah.

• 40:34Shawn Ryan?

  Dude. I appreciated it. Yeah, I bet. Um, I mean, I've just, you had mentioned that.

• 40:44Shawn Ryan?

  Dude, where do you go as a kid? I mean, is it, where do you go? I mean, you go to, you had mentioned that

• 40:53Shawn Ryan?

  you got a lot out of going to church.

• 40:54Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 40:55Shawn Ryan?

  But then at the end there, you tell me, you go to church, you think you're going to hell? Because

• 41:03Shawn Ryan?

  of homosexuality that you had no choice.

• 41:05Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 41:05Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, you go home, you get abused.

• 41:11Shawn Ryan?

  You go to school, you get your, you get fucking jumped on the way, like what?

• 41:17Shawn Ryan?

  Do you have any peace in your life as a child?

• 41:21Speaker 06

  No, man, it was all chaos. It was chaos and instability.

• 41:26Shawn Ryan?

  Did you have suicidal thoughts as a child?

• 41:28Speaker 06

  Never, man, never. Well, that, that too, like I, I credit that to my religious upbringing that I, I thought that would damn you to hell. Right?

• 41:36Shawn Ryan?

  And to be on. What kept you going?

• 41:38Speaker 06

  Yeah, I just, I'm, I'm telling you, man, it was just my life. Sean, it was just my life. Right?

• 41:43Shawn Ryan?

  But you didn't even have anything to look forward to, it didn't sound.

• 41:46Speaker 06

  No, I didn't, I did not. But it, no one else did either. I felt like, you know, that was one of the blessings of the trailer park too, is that we were all kind of there together. You know, it was a, I didn't feel special in that, right? Everywhere I looked, someone's parent was on crank or someone's mom's an alcoholic, someone's dad's beating the crap out of the, you know, the landlord. It just felt like that was just it. It just became the baseline for me that it was, it was just chaos. And, um.

• 42:15Shawn Ryan?

  How many kids were you friends with in the trailer park?

• 42:17Speaker 06

  Oh, there was tons. Yeah, there were so many kids.

• 42:20Shawn Ryan?

  And all you guys are going through this shit?

• 42:22Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. But in that, we're all angry kids too. We're all angry kids, hyper violent kids.

• 42:28Shawn Ryan?

  Are you guys venting, do, I mean, is this like a good camaraderie or the kids all hate each other or?

• 42:33Speaker 06

  Yeah, it was maladaptive, man. It was dark. You know, we, we did, I did have a couple of friends that I was, I was close with, primarily it was like Brandon, who I ended up losing and then maybe one other person, but the rest of us, we used to joke, we'd like, we show up to the, the street fights and a basketball game would break out. Alright, cause no matter what we.

• 42:50Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, my God.

• 42:52Speaker 06

  Yeah. Cause no matter what, when we would get gathered in that trailer park, whether we were playing football or basketball, it was just a matter of time till fists started getting swung and, and it was just, everyone was angry, man. It was a lot of fighting.

• 43:04Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 43:04Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 43:05Speaker 06

  And once we got older, the drugs got introduced. Right? So we're all young, angry kids. And then at a certain point, you know, the drugs started. You know, people started ransacking their mom's pills and things like that. And it started, everything started shifting again. It was like a new chapter in the trailer park. Once that group of core group grew up to teenage years, it just became pretty dark.

• 43:26Shawn Ryan?

  This is like textbook generational trauma.

• 43:29Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

• 43:30Shawn Ryan?

  Did you take part in that? Did you get addicted to drugs as a kid?

• 43:34Speaker 06

  And? Yeah.

• 43:35Shawn Ryan?

  Fall down that rabbit hole too?

• 43:36Speaker 06

  So after, um, so my stepdad died from brain cancer first. Right? And I remember afterwards, I went and I hung out with Brendan and we had another friend, Kevin. And, uh, remember we were kind of sitting there talking and they didn't know what to do, right? But I remember I was, I was very sad. I was still grieving. No matter how much little bit of relief I had in there, it was just, it was a rough time to watch it, watch someone that was a caretaker die and just go through that whole process. It was very, uh, heavy. And I remember, uh, they were whispering off to the side. And I was like, what, what are y'all whispering about? And, uh, Brendan's Brendan's telling him, he's like, God, don't tell him. And Kevin's like, hey, dude, like last weekend, me and Brendan smoked weed and we think it would really help you out. And I'm like, what?

• 44:18Speaker 06

  And at first I look at Brendan, I was like, dude, like he betrayed me, right? You're my best friend. It's like, you're smoking weed? And then second, you're smoking weed without me? It's like, I felt like that was something we were supposed to do together, man.

• 44:28Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 44:29Speaker 06

  Right? But I'm like looking at him and he's like, yeah, I did. I'm sorry. I didn't know, you know, if you're, how you're going to feel about it. So I didn't drink. I didn't do drugs or anything at this point. And I remember we made a, a small bong out of a socket and a, a jump rope for a heart bottle. And I smoked weed for the first time. And I remember once it, it finally hit me and I felt it. I was like, oh, man, there might be something to this. There might be something like it gave me just the amount of relief and a little bit of that escape. And I caught myself giggling and laughing. I'm not trying to glorify any type of drugs here. But in that Steve that was hurting so deeply, I found something in that. I found some comfort in marijuana. And that became kind of my go-to thing throughout high school till I joined the military.

• 45:11Speaker 06

  How did you get any interest in the military growing up like that? Yeah, there wasn't much. How did it even pop up on your radar? Yeah, well, I'll credit it to two things, right? Nine eleven. So when I was, I think it was my ninth grade year. Um, we're sitting in class when nine eleven happened. And um, I'm sitting in class. I wasn't a good student either. I was like, you know, obviously I had attention issues and didn't really understand why I needed to sit in a desk all day and listen to these people talk about stuff that had nothing to wasn't going to fix what I was going through. Um, but I was sitting in class and I remember the teacher grabs the remote and turns on the TV. In the corner of the room, one of those old crusty TVs just kind of bolted to the side and I got to watch the second twin tower come down. And I was like, dude, what the heck's that all about?

• 45:57Speaker 06

  I remember having that feeling like I was angry, actually. And I remember that's, that's one of the fond things I remember that time is that there was like, people were patriotic then. You know, I kind of miss it. I would never want another disaster, but like we cared, like the American flag meant something. And it was like, there's a little bit in me that gave me some hope. That I could be a part of something that was more than just my stuff. But, you know, I was still early on in high school. And I'm still just trying to make it through that process. Uh, the second thing that kind of motivated me there was my brother. So as I graduated, he, uh, some Marines came to the school. And he did some pull-ups and got a T-shirt. And I remember he called me and he's like, um, because at this point we're living with my grandparents at this point. And uh, he's like, dude, the Marines came, I got a T-shirt, I'm gonna be a Marine. I was like, oh, man.

• 46:40Speaker 06

  Like Mitch, come on. He's like, I'm doing it, dog. Like, you coming with me? And I was like, yeah, man, if you go, I'll go. I'll go with you, homie. You're my ride or die. So those two things were like big catalysts for me to even think about going to the military. No shit. So your little brother is what drove you to, I mean, along with the, with the, the nine eleven travesty. Yeah. Drove you to join. Yeah, I mean, definitely him. If he would have bailed out, then I probably would have created some excuse to not join. He was a huge catalyst. No shit. Yep. Wow. Wow.

• 47:13Shawn Ryan?

  Man, so you made the decision in ninth grade?

• 47:16Speaker 06

  Yeah, started like-

• 47:17Shawn Ryan?

  How old was your, how, how, how much younger was your brother?

• 47:20Speaker 06

  Yeah, he was like, uh, it's like two years, like eighteen months, so right behind me.

• 47:25Shawn Ryan?

  So sev- seventh grade, he gets a T-shirt and he's like, I'm in.

• 47:28Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 47:28Shawn Ryan?

  Fucking going.

• 47:29Speaker 06

  He's ready to go.

• 47:30Shawn Ryan?

  No kidding?

• 47:31Speaker 06

  Yeah, he was sold out. I was proud of him too, man. Started running, like that little bit of him that I saw, like, that I've been trying to fight out of him. All these years, he started to come into his own. I started lifting weights, started getting stronger, started getting a little attitude about him, and I was like, okay dude, yes. Like, alright, you're gonna be alright, you're gonna make it. Yeah, for him to pick the Marines, like, is just classic, right? To go through the life he went through to be a Marine, it's like, I think they do a great job recruiting Mitch Bunting.

• 47:58Speaker 06

  They found one with him, they knew exactly what they were looking at, and they got it.

• 48:01Shawn Ryan?

  So when did you, when did you enlist? When did you actually show up and enlist?

• 48:05Speaker 06

  Yeah, so I ended up enlisting in two thousand six, so June two thousand six.

• 48:09Shawn Ryan?

  And you were how old then?

• 48:11Speaker 06

  Yeah, I think I was, I was, uh, I graduated, I was like nineteen.

• 48:14Shawn Ryan?

  Nineteen?

• 48:15Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 48:16Shawn Ryan?

  Did you know what you wanted to do?

• 48:18Speaker 06

  Man, I didn't. You know, I had a, I had a guy in the trailer park, who's actually the manager of the trailer park, kinda told me one time, cause, you know, I was obviously interested in the SEALs, right? They do such a great job of publicity and just kinda recruitment. And that was something in the back of my head, but I remember a guy pulled me to the side and he was like, hey, have you ever heard of Force Recon? And I was like, no, man. He's like, no one talks about them, but they're badass. And I, I kinda mental noted that too, I was like, huh, I wonder what's up with those Force Recon guys? But when I started join, when I was joining the military, I was actually gonna join the Marine Corps with my brother. But, uh, that didn't end up working out. Cause, uh, you know, like I said, I was working already, so I was already out of high school and I was working, and, um, he's still in high school. And we'd have to go to these like depth meetings.

• 49:03Speaker 06

  So before you get in, you know, you have to go to these meetings and, and kinda, they end up, start indoctrinating you there. You start running with the group and like, you know, they're getting you ready for bootcamp. And all the time they'd be having these depth meetings, but I had to work because I had my own apartment and I was like, I had bills to pay. So I tell the recruiter, I'm like, hey, bro, like, I can't make it to this thing, right? I can't, I have to work. And he's like, you have to come. If you want to be a marine, you're going to get your priorities straight and you're going to be here. I'm like, hey, dog, I gotta pay bills. I hear what you're saying. It's cute that you're doing this with the high school kids, but I'm not in high school and like, I can't just take off work. So one of the days he called me and I was frustrated and I said, hey, how about this? You don't call me, I'll call you. And I hung up the phone. Totally forget about it. So Mitch hits me up. He's like, hey, we're doing a run on Saturday. Are you down? I was like, yeah, I'm down. Yeah, I'm good Saturday.

• 49:48Speaker 06

  So I show up to this recruiting office and the guy, as soon as he sees me, Sean, he flips his desk, this huge marine flips his desk, tries to fight me. He's like, you never disrespect a Sash Sergeant like that. And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa. I'm thinking we're about to fight for real in this office. And I'm like, dude, you're a psychopath. And I'm like, I'm out of here. So I end up walking out of there and I end up going into the Navy recruiting office right next door. And I was like, hey, what's the closest thing you got to a marine? And like, we got Navy corpsmen. I said, all right, what's that? Like, you're going to be the medic for the Marine Corps. I was like, okay, I'll do that. And like, yeah, you don't get to just do that, dude. You gotta take a test. There's like a process and we have to see if there's spots for you. But then I was like, okay, I'll do that. And I remember my brother was like, dude, what the heck, man? What's up, Judas?

• 50:33Speaker 06

  You're just gonna bell on me? And I'm like, I'm like, hey, homie, you could go dig foxholes with those psychopaths if you want, but I'm not dealing. Like if I have to deal with that, I'm not going to make it. I'm going to fight. Right? It's like, I don't know. Like, I can't deal with this. And it's like, I gotta figure something else out. And then also I told him, I was like, think about this, bro. I can come into the Navy and I can get assigned to your team or your, your unit and I can be your medic and we could still be together. He said, you think that could happen? I was like, it could happen probably. He's like, okay. It's like, but you could just come with me. He's like, hell no, dude. I'm gonna be a marine. I was like, all right, dude. Yeah, but I had to let him. Like it's something about that was like a differentiation allowing him. He'd always been kind of under my wing our whole life. And for him to join the Marine Corps on his own, it was like, I was proud of him, dude.

• 51:14Shawn Ryan?

  That's cool, man.

• 51:15Speaker 06

  Yeah, bro. Good for you.

• 51:18Shawn Ryan?

  So you go in the, you go in the Navy to become a Marine Corps corpsman?

• 51:22Speaker 06

  Yep. Yeah, so I got hospital corpsman like was my NEC. And then as soon as you get in there, they start kinda, they, it was in two thousand six and they needed a green side corpsman. Right? They're like, hey, if you think you're gonna come and just sit on a ship, you're kinda crazy. Like, we need dudes with the Marine Corps. And they started kinda pushing everybody that direction.

• 51:42Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, that's interesting. You're, you just mentioned too, you're not a great student. That's not an easy school to get through.

• 51:48Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 51:49Shawn Ryan?

  And then even once you get through that school, I think, do you guys go through the, you guys go through the eighteen Delta and everything, right? So I mean, then it just gets more and more and more challenging as time goes on.

• 51:57Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah.

• 51:58Shawn Ryan?

  Did you, how, how, how did you handle the academics?

• 52:01Speaker 06

  Yeah, well, I remember, like, I grew up, we didn't really have cable. But on TV, I remember that show Rescue nine one one would come on. Do you remember that show?

• 52:10Shawn Ryan?

  I do.

• 52:11Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah. So I'd watch Rescue nine one one. I remember just like these, those little medical shows, like ER and stuff. Whenever I would see him, I was like very fascinated by it. You know, I was, I was very fascinated about cars too, growing up. So for me, when it came to the medical stuff, one, I already had a fascination for it. And then I, I can hyper focus. So if there's something I'm interested in, I can, I'll learn everything about it. Right? And if it's stuff I don't care about, obviously, it's like, dude, um, you know, my ears shut off. But I related everything to a car. So I was like learning the path of the blood through the heart. I'm thinking of the oil management system in an engine.

• 52:43Shawn Ryan?

  No.

• 52:43Speaker 06

  Right? Yeah. And I'm thinking of the electrical work being like our nervous system. So I started quickly like tying these two together and it, dude, it got me by.

• 52:50Shawn Ryan?

  No kidding.

• 52:51Speaker 06

  Yeah, it was like it was almost a direct translation of like the human body is, is components of a car. And I was like, it got me by until I started really learning enough to be fascinated with it and obsessed with it.

• 53:01Shawn Ryan?

  So you picked, so you picked it up right off the bat?

• 53:03Speaker 06

  Yeah, I was very, yeah, interested by it.

• 53:05Shawn Ryan?

  Nice. Now, did you and your brother leave at the same time to, to, to go to boot camp?

• 53:10Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah, yeah. I think it was within a few days.

• 53:12Shawn Ryan?

  No shit.

• 53:13Speaker 06

  We went to Paris Island and I went to, uh, Great Lakes and I'm writing me letters under the red light and he's writing me letters back. It was like kinda surreal.

• 53:20Shawn Ryan?

  What does your mom think about you guys joining the military?

• 53:24Speaker 06

  Yeah, I think in the, in the beginning, she was apprehensive, right? It's the height of the war, you know, Fallujah's on TV, Ramadi's on TV. It's like, we'd all seen it. They were, it's like, probably the first time war was televised the way that it was. And I think she's, she's very concerned. She was scared, but she was proud. Yeah, she came to both of our graduations and she was, she's very proud, but I, I think she was scared a little bit.

• 53:47Shawn Ryan?

  How was it leaving her?

• 53:49Speaker 06

  It's good.

• 53:51Shawn Ryan?

  It was?

• 53:51Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 53:51Shawn Ryan?

  You were ready?

• 53:52Speaker 06

  Yeah. We ended up moving out of her house, probably in, I think I was 10th grade. Things had just gotten too bad. And my grandparents had moved to Alabama. My grandpa moved back. And ended up, they, they raised us the last couple of years. You know, me and my brother slept in the same bed, in their guest bedroom. And so I'd already kind of separated from my mom, a little bit.

• 54:10Shawn Ryan?

  Was that a, was that a completely different environment?

• 54:14Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah. Yeah. My grandma would cook us breakfast, right? Cook us dinner. She's very loving. They had, they had resources that my mom didn't. So we were like, for the first time, we're getting mu- we didn't have to just eat free lunch. I wasn't just eating a square pizza and, you know, milk every day. Like, my grandpa would give me five bucks heading out the door. Oftentimes, they'd probably stockpile it and buy weed with it, to be honest with you.

• 54:36Speaker 06

  But it was, it was, it was different, man. Yeah, it was different, you know? Just started to get a little bit of pride. I remember I started ironing my clothes there and like, it was just, it was, it was more stable, for sure.

• 54:46Shawn Ryan?

  Did, did you say, sorry to go back to childhood, did you say that you reconnected with your dad around 18, 19 years old?

• 54:53Speaker 06

  No, I connected with him later, once I joined.

• 54:56Shawn Ryan?

  Once you joined?

• 54:57Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 54:58Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 55:00Shawn Ryan?

  We'll get to that point then.

• 55:01Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 55:02Shawn Ryan?

  So you join the, you join the Navy.

• 55:04Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 55:04Shawn Ryan?

  You're in Great Lakes, your brother's in Paris Island. Where do we go from there?

• 55:08Speaker 06

  Yeah. So really quickly in the Navy, they start kind of isolating the dudes. And I remember, like, even in boot camp, they pulled us aside and they started showing us Frogman videos, right? And EOD videos and stuff. And I'm like, like, who wants to do this stuff? I'm like, dude, I do. I raised my hand. And, uh, you know, I was like, looking around, thinking everyone, like, asking all of us dudes. And I'm like, yeah, I want to do it. And I'm looking around, like, everyone's just kind of sitting there. I'm like, so at first I'm like, is that the wrong answer? I'm thinking I'm going to get yelled at. And they're like, no, it's not the wrong answer. They're like, kind of wrote it down. And, um, they start giving you an opportunity in boot camp to do the dive motivator prep, right? So they'll start sending you to the, the pool every day and things like that. And I remember, once I started walking that path, I asked them, I was like, hey, if I don't make it through this process, do I still get to be a corpsman?

• 55:50Speaker 06

  And they're like, no, you're not. And I was like, okay. I was like, so maybe I should wait. Maybe I shouldn't sign the dotted line right now. Maybe I should wait till I get through core school and then figure it out from there. I was really scared that if, you know, I didn't make it through BUDs, then I was gonna be, you know, a deck semen or something. I didn't know what it was gonna be at the time, but I knew it probably wasn't gonna be good.

• 56:06Shawn Ryan?

  Didn't sound interesting.

• 56:07Speaker 06

  Did not sound like, and the risk wasn't worth the reward, because my trailer park barely had a six foot pool and it was, is half filled half the time, so. I knew, I was like, something about that water's gonna, gonna eat me up. Um, so I, you know, I kinda waited off, but they still kinda pull you out. And then once you get to core school, the main battle for them is to get people to go greenside. And while I was there, I had a mentor who was a recon corpsman named Dave. Sean, when he walked through the halls, man, with his huge stack, his jump and dive, his long hair and just the way he carried himself, like everyone moved out of the way. And, uh, Dave was the man. And I remember I was like, dude, I wanna be that guy. So at core school, they start isolating us again. So everyone that's a medic that wants to go special operations, like whether it be BUDs,

• 56:52Speaker 06

  you know, SWIC, uh, SARC, DMT, those types of things, we do dive mode there. So we're getting up early in the morning, four in the morning, we're going to swim. Go swim a five K in the morning, we're running a few miles, doing pull-ups and push-ups, and they're just getting you ready. Doing the SOCOM screener prep, just bobbing and doing all the basics, the underwater crossover, all that stuff. And, um, so we're all there together, working together. And as you get towards the end of, um, core school, they ask you, hey, do you want a BUDs contract? Do you want recon or what do you want? And everyone in my class there went, went to BUDs, except for me and my buddy Rodney.

• 57:23Shawn Ryan?

  No shit.

• 57:24Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah. Yep. They say the hardest part of the SARC pipeline is the first three weeks of BUDs.

• 57:32Speaker 06

  I love you guys. But, yeah, so me and Rodney were the only ones that were like, nah, we wanna, we wanna do what Dave does.

• 57:38Shawn Ryan?

  What was it? Was it your brother? Why did you, why did you pick that?

• 57:42Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 57:43Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, you, you actually, you just mentioned it because you didn't wanna.

• 57:47Shawn Ryan?

  Not making it wind up somewhere else, but I mean, I'm sure your brother had a something to do with that as well.

• 57:51Speaker 06

  Yeah, there was still a fleeting idea that that was going to be a possibility, but also it was just a water competence competency. Yeah, it's the first time I'm having to do a 50 meter underwater crossover. And it's like, that's not something you pick up overnight. Some people are freaks like that and they can, but I wasn't. And that was something like deep down inside. I was like, dude, I don't know if I'm going to be able to do this.

• 58:08Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 58:09Speaker 06

  And I felt like somewhere in there I was going to have more time. Cause Bud's is the real deal. That's something I really am impressed about is that they'll pull someone around the street. And within a year, you're in Bud's and you have to perform at that level. And it's like, they, they do a good job prep now, but back then it was like, that was right around the corner. I would have taken Bud's contract. I'm, I'm going to be there potentially like in a month.

• 58:28Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 58:29Speaker 06

  And there's no way I'm making it. And I just knew that I was going to need some more time and I felt like the recon pipeline was going to take me longer to get to dive school. Which it did, and it gave me plenty of the time I needed to be successful.

• 58:39Shawn Ryan?

  So can you, before we get into all of your career, you know, as a recon corpsman, can you, can you, can you just describe what that is?

• 58:50Speaker 06

  Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, you know, since the beginning of the Marine Corps, right? And Ton Tavern, you know, when they were created. There, the Marine Corps is a component of the Navy. They don't like to talk about it, right? But it's their department of the Navy and, um, wherever ships were going, there would be Marines on board. And wherever Marines were at, there would be a, a medic from the Navy. Right? And very early that relationship began where for every group of platoon of Marines, there'd be a medic there, a Navy corpsman alongside of them. You know, the Navy corpsman, uh, rate is a very like honorable one. I believe it's, it's the most decorated in the sea in the entire military. Right? So even at corps school, walking down the halls, you'd just see Medal of Honor recipients as you're going down, just seeing all the

• 59:30Speaker 06

  the pharmacist mates, the lob lolly boys, like all these people, the lineage of, of Navy corpsmen that have been on the front lines with the Marines since the beginning of time. Every conflict. As like World War II happened, they created the Raiders and they created this specialized unit in the Marine Corps that would do the light boat entry, deeper reconnaissance type stuff for like the Japanese island campaigns, et cetera. And that's where the Marine Corps started specializing towards like a special operations component. But after World War II, it kind of got disbanded and they re-upped it for Korea and then re-upped it for Vietnam. But all along the way, you know, as they specialized into reconnaissance teams for that amphibious reconnaissance capability and deeper reconnaissance capability, there's a corpsman there along the way.

• 1:00:13Speaker 06

  So I think it was somewhere in the mid 90s, they realized that they needed to make it a real rate in the Navy and make it established and they couldn't just keep bringing people in if they actually need to build what was what became the modern recon corpsman or SOIDC. So as part of that process, you know, we've been attached to teams. So we started cutting our teeth in the recon community, force recon community. And then 2006, when Marsoc stood up, then everything shifted. They took a, the majority of first force recon started standing up first IMSOB and then every, all those SARS went with it.

• 1:00:43Shawn Ryan?

  So when you, when you decide to do that, I mean, do they, is there a path? I mean, do they, do you know you're going to go to a special operations unit or do you, or do you know you are going to the Marine Corps? I mean, how, how granular does it get?

• 1:00:57Speaker 06

  Yeah, it is pretty granular, but the, the difficult thing is, is that if you fail any part of that pipeline, you're going to the grunts.

• 1:01:04Shawn Ryan?

  Got you.

• 1:01:05Speaker 06

  Yep. So you have to make it through everything where it's jump dive, 18 Delta, dive med tech, you know, all those different courses that are through that process. If you, if you don't complete one of them, you'll end up going to the grunts.

• 1:01:18Shawn Ryan?

  Now, do you go to, do you go to BR, do they call it BRC still?

• 1:01:22Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:01:23Shawn Ryan?

  Do you go to that?

• 1:01:24Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:01:25Shawn Ryan?

  So you do everything that a, that a recon operator, a Marsoc operator goes through plus some?

• 1:01:33Speaker 06

  Right. Yeah. So the, the main differences, I think, between then and the Marsoc component now is that they have ITC, they have their own selection process. What I went through was the force recon pipeline.

• 1:01:44Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:01:45Speaker 06

  Yep. So BRC, jump dive, dive med tech, and then 18 Delta. And then you come back, you go to SER once you get to your unit. And then if you're, you know, if you're a force company, they'll send you to free fall, et cetera.

• 1:01:58Shawn Ryan?

  Shit.

• 1:01:59Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:02:00Shawn Ryan?

  Let's, let's continue down the journey. So where do we go? You, you get done with it, with A school, you get the opportunity to go green, then what happens?

• 1:02:09Speaker 06

  Yep. So then you, you just keep selecting, right? You keep selecting to, uh, start going to the, the recon pipeline. And, um, very quickly I was, dude, I could run like the wind blows. It's very quick. I was a lot lighter than I am now. And, um, was, became very successful in there. And then, you know, getting, started working on the amphibious stuff in the water. And things started to come pretty quickly. Once I graduated, uh, field med, which is actually, so after you go to A school, you have to go to the Marine Corps side of the house. So essentially go through Marine Corps boot camp. So you go to boot camp, go to A school, and now you go to field med where it's like, Marine Corps indoctrination, which is essentially like Marine Corps boot camp.

• 1:02:46Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:02:46Speaker 06

  So yep. So here I am again, they're banging on trash cans, yanking us up. We're in squad bays and I'm like, what? And we're marching around yelling and acting crazy, doing the pugil sticks and oak horse and all that stuff. And, um, getting your little Marine Corps indoctrination. They do a really good job of that. And then, um, from there you select your last time to go recon. So they'll give you one more shot there if you haven't made it or, um,

• 1:03:07Shawn Ryan?

  Now is this a tryout or is this a, they ask you if you want to do it?

• 1:03:11Speaker 06

  Oh, they'll ask you. Yeah. So it's all voluntary, but you gotta, you gotta try out.

• 1:03:15Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:03:15Speaker 06

  You gotta do the NSW screener, the same as the BUDS ones, same run, swim, uh, pull ups, push ups, um, sit ups, et cetera. So you do the same BUDS screener. And then if you make the times, then they'll award you a contract.

• 1:03:27Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:03:28Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 1:03:28Shawn Ryan?

  And yours was for recon?

• 1:03:31Speaker 06

  Yep, for recon. Yep.

• 1:03:34Shawn Ryan?

  And then what?

• 1:03:35Speaker 06

  Then you get assigned to your first unit, right? So oftentimes just based on the school and where you are in time, they, they'll send you probably to like first, second, third recon first to kind of cut your teeth till you wait till orders to BRC. So BRC is like the gold standard there, the basic reconnaissance course. I ended up checking into first recon, January of 2007.

• 1:03:55Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:03:56Speaker 06

  So I check in there as this fresh boot corpsman at the BAS and, and things started getting real, really quick, right?

• 1:04:02Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. So how, so, so you, so you actually, okay, I'm sorry. I have no knowledge of this. So I'm trying to understand it all and, and break it down for the audience as well. So you get done with, with corpsman school. You, you, you go, you check into, did you say first recon?

• 1:04:18Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:04:18Shawn Ryan?

  You check into first recon. Then you start, then they, then they take you as a, as a basic corpsman medic. And that's when they kind of turn you into special operator.

• 1:04:29Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 1:04:30Shawn Ryan?

  Okay, what's it like checking in?

• 1:04:32Speaker 06

  Dude, it's crazy.

• 1:04:34Shawn Ryan?

  How are you, how are you treated?

• 1:04:35Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's, it's crazy.

• 1:04:36Shawn Ryan?

  It's such a weird dynamic. I mean, you're a Navy guy, a medic, who's gonna save these motherfuckers and they're probably gonna treat you like complete shit when you show up.

• 1:04:45Speaker 06

  Oh, in the beginning, they do, right? A roper's a roper. Whether you're a wannabe recon marine or you're a wannabe Sark. And you get treated as such. Yeah, as soon as you check in, you're on your face. Doing pushups, pushing them out, and they, they start laying the groundwork pretty quickly. Right? Which is something I always have so much respect for the culture that, that recon, the recon community has, is that they don't sway in it. So very quickly I come in and it's, it's you're doing everything. Um, you're running sick haul in the morning. You're working out at lunch, you're working out prior to lunch. We had this, uh, kind of recon indoctrination program that we had to do. So we're running, we're ruck running, we're hitting the hills, we're carrying logs. We're doing all that stuff and we're having to run sick haul. So we're learning the basics of medicine, learn how to give immunizations, draw blood,

• 1:05:27Speaker 06

  remove moles, like removing room toenails, like the basics of like, of, of being a Navy corpsman. So you're learning those skills and you're just looking at that calendar, waiting for your date. And they'll tell you, hey, your BRC date's this date, and you're just trying to survive to make it. While you're having to do PSTs every week to make sure you're still in shape. And then once you, once you leave there, you head off to the pipeline.

• 1:05:48Shawn Ryan?

  How was, how was, uh, BRC for you?

• 1:05:51Speaker 06

  Yeah, it was, um, I mean, it was pretty tough. It was tough. I was in very good cardio shape, which is good for me. And by this point, I'd swam a lot. Right? I've gotten a lot, got really good at the combat sidestroke, which I never even knew was a thing before this, but got really good at it, became very proficient in the water. And I felt very comfortable. It was just still, it was a kick in the ass. Yep, showing up and, and just getting, getting your legs run off and carrying a heavy ruck and, and trying to figure out some of the, you know, the things that, with a corpsman, you're a little bit behind the power curve because you don't get some of those basic infantry skills. Right? Where the Marines went through ITC, or sorry, they went to, uh, you know, their infantry training. Um, and so they kind of already know some of the basics and as a corpsman, you have a lot to overcome. Right? You have to learn the basics of patrolling, you have to learn a lot of things that you just didn't get prior.

• 1:06:36Speaker 06

  And, um, it can be a little bit of a learning curve, but it was, it's a pretty good time.

• 1:06:40Shawn Ryan?

  Gotcha. I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm curious, I mean.

• 1:06:45Shawn Ryan?

  I would imagine BRC is very similar to Bud's. I mean, what from a guy that comes from a childhood like you and then you get in with, you know, you're in BRC, which is, you know, supposedly some of the toughest military training in the world. But what do you compare that to? Your childhood or is are you constantly thinking like I've been through worse shit than this? This is a fucking joke. These people don't know what I've been through. You think you can fucking hurt me? Is that going? Is that, I mean, is that the mindset?

• 1:07:20Speaker 06

  Yeah, man, it was home. I was home. I was home. Something about that chaos I loved. I did when everyone else, something about me too, like when everyone else was breaking, they like empowered me, which sounds crazy. But I would see other people like breaking, crying, quitting, and I'm like, like, let's go, I'm, I'm, I got, I got another gear. Like, I haven't even gotten to my safe space yet. Right? I got a spot that no one can touch me. And I would catch myself in a lot of that process when things would get rough. People would always tell me, you know, from my peer group, they'd be like, Steve, I know when it sucks for you because you finally shut up.

• 1:07:54Speaker 06

  Because if I wasn't talking shit to you, then they knew Steve was finally hurting, right? And they would, uh, but it was, yeah, I would just go to that little spot in the back of my mind. And it was just, it was an easy day in a lot of the ways. It still suck. But dude, they were feeding me. I had access to a gym, like, I mean, it was like, dude, life was good. I had a, I had a warm place to sleep at night. And it was just like, I, I took to it really well.

• 1:08:16Shawn Ryan?

  It's interesting, the perspectives, the different perspectives from everybody that's, that's the beautiful thing about the military is just all walks of life and everybody's perspective from their background is, it's a completely different experience. But it's the same experience. You know, and it does, I don't know if that make, makes any sense.

• 1:08:35Speaker 06

  Yeah, it is crazy. All the different perspectives you can have in this life. You have the same thing. Two, I didn't really have a dad growing up, right? So I just considered it camping. I was like, where is camping? Like, I thought it was fun. It's kind of cool to me. I was like on a field trip.

• 1:08:48Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Oh, fuck. So how was BRC broken down?

• 1:08:55Speaker 06

  Yeah, so it's, I mean, I'm sure it's light years different now, but initially you start out kind of learning the basics of like comms. You do a lot of comms classes. You do a lot of classes on like land navigation. So just learning how to hit points. You're up there in the hills of Camp Pendleton and those hills alone will break you off. But you start learning the basic fundamentals of patrolling and the reconnaissance tradecraft. Right? So a lot of the front half is all about that. It's conditioning, doing all the different qualities you need to from the swim quals, etc. The pool work, which is where they get a lot of their attrition, as you know, it's like the water will break the strongest men. You know, and that usually thins the herd pretty quickly. And then they'll go into things like land nav. So now it's like you're tested, gotta hit these points. You gotta make it in time. If you think you're walking this land nav, of course you're crazy and you're doing it with a ruck on.

• 1:09:39Speaker 06

  Right? So you make it through land nav and then you start working into, as you make it through that land phase, you go into kind of our buds. Sorry, not buds. Our hell week is like, it's called patrol phase. Right? So it's a week long of you just no sleep, tear gas, having a patrol and you're just setting up patrol bases and just the fundamentals of being a reconnaissance marine. Setting up a harbor site, you know, building a sand, a sand table, building out the next stop, whether you gotta do a reconnaissance on an empty field or a bridge or whatever it may be. And you're just doing that nonstop or you're getting tear gassed, taking contact, taking casualties. And it's just a suck fest through that whole week. Once you get done with that, you kind of go into our next phase of training, which is amphib.

• 1:10:18Speaker 06

  So we end up going down to Coronado and we start working through all the amphib stuff, getting the Zodiacs out, learning how to build the Zodiacs, learn how to do surf passage. A lot of surface finning too, just doing the two Ks every day, just breaking off those hip flexors, running around like a maniac and just doing a lot of the small boat tactics. Doing things like collecting bottom samples, doing surf reps, all the basics of like kind of reconnaissance from there. And once you make it through amphib phase, like you're done, you graduate after that.

• 1:10:47Shawn Ryan?

  How long is this course?

• 1:10:48Speaker 06

  I think it's around three months.

• 1:10:49Shawn Ryan?

  What's the attrition rate?

• 1:10:51Speaker 06

  It's pretty high. I don't know what the number is, but um, yeah, it's, it's pretty high.

• 1:10:55Shawn Ryan?

  Did it ever get, did it ever get tough for you? Were you ever riding the line where you're like, I don't know if this is for me. I think I want to quit?

• 1:11:02Speaker 06

  Yeah, I never thought I was gonna quit, but um. Patrol phase, like I remember being so sleep-dept that I remember them trying to ask me what I was gonna do and I remember being like, oh, like my brain's not working. And I very well could screw this up right now. That was the only point. All the testing and stuff like that was pretty easy, like land now was easy for me, but yeah, in there I was so tired by like day four. And I remember them asking me and I felt like I should know the answers, but I don't know how I made it through, but I did. But yeah, that was the only point in that whole process where I was like, dude, I might not make it through this, cuz like if I go one more day without sleep, I'm gonna be worthless. And um, yeah, but everything else seemed to work out.

• 1:11:39Shawn Ryan?

  So what happens at the completion of BRC?

• 1:11:42Speaker 06

  Yep. So at the completion of BRC, for the recon side of the house, you're technically, you get awarded the recon, um, NEC or MOS. But for us, SARC, we don't get anything. It's just another school and you don't get awarded yours to the end. So what oftentimes happens, if you got follow-on orders, so say luck of the draw that all the schools matched up, maybe you'll go to basic airborne first. Right? So me, I had already gone to basic airborne, cuz when I checked into first recon, we had a competition. Where the uh HM1 that was there told the Marines, he said, hey, I'm not signing any more basic airborne nominations to go to school unless you let some of my corpsmen go. And the Marines said, okay, fair enough, doc. Said, how about this, if they show up on Friday at zero four in the morning?

• 1:12:24Speaker 06

  And they beat my Marines for their spots, I'll give it to them. So he told me, he told me and Rodney and another dude, he's like, hey, guys, be there zero four on Friday. Don't be late. And we ended up beating the Marines.

• 1:12:36Shawn Ryan?

  No shit.

• 1:12:37Speaker 06

  So we got to go to basic airborne before we even went to BRC.

• 1:12:40Shawn Ryan?

  Nice, nice.

• 1:12:42Speaker 06

  Yep. So I had a gap there. So I ended up going back to first recon and kind of working. As a uh, as a BRC grad, you got a little bit more clout now. You're not running around with a rope on, you're not getting bullied anymore. And um, you kind of wait for your next schools, which my next school was gonna be eighteen Delta in Fort Bragg.

• 1:12:58Shawn Ryan?

  What is graduation like, BRC? I mean, is it ceremonial? Is it, or are they like, here you go, get back to work?

• 1:13:05Speaker 06

  Yeah, they um, they do it in the school of infantry, kind of um auditorium, so it's like. You're at the School of Infantry, like you, all you want to do is get away from there as fast as possible. They bring in some motivator to talk, but I couldn't tell you who they were. What I will share is like one of the most memorable parts of that is, uh, I have reconnected with my dad through this process. And, um, I had invited him to the graduation. I hit him up and I said, hey, man, like, I know we barely know each other. It's like, but this is kind of a big deal for me. It's a probably my lifetime accomplishment to this point. And I would, I got a ticket for you if you want to show up. And, uh, needless to say, he didn't show up. He didn't? No, I didn't show up. How did you find him? Yeah, well.

• 1:13:49Speaker 06

  So all through the chaos of my childhood, I had this two prized possessions, three prized possessions. One was a pound puppy that I had from like my grandma gave it to me. Do you remember the pound puppy? Fuck yeah, man. Dude, I had a brown pound puppy and I held that thing. Who knows where it is? I wish I had it. But yeah, it got lost along the way. And then, uh, next was a little blanket that had a duck embroidery on it from my mom, uh, my mom's mom. We ended up moving to Alabama. And the third one was a letter from my grandma, my dad's mom. It was a pencil written letter that I kept with me everywhere we went. It's like I'd grab our clothes, throw it in the trash bags and I'd have that letter. And I kept it my whole time. So when I joined the military and I got to Camp Pendleton, I checked into first recon.

• 1:14:32Speaker 06

  I remember I, I had that letter. I pulled it out and I wrote a letter to that address. And I said, hey, I don't know if this, if you're still my grandma, right? Or my grandpa, but like, I'm your grandson and I'm in the military now and I'm in California and I'd love to meet you. And this is back, I think I had just gotten one of those Nokia fifty-five ninety brick phones. And I was like, hey, here's my phone number if you want to call me. So it was probably like two weeks and I get a phone call on that phone. And she's like, hi. She called me by my middle name. She's like, hi, you know, I'm your grandma. I was like, oh, hi grandma. She's like, I'm so excited to hear you. Me and your grandpa are looking forward to seeing you. And I'm like, oh, that's awesome. I'm like, well, I'm at Camp Pendleton. I don't have a car or anything. And she's like, well, you know, we're down in, uh, Ocatillo, down here, El Centro.

• 1:15:14Speaker 06

  She's like, um, you know, we're down here. I'm like, okay, well, can you, I don't have a car. She's like, well, any grandson of mine will figure it out. And I was like, huh. Like, okay. She's like, okay. I'm like, all right. Well, I guess I'll, I'll try and figure it out. So they gave me the address and I told my roommate. I was like, hey, he had a car. I was like, will you drive me down to El Centro? And he's like, no, bro. He's like, that's like four hours from here. I'm like, Jesus. I'm like, all right, well, what am I gonna do? He's like, I'll take you to the bus stop in Oceanside. And I was like, okay. All right. So he takes me to the bus stop in Oceanside and I ended up riding that bus all the way to El Centro. It was like a 12 hour ride, dude. It was ridiculous. But I rode it all the way down to San Diego and all the way out there. And they ended up picking me up at 2 a.m. at the El Centro bus station.

• 1:15:56Speaker 06

  I remember my grandpa showed up at that. It was like, you know, there's crackheads outside of there. And so it was a real sketchy situation. I get in and uh, he's like, hey, boy. I was like, hey, grandpa. And he started yelling at me. He's like, you're have to speak up if you're gonna talk to me. I'm like, okay. All right, let's go. Ends up driving me to the house. We get to their desert house and I come in. And Sean, as soon as I came in, man, it just like melted my heart. Like I said, the pictures of me as a young boy was still up on their mantle, like of me as a three year old boy. Pictures of my brother, you know, on the wall inscribed with markings was our, our heights. And I came in and dude, it was like a huge hole in my heart because I didn't know any of this side of the family at all was starting to heal. I come in and my grandma was like, I never missed any, like, never missed a day.

• 1:16:39Speaker 06

  It was like I'd been coming there every, every weekend for the last 20 years and sat down and had dinner and started building a relationship with them. And um, you know, as I was kind of touring their little house, they have a quaint little house there in the desert. I saw my grandpa had a shadow box, right? He was a sailor in the Navy. And in that shadow box, I saw he had a combat action ribbon and I was just now learning about what these things mean. And he was a whole technician. So I was like, hey, grandpa. I was like, how'd you get, uh, how'd you get a combat action ribbon as a plumber? And he didn't appreciate that too much.

• 1:17:12Speaker 06

  He's like, listen here, Dick Smith, when you finally go to combat, you rate and I'll tell you. And I was like, oh, okay, okay, grandpa. But we became the bestest of friends, man. No one else in the family understood my grandpa, but he did two tours in Vietnam. He's a riverine guy, man, two uh, dual 50 cows on the Danube and whooped it on. I never told anybody, right? And I would sit out in that garage with him and just talk to him, right? And he was so proud of me and my brother. Um, he ended up passing from a kind of Agent Orange related kidney disease, cancer. Um, but man, it was some good years there for a while. But. As I started like kinda coming, that was my new favorite thing now. So every weekend, I'm like, I'm going to grandma's house. Like, I gotta figure out a car. They're like, we'll get you a car. They got me a car real cheap. And next thing you know, I'm going down to the desert and spending time with my grandma and grandpa.

• 1:17:56Speaker 06

  And very quickly, they start calling the family, calling my aunts, my uncles. I have a couple sisters from my dad's side. And they start bringing them over. And I'd come, every time I'd come, there'd be a new surprise. Hey, I'm your Uncle Jim. Hey, I'm your Aunt Connie. Right? And I'm like, dude, my heart just started healing, dude. I was like, oh, my God, this, this kind of void that I had. And um, but my dad never came. My dad never came. He lived further north up in California. Guess he worked at CVS, didn't have a lot of money. But I started just kinda thinking about it. I was like, okay, like, everyone else is making it. Like, I took note of it. And um, you know, I remember one of these times I was doing some work with Forest Recon in Hawaii. And I was starting to kinda figure things out. And I remember I had his phone number. And I gave him a call and I told him, I said, you know what, man? Like, I just wanna thank you for never being a part of my life.

• 1:18:42Speaker 06

  You know, if you would have been a part of my life, maybe I would have been screwed up like you. And I'm just glad that, that you never even had an influence on me, cuz I'm actually making something in my life. And Shawnee got so mad at me, like, he was yelling at me over the phone. He's like, I loved you so much. Like, I didn't want your mom to take you from us. Right? I, I loved you, and that's not true. And I was just like, dude, whatever, man. Like, whatever. Actions speak louder than words. So I hung up the phone. Um, so as I was getting close to my first deployment, right? I was getting ready to go on my first deployment. We're gonna do a counter piracy mission off the Horn of Africa. And I was pretty excited about it. My Aunt Connie, she hosted a party at her house and invited me down. It was a going away party. And I'm there, and this, this car shows up. And next thing I know, it's my dad.

• 1:19:27Speaker 06

  So he steps out of the car, he's there with his girlfriend. And at this time, me and my wife were married. We had had a son. And um, he comes in the house. And I remember I came up and I shook his hand. But dude, between you and me, I always thought, like, if I saw him, I was gonna fight him on sight. Like, I had so much. I was so angry at him. Not a single birthday card, not a single call. Like, all that stuff I went through in my life. I was like, dude, if I just had you here, this wouldn't have happened to me. Right? So I had a lot of resentment. When he comes in, I end up shaking his hand. And I made a pact with myself. I said, you know what? How about this? If he can be a good granddad to my son, then I'll open up a door for him one day, but not today. So shook his hand, kinda introduced him to my wife, let him kinda hang out with my son. He's, you know, patting him on the knee and like, um, you know, bouncing him on his knee. And, and just being okay.

• 1:20:12Speaker 06

  I was real cold with him. And then after that, I shook his hand when I got done with the party and I said, hey, man, like, I'm going on deployment. But if you can keep in touch, we can work on this when I get back. So I said, okay. It's like, all right, well, that's kinda interesting, right? So I go on that first deployment and, um, How long had it been? How old are you right here? Yeah, I'm probably, I'm twenty, twenty-one years old. So almost, almost twenty years. Yeah, yeah. Since I'd seen him, had any communication with him outside of those phone calls I called. That was mainly after he no showed me for my, my BRC graduation. I was pretty, I was angry at that point. Everything shifted from hope to just like, screw this guy. Did you talk to him about all this? Yeah, so

• 1:20:54Speaker 06

  on this first deployment, right, we're going, we're doing a counter piracy mission off the Horn of Africa, just cutting squares there. And, um, it's us and the Force Recon Platoon. And, uh, I get a Red Cross message. Yeah, about four months in, I get a Red Cross message. My platoon commander pulls me aside and he's like, hey, man. Hey, Doc, this isn't good. You know, usually these things only happen if, if it's a suicide or a murder. They won't tell us what happened, but your dad's dead. And I remember just being so bummed, man, so bummed. I was like, I was just barely starting to work my way around to like reconnecting with him and opening up this door to, of us being able to repair this relationship. And now I'm flying back to the United States. And because I was the oldest boy, now I'm the person that has to, you know, sign for all his stuff.

• 1:21:39Speaker 06

  I have to handle all his death stuff. And, um, yeah, somewhere along that way, man, he, uh, ended up committing suicide. Yeah, I guess the gravity of everything kinda hit him. Um, he had a falling out with my sister's mom, um, have a half sister with him. And he wasn't gonna be able to see her and he ended up, um, committing suicide. So I had to fly back and handle all of that, like as the oldest boy and I had to figure out how to bury him, figure out how to, you know, call all his creditors and all this different stuff. And, and that was kinda the, the end of the chapter there for that one. Shit. Yeah.

• 1:22:14Shawn Ryan?

  How do you feel about that?

• 1:22:17Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's a bummer, man. It's a bummer. I just wanted him to be proud of me. I think there's something about me that just wanted a dad to be proud of me. Think I wanted to show him that I made it. And dude, he was like a cool guy. Like, he really was. He was conflicted. He had his stuff, but like everyone I know, like from my aunt, my grandparents, they always spoke highly of him. He had childhood trauma too. Something bad happened to him when he was a little boy. And, um, you know, I just, I would have, I would have loved to meet him, like and spend time with him and just kind of gets to know him better and it sucked, dude. It ended that way. I waited my whole life for it. And then it was just like, dude, it's just gone. Like, it's another one of those things where I was like, this is just the way life is, man.

• 1:23:03Speaker 06

  I wasn't even surprised. I'm like, of course, of course.

• 1:23:08Speaker 06

  Just kept moving forward.

• 1:23:10Shawn Ryan?

  What would you say to him? If you could say anything to him right now?

• 1:23:14Speaker 06

  I would tell him I forgive him. Yeah. I'm sorry for being so mad at him. Like, I know it wasn't his fault. Dude, and like, when my mom left him, there wasn't not internet, right? It was like, dude, if, if my wife took my kid and moved halfway across the United States and I didn't know, it's like, obviously he could have found his way. I would just tell him I forgive him. I forgive him.

• 1:23:38Speaker 06

  And, you know, I wish he would have found some healing. I wish I could have talked to him now, knowing what I know now. I wish I could have showed him some ways to find relief, which I could have modeled it for him and helped him find the peace that he needed, but yeah, he never found it, man. I know. Yeah, that's what I would say.

• 1:23:55Shawn Ryan?

  I'm sorry, man.

• 1:23:56Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:23:59Shawn Ryan?

  What was the communication like with your mother after you completed BRC?

• 1:24:04Speaker 06

  Yeah, just hit her up. Hey, Mom, I, I made it. She's like, cool. Are you a Navy SEAL now?

• 1:24:10Speaker 06

  Every time I turn around, she's like, you're a Navy SEAL. I'm like, no, mom. Okay, okay. You probably can't tell me.

• 1:24:19Shawn Ryan?

  She's proud.

• 1:24:20Speaker 06

  Yeah, oh, she's so proud, man. She's so proud. Yep.

• 1:24:23Shawn Ryan?

  How about your brother? What did he have to say when he completed it?

• 1:24:27Speaker 06

  Yeah, so I kept trying to hit him up. And I'm like, Mitch, you need to go recon, man. Like, if we're, our plan's gonna work, you gotta go recon. I think once he got through boot camp and got through his infantry training, he's like, no, man.

• 1:24:40Speaker 06

  He was like, no, I'm good. I'm not dealing with that. He was a grunt in the infantry battalion, and he was like, dude, his idea of like, asking for more of that was like psychotic to him. But he's a smarter man than me, right? At this time, he's like, but I'm like, dude, you gotta go, or we're not gonna make it together. Like, I'm never gonna be assigned to your team if you don't go to recon. He's like, you can do the high-speed stuff if you want, bro. He's like, I'm good where I'm at. And then he ended up going to war, um, right after that.

• 1:25:06Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 1:25:07Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:25:07Shawn Ryan?

  Wow. How did it feel for you? I mean, getting through BRC? I mean,

• 1:25:14Shawn Ryan?

  it didn't sound like it had, you had a lot going for you.

• 1:25:17Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:25:17Shawn Ryan?

  Not a good student, growing up in a trailer park, surrounded with substance abuse and, and, and, and sexual abuse and regular abuse. I mean, and now you're, you've just graduated one of the, one of the premier toughest military training programs in the fucking world.

• 1:25:37Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:25:38Shawn Ryan?

  That's pretty cool.

• 1:25:39Speaker 06

  I would like to say that I was proud, but I wasn't, man.

• 1:25:42Shawn Ryan?

  Really?

• 1:25:43Speaker 06

  Yeah, for me, it was just another thing. And for me, always back then, I had this fear that the other foot was gonna drop. Right? I had like severe imposter syndrome, just really insecure. Like, I was like, dude, like, okay, cool, that's, I, I made it past this one, but what's the next thing that's gonna get me? Like, when's this gravy train gonna be over? When's everyone, everyone gonna realize I'm just a trailer park kid? When's everyone gonna realize, like, I don't even belong here? Like, I'm not elite, I'm not what these people talk about. I can never be these legends that they tell me about. Right? Any minute now, they're gonna sniff me out. And I almost just kinda expected it just not to work out, to be honest with you. And I think because of that, it robbed me of the joy. It was just like, well, that's cool. It doesn't matter if I make it through this whole thing, so I, I'll celebrate later. I'll celebrate at the end.

• 1:26:28Shawn Ryan?

  Jeez, man.

• 1:26:33Shawn Ryan?

  So where do we go? Where do we go from here? Graduate BRC? You've already been to, you're going to 18 Delta. You reconnected with the other side of your family.

• 1:26:43Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:26:43Shawn Ryan?

  You went on deployment.

• 1:26:45Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:26:45Shawn Ryan?

  How was 18, how was 18 Delta for you?

• 1:26:48Speaker 06

  18 Delta is the real deal, man. It's the real deal, yeah. I mean, for everything else that's physical, it's one thing, but the one thing I found one intimidating and impressed by the Army is they, there's a million people that want to be in 18 Delta in the Army. Right? There's a small amount of Marines, there's a small amount of recon Marines. Right? But they're like, hey, they had the 18 X-ray series going, so they're pulling dudes off the streets and stuff to go through this process. And it's like, they were cutting people left and right. Right? If you failed the test, it was like, so sad, back to the needs of the Army. And it's just happening all around you where you're like, oh, man. Like, this is the real deal. And it was, uh, it was a real deal too, because you couldn't bull crap your way through it, man. Like, the standard was real. They make the best medics on the face of the earth. Right? Other, uh, you know, um, other military-

• 1:27:33Shawn Ryan?

  Where, where all do 18 Deltas go from school?

• 1:27:36Speaker 06

  From school?

• 1:27:37Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. What, what units do they go to?

• 1:27:39Speaker 06

  Yeah, so they, all soft components, majorly, uh, you know, Rangers, so they'll go to Ranger Bat. SF guys, there are still SEALs going through our program, so they go back to the teams. SARS could go anywhere between Recon Battalion Force Recon and Marsoc. And then they also have, um, the Special Operations Aviation guys there too. So the 160th guys are going through there. And then they'll squeak in some Civil Affairs people and, and things like that, Psyop people, uh, in there as well. But that's, it's majorly all the soft components.

• 1:28:09Shawn Ryan?

  Pretty badass, man, dude. Pretty badass. So you get done with that, then you go on deployment?

• 1:28:16Speaker 06

  Yeah. I actually did dive school after 18 Delta.

• 1:28:19Shawn Ryan?

  Then you do dive school?

• 1:28:19Speaker 06

  Yeah, I went to Marine Combat and Dive down in, uh, Panama City. And then followed up with, uh, Dive Med Tech, so you go to DMMP, the Dive Med Tech course. So you learn to do the recompression therapy and all that type of stuff.

• 1:28:30Shawn Ryan?

  So you completed pretty much everything by the time you went on your first deployment?

• 1:28:34Speaker 06

  Yep, for sure.

• 1:28:34Shawn Ryan?

  What's it like checking into your team?

• 1:28:37Speaker 06

  Yeah, it was a one. I was like, I made it. So there I was a little bit happy about that. But then two, the Marine Corps has a magical way of just crushing you. Right? Which I know it's probably very similar to on the teams too. It's like you're a new guy and you ain't shit. Yeah. Yep. And it was very much that too. Luckily for me, which I'm very grateful for is I went to recon battalion first. So we did have some guys going straight to Marsoc. You know, I had other guys that if you were a fleet returnee and you had a combat deployment or two hundred year belt, they'd send you straight to force recon. So luckily for me, I got paired up on a team that had junior guys in it. So I had, it wasn't just me, the new guy, but there's a lot of junior recon Marines as well. So we're all cutting our teeth at the same rate and same pace.

• 1:29:18Speaker 06

  But dude, I had a tremendous platoon sergeant, was a well decorated, just war fighter, took it seriously, really embodied what it was to be a reconnaissance Marine. And he, he did right by us. We trained our faces off, man. Nice. We trained her. There was war on the white space. There was no vacation. You're not going home. If there's free time, you're going to go sleep on a bush and report on an empty field, send up comm shots, you know, practice E and E plans, breakout drills. Like he, yeah, he made, he made men out of us. Badass, man. So what were you guys doing in Africa? Yeah. So right now is kind of, uh, they have what was called the maritime raid force. I'm still sure they had that. So it'd be three different ships. It was like the amphibious ready group, which was actually nostalgic because Jaco was talking about a lot of this on the, uh, a few podcasts ago.

• 1:30:03Speaker 06

  But talking about just that, that life on the ship and essentially the ships just being marine carrying vessels, essentially. And, uh, we were doing a lot of that Somali, uh, counter piracy stuff. Oh, okay. Yep. And oh shit. Did you guys get any? Yeah. So we didn't get to board any ships, but we did get to isolate one, right? We were neck, right next to Indian waters. So instead of us doing BBSS, um, we actually called in the Indian, uh, the Indian, uh, Navy. And they, they lit that thing up. It was pretty, pretty crazy. They did it in a different manner than we would have. We would have taken people and they didn't. They just doused it in fuel and lit it on fire. That's awesome. Dude, it was crazy. Yeah. We had a.

• 1:30:44Speaker 06

  A Colonel named Colonel Kaufman, who was in charge of the battalion for 1-1 badass dude, was a pilot in Iraq, got shot through and into his jaw and completed the mission like the dude was a legend. But he pulled us all out onto the deck of the ships and he gave us like a, uh, like a Braveheart speech. Right? He's like, you are now in CENTCOM. This is the Super Bowl. He's like, and we're watching this, this Somali ship, mothership in Skifs just burning in the background, right? As we're sitting there at attention and he's just giving this motivational like Marine Corps speech like only they can. It was like, yeah, it's pretty cool. That's awesome, man. Yeah. So you come home from that deployment and then what happens? Yeah. So when I came back from that deployment, it was, uh, it was Marsoc time.

• 1:31:26Speaker 06

  So I came back, kind of cut my teeth there, got to do some, you know, FID work too. We didn't just stay on the ship there. But, um, got to see a little bit of the world, which I was happy about, which was cool to me, you know, being a little trailer park kid from Alabama, going to Thailand and all this. You go, you immediately redeploy with Marsoc? Yeah. Well, I, I went there and I got assigned to a team at Marsoc. Okay. Yep. So I went up the hill on there, still in the same camp now in Camp Pendleton. And, um, yep, went over there and I checked into my first team there. So how, how was it checking into a Marsoc element from, from reconnaissance? Yeah. It was, it was a different ballgame. It was a different feel. It was just, um, Do you have a, uh, do they have any respect for you showing up? Oh, yeah. They do? Oh, yeah. So you're not the new guy?

• 1:32:08Speaker 06

  Yeah, no. They, um, yeah, I mean, Marsoc was stood up off of first force recon. So if you come over as a recondo, it's like there's tremendous respect. Okay. Yep. If you're a recon guy there, yeah, so much respect there. And then me coming in, already had a, a deployment under my belt. So it's like that counts for something, right? And kind of coming in, but then it's, it's, it's game time there too. Right? Where it's like, you better, um, you know, recon, it was a jogging pace for what we're doing reconnaissance and stuff. It's like hard work, but, you know, it's a little bit different than training for a DA mission, training for Afghanistan and the things that we were ramping up for. You know, you were going to Afghanistan? Yeah, for sure. They told you that right off the bat? Yeah, that's, that was, that was where the show was. And that's, yeah, everyone's kind of doing back to backs there.

• 1:32:53Speaker 06

  How big is the team? Yeah. So at recon, it's like a 30 man platoon and there's just one corpsman. Um, at Marsoc, a team's probably, um, around six, six, seven people, 13 people in an element.

• 1:33:07Speaker 06

  And then there's two SARS there. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. So I went from more having to manage thirty people to just managing half that with two guys. It was like, it was, it was nice.

• 1:33:18Speaker 06

  Who is the other, who is the other Navy corpsman? Yeah, he was a, a dude named Chris. Yeah, I think he just got out. But, um, yeah, it was a dude that came from third recon at time. Squared away, such a really, really gifted with medicine. And I wasn't, I, I was good at medicine, but I didn't like the sick hall type stuff. Mm hmm. Where Chris was really good at that, right? If your tummy ached, he would be able to fix you. Like he, he's really good. So we were a good balance. Where all I wanted to do was operational stuff. I just wanted to run and gun. Chris was very good at that, but he was actually, he was much better at the medic, like just being a better medic than me. Right on. Yeah. Right on. So what's the culture like? What would you say the culture is like at a Marsoc unit? Yeah, well, it's just a very, very high standard.

• 1:34:01Speaker 06

  Very, very high standard. Like, um, at this time, people were very serious. About what it was, you know, many of these guys were at debt one at first force and stood this up. And all they knew was just back to back deployments right between Iraq and Afghanistan. And it was just, um, it was a level of professionalism that I, I appreciated, but it was a very high standard. Right? And, um, yeah, it was, you were gonna work hard. And it was just, uh, what you're gonna do. There's a lot of honor there. Is this where you meet Prime? Yeah. How would you meet him? I met Prime probably on my, I, I think my third deployment with Marsoc. Oh, okay. Yeah, but we all had mutual friends. So it's like I had, we all had mutual friends and we knew each other from like a degree of separation. But once I went to Delta Company, that's where Prime was kind of coming back from that last trip with his.

• 1:34:46Speaker 06

  And he was just kind of trying to sort through things. And, um, his medic that he had went on to some SMU. And he was like, hey, like Kevin said that you're the guy to come to, to help me. And I was like, I am, dude. So he came to me and I just, we became really good friends and I just helped him work through that process. It was a really tricky one with what they tried to do to him. Um, yeah, that's how I met Prime. Right on, right on. So I mean, now you're in a unit.

• 1:35:17Shawn Ryan?

  That I would guess has a lot of experience throughout the GWOT by the up to this point. What what kind of questions do you have? I mean, what what is your impression of these guys? With everything they've seen been through? Everything you think you want to do? How is it?

• 1:35:37Speaker 06

  Yeah, these guys were tacticians, man. Tacticians, they eat, slept and breathed this job. And I think one thing I struggled with in the beginning was that imposter syndrome stuff. So I always kind of kept one foot out even subconsciously because I felt like any minute they were gonna it was just it wasn't going to work for me. And I'm starting here and I'm working with these guys that like are true professionals. And I couldn't continue going that direction with it. I was like, dude, I gotta be all in if I'm gonna be able to keep up. Right? And these guys knew because there'd been so many friends, so many people at that battalion that had passed. At war. And if it wasn't at war, it was the green on blue type situation that you've heard of so much. We had a lot of people getting chewed up the seasons prior to that. And it was like, dude, there you had to lock in.

• 1:36:21Speaker 06

  You had to lock in, you had to be a professional. And that's when I really started to see that where it's like even me deep down inside. I'm like, I gotta take this seriously. Or whatever I've been doing to get by like this is not going to be sustainable and I need to lock in and really become a professional with this stuff. Because the consequences are so great now. Right?

• 1:36:38Shawn Ryan?

  Right on. Well, let's take a let's take a quick break and when we come back, we'll get into your first deployment.

• 1:36:48Shawn Ryan?

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• 1:39:24Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Steve, we're back from the break, getting ready to dive into your first MARSOC deployment in Afghanistan. So let's, let's just talk about, you know, what it's like first time in country. What are you feeling?

• 1:39:38Speaker 06

  Yeah, I was relieved.

• 1:39:41Shawn Ryan?

  Relieved?

• 1:39:42Speaker 06

  Yeah, relieved, man, because, you know, you come in, the thing about the military, especially if you come in wanting to go into special operations is you want to deploy, you want to go to war. And it feels like every day in the military that you're not deploying, it's slipping between your fingers. Right? So I came to recon battalion off the backs of like the Fallujah guys and all this stuff. And I'm like, wanting so bad. And they're like, well, you're doing a VBSS mission off of Africa. So you're like, I missed it all. The war is over. Right? And it's just like, it's something we do. Why? It's like really common. But I was like, just kept feeling like I'm chasing the dragon. And if I don't ever get to go there, then, then it was all for nothing. So I finally land, you know, there in Bastion. And I'm like, I made it, you know, at least I'm here at the show, right? I got a chance. Who knows what's gonna happen? It's the fighting season. Chances harm, chances

• 1:40:27Speaker 06

  are I'm gonna get to shoot my, my weapon in anger. Right? But um, I'm there. So a little bit of that was like a check in the box for the first time, right? Where I actually could take a breath and say, okay, I made it here now. Yep. And then we start kind of learning about what that mission's gonna be. You know, once you get there, you get divvied up amongst the Helmand River Valley, and you get your assignment on where which VSP site you're gonna go to.

• 1:40:48Shawn Ryan?

  Where were you at?

• 1:40:49Speaker 06

  Yeah, so we were in the Helmand, but I was at the northern most part of the Helmand near last, uh, near, uh, the Kajaki Dam, where the Kajaki Lake is. So it's like kind of the forward line of troops there for the Helmand River Valley.

• 1:41:01Shawn Ryan?

  Gotcha. What year is this?

• 1:41:03Speaker 06

  So 2013.

• 1:41:08Shawn Ryan?

  Is that when the big push was happening down there with the Marine Corps?

• 1:41:10Speaker 06

  That was 2010.

• 1:41:12Shawn Ryan?

  That was 2010.

• 1:41:12Speaker 06

  2010 was the, the height of that push, where they're kind of reclaiming it, where the Brits had been managing it. I'm sure they did a good job, but there's a lot of work to be done. And, um, yeah, so that big push between Marja, Sangin, um, 2010, was a lot of casualties, but that's the pretty iconic one, the one they'll probably have in history books.

• 1:41:29Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:41:30Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:41:30Shawn Ryan?

  Right on. So you're down in Helmand?

• 1:41:32Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:41:35Shawn Ryan?

  A great place to be if that's what you want. That's what you want to do.

• 1:41:38Speaker 06

  No better place for the Marine Corps than Helmand River Valley, I'll tell you that.

• 1:41:42Shawn Ryan?

  How was, uh, what was the mission?

• 1:41:45Speaker 06

  So we were doing, um, kind of as a quasi SF model.

• 1:41:49Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:41:49Speaker 06

  Which I was a little bit irritated about initially, right?

• 1:41:52Shawn Ryan?

  Most people are.

• 1:41:53Speaker 06

  There's not much about the heart, you know, by with and through and the hearts and minds thing that resonated with Marine Corps mentality and just, you know, with, with doing the work, but, um, but that's what we were doing. So we're doing village stability ops where essentially there'd be a contested area. And a team of commandos, right, partnered with, you know, a coalition force would go in and they'd fight anywhere between 72 and 96 hours to create a bubble. And then once they create that bubble, start creating Afghan local police, start building up the militia, start putting outpost and then your job, like after that, a team would come in and manage that post and their job would be to keep pushing that bubble out over the course of that deployment. So we fell into a region in the north that was kind of a pretty tricky situation because that was the rat lines

• 1:42:37Speaker 06

  from the other provinces into the Helmand River Valley. Right? So there's a pretty nasty place called, uh, Zemindwar there, which was, had a bazaar. Uh, I think it was called the Gendarmy's Bazaar where that's where they would do, buy all their RPGs, buy all their stuff and then push deep down into Lashkargah, Sing and Marja and start whooping it on. And our job was to hold that region down.

• 1:42:58Shawn Ryan?

  Right on.

• 1:42:58Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:42:59Shawn Ryan?

  Right on. How fast did you guys get into it?

• 1:43:02Speaker 06

  Yeah, it, um, very quickly, we became the, uh, the target of a pretty proficient mortar team. So very quickly, you know, as we're doing our left and right seat, actually, uh, I did my left and right seat with Cody Alfred.

• 1:43:15Shawn Ryan?

  What?

• 1:43:15Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:43:16Shawn Ryan?

  You know Cody too?

• 1:43:17Speaker 06

  Cody well, yeah.

• 1:43:17Shawn Ryan?

  Dude, I fucking love that. I love that dude.

• 1:43:20Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:43:21Shawn Ryan?

  I love that.

• 1:43:22Speaker 06

  I ripped, I ripped out with him. So his team was holding that area down and I showed up and I'm like, what up Cody? And then he's like, here's the deal, dog.

• 1:43:29Shawn Ryan?

  Good motherfucker to be at war with, that's for damn sure.

• 1:43:32Speaker 06

  My homie, there's, yeah, he, he is everything he says he is. He's the man.

• 1:43:35Shawn Ryan?

  Dude.

• 1:43:36Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 1:43:38Shawn Ryan?

  That's awesome. I love that dude.

• 1:43:40Speaker 06

  Me too.

• 1:43:40Shawn Ryan?

  And prime too.

• 1:43:41Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:43:42Shawn Ryan?

  But man, you were with some good people.

• 1:43:44Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:43:44Shawn Ryan?

  What was Cody like?

• 1:43:46Speaker 06

  A maniac, he's a maniac. Was he? He's dude, everything he says, he was, he was, he's not, I mean, he's obviously, he's, he's an integrated warrior now. And God bless, thank God. But when he was in, he was, he was a fighting machine. He eats, slept and breathed this stuff. He was a consummate professional, but he would tell people what he thought. He didn't bite his tongue. He was who he was. He was good at what he did because he, he stayed true to it and he stood on it. Yeah, but it didn't matter if you were an officer, it didn't matter who you were. Like if Cody Offer was there and he had an opinion about what it was, nine times out of 10, he was right. And two, he made sure that everybody knew it. He was a gangster dude. Right on, yeah. Did you, would you, was so, he was, he, he was like a senior guy when you showed up?

• 1:44:29Speaker 06

  Yeah, he's already, I think, uh, if he wasn't, he might have been a master sergeant already, he might have been a gunny. I don't remember. If he wasn't a gunny yet, he was a, I mean, master sergeant, he was a master sergeant right after that. Damn. Yeah, but it was him and a captain running that team. And it was, um, yeah, it was kinda crazy. What a badass. Yeah. What a badass. Yeah. What was the living conditions like? Yeah, so we, um, we were sandwiched in between. So there was a Marine Corps company that was up there, like a conventional force company, but they were locked down. So the ROEs right now is like a very, it's kinda weird, it's really tricky, but they were risk adverse at this time. So they weren't letting the Marines do pretty much anything. So we had like a company of Marines, uh, north of us, but they bordered our camp.

• 1:45:10Speaker 06

  And then in between them was our camp. So we had a, uh, MSOT, um, eight, one, two, three, and then we had an ANSOF team with us too. An ANASF team of commandos with us. And then next to us, we had an Afghan National Army camp, which was kinda terrifying, man. To be honest, I was more worried about what was on the other side of the HESCO than, than the Taliban. Because it was just another, it was probably a company of Afghan National Army and they were always squirrely. Always just doing weird stuff and it was just, you know, and plus with all the green on blue type stuff happening. And we had so many Marsoc guys die from their partner nation forces turning on them. It was, there's high anxiety, man. There was high anxiety. Like you just had to keep your head on a swivel and you knew that no matter what, it wasn't safe. Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:45:54Speaker 06

  So what was the, what was the, what was the op tempo? Yeah, the op tempo was a little bit slower, right? Because you know, the CJ Sodif and the Sodif was like really risk adverse at this time. I think there was kind of thoughts that we're going to start de mailing and pulling out. And the idea of like stacking a bunch of, you know, casualties probably wasn't high on their priority list. But luckily for us, the Taliban didn't care what the Sodif thought, right? So, you know, a lot of times we were prepping for ops. And then for whatever reason, they would, they would try to decline it. So we'd have to get very creative on how we were able to accomplish the mission, which was cool for me to get to see. You know, kind of working some of the special activities stuff. It started opening up a whole nother realm of how to get, get the job done.

• 1:46:38Speaker 06

  Um, that I wasn't aware of, which actually served me greater as I moved forward in my experience. Find another way. Oh yeah, and we did. Yep, and I was very impressed about how well it worked. Yeah. Let's talk about your very first real world operation. What was it? Yeah, so a lot of Afghanistan. Yeah, a lot of what we're doing was a lot of key leader engagement stuff, right? So if it wasn't the Sodif kind of pulling the brakes on us, it was, it was just the locals not doing what we asked them to do. So we had a, we had a town next to us called Machakel. And it was like a little hot town and that's where the mortar teams were coming from. So our main goal, that deployment was to push in there and kind of rid that area of Taliban activity. And one of our first missions was to push in there and kind of do a probing mission.

• 1:47:23Speaker 06

  Luckily for me, I was on overwatch this mission, but as we started pushing in, we realized, one, there's IEDs everywhere. And two, they were ready. So just like we had been watching them for the first, it's probably about a month, month and a half before we start kind of doing our own thing. They were watching us very quickly as the other element starts bounding in, they start taking RPGs, right? And we start realizing that if we push in any further, it's going to be problematic. And then as we're reporting up, they're pretty much calling us, telling us to stop. And we kind of had to back off of that, right? So that was the first time we started pushing in and started noticing that things were real, right? Started taking fire and then taking RPG blasts, things like that. You were or your, your partner? Our team was. Your team was? Yep, so we're partnered up.

• 1:48:06Speaker 06

  We had a, we had a, a team of A and ASF that were Pashtun as well, right? So Pashtuns are real heavy in the Helmand River Valley, which became a challenge for us as well. Realizing that we had a partner nation force that had no intentions of killing their people at all. Right, which became very tricky. Right, where we would try to get them to kind of push forward and do things and they just wouldn't do it. They're very rebellious, pretty much, you know, putting their foot down and they were gonna do what they wanted to do and they wouldn't listen at all, which started kind of raising the hair on the back of our necks. We're like, this isn't good.

• 1:48:38Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, no kidding.

• 1:48:39Speaker 06

  It's a very bad situation and it just ended up getting so bad that we ended up kicking them off of our camp.

• 1:48:46Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit, okay, so, right off the bat, you're getting real world ops, you're getting lit up by machine gun fire and RPGs. You can't get to them, your partner forces isn't fucking doing what you're wanting them to do. You're worried about them turning on you. But there's a, uh, not a great dynamic.

• 1:49:06Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:49:06Shawn Ryan?

  Here.

• 1:49:08Speaker 06

  Yeah, it got tricky and it got complex. Right, and each time, every time we'd leave the wire, we'd come back and we'd have to circle up because they started getting sketchier and sketchier, man. They started getting sketchier and sketchier. We started arguing with them on ops and stuff because they wouldn't do what we're asking them to do. They would shoot people that didn't need to be shot. Essentially, there was a situation within uh, our area where they ended up shooting a disabled person. And that ended up being kind of the line in the sand. Where, we're like, hey dude, you guys are, you're out of control, you don't listen. We start rogering up to their Kandak and letting them know like, hey, you gotta get these guys off our camp. And the next thing I know, Sean, they start carrying their guns to the chow ha. They, the posture changed on the camp to the point where we're like, they're going tomorrow.

• 1:49:50Speaker 06

  Right, don't let them know, but we, like, we're sending a bird in and they're, they're getting off our camp tomorrow. Because it just got so sketchy.

• 1:49:57Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit, how fast did this happen?

• 1:49:59Speaker 06

  This was in probably the first two months we were there.

• 1:50:01Shawn Ryan?

  Was there any, I mean, was there any talk about this during the turnover?

• 1:50:05Speaker 06

  Not really, they, they got along well with Cody's but, team commander. But his team commander was a unique guy and I'm not, obviously wouldn't say anything about him, but let's just say him and Cody didn't see eye to eye. And that was pretty much, once we showed up and we weren't willing to do the same things that he was willing to do, which has essentially been the knee to those guys, it became, there was conflict immediately.

• 1:50:27Shawn Ryan?

  Did they get him out of there?

• 1:50:28Speaker 06

  Uh, the team commander?

• 1:50:30Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, when you, when you called in a bird.

• 1:50:33Speaker 06

  Oh, sorry, for the ANASF? Yeah, they did. Yeah, thankfully, they took, they took it seriously. Yep, and, and very quickly, they were out the next day.

• 1:50:41Shawn Ryan?

  So, hold on, so what the, what happens to the mission when the partner force is gone?

• 1:50:48Speaker 06

  Yeah, you gotta wait. Yep, you gotta wait. Everything's put on hold, because especially the rules at this time is that you weren't doing any solo ops.

• 1:50:55Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:50:56Speaker 06

  Right? You had to do everything by, with, and through technically. And without that component or that, you know, capability, yeah, all ops are off. Outside of key leader engagements, the basics that you have to do in and out. Well, yeah, any operational type things are gonna be stopped until you get another partner nation force.

• 1:51:12Shawn Ryan?

  And they just left?

• 1:51:13Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:51:14Shawn Ryan?

  They wanted to leave?

• 1:51:15Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, it was gonna be problematic.

• 1:51:18Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I think we've established that.

• 1:51:21Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:51:22Shawn Ryan?

  Uh, I mean, how long are your guys' deployments?

• 1:51:26Speaker 06

  Six months, usually.

• 1:51:27Shawn Ryan?

  Six, and this happens right at the very beginning?

• 1:51:30Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:51:31Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, how, how many, how many people are in this partner force?

• 1:51:34Speaker 06

  Yeah, so it's probably, it's probably around like fifteen to twenty people at least.

• 1:51:38Shawn Ryan?

  Well, that's actually a lot smaller. I thought we were talking hundreds.

• 1:51:41Speaker 06

  No, no, no, not this. On the other side of the fence, there was, there was hundreds. Right? But for our organic team, it was like a, it mirrors a NMSOT.

• 1:51:48Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:51:49Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:51:49Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:51:50Speaker 06

  Yeah. I was actually, I don't know if I should share this story, but we're here. Right? But I was in charge of, uh, the interpreters. So I was kind of the TERP manager.

• 1:51:59Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:51:59Speaker 06

  And, um, you know, I, I wasn't too sure right now. Like, things got really bad, where people like, pretty much drawing down guns on each other, um, between us and the ANASF. And they told me, they said, "Steve, you gotta vet the interpreters." And I was like, "Okay," because they live on our camp too. So I circled them up, and I was like... This is, this is kinda crazy, um, but I sat them down and I was like, hey, I need to know that you're not on their side. And they're like, no, sir, we're not, we're not, we're not on their side. I was like, well, I really need to trust you and I don't trust you, right? Because you guys just let this get weird, right? You knew that these guys, you hear what they're talking about and you didn't come to us, right? And I can't say that I trust you, right? And I don't

• 1:52:43Speaker 06

  trust people, like, we don't have any room for no trust on this camp.

• 1:52:47Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, they're the only in-between. They're the only communication in-between the two units. And if they didn't articulate, they, they let the situation develop to that.

• 1:52:56Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah, they knew. And they're going there and they're smoking hash with them every night. They're, they're good old buddies, right?

• 1:53:02Shawn Ryan?

  So what did that do to operations then for the rest of the deployment?

• 1:53:06Speaker 06

  Yeah, so we got another team. Yep. So very quickly, um, they knew there's no point in us being up there and they got us a team pretty quick. The new team that we got were Tajiks. So they're from Tajikistan. So they had like Mongolian blood in them. And these guys wanted war and the Tajiks at the time hated the Pashtuns. So they were happy to be in the helmand and they were right, they had no qualms about whooping it on. So then from there it became us like, like, things are starting to get out of control in a, in a better way. Oh, yeah. So now we're like, like having to pull the reins back on them because we, we tried to write something up to go outside the wire and the SOTF was like, no. And they're like, we're going. And they would go. And we're like, oh shit. We're like, go play. And they, dude, they started whooping it on. They

• 1:53:49Speaker 06

  were there within a week, they were already over in Machakel whooping it on. Like, we had to sit back on that one and watch because the SOTF wasn't going to let us push with them. But like, it started shaping things in a big way. And they'd come back and they were happy as can be. Yep. And the whole game started changing, right?

• 1:54:06Shawn Ryan?

  Let's talk about the first operation that you went on with the new, with the new force that got kinetic.

• 1:54:12Speaker 06

  Yeah, well, that was gonna be back pushing back into Machakil. Right, so pushing back into that region where last time we kind of got stopped short with RPGs and things like that. Uh, we pushed up to a very similar spot to where we were before as the four line of troops, but they actually pushed in. So as they pushed in, they start shaping the battlefield and pushing everybody else out to the side. And we're kind of on containment on the backside and just dudes were squirting out the back trying to get back to the Ginnamere's Bazaar and some Indawar and all those areas. And they just went in and just started death blossoming and just really whooping it on. But that was the first time when we pushed out with them, we realized like, oh, this team's different. Like this is gonna be a different, a totally different six months from here on out.

• 1:54:51Shawn Ryan?

  How did that feel for you guys?

• 1:54:53Speaker 06

  It was good. It was very good and we're happy, but also it raised red flags at the Sota. So now they're like, oh, now we gotta watch that team. Right, this team's thinking they're gonna be out there fighting this war, trying to win this war, like how dare them, like try to go out there and do what we brought them here to do. So it kind of tightened things up a little bit more on us, which is why we had to get more strategic with how we like, kind of, um. Yeah.

• 1:55:16Shawn Ryan?

  So what were you guys doing? How did you get strategic to get the ops?

• 1:55:20Speaker 06

  Yeah, well, it's just small things like the special activities side of the house. Right, really building alliances within the community, really figuring out who's on our side, not on our side, and employing people outside of maybe our organic team to get things done.

• 1:55:33Shawn Ryan?

  Nice.

• 1:55:34Speaker 06

  Right, and there were people out there, like they were tired of it. Right, the Taliban had been, uh, ravaging that area for quite some time and it didn't take long for us to start finding some key players in the area. And they were willing to do some really cool stuff for us.

• 1:55:46Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, what kind of key players are you talking about? Are you talking about key players within the special operations community? You're talking about key players within the Afghan community that are, that are gonna allow operations to happen in their backyard?

• 1:56:00Speaker 06

  Yeah, within the local nation populace. Yep. People where you wouldn't, we would do little things like a, like a humanitarian aid thing, where we'd go and hand out backpacks. There's a little area called the Garmob Curve that was very, very dangerous, right? It was just kind of a choke point in, in the road heading south towards Helmand. And anyone that kind of got, you know, all these big trucks, supply trucks, would have to do multi-turn maneuvers to get through there. And they would just get lit up all the time. So we'd go down and hand out backpacks in the area, right? To just to do present patrols. We want to whoop it on. So we're just being a bit provocative as well. Like, hey, we're here, hand out backpacks. Like, what's up now? Right? You want to pick on the army and the route clearance teams? Like, what you got? Right? But while we were down

• 1:56:43Speaker 06

  there, we'd start engaging with the population. And me as a corpsman, which also had some extra training, you know, the special activities training that I got to do when I was there, I'd pull people aside and start talking to them. You know, they'd come up with a rash or something, and I'd start interviewing them. I'd be like, what do you do? And they're like, well, I'm the secretary for the, the district governor. It's like, oh, that's interesting. Right? It's like, I'm more than happy to give you whatever you need. But we would start finding people that way. Right? And within that, we'd start finding people that were, you know, sympathizers for what we were doing. They were kind of tired of it. Maybe their brother-in-law or somebody rolled over an IED, and they were pissed off about it. And we'd start finding people that were, they were hungry, and they wanted to help. So even though we couldn't be

• 1:57:25Speaker 06

  as kinetic as we wanted to be at times, we maximized that time to find sympathizers and start kind of working them towards getting some of the stuff done that we needed from them.

• 1:57:33Shawn Ryan?

  So you guys are probably also gathering quite a bit of intelligence through this, too?

• 1:57:38Speaker 06

  Yeah, that, that actually became a big shift. So as, as like, the leadership in the region started to tighten down things for us, we just shifted focus towards more of an intelligence type side of the house.

• 1:57:49Shawn Ryan?

  Right on, man. How hairy did it get on this deployment?

• 1:57:52Speaker 06

  Yeah, it, I mean, honestly, I felt fine the majority of the time. Like, the scariest parts I had was just, you know, having to deal with a partner, partner nation force. But I never really felt too scared. But a lot of the work that we were doing was at distance, right? So I'd never really felt like, you know, I wasn't, you know, engaging people five feet away or anything like that. It felt pretty predictable and pretty controllable for most of the time.

• 1:58:14Shawn Ryan?

  What was it like coming home from that deployment? You're married now?

• 1:58:18Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:58:19Shawn Ryan?

  With a, with a, with a kid.

• 1:58:21Speaker 06

  Yeah, so I'm married with a kid and um, I came back and I was, you know, I was, um, I was different, man. I was different.

• 1:58:30Shawn Ryan?

  What changed you?

• 1:58:31Speaker 06

  I think it was just, it was, I think it was the high stress, to be honest with you. You know, I say it kind of like it was fine, but day in and day out, I think that was the biggest part was the stress. It was the, just the stress and not being able to sleep well at night, right? Just dealing with the bureaucracy, right? Added another level of stress where it's like, we know exactly what we need to do. And if you just let us do it, things will work. But then they're, they're just making, you know how it is, they're making policies from higher that don't make sense with the ground force. And it just puts a lot of pressure on you. And um, I think, just kind of coming back from that, that's where like the insomnia stuff started to happen. You know, having the warrior dreams that we like to say, right? And things like that. And then um, that's when I think I probably just started hitting the bottle more than I ever had at that point.

• 1:59:13Shawn Ryan?

  Did you take any losses on this deployment?

• 1:59:16Speaker 06

  Yeah, we did not. So our team did not.

• 1:59:18Shawn Ryan?

  So this is kind of, if, let me, if, if you don't mind what I'm receiving from you.

• 1:59:26Shawn Ryan?

  Good deployment, not terribly kinetic.

• 1:59:28Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 1:59:29Shawn Ryan?

  Most of the kinetic stuff was with the partner force. A lot of paranoia from the previous partner force. Uh, so you got to see some shit, but not a, not a whole lot.

• 1:59:39Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:59:39Shawn Ryan?

  And just enough to give you a taste.

• 1:59:41Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:59:42Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:59:42Speaker 06

  Enough to kind of see what it is. I felt like I checked the box in a lot of ways. It was good enough. Yes, it's always hard to kind of ride the coattails of the Fallujah guys and all this stuff, but you know, I felt like I was there. Yeah, we, we got to whoop it on a few good times and you know, I got to do some uh, got to check the medical box too. I got to do a crike.

• 2:00:01Shawn Ryan?

  You did? Okay, so you did. You were in combat.

• 2:00:04Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:00:04Shawn Ryan?

  You were in combat or you were?

• 2:00:06Speaker 06

  Yeah, for sure. Yeah, so one of the trips down to the Garmov curve that I was telling you about, um, we received some fire and a guy ended up getting shot in the head. On one of the partner nation force guys. So we had to evacuate him off that, the X essentially there. We bring him back up to our site where we had a battalion aid station. And I went in there and um, we had to patch him up till we could get a bird in. And in that, I got to do a crico thyrodomy on him. Which for, this sounds kind of morbid and crazy, but for a medic, that's like, hard to come by, right?

• 2:00:32Shawn Ryan?

  You guys are always fucked up.

• 2:00:36Speaker 06

  Yeah. I'm sad right now. Well, it's like, uh, like you come from eighteen delta and you learn all these things and it's like you kind of want to do them, right? So I was, I was very fortunate, right? He's, he's, uh, had an uptunted airway and he was in an obstructed airway and he was, uh, not able to breathe. So I was able to do a crike, work that whole process with him and get him evacuated. Then we had some other casualties as well. And I think probably to answer your question of what you just asked, the parts that changed me were these things, right? Wasn't the kinetic stuff, it was the medical stuff. Okay. You know, we were, um, doing a mission one day where we were pushing down to the district governor. We're kind of had our guns facing Machikel, that area. And I see these guys out there digging. And we already know what that means, right? They're digging an IED, they're putting it on their route,

• 2:01:17Speaker 06

  going in and, um, you know, with anticipation that we're going to move from this, this meat site to push in. And I see it and I end up pulling out my binoculars and I'm on the roof with a guy. Actually, on this deployment too, I carried a mark forty-eight. So I carried the mark forty-eight machine gun and a med bag, which is a little non-conventional. But, um, I'm up on the roof and I see him. And, um, actually Jake was there too from singing. And I look through and I see these guys digging and I realize it's some kids. So I'm like, all right, we're not going to engage these kids. We're just not going to go that direction. And if we do, we're just not going to go right there where I see it. So just marked it. All right, cool. That's where the ID is. But after the meeting, we said, now we're going to head back to camp. So we ended up pushing back from that meat site back to the camp. And it's probably like, probably forty-five minutes to an hour later, we

• 2:02:02Speaker 06

  hear an explosion. So I'm actually working out and I hear this explosion and I'm like, huh, that's interesting. And next thing I know, we start getting calls, right? A few minutes later after that, they bring that kid. So what happened was the Taliban said, okay, they didn't go that direction, go get our IED now. So he sent that same kid, it was like a ten-year-old and maybe like a seven-year-old back out there to dig up the IED. And when they did, it turned the older kid to spaghetti sauce. And the other kid that was next to him, his little brother, took a lot of, a lot of shrapnel, was injured. So they end up bringing both of them to us, one's in a wheelbarrow and the other one's still alive. So we end up getting to take the kid in. So as we take the kid in, we start patching him up.

• 2:02:43Speaker 06

  Um, he had some sucking chest wounds and things like that. Me and Chris, my A slash are just rocking and rolling on it. Business as usual and but the kid's suffering pretty badly. So this was actually the first time I got to use ketamine. As an anesthetic to start working with him and um, give him the ketamine, start patching him up. He's really mangled. And um, he starts kind of snoring. He's like in in a decent spot. So I was like, wow, that worked better than I imagined, right? My first time pushing ketamine. But then what I next thing I know, I hear my team captain talking to the dad. Right? And the dad was yelling at us, demanding money from us. Right? Demanding money that we pay him because his son got injured. And I remember I lost it, Sean. I lost it. I walked away from his son. I went out there and grabbed the dude and slammed him. I was like, this is your fault.

• 2:03:26Speaker 06

  Like you did this to him, right? Because a little bit of me was like, here's these adults. Put another kid got hurt because of some piece of crap adult, right? And and you want to talk about money. And you that's what you're thinking. You want to try and get money off of this. Right? So I end up screaming at this guy, the team captain's like grabbing me and I'm like, get him out of here. Get your son and get out of here. Right? We ended up calling in a bird for the kid. It wasn't his fault, but that's like a little bit of that, dude. Whereas just started to kill me a little bit inside, started to get a little bit numb about what we were doing. And just the consequences of war, to be honest with you, where I was like, dude, what are we doing here? Like, this is crazy. Yeah.

• 2:04:00Shawn Ryan?

  What was it that made you think, what are we doing here?

• 2:04:03Speaker 06

  Just seeing the civilian impact. Right? That would become a theme as I made, you know, more trips back to Afghanistan. It's like, just, it was hard to ignore that part. Right? It's hard to ignore the just seeing the suffering, man. Seeing the little kids. Seeing the the, you know, tough living conditions. And I'm not saying they're better now that we're gone, but I knew it was hard for me to not. Acknowledge that I was participating in something that was hurting a lot of people. No matter how good we tried to spin it, there's a lot of people that suffered because of it.

• 2:04:32Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I'm with him. I'm with him.

• 2:04:37Speaker 06

  Did you have to take any life on that deployment? Yeah, I was, uh, it wasn't, I didn't until we started moving south. So I was, I was in the lucky, but I would call it unlucky group that my element seemed to be the, the, the white cloud and the other element was the dark cloud. So everywhere they went, they started, you know, they always drew fire and I always happened to just be the guy doing Overwatch or whatever it may be for the majority of it. But as we were pushing south, so we started this initiative at the end where they said, you know what? We're actually just going to start de-mailing the Helmand River Valley. And we were at the very north part. So our job was to start de-mailing the site. All right. Get an accountability of everything and start tearing things down and we're going to turn it over to the Afghans.

• 2:05:17Speaker 06

  So as part of that process, we had to kind of push our way down and we were like this providing the security bubble as we de-mailed down. We'd hit each VSP site, they'd de-mail their stuff and they'd hop in. We just started this slow multi-day caravan through the Helmand River Valley, hitting all these different sites, picking them up. And as we started reaching, heading down south, we got past that Garmob curb down in Upper Singing. Um, they started noticing, they started rogering up, letting the Taliban know we were on the move. This is, we were growing a bigger caravan by the day. So it was like a great target for them. And along that journey, yeah, we started, um, getting ambushed and that's when I first got to, you know, engage some guys and, and take them out. Do you want to describe that? Yeah. Um, I mean, it's, it's not the craziest sexy stuff, right? But it was just, you know, It's the first one.

• 2:06:02Speaker 06

  Yeah. And we're kind of pushing through and you know, the IED threat's huge. So that's our biggest fear is that we're trying to move through and, um, we're doing it at a snail's pace because none of that stuff moves fast, as you know. And it's like, you're kind of just sitting and waiting and everywhere you looks like potential bogeymen, right? You're in Indian country and it's like everyone's around you and, um, we're just kind of creeping through. And I remember we're kind of sitting there, I'm trying to stay, stay awake, right? And I'm on the, uh, the Mark 19, which is a grenade launcher. And, um, I'm kind of sitting there and next thing I know, the, the vehicle in front of us, which was actually an ANA vehicle starts getting lit up. And at first I was a little bit confused about what's going on. I'm like, are they test firing their guns? Like, why would they test fire their guns right here in the city? Right? It's like, actually a built up area. And then I realized, I'm like, oh, that's incoming. That's not outgoing.

• 2:06:47Speaker 06

  So I swiveled the Mark 19 off to the side and I see the guys there. Right? They're probably about 20 yards away. And they're aiming their guns at us now. They have rockets and I just light them up with a Mark 19. And just immediately, they were just, uh, neutralized, I would say. And, um, it was, that was kind of the end of that right there.

• 2:07:06Shawn Ryan?

  How did that feel?

• 2:07:07Speaker 06

  Um, I mean, exciting. Yeah. To be honest with you, it was exciting.

• 2:07:13Shawn Ryan?

  Accomplished?

• 2:07:14Speaker 06

  Yeah. As, as morbid as it sounds. Yeah, it did. It's like, okay.

• 2:07:21Speaker 06

  Like I got, I checked that box and, um, then it was back to business. We didn't even stick around for probably even a minute after that. It's just like the wheels start moving. Vehicles are still up and running. A lot of bulletproof glass and stuff was shattered. And, but we just worked around it and it was like, we just kept pushing, right?

• 2:07:37Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:37Speaker 06

  Yeah. We didn't know if there was going to be many more after that or, or none. So we just kept, uh, stayed locked in and kept pushing south.

• 2:07:44Shawn Ryan?

  Right on, man. Yeah.

• 2:07:47Shawn Ryan?

  Was the Kriek your first call as a medit?

• 2:07:50Speaker 06

  No, it wasn't, but it was the first real like, yeah, real gunshot wound victim in country. Yeah, there's all smaller things like, you know, every people, everyone are, uh, everyone's always acting weird. Falling downstairs is like, just the basic life on a camp with a team.

• 2:08:05Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:05Speaker 06

  Every time you turn around, somebody kicked a, stuck their hand in a, a fan and got their finger cut or whatever. You know, so we stayed pretty busy with the routine day in and day out stuff. And then also the, the grunts would call us up. So whenever they have casualties, they, they help me and Chris and we go up there and help them out. And then the A and A were always pulling in casualties too. So any reps I could get, I tried to stay busy with that stuff.

• 2:08:26Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 2:08:27Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:08:28Shawn Ryan?

  How did the, how, I mean, for the first big one, for the first combat casualty, I mean, how do you? What was the pressure like on you?

• 2:08:35Speaker 06

  It was business, man. It was business. It was just every

• 2:08:38Shawn Ryan?

  You just fall into a zone?

• 2:08:38Speaker 06

  Every bit of the training, man. I'm telling you, eighteen Delta does such a good job. Such a good job. That it was almost like I was on autopilot. Right? The things that we need to do, and I'm telling you, I can't say enough great things about Chris. Like, my A slash medic was probably the best medic I've ever worked with. I was, I was at HM1 by then, I was at E6, and he was like at E5. But dude, I leaned heavy on him, and he was, he was locked in, dude. Very, very gifted in this space.

• 2:09:03Shawn Ryan?

  Right on.

• 2:09:03Speaker 06

  Yep. So I never felt like it was, we could have done anything. We could have done total IV anesthesia and chopped someone's leg off.

• 2:09:09Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, do you, do you, did you feel that, you know, after your, after your, your first,

• 2:09:17Shawn Ryan?

  your first call as a medic in combat, your first kill in combat, I mean, did you, do you feel, especially the medic part, I mean, cricking somebody, I mean, do you, do you feel that, did you feel accepted? Did you feel that you had proven yourself, you belong there, that, does that make any sense?

• 2:09:35Speaker 06

  Yeah, it does. Yeah, and I, and I did. I did. Um, and I knew how hard, it's hard to come by, right? And it's even harder these days. Right? So I felt grateful for that. So I say it sounds a little bit morbid, but I was, man, I did. I did feel accomplished. I was grateful for the opportunities to actually do what I went to school for. I think that's something that maybe people that haven't joined the military, special operations, might not understand. Is that there is a lot of that. If you, you can be in for twenty years and never get to go to the show. Right? And I think, I know some of my friends that just had bad timing. It's like it, it's some stuff to overcome.

• 2:10:11Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Were you ever in country with your brother at the same time?

• 2:10:14Speaker 06

  No, I wasn't. Yeah, he ended up doing that one deployment in two thousand eight where he got blown up really bad. And, um, because of that, they ended up med discharging him from the Marine Corps.

• 2:10:23Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 2:10:24Speaker 06

  Yeah. When I was at eighteen Delta, actually, I started getting the phone calls from Mitch. Where he would call me and he was like, hey dude, I'm forgetting everything, I'm getting nosebleeds nonstop. And the Marine Corps stuck me in the, um, in the post office. So they're calling me a turd. They're telling me I suck and they don't know what to do with me. And they're, they're sticking me in the post office and I'm losing my mind because I don't know what's wrong with me. And they don't care and they're telling me I suck. And I remember talking to him. I was actually telling my buddy Leo and one of the 18 Delta instructors, old cat guy, old salty cat guy. He's like, hey, hey, come here. I was like, yes, sir. He's like, you get that boy some help. He's like, cause my son was a ranger and he experienced everything I just told, I heard you say, and he ended up killing himself.

• 2:11:05Speaker 06

  He's like, so you get that boy some help. I was like, yes, sir. So then I started kind of coaching Mitch through that. In between, I was like, hey, this is what you gotta do. Do you have a cool doc? Like who's your cool doc? It's like so and so. I'm like, go meet up with him. This is what you need to tell him. Right? You need to start documenting this stuff. Mitch, it's not going to get better for you. Cause this is 2008, like they knew I like, they were starting to understand TBI, but they didn't know what to do about it. And Marine Corps does what they do and they just ostracized them instead of like trying to help them. So I walked them through that med board process and he ended up getting med retired. And um, you know, kind of becoming a civilian after that.

• 2:11:40Speaker 06

  How did you meet your wife? Yeah, the quintessential uh, young military story, man. I uh, Tender? No, no, there's no tender back then. Better than tender, core school. Right on. Yeah.

• 2:11:56Speaker 06

  Very similar to tender, but it was core school. Yeah, dude, we were in a class. We were in class together. And I remember she's a little Latina girl and I was a, I was a trailer park kid from Alabama and I was like, I'm interested about these Latina things. What's, what's going on here? We don't have too many of you where I come from. Yeah, this is an interesting creature. Oh, yeah. Yep. She would always harass me because everyone else is kind of studying and stuff and I'm like, reading Navy. I was reading Rogue Warrior by Dick Marcinko and like just not paying attention. And she would give me hell about it. She's like, are you going to study? Or like, what are you going to do? I'm like, And the next day I know she start giving me gifts like she's like here's a banana. You look hungry. I'm like, oh, thanks. So she's like, feed me. And she would even go take the test before us, before me and come back and start highlighting things in my book. And I was like,

• 2:12:40Shawn Ryan?

  No shit?

• 2:12:41Speaker 06

  Yeah, man. So,

• 2:12:42Shawn Ryan?

  Nice.

• 2:12:43Speaker 06

  Yep. We didn't even really start dating then in core school, but we became, we grow fond of each other. We'd find reasons to go to the uh, the PX or whatever, go grocery shopping or whatever it may be. And like, we just started to build a little bit of a relationship. And she ended up becoming, she was a dental tech. And um, she got stationed out in San Diego and then she hit me up. I was out at first recon. And then it was, it was all she wrote from there. I think we were married six months after that, man.

• 2:13:05Shawn Ryan?

  No shit?

• 2:13:06Speaker 06

  Yep. We started looking at the money.

• 2:13:10Speaker 06

  We're making nothing. You know how it is. Like you're not making anything.

• 2:13:12Shawn Ryan?

  Live off base?

• 2:13:13Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 2:13:13Shawn Ryan?

  Um, that's cool, man.

• 2:13:16Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:13:16Shawn Ryan?

  Are you still married?

• 2:13:17Speaker 06

  Eighteen years, man.

• 2:13:18Shawn Ryan?

  Congratulations.

• 2:13:19Speaker 06

  Best friend, the love of my life, dude. I owe, I owe my life to her. Yeah.

• 2:13:22Shawn Ryan?

  What is, how many kids do you have?

• 2:13:25Speaker 06

  We have two kids now. Yeah.

• 2:13:26Shawn Ryan?

  Two kids?

• 2:13:27Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:13:27Shawn Ryan?

  What's the secret to a successful marriage?

• 2:13:29Speaker 06

  Dude, just not quitting. It's like anything hard. If you just don't quit, you can make it. Right? No matter what it is. She's had to endure a lot with me, but she just won't quit. She's first generation Mexican, hard as they come, so loyal. And um, just really has a capacity to endure. And you know, I think if you just don't quit, you can work through it if you want to, right? No matter what it is.

• 2:13:52Shawn Ryan?

  Good for you, man.

• 2:13:53Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:13:53Shawn Ryan?

  Good for you. Thanks for sharing that.

• 2:13:58Shawn Ryan?

  So you said when you got home from your first deployment, that's kind of when the drinking started. Uh, sounds like some PTSD stuff was happening. What, what, what was going on specifically?

• 2:14:09Speaker 06

  Yeah, man. I just started to kind of like lose myself in that process. Right? Where I started to like, um, it, it started to become my identity. Like this, what I'm doing wasn't just a job. It wasn't just me like trying to like show that I'm good enough, but I'd already done it. Now it's just like, it almost started to consume me a little bit, man, to be honest with you. Started to lose my mind in it and um, just becoming less present at home, more numb. Just really started to realize that I was more comfortable with my team and like doing workups and going on deployment than I was at home. And I really started to just stop putting a lot of effort into that.

• 2:14:42Shawn Ryan?

  How old's your son at this time?

• 2:14:44Speaker 06

  Yeah, he's uh, probably. At Marsoc, he was probably three.

• 2:14:48Shawn Ryan?

  Three or three.

• 2:14:49Speaker 06

  Yeah. Even I started to notice that, man. I'd come home and he'd be like, "Why is daddy here again?" And I'm like, "Whoa, little homie." And then I hear him saying stuff to my mom, my wife. He's like, "When's dad gonna leave? Because you know it's better when it's just us."

• 2:15:04Shawn Ryan?

  You heard that?

• 2:15:05Speaker 06

  Yeah, I heard that. And I would just get angry at, back then I would get angry. I'm like, "Dude, what the hell?" I'm like, "What are you telling him?" She's like, "He just misses you." She's like, "We were at a wishing well the other day and he threw a coin in and he wished that you didn't have to deploy anymore, right? That you could be home." She's like, "This is taking a toll on him, Steve." And it wasn't just like the deployments, it was just the dad that he had to deal with, man. I was just like numb, nummer than ever, man. Nummer than ever, colder than ever. And I just like leaned in to the, that Marine Corps way of life. Like, that was easier for me. And the anger was there and it was just like,

• 2:15:42Speaker 06

  yeah, it was, it was tough on everybody around me, I'm sure.

• 2:15:45Shawn Ryan?

  Damn, Steve.

• 2:15:46Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:15:47Shawn Ryan?

  Were you having thoughts about your relationship with your own dad? When this is happening?

• 2:15:53Speaker 06

  Yeah, man.

• 2:15:54Shawn Ryan?

  Simultaneously?

• 2:15:55Speaker 06

  Yeah, dude, because deep down inside, I was like, "I don't even know how to be a dad, dude." I never had a dad. The only guys that ever tried to play that role just beat me. And it's like, deep down inside, I was the greatest in security. I had insecurity about being an operator, but my greatest insecurity is like, "How am I gonna be a dad? How am I gonna show up for this little boy, knowing that I was broken, knowing that I had a skeleton, a closet that was falling out by the day?" And that was almost more overwhelming than anything was that fear that I was gonna mess him up too. And that I was turning into my dad.

• 2:16:23Shawn Ryan?

  Damn, man.

• 2:16:24Speaker 06

  Yeah, dude.

• 2:16:25Shawn Ryan?

  And I would imagine it just gets worse after each deployment.

• 2:16:29Speaker 06

  Yeah, just each time. I was coming back a shell of myself.

• 2:16:34Shawn Ryan?

  Were you and the wife good at the time?

• 2:16:36Speaker 06

  No, man, no.

• 2:16:37Shawn Ryan?

  After, after the second deployment to Afghanistan?

• 2:16:39Speaker 06

  Yeah, no, she's like, "We're having issues, dude. We're having issues." Right? I'm just...

• 2:16:45Shawn Ryan?

  Is she still in?

• 2:16:46Speaker 06

  No, she got out right after my son. So she didn't, I don't think she knew what she was signing up for. In the Navy, they're like, you have to do watch. She's like, what? Like, you have to do watch. It's like a basic function. And she was like, I didn't sign up to do watch. Like, I don't get to just go home every day. That was one of the first things, dude. And then second was, you know, she'd have to get up at four in the morning and bring my son to the on base care. And she'd have to drop this baby off at the daycare with strangers to go in and do her job cleaning teeth for the recruits. And she's like, Steve, I'm not going to do this. Right? Like, I'm not leaving my baby no more. She's like, we'll figure it out. It's like, all the eggs are in your basket, but I'm gonna raise our kid. Especially if you're gonna be deploying the way you are, like,

• 2:17:30Speaker 06

  not letting some strangers on base, you know, take care of our son while I'm doing, standing in a square for no reason.

• 2:17:37Shawn Ryan?

  It's a good mom.

• 2:17:38Speaker 06

  Yeah. Yeah, she's a good woman.

• 2:17:43Shawn Ryan?

  We're second deployment.

• 2:17:44Speaker 06

  Yeah, second deployment. So I come back from there and I end up going to a free fall team. Right? Which I think probably wouldn't have been the case, but I almost died in a free fall jump. Yeah. So I, I come from, back from that deployment and um, we had a scheduled jump on base. And it was from a Huey. And I was like, I never jumped out of a Huey. I'm like, let's go. Yeah, I want it. So I jumped on that manifest. And I remember my buddy, who's old team chief, was the uh, uh, jump master. So I asked him, I was like, hey Kaz, I'm like, how do, how can we exit this bird? He's like, exit smartly, Steve. He's like, I'm not gonna, I was like, all right, Roger that Kaz. You don't have to say nothing else. I was like, he's like, just exit smartly. I was like, okay. So in my head, I'm like, I'm doing 10 front flips out of this Huey.

• 2:18:27Speaker 06

  Yep. So we were uh, we're there on Camp Pendleton at this uh, pretty iconic DZ called DZ Basaloon. Um, and uh, we go up. And we get up to the top. I was one of the last ones out. He was following me out and he slaps me on the back and I jump out and I do my flips. And then as I'm flying down, oh, it's probably not too high. You know, it's probably less than 10 grand. So there's not a lot of free fall time, right? It's like a hop and pop essentially. As I go into my opening sequence, Sean, I go to throw, because we do handiploid pilot shoot with a Marine Corps rig. I go to throw it out and I feel something hit me on the back. So as I throw out the pilot shoot, something hits me on the back and I go into a sideways, sideways spin. As I kind of get my bearing, I look up and I see that my parachute won't snivel. So it's just like a squid at the top and the slider won't come down.

• 2:19:12Speaker 06

  And I see something's like wrapped around the right set of main risers, which I thought was the pilot chute. So instead of cutting away, I start climbing the risers. So I'm seeing the ground rushes is coming and I'm climbing these risers and I'm shaking on it with all my life. I'm like, oh, like trying to get it to come loose. And finally, on my last few tugs, the slider slides down and it pops and I got two turns before I smash into the side of the peak. So there's a pretty high peak there, the Margarita Peak, and I'm on the backside, thank God. And I just kind of burn in, come sliding down this thing. And as I finally come to a stop, one, I'm like shaking, I'm like, oh, that was a rush, right? And two, as I start pulling in my chute, I realized that there's a bag locked parachute there, wrapped around the right set of main risers. And I was like, uh oh.

• 2:19:54Speaker 06

  And right about that moment where I saw that, the DZ crew's running out like, don't touch anything. You know how they are, there's an investigation, don't touch anything, like, stop. So they come up and I realized what had happened, that my Cypress had fired. And it shot my reserve into my deploying main and it had bag locked up in there. So if I would have cut away from my parachute, I would have died, right? Yep. So they do the investigation and I write down, so I have to write down. And me being the dummy that I am, I wrote that I did flips out of the helicopter. So they keyed in on that, on my statement, they're like, you jumped out of that helicopter and did flips? I'm like, yeah, it's a Huey, bro, like, who wouldn't? You know, and they're like, well, you're reckless and we believe that you lost altitude awareness.

• 2:20:38Speaker 06

  And that's why you had a dual deployment. And I was like, hey, well, fair enough, like I did do flips, but I was watching my altimeter and all like, if I was that honest about me jumping out of the bird, the way I did, then you have to trust me that something weird happened. And I said, you know what, like, we're going to send this Cypress off, but the chances that it was a Cypress malfunction is almost impossible. And, um, you know, if it, if it comes back that you, you were a late pull, there's going to be disciplinary action, right? They're going to NJP me, it could be anything, right? Um, so we wait the time and it comes back that they, uh, they said one of two things happened. They said either the Cypress malfunctioned or the barometric pressure settings they gave us were incorrect. So I'm standing there with my chief and I'm standing there with the paraloft, I was like, which one was it, guys?

• 2:21:22Speaker 06

  Like it was a Cypress misfire. It's like, Roger that. But as part of that, they're like, you're going on a free fall team for remediation. So I went on a free fall team. Damn, dude. Yep.

• 2:21:33Shawn Ryan?

  Shit.

• 2:21:35Speaker 06

  Yeah. Which is actually more stressful than the combat deployment. Dude, hey ho jumps were just, they stressed me out, man.

• 2:21:43Shawn Ryan?

  I've never done one.

• 2:21:44Speaker 06

  I hated every minute of it.

• 2:21:46Shawn Ryan?

  Damn, damn. So how long were you on the freefall team?

• 2:21:50Speaker 06

  Yeah, it was probably a year and a half there. Um, we ended up going and doing some work in New Zealand, kind of South Philippines, went down there and worked in, in the South Philippines with a Filipino National Special Action Force, like their FBI. Kind of working. There's some uh Islamic terrorist groups down in Southeast Philippines that we're kind of trying to help support.

• 2:22:11Shawn Ryan?

  Right on.

• 2:22:12Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:22:14Shawn Ryan?

  Third deployment. Did you do three?

• 2:22:16Speaker 06

  This was the third, this was the third, yeah.

• 2:22:19Shawn Ryan?

  You know another one after that?

• 2:22:20Speaker 06

  The fourth one, so across after that, I ended up picking up Chief Petty Officer. So I picked up Chief Petty Officer. I was uh moved from a team to the company level now. So this is my first time kind of getting pulled away from the team. And now I'm sitting there at the uh, you know, almost the executive level now, and I'm sitting in meetings all day long. And we're just dealing with the bureaucracy, getting ready to push guys out to Paycom. We're doing a task force uh in Guam. And this is when I started like some of the other mental health stuff started to come up, right? The first time I'm not part of the homies and they're going out and doing stuff and I'm stuck back with the, the command element. You know, trying to manage everybody where they're at their different sites, but it's just like, that's when alcohol started becoming a big issue for me.

• 2:23:02Speaker 06

  Yep. You start not to be able to trust the people. You used to be in with your boys and now you're with, you know, a lot of officers and things like that that you can't quite trust. And it just, dude, just started to wear me out really bad.

• 2:23:12Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:23:16Shawn Ryan?

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• 2:24:01Shawn Ryan?

  That's 855-936-GOLD or Sean likes gold.com today.

• 2:24:10Shawn Ryan?

  How's the family life?

• 2:24:11Speaker 06

  It's falling apart.

• 2:24:13Shawn Ryan?

  It's getting worse?

• 2:24:14Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:24:15Shawn Ryan?

  Still one or you got two now?

• 2:24:17Speaker 06

  Two kids?

• 2:24:18Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:24:18Speaker 06

  No, still one kid at this point. Yeah, I mean Sean, I was begging her to divorce me, man. I was begging her. I was, I just burned it at both ends so hard.

• 2:24:27Shawn Ryan?

  All right, let's, let's, let's dive into the family life then.

• 2:24:30Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 2:24:31Shawn Ryan?

  So you got, you got three deployments. One's rough. One sounds really rough.

• 2:24:36Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:24:36Shawn Ryan?

  In Afghanistan, free form. So what's, what is going on at home? Like just describe the home life.

• 2:24:44Speaker 06

  Yeah. It's, it's me showing up to a house that I just felt like I didn't even belong in. Right into a house that I didn't even feel like I was welcome in, which was my stuff because it wasn't true. Right, it's like my wife ran a beautiful household. She has an amazing family and all they did was shower me with love, but I resisted every bit of it. Right, the more they leaned in on me and loved on me, the more I hated it. Right, the more I couldn't deal with it. Right, I'm just becoming even more just distant from her and numb. Right, we're, we're not talking about anything outside of like the things we need to do. My son was in baseball, so it's like everything revolved around T-ball and things like that. But inside I was dead, man. Inside I was dead. Every night I'm drinking to go to bed.

• 2:25:24Shawn Ryan?

  How much?

• 2:25:25Speaker 06

  At, at least six beers, like at least, if not more, right? But it's like to drink six in the night was nothing, right? That was an easy day. You know, and that started to create issues too. You know, Vivi'd be like, hey dude, like no one drinks six cokes. Would you drink six cokes? I'm like, no. She's like, why would you drink six IPAs? And I'm like, just leave me alone. Right? And it's all those little things like that. It's like, she's absolutely right. She's like, then I would wake up, you know, I'd be, I'd be aggressive in my sleep too. I'd have dreams and next thing I'm grabbing on her, not intentionally. She, I'm waking up to her terrified, screaming. And she's like, what's wrong with you? And I just, I didn't know. I'm just like, I don't know. It wasn't one particular thing. It was just like, my body was just worn out. And then even just the things like birthday parties, dude.

• 2:26:09Speaker 06

  I'd go to it and I'd feel really sad because I couldn't feel happy. I'd see my son do something I'm supposed to be proud, but I feel dead inside. And it just started to weigh on me. I started to isolate. I didn't do anything outside of just work. Didn't really have any real friends outside of work. And I was just dying inside, man. And I wanted it to end. I didn't want my life to end, but like, I felt like if, if my wife would just divorce me, then they could go live a happy life. Like, I truly believed they would have been better off without me. Did you articulate that? Yeah, I would beg her. I'd try to paint the picture. She's like, nah, I'm gonna love you. We're gonna figure it out. She wouldn't give up, dude. I begged her. Yeah, I gave her every excuse in the world and she just would not. Just would not stop loving me.

• 2:26:53Speaker 06

  How long were you trying to convince her to divorce you? Probably over half the time that we were married there, right? It's like years. Years? Yeah. Years of me just trying to paint this picture of why I'm not, why she's not happy with me. And she was so confused, man. She's like, why are you doing this? And I didn't even know why.

• 2:27:12Speaker 06

  A little bit of me felt like maybe I would be happier on my own, right? But then there's my dad's stuff coming up. It's like, oh, Steve, remember this? Your dad probably felt the same way here. Right? And I'd beat myself up for that as well.

• 2:27:26Speaker 06

  Fuck, man. Yeah.

• 2:27:30Speaker 06

  Why did you leave the Marine Corps? Why'd you get out?

• 2:27:35Shawn Ryan?

  You hate being home.

• 2:27:37Speaker 06

  Yeah. Well, I had a bad.

• 2:27:40Shawn Ryan?

  Being with the guys, you're pissed off because you can't fucking be with them anymore because you hit advanced.

• 2:27:46Speaker 06

  Yeah. So as I went into that last deployment, like the majority of my friends um were moving up and on. So a lot of them went to damn neck and um damn neck at the time was taking on a lot of Sark's as their as their primary medics for their teams. All the PJs had held that billet for a long time and now we had a few of the of the crushers from our community go over there and like, hey, we got Navy component guys like let's start using them too.

• 2:28:10Shawn Ryan?

  Oh shit, I did not realize that.

• 2:28:12Speaker 06

  Oh yeah. So they started pulling over some of the hitters for Sark's and then next thing you know, there's a mass exodus. Was if you're in that group and you're in that peer group, like you were going to damn neck. So, you know, I told my wife, you know, the way that I mitigated our issues without taking responsibility because I never did between me and my wife was I blame the military. I'll just blame the Marine Corps. I blame that and just it that became my scapegoat that it was it was work and I hated it and I have to do it and it's it's whatever. It was kind of a weak position, but that's what I did. But I finally came to her and I said, hey, I want to go to damn neck. That's where all my homies are. My best man's over there. Everything's there. It's like, I'm going to go there and if I don't make it, then I'm getting out. She's like, okay. So I end up going to uh.

• 2:28:52Shawn Ryan?

  Damn neck for everybody that's listening is is SEAL Team Six.

• 2:28:56Speaker 06

  Yeah. Yep. And I was applying for a direct support medic role, right? Not as an operator, just to be clear. So I end up going there um to selection for that because they have their own selection process and Sean and I ended up fell in the psych. Crushed it physically, did everything I needed to do. All my homies are there and I end up failing psych. Right? And that one kind of hit me pretty heavy. I was like, dang, man. So go up and there's no recourse on that one, right? If you fell psych, it's not like you get to, if you run slow, you run slow, right? You can run faster, right? If you mess something up on a medical call, like you can, you can do better next time. But if you fell psych, they don't tolerate that, right? So that was like kind of the first little glimpse behind the curtain that I was like, oh, this stuff's bubbling out.

• 2:29:38Speaker 06

  And it just cost me probably the opportunity of my lifetime here. But in it a little bit, I was relieved. Because finally I was like, it's over.

• 2:29:45Shawn Ryan?

  You were relieved.

• 2:29:46Speaker 06

  Yeah, I was relieved too. It's like now I can quit. Now I can stop trying to hold all this stuff up. I can stop this facade. And I can just quit. And also, I believe that the military is the reason for all my problems. So I was like, now I get to leave. And everything's gonna get better. As a civilian, everything's gonna be magically better.

• 2:30:04Shawn Ryan?

  It is funny how you think that.

• 2:30:05Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:30:06Shawn Ryan?

  I thought that too.

• 2:30:07Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 2:30:10Shawn Ryan?

  What did you do as a civilian? Did you have any, any plan at all?

• 2:30:14Speaker 06

  Yeah. So, um. At eighteen Delta, they make relationships with a lot of different schools, right? And what they encourage you to do is to start working on your education. So one of the schools they have an agreement with is George Washington University. So they'll honor all the work you did at eighteen Delta and actually let it go towards a bachelor's degree. So on that last deployment, I signed up. Actually, Chris, the prior medic was like, Steve, let's, let's go to school. And I'm like, okay, if you do it, I'll do it. And um, so we, we signed up for school and we started chipping away at that bachelor's degree. So as I transitioned out, I was thinking, I was like, dude, I'm gonna go into the medical world. Like, this is what I do. I know it. I love it. And this should be an easy transition. So I set my eyes on wanting to be a trauma surgeon, right?

• 2:30:57Speaker 06

  So I was like, I remember being so proud about it, telling everybody, and I just couldn't tell enough people. I'm telling random people at the store. I was so proud of this new idea. And then I started looking at it, dude, and I was like, oh, my God, there's no way. It's gonna take me like ten years. This is insanity. It was horrible. Yep. So I started chipping away at that bachelor's degree. I'm sitting in a library all day long. And needless to say, I hadn't resolved any of my personal stuff. Hadn't taken care of myself a single bit. And um, it started bubbling over. Started to have a lot of anxiety. I remember I had my first anxiety, uh, panic attack ever. Never had anything like this.

• 2:31:31Shawn Ryan?

  Where was that at?

• 2:31:32Speaker 06

  Say again?

• 2:31:33Shawn Ryan?

  What happened there? Where were you?

• 2:31:35Speaker 06

  Yeah, I was, I was actually at home. And I remember me and, me and Vivi were going through a tough time, right? Me and my wife were going through a tough time and um. I remember I was sitting there and I was typing on a computer trying to do my work and I couldn't read anymore. Like the words didn't make sense. Right? And then I remember I couldn't use my hands and I'm trying to talk and nothing's making sense and my heart's beating so hard. I feel like I'm dying. And I thought that my, I thought my wife poisoned me, actually. Somehow I get the phone on and I call her, even though I can't read it and I tell her, I was like, I know that you poisoned me and I'm dying. Like, can you call 911? She's like, what are you talking about, dude? She's like, oh my God, Steve. Holy shit, dude. Just lost his mind.

• 2:32:14Speaker 06

  She's a, she's a therapist at this point, right? She became a therapist and she comes back and she's like, I think you're having a panic attack. And I'm like, shut up. No, I'm not like, I don't have panic attacks. What are you talking about? And they take me to the hospital and sure as shit, as soon as I get into that waiting room, everything starts going away. And I remembered some of those calls I would go on a rotations where it's like, like, oh, man. And I went in there, they did the cardiogram, they did everything to test me. And they're like, hey dude, I think it was anxiety. Do you have anxiety? And I'm like, no, man, I don't have anxiety. Okay. So that was like the first time when I had that panic attack, started realizing things were kind of bubbling over there.

• 2:32:54Speaker 06

  Yep. But I'm still plugging away at school. Right? Still trying to figure this out. Just chipping away at it. The online way of doing stuff is really difficult. You know, I was never the best student when it came to discipline and things like that. So I was just chipping away at it, knew that's what I needed to do, but started realizing that maybe the surgeon route's not going to be tenable. Right? That I need to start working at things and kind of set my sights on being a PA. But as I'm going through this process, Sean, like I said, I haven't repaired anything at my house. Things were a little bit better now that I was out and I was ever present. Um, but still having anger outburst, throwing bowls of salad across the room, just acting really uncharacteristic and just unstable. And, um, I got an opportunity where one of my good buddies went to the GRS program.

• 2:33:39Speaker 06

  And he hit me up one of these days, I'm at the library and I just feel like I'm gonna lose my mind. And he's like, how you doing, bro? That's my boy Jesse. And I was like, dude, I'm not, not okay, dude. Like, I'm holding it together, but I'm not okay. Like, I don't know what's going on with me. I don't, I feel lost. You know, I lost all my money from the military. I don't have any money. My family's like stressing. And I'm like, I need to make money. He's like, okay. So he ends up hooking me up and telling me where to send my resume. He puts in a good word for me and I end up, you know, going to GRS.

• 2:34:09Shawn Ryan?

  So GRS for the audience, uh, is the Global Response Staff Contracting for CIA. At least I'm contracting or?

• 2:34:18Speaker 06

  Yeah, contracting.

• 2:34:18Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 2:34:20Speaker 06

  Yep. So here I am again, back in the chute, right?

• 2:34:24Shawn Ryan?

  Um, are you excited?

• 2:34:26Speaker 06

  I am excited.

• 2:34:26Shawn Ryan?

  To be coming back?

• 2:34:28Speaker 06

  Yeah, I'm excited. I am. I remember being excited and I remember like not really knowing. I never heard of it before. Right? So I had no clue. I knew who they supported, right? I knew that a lot of my friends got out and went that direction, but I had no clue about it. I just didn't pay attention to that type of stuff. And, um, yeah, I end up going to TDC and it got real, real quick. Like, I realized really fast, like, one, I should have prepared better, right? And two, um, the gravity of what I was signing up for was about to get real.

• 2:34:59Shawn Ryan?

  What year is this?

• 2:35:00Speaker 06

  This was 2017.

• 2:35:02Shawn Ryan?

  Okay, 2017.

• 2:35:05Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:35:05Shawn Ryan?

  What'd you think of the vetting? Vetting, TDC, yeah, you TDC. What'd you think of it?

• 2:35:10Speaker 06

  Very good, very good. Yeah, very good. We started with 13 or 14, we graduated four. Yep. The only first time go guys there was me and another dude from Marsoc.

• 2:35:21Shawn Ryan?

  Right on.

• 2:35:22Speaker 06

  Yeah, everyone else, like, dude, it was crazy. Uh, I'd overcome a lot there, too. That was the first time I felt like, um, I was gonna fail. Yep, that's the first time where I was like, dude, I don't think I'm cut out for this. Like, I came grossly underprepared and I'm not in a good space.

• 2:35:39Shawn Ryan?

  What were you underprepared for?

• 2:35:41Speaker 06

  Just the pace of it, just similar to 18 Delta. It's like, here's the standard, here's the time. You either shoot it or you don't, and we're not gonna be angry about it. Like, no one's yelling at you. It's a gentleman's course, and the standard's the standard. And you're either gonna pick it up, or you already got it, or you don't. And that was a lot of pressure. Whereas everywhere in the military, outside of those first two years, like, I knew people there. I went to a school, I had a homeboy there, right? It's like, there was no confusion about what the standards were. It was like, I knew enough people that was like, different, and that's where I'm showing up, and I'm like, they don't know me from Adam. I have a call sign now. They don't even know who Steve Bunting is, they don't care. And you're either gonna make it, or you're not. And it was a lot of pressure, man.

• 2:36:24Shawn Ryan?

  Doesn't sound like much has changed.

• 2:36:28Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:36:28Shawn Ryan?

  Where was your first deployment with the agency?

• 2:36:30Speaker 06

  Uh, Kabul.

• 2:36:31Shawn Ryan?

  Kabul?

• 2:36:32Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:36:34Shawn Ryan?

  Anything significant?

• 2:36:36Speaker 06

  Yeah, uh, not much, but because I was an 18 Delta grad, I got to do some cooler stuff there. So anytime there was an opportunity to push out to Muzari Sharif, or push out to, uh, uh, anywhere in the country, I got to see the whole country. So anywhere there was a site or a team there, I was, I was flying around and got to kinda do that type of stuff. So my eyes were open to that. This was pretty interesting.

• 2:36:58Shawn Ryan?

  Cool. What did you, what did you think about the culture at CIA versus the culture within a Marsoc?

• 2:37:06Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:37:07Shawn Ryan?

  I'll bet that was a staunch difference for you.

• 2:37:10Speaker 06

  Well, dude, yeah. When it came to the GRS teams themselves, like, there's just a lot of disgruntled people, man. Yep, a lot of disgruntled people, people really angry, right? And I don't blame them, but you could see, you could see it on their eyes, you could hear it in their story, where it's like, they're on their fifth divorce, right? They, they don't know what to do outside of that type of work. And it's almost like, they're very good what they did, and I know they took pride in it, but it almost, for me, looking, they look like they were prisoners to this process now. And that was, in the very beginning, I realized, I was like, oh dang, like, you can't become a slave to the money. You can't become a slave to this lifestyle, and it's almost hard to do both. To, to work at that up-tempo and have a family and anything else, right? And then when it came to the agency themselves, I learned a lot there as well.

• 2:37:56Speaker 06

  Right? Just how deeply political things are. Right? It was different than the Marine Corps side of the house. There's only one game in the Marine Corps and that's

• 2:38:06Speaker 06

  seeking kill the enemy, right? And here there was very much a political thing to everything that we did. And it that became revealed to me pretty quickly as well. Yeah, yeah. How many tours did you do with them? I did three with them. Three? Yeah.

• 2:38:21Speaker 06

  You want to go into it? Yeah.

• 2:38:24Speaker 06

  Um, that first one really was just, you know how it is, driving around a lot, just giving people rides and things like that. Um, the second trip, because I was a eighteen Delta, they gave me the opportunity to go out to coast. And I was asking dudes around, I'm like, what's up with that? And they're like, yeah, it's the real deal out there. All right, it ain't the city life. You're not doing the, you know, taxi cab driving out there. You're out there figuring out some stuff. So I jumped on it. I was like, okay, cool. I didn't really like, you know, cobble so much anyways, which is too dynamic. You know how it is. So I get out to coast and it's a smaller team. Right? And the things that you're doing have greater consequences. And then there's other aspects of the people that are on that camp that make it a little bit different of an experience. So I get out there that first trip with them and it was in the winter and it was kind of dead.

• 2:39:08Speaker 06

  But I start getting to know some of the directs, start to build a relationship with some of the the other guys that are working there that I'm working intimately with. And um, start becoming friends with them. It was like kind of a cool little camp there. Also, you know, for the ground guys that were out there, I had friends from the Marine Corps that were in there. So I was like, oh, man, I got homies here. Like, everyone's not as miserable. Here, it seems like everyone's out here like wants to be out here. And it was kind of good. And so that trip was like a little unremarkable. But then the third trip I went was like kind of where things changed for me. Yeah, it was it was in the summer. It was in um, the summer of twenty nineteen. Right, and Afghanistan's kind of falling apart at this point, right? Just due to the politics, some of the policies they're pushing in there.

• 2:39:50Speaker 06

  It was, it was the secret rumblings of what we saw happen with the fall of Afghanistan is, I found myself at the very edge of that. I was kind of watching that happen and, you know, seeing it being facilitated around me. And, uh, you know, for me as a Delta on the, on their team, some of the other guys that were leaving the wire and doing more kinetic stuff, I had friends there. So they'd hit me up and they'd be like, "Hey, Slidlock, will you go on, will you go on, um, QRF with us?" So I'm like, "Yeah, okay." Yep, so I caught myself kind of going on QRF a few times, trying to help them out. And things just kind of shifted there. Uh, their partner nation force was getting chewed up, dude. And, um, I just kept finding myself like jumping on some of those ops and, and running out there next,

• 2:40:33Speaker 06

  you know, my elbows deep in, in blood and just doing the medical stuff and being in that environment again that I, I wanted to be in so much, but it was just hitting different this time. What was different? It was just, I, I think it was, to be honest, I think it was just my body was just worn out, dude. I think the nervous system was gone. You know, in the beginning you get that rush and it, it's like the adrenaline hits and all this stuff. And now even at that level, it's just the numbness was becoming greater than anything. Right where I catch myself doing situations that used to light me on fire and had me fired up. And I'm just like, kind of numb to it. Did you realize that immediately? I didn't, but it, it started to, started to raise its head pretty quickly, right? What did you notice? Well, for me, it was the insomnia started happening really bad.

• 2:41:18Speaker 06

  Right where I couldn't sleep at all. Like I was struggling every single night to go to sleep. And it was just, uh, getting severe insomnia where I couldn't stop my mind from racing. It's like no matter what I was doing, I couldn't, couldn't get any peace from that. And, um, that's when I started kind of meditating at this point to try and figure out how to get to sleep. But, um, it's worn pretty thin, um, at this point. Still on the bottle, heavy? Yeah. Anything else? No, at this point, I think, um, I was having severe back pain and this stuff called kratom. Have you heard of that? Mm-hmm. Yeah, that was kind of a hot thing back then. It was an uncontrolled substance and, you know, it was supposed to be good for pain. It's better than, you know, opioids.

• 2:42:01Speaker 06

  And I remember that's, I started kind of dipping in on that kratom stuff. Started consuming that and, um, yeah, it was not helping anything. It's actually making everything worse.

• 2:42:11Shawn Ryan?

  Well, kudos to you for being a medic that's not self medicating from the uh supply. Maybe the first time I've ever seen that, to be honest with you.

• 2:42:18Speaker 06

  It's very common, man. It's very common. It's hard not to when it's right there.

• 2:42:22Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:42:23Speaker 06

  Between the tramadol and nubain and all that.

• 2:42:25Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:42:26Speaker 06

  You know, we had a few people die along the way from that. There were medics. Um, so I knew better than to mess with that stuff, but the booze and the cratum was something I was probably hitting pretty heavy back then.

• 2:42:36Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:42:37Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:42:39Speaker 06

  But there was this one situation that happened there that kind of turned it, like, turned me away from the whole process. Is um, at this time, they were starting to use drones to do reconnaissance on the camp, right there where we were at. And they'd run drones over and find out where all the UTVs and stuff are parked. And then that night, they would either mortar or shoot rockets in. So part of this, the static guys, like, part of their job was shooting uh, uh, drones out of the sky. Um, I was also a crypt, I was the uh, a radio guy, a comm guy, because I'm a newer guy, right? So like, slide lock your own all the comm. I'm like, great, thanks. So I'm in charge of rolling all that stuff every other day. So as part of my routine, I would grab all the radios and I would go into the, the uh, the static side of the house. They're always happier. They seem like they had a better life.

• 2:43:24Speaker 06

  And the GRS guys were disgruntled, angry. I could barely have conversations with them. And those guys were always having a party.

• 2:43:29Shawn Ryan?

  No shit?

• 2:43:30Speaker 06

  Yeah. I mean, there's some good dudes. They're not all bad, but you know, it's a different energy. And then guys didn't want to sit in the team house, in the team room there, whereas the static guys were always hanging out, having a party in there. Yeah. So I grab all my stuff and I bring it in there to their room. And I'm just coking and joking with them, talking shit, watching all the cameras. And um, they had like this little game that they would play, that a barrel of shotguns, right? And whenever a drone would come over, whoever got to the shotgun first could run out there and they could, they could take the drone out, right? So I'm sitting here at this little, it's their little comm desk, and I got all my damn, you know, radios, the truck radios. And I'm sitting there just jamming radios. And um, they're like, we got, we got some drone guys. I'm like, okay, so everyone stops.

• 2:44:10Speaker 06

  They kind of zoom in, the G-boss or whatever, and we see them. And they're crept down outside of one of the barriers outside the camp. And they're sitting there and it looks like they're setting the drones up. So we're waiting, we're waiting for that drone to take off, right? Because then someone can grab a shotgun and whoever gets out there can do it. That's before they were using exploding drones and stuff, thank God. So we're all sitting there waiting. And the guy that's on the sticks is like, okay, I'm gonna zoom in. No one gets to go yet. Like, I'm gonna zoom in. We're like, alright. So he zooms in a little bit further. And Sean, when he zoomed in, what I saw, I was like, oh my god, dude. It was a mom and her child. And they were squat squatting down and they were fishing food out of our gray water. Yep. And I saw it and I was like, ah, man. I was like, what am I doing?

• 2:44:55Speaker 06

  What am I doing here? Like, I don't want any of this anymore. You know, I was like, I don't want to be a part of this no more. I don't want to hurt no more people. Like, there's no way I could justify it for myself anymore that us being there was doing any good. And it killed me, bro. It killed me. I was so sad. I know. I got back from that trip. We had a pretty rocky trip after that. A lot of tax on the camp and things like that. And, um, I resigned. Yep, I resigned. I called called the company and said, I made up an excuse. It was over some AFAM pay or something. They had shorted me like 200 bucks. So I used that as my reason to, you know, resign and I resigned.

• 2:45:33Shawn Ryan?

  Why didn't you just tell them?

• 2:45:36Speaker 06

  I don't know. I didn't want to feel weak. Like, I didn't want to feel like a coward. Like, for me to come to terms with that, I I didn't know how to sit with that either, man. But that's absolutely what it was, where it just it killed the warrior in me. Like, I couldn't justify that behavior anymore. And I didn't even want to explain it. So I knew arguing about money was was an easy argument. They're used to having that argument. So I used that as my scapegoat to just say, it ain't gonna work out for me no more.

• 2:46:02Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 2:46:03Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:46:03Shawn Ryan?

  Had you chatted with your wife before about leaving? Or was that like an instantaneous, I'm done, I'm done?

• 2:46:10Speaker 06

  Yeah, I don't remember if I discussed that with her or not.

• 2:46:13Shawn Ryan?

  Was she happy?

• 2:46:14Speaker 06

  Um, oh, yeah. She hated it.

• 2:46:16Shawn Ryan?

  How old was your son when you quit?

• 2:46:18Speaker 06

  Yeah, he was probably, he's 15 now. Probably eight or nine. And I had a daughter too.

• 2:46:26Shawn Ryan?

  How old was your daughter?

• 2:46:27Speaker 06

  Yeah, she was a baby. I had, we had her on my second trip.

• 2:46:30Shawn Ryan?

  Had you, had you worked on your relationship with your son since you had heard when his dad leaving again?

• 2:46:38Speaker 06

  Yeah. So at the time of the military, I didn't, I just put it on the back burner and didn't pay attention to it. But once I got out, like I went all in on coaching.

• 2:46:46Shawn Ryan?

  Out of the agency or out of the military?

• 2:46:48Speaker 06

  Out of the military. So in that gap there, I was like all in on coaching. So I was coaching him in baseball, coaching him on football, and I felt like every, if I could just spend that time, even though it was very structured and we're doing it in that manner, I felt like I was getting some time back. So I just became as, as dedicated to that as possible. Right? Which I think if he was here today, he'd say probably it's not good enough, but you know, that was my, my thinking. Right? It's like I can make some of this time back and spend time with him, coaching him.

• 2:47:15Shawn Ryan?

  He would have, he would have said it was not good enough.

• 2:47:17Speaker 06

  Well, I don't think that's what he wanted. Like, I don't think that's what he needed. Right? He just needed his dad just to be approachable, like be sensitive. To allow him.

• 2:47:26Shawn Ryan?

  Tell you that?

• 2:47:28Speaker 06

  No, he's never told me that. Yeah, I think he would though. Probably needed a dad that would let him be sensitive too. I didn't have a lot of room for that. It's too busy thinking I had to build this man and build this like warrior and not let a little boy be a little boy.

• 2:47:46Shawn Ryan?

  I think a lot of guys from our background do that.

• 2:47:50Speaker 06

  Yeah, man.

• 2:47:52Speaker 06

  We got a lot of work ahead of us.

• 2:47:53Shawn Ryan?

  How are you guys today?

• 2:47:55Speaker 06

  Good, man. Good. We're working on it. But um, there's still more work.

• 2:48:03Speaker 06

  I want him to know that I know that. Whenever he's ready, I'm ready. I'm gonna do my best to keep working on myself so that when he's ready, that I'm gonna have open ears. I'm not gonna let any of my shit get in the way of that. And that he has a right to feel the way he feels. He does. Whenever he's ready, we can, we can talk about it.

• 2:48:21Shawn Ryan?

  Do you think he's gonna watch us?

• 2:48:22Speaker 06

  Yeah, for sure.

• 2:48:27Shawn Ryan?

  Are you gonna watch it together?

• 2:48:29Speaker 06

  Yeah, I'm very proud of this, so I think he's very proud of me, too.

• 2:48:35Shawn Ryan?

  What are you gonna say to him when you get to this part?

• 2:48:38Speaker 06

  Tell him I love him and I mean it.

• 2:48:42Speaker 06

  I know it hasn't been easy for him and I'm sorry. I wasn't well. I was trying to figure it out, too. I didn't have any examples. There's no excuse, but I didn't know what I was doing and I do now. He did deserve better and, um, yeah, like everything he experienced is valid. Any feelings that he has is valid and I'll never tell him he's wrong. I'll never try and silence him about it and that I love him tremendously. And for the rest of my life, I promise to do it better.

• 2:49:17Shawn Ryan?

  How are you and your wife today?

• 2:49:18Speaker 06

  So good, man.

• 2:49:21Speaker 06

  Yeah, so good, dude.

• 2:49:24Speaker 06

  Yeah, once I started healing, dude, I didn't even realize what I had. I think deep down, I thought I didn't deserve it. Once I started kind of working through it, I'm so grateful to have her on the other side. It's like, oh, my God, like, I don't know how I got to marry such a saint, right? And I got to marry someone that was so hard, just as hard as me in so many ways when it comes to not quitting. And that would have the patience for us to get where we are today. Like eighteen years of marriage, I'm like, dude, who I would have never believed it could be as good as it is.

• 2:49:58Shawn Ryan?

  I saw you did, um, some psychedelic therapy. How fast did you get into that before, what, after you left the agency?

• 2:50:07Speaker 06

  Man.

• 2:50:09Speaker 06

  It was not long after that.

• 2:50:12Shawn Ryan?

  Months, year?

• 2:50:13Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:50:16Speaker 06

  Yeah, it was within, it was, so I got done twenty nineteen, then the whole world shut down for COVID in twenty twenty. So in between my agency gigs, I was doing high threat personal security for another company. So even when I was back, I'm still going down to Mexico, going down to Panama, things like that. And, um, so.

• 2:50:33Shawn Ryan?

  You had like zero time at home.

• 2:50:35Speaker 06

  Yeah, I was.

• 2:50:36Shawn Ryan?

  You're just gone.

• 2:50:37Speaker 06

  Spent the least amount of time.

• 2:50:38Shawn Ryan?

  All the time.

• 2:50:38Speaker 06

  Yep, just had a North Face bag that I switched out chonies here and there and was off to the races to the next thing. So I felt like at least if I could provide for my family, I'm good enough. Maybe I can't be there emotionally. Maybe I'm no leader to lead this family. But at least if I can keep money in the bank, then I can look in the mirror at least, or try to look in the mirror. Yeah, so 2020 hit. It was just kind of rough, man. Watching the whole world flipped upside down. You know, throughout my time in the military, I'd, we'd game plan very similar scenarios. And it was hard for me to not think there was some malicious intent going on. And then to see the way people acted, and it's not their fault, but it just got crazy overnight. And um, we ended up losing my, my wife's dad to it.

• 2:51:22Speaker 06

  We had to watch him pass away on, on Skype. And I was mad, man. I was mad. I was so angry. I felt like it was like crimes against humanity that we would, we would not allow people to be with their loved ones as they're transitioning from this world. You know? Also, the calls started coming, dude. Once I got out of the military, Sean, like I was getting calls like almost every other day, it felt like of people committing suicide. When I first got out of the military, like part of my game plan was, so my, my brother and his wife dissolved their marriage and they had a son. And then my brother just started to spiral. And when he got out, he had a TBI related diagnosis because he had a significant traumatic brain injury from those two one five fives that he stepped on.

• 2:52:05Speaker 06

  And um, they put him on the cop, they put him on the psych cocktail. Right, where he's on everything from Vivance to, to the antidepressants to the Xanax. And I remember he would call me and he's like, dude, my life's falling apart. I feel like a zombie. And he's like, I need to get off these meds. His relationship with his wife dissolved and I, I just got out of the military. So I was like, I'm gonna get my ride or die back, dude. So I hit up Mitch, I'm like, come with me to California. Come with me, we'll get you out here, we'll find a new purpose. We'll find you a little Latina too, and you'll be good to go. She'll take care of you, she'll get you squared away. And we can be together again, man. Because I'm gonna need help, I don't know what I'm gonna do. And I was a little bit afraid too. So he's like, okay. So we start working through that process. Right, and as he starts trying to wean himself off his medication,

• 2:52:49Speaker 06

  he ends up having a seizure from the Xanax withdrawal. And he was driving, so he ends up getting a neurology um restraint on him that they have to monitor him for six months before he can leave and get his license back. He's trying to tell him, he's like, hey, it's from the Xanax. I don't have, you know, epilepsy. But he gets tied up in that. So that delays our process. So he kept wanting to come to California and I was like, Mitch, just wait. Go to that last neurology appointment. Get your license back because you're gonna need it in California. You're not walking nowhere out here. Everyone that you want to see, all our grandparents and stuff, you gotta drive to. And he's like, okay. But as he started to kind of work his way through that process, he started to spiral. Right? Started doing some of the cliche things that like we all know. We started giving away all his stuff, dude. Started giving away his uniform.

• 2:53:35Speaker 06

  Had, gave away his medals, his Purple Heart to like strangers. And he whittled his way all the way down to a backpack.

• 2:53:42Speaker 06

  He ended up losing his house, ended up losing his car. And he ends up going and staying with my grandparents, which I was a little bit relieved about. I was like, yeah, he can make it there. They'll feed him, take care of him. Then we can get him out to California. But he was, uh, supposed to come out and he ended up going and getting his tonsils taken out. He's like, hey, I'm gonna go get my tonsils taken out. They gave me a lot of issues. When they did, they gave him a lot of narcotics, right? And he came home one day while he was in that healing process. He was supposed to come out like a week later. He just went in the bedroom and took all his pills. Took everything, drank all the codeine, took all his Ambien, all his stuff and laid down and passed away that night.

• 2:54:20Speaker 06

  Damn, man. Yeah.

• 2:54:24Speaker 06

  I'm sorry. That one sucked, man.

• 2:54:28Speaker 06

  If I would have just like brought him sooner, maybe we could have mitigated that. And then dude, just like his whole life, bro. His whole life, like just fucking sucked, dude. He never got a easy shake a day in his life. Like from the beginning to the end, it was just tragedy. And that poor kid suffered so much. Like he suffered so much.

• 2:54:54Speaker 06

  And even he was so proud to be a Marine, right? So proud to get that. And even in that, it like, it took it all from him.

• 2:55:02Speaker 06

  Dude, like when I lost Mitch, I was like, man, just another, that pit of darkness for me just grew a little bit deeper.

• 2:55:10Speaker 06

  And that's when I kind of went into contracting too. When it was like after Mitch died, I was like, I don't really care anymore. Right? There's like, deep down inside Sean, I just kind of wished I would have died in combat, to be honest with you. I was a bit reckless too. Like I pushed the envelope. I didn't need to like volunteer to go on the QRS I was going on. There was something deeper inside of me. I wasn't suicidal man, but I was like, at least if I can die a hero, at least my son can be like, my dad was a badass. Right? Maybe people would like, speak highly of me, but I felt so dark, dude. I like hated myself deep down inside.

• 2:55:43Speaker 06

  So that was like one part of it, right? Another part is like, once I got out, I got out with like almost a max exodus of friends. So the ones that didn't go to damn neck, they got out too. They're like, we can't, peacetime Marine Corps is not the place to be. And they're like, we, we gotta get out. And um, I got really close with one of my friends, Dan, was my best friend, went to Corps School together. We're at recon, cut our teeth at recon together, was at Marsoc together. And um, he got out. He uh, sustained a pretty significant traumatic brain injury as well in Afghanistan on the trip before mine. And um, got bed discharged. So me and, me and uh, Dan became besties, right? Even closer. And we made a pact because we're getting phone calls of friends that had passed, right? They were committing suicide, it was happening all the time.

• 2:56:26Speaker 06

  And I remember calling Dan and I was like, dude, we're not doing this. He's like, we're not doing this, brother. It's like, I don't care what's going on anywhere in this world, I'll come get you. I'll come get you, like, I'm here for you, we're not doing this. He's like, we're not doing this. So we made that pact that we wouldn't commit suicide and we'd be there for each other. And start working through this process. And um, as I get done with contracting, you know, going into 2020, um, you know, I started kind of working into that, that plant medicine space. Right? Start working in the plant medicine space.

• 2:56:56Shawn Ryan?

  Where'd you hear about it?

• 2:56:57Speaker 06

  Um, well, first off, there was some, remember there was some guy on the East Coast? I can't think of his name right now, but he was setting up a nonprofit to help veterans get into that space.

• 2:57:09Speaker 06

  Right? And I was like, huh, what's up with all that? Like, that's kind of, kind of odd. And deep down inside, I knew that like, I wasn't well. But I didn't know, like, I didn't, I was like, you're just gonna eat mushrooms and be better? It didn't make sense to me, right? Um, but then I started kind of doing the research and started learning about like, uh, the roller carts project. With Jesse Golden, seeing what they're doing and like the mission within. And I was like, okay, there's something to this. Right? So I reached out to that guy and, uh, he was like, yeah, do you, do you want to have an experience? I'm like, oh, yeah, I think so. I think so. It sounds like maybe it would help. Maybe I'm like a good candidate. I'm gonna start going through their process and they're like, yeah, you are, you are a good candidate. Right? And they ended up getting me funding and, you know, Martine took care of me. And that's how I got my first kind of trip to, uh, to Mexico. And you did mushrooms?

• 2:57:54Speaker 06

  No, it was the ibogaine and five me O D M T with the mission within.

• 2:57:59Speaker 06

  Yeah. Do you want to talk about that experience? Yeah, I think so. Yeah, man. Cause I, I came into that experience not really knowing, right? Didn't have a clue, you know, I'd heard.

• 2:58:12Speaker 06

  You know, you hear the cliche things about psychedelics, right? You see, see sounds and hear colors and all that stuff. And I'm thinking like, maybe that's gonna be the case. And I really had no reference point for what this was gonna be like. Right? So I come down there and it's, uh, You, you hadn't talked to, you haven't really talked to anybody that had done it? No. You're just.

• 2:58:34Speaker 06

  Wow. Okay. Yeah. So you, you're just like, whatever, I'm fucking desperate. Yeah. Let's do it. Yeah, people are packing themselves off all around me. I know I wasn't in a good spot and, um, had an opportunity to go, so I went. Yep. So I get down there and, you know, I'm there with a bunch of dudes that are like high level operators. Right? Guys from all the different units that they write books about and stuff. And I'm sitting there and I'm amongst giants here in this group. And, um, we're all kind of telling the same story. Right? And, um, as we kind of go into the experience. I didn't really have a reference for it, but they give you like two little pills. Right? Of the ibogaine from the, uh, iboga tabernath plant from Gabon. Right? I guess they scrape the root bark off of there and get the alkaloids and, and create this medicine.

• 2:59:18Speaker 06

  Um, so as I take the medicine, I remember I go up and we, we have these mats and they hook you up to some, uh, cardio monitoring devices and stuff so they can check your heart rate and everything through it. And I go in and I kind of lay down and I just start waiting. I remember I had a little bit of anxiety because I'm like, I don't know what this is gonna be like. But as I'm laying there. I start to hear what sounds like tornado sirens, right? And being from Alabama, there was a lot of nights that I said a prayer and laid in that trailer park bed and just was like, if this tornado gets us, it gets us. Like I, I survived a couple tornadoes in Alabama. So I was like, it's, it was all familiar sound. So I start hearing that whirring. The next thing I know, I, I see some like, almost like pink smoke and these words come out of it.

• 3:00:01Speaker 06

  And the word was compassion. And then next thing I know, the I O N just falls and it lands. And I look down and there's sand and there's a compass there. I see the compass and I look up and it says compass. So it's compassion, I O N falls off, turns to a compass. And I look up and it's like, compassion's gonna be your way. It's gonna be your compass. And I'm like, uh oh, like what's going on? Things start shifting. I'm, I'm totally being removed essentially from this experience. And next thing I know, I come into what looks like, almost like a movie of my life. And Sean, as it starts to become clear, I'm standing in that living room as a young boy, right? That, that HUD housing apartment complex.

• 3:00:44Speaker 06

  And I see myself laying in the floor in the corner and my brother, and I see this guy over the top of us. I see the coffee stains on the floor. I see the closet that won't close because the vacuum cleaner handle that would always pushing it open. I smell the smoke. I hear the TV playing and I'm like, oh no. Oh no, like what am I doing here? And essentially the medicine's kind of like, are you okay? And I'm like, I guess so, right? But what am I doing here? So I start kind of exploring the space and I walk around and what I notice is I kind of stopped there and I look and I see the guy's face is all pixelated, right? I can't see his face. And then I start having these memories of the nightmares I had as a kid.

• 3:01:25Speaker 06

  These nightmares that I had repressed of this guy molesting me and my brother, right? And I remember like in my dreams, I could never see his face.

• 3:01:36Speaker 06

  So the medicine was kinda asking me, I was like, hey, what do you want? What do you need in this? And I told her, I was like, I wanna see his face. So next thing I know, I'm sitting there and I can see the guy over me and his face comes into clarity. And I could see it, man. And I remembered it. I remembered it all of a sudden. And my initial thought when I first saw him was like, oh, man. Sean, when I looked into his eyes, I saw that same, that same pain. Right? I saw him not as someone that like hurt me and as a predator, but I could see the little boy in him that someone had hurt him. I remember I was sitting there in the medicine, I told him, I was like, dude, I forgive you. Like, I forgive you. Like, you didn't mean to do this to me. You didn't mean to hurt my brother. Right?

• 3:02:19Speaker 06

  Something, this happened to you. Right? And I wished him well. I said, I hope you figure it out. I hope you find the peace that I'm finding. Like, and I really wish you well and I forgive you. And something happened there in that process. Where like, there was like a part of me that was allowed to heal by seeing his face and by able to give him that compassion. But also what happened after that is it showed me every area of my life where that situation that happened to me impacted my ability to be intimate with my life. My ability to be compassionate for others. Right? The insecurities that had welled up inside of me throughout my life. Right? All these different spots that that, that situation that happened to me had created.

• 3:03:01Speaker 06

  And it allowed me to see it and almost put all those things back into place. Right? Something about spending time with that little Steve in that situation and finding some resolution there, dude, changed everything for me, man. Wow. Yeah. Anything with the five MEO? Yeah, well. Dude, the five, like the Ivo game, just, I feel like it just dredges everything up. Like it dredges everything to the top. Like stuff you didn't even realize that was playing a role in your life. It highlights it and brings it to the surface. And when you, the five MEO is like baptism for me. It felt like anything that was stuck to me after that process just was washed clean. Yeah, just a overwhelming amount of gratitude. I remember when I came out of that experience,

• 3:03:45Speaker 06

  it wasn't the most comfortable experience for me, but I just sat there and I ate this bowl of fruit and I cried and I laughed at the same time. And I was just so grateful, dude. So grateful. It felt like I could feel my heart again. That heart that I'd spent my entire life building this like brick layer around, felt like it was open again. Felt like there was fresh air hitting it and I didn't know how to take it. I just laughed and cried for thirty minutes, man. Just eating strawberries and I was like, oh my God. And I was so grateful because I thought I was never gonna feel that way again then.

• 3:04:16Speaker 06

  I thought that part of me was gone forever. And, um, man, I'm so grateful for Martine and what they do down there. Like, that, that experience undeniably changed my life.

• 3:04:32Shawn Ryan?

  It's done a lot of good for a lot of people.

• 3:04:36Shawn Ryan?

  You still feel like that?

• 3:04:38Speaker 06

  Yeah, man. Yeah. Nothing's perfect. There's no shortcuts. It's all work. That's one of the things that I really got to learn about the, like, I started working with Heroic Hearts not long after that, but the integration is everything, man. You know, people are thinking you're just going down to have a psychedelic experience. Like, that's this much of it, right? It's the prep work and the work after. And if you do the work after and you really dedicate it to a practice of taking care of yourself, really fall in love with yourself again, it can be for the rest of your life. Life ain't perfect. Stuff's still gonna happen. The universe is masters at throwing curveballs. They're endless. But how you hold, like, how much you love yourself plays a big role in how that affects you, right? And, um, it definitely helped me do that.

• 3:05:23Shawn Ryan?

  What was it like coming home from that?

• 3:05:25Speaker 06

  Man, well, one, there's two urges, right? One is to try and tell everybody I know, right? So the first one's like, everybody needs this, right? So you come back, you're like, guys, look what I found. And that, that can be difficult in its own, right? Because you're trying to bring something that's hard to convey in words to people that don't have a reference for it. And you can't force people to hell. They have to choose, right? So that's one lesson I had to learn there. And two, man, I came back and I remember I sat down on the carpet in front of my wife and I just cried, probably for the first time in her entire life, seeing me cry. And I just cried and I told her how sorry I was. I told her, I'm so sorry for all the shit I put you through, like all the suffering. I didn't mean to, right? But I did. And it was all very apparent for me.

• 3:06:06Speaker 06

  And I shared with her this revelation of like, I never talked to her about being molested as a kid. That was my dark secret, right? And I told her about all this stuff and I helped her see that it was having an impact on every part of my life. And she was a victim to some of that as well. And dude, she just cried with me. And she's kind of sat there and she's like, okay. And then I also shared with her, I said, Hey, you know what? Like, I haven't been the best husband, but I think that you do deserve this experience. As the spouse of me, as a spouse of a special operator, as a spouse of anyone that kind of has to go along this, they're not, sometimes they get forgotten, right? As the spouses, that every bit of Steve's chaos, there was a woman back there equally confused, equally insecure about things,

• 3:06:48Speaker 06

  equally desperate for love and connection, right? And I told her, I said, Hey, like I need, I want, I think it would be a good idea for you to go have an experience as well. Like you deserve the healing. And even if that means you go down there and you see things that you can't turn a blind eye to anymore about me, I'm willing to risk that because you deserve to heal. And it took her a little while, but she did. She did do it. She did, man. Yeah. How did that turn out? So beautiful, man. So beautiful. She went down with a women's group of veteran women. Well, she's a veteran too, but spouses, they went down there and just loved on each other, man. I think they did a, they did a psilocybin retreat and a 5MEO retreat. They do it a little bit different for the women. And she came back and she had a very similar experience.

• 3:07:32Speaker 06

  She said, Steve, a lot of the issues that I had with you that I thought were you was actually my stuff. I have childhood stuff too, that I never told you about.

• 3:07:42Speaker 06

  Like she, she'd been suffering by herself too, man. She'd eaten all that stuff too. Cause in her culture too, they don't talk about that stuff. It happens so much to them. Little, little girls in their culture, it's like dude, the uncles and stuff predate on them and it's very common. And they try to expose it and they get slapped down. They get ostracized, right? And she, that poor woman had to feel dirty too. She had to carry all of that. She never told a soul. She just ate it. And when she went down there and was able to reconcile with that and see it, dude, it opened up, it brought down those barriers in her heart and allowed us to finally connect, man, for the first time in my life and the first time in our relationship.

• 3:08:26Speaker 06

  We had no clue, man. I had no clue.

• 3:08:29Shawn Ryan?

  Good for you guys, man.

• 3:08:30Speaker 06

  Yeah, man. Yeah.

• 3:08:34Shawn Ryan?

  And that was the beginning.

• 3:08:35Speaker 06

  Oh, man. Once I saw that, I was like, oh, there's something to this. There's something to this self-love thing. There's something to like taking care of yourself. There's something to being connected to God, right? I had a very spiritual experience, right? Where it's like I felt reconnected to God, which I didn't feel connected for a long time. Coming from my upbringing in the church and seeing what I saw in war and kind of losing myself to that process. I felt very distant and I didn't realize how important that spiritual component was to this. Right? We don't always talk about that part either, but it's just as important as sleeping right. It's like having, anywhere there's a void, we'll try to fill it. And there was a big void for me at this point with my religion and like spirituality.

• 3:09:19Speaker 06

  And when I was able to feel that redemption, right? When I was able to feel that connection again, it's like that, out of everything, really healed, healed me in a lot of ways.

• 3:09:29Shawn Ryan?

  Good for you, dude.

• 3:09:30Speaker 06

  Yeah, thank you.

• 3:09:34Shawn Ryan?

  Let's take a quick break and then when we come back, we'll get into Sharp Performance.

• 3:09:43Shawn Ryan?

  Want more from the Sean Ryan Show? Join our Patreon today for more clips and exclusive content. You'll get an exclusive look behind the scenes where you can watch the guests interact with the team and explore the studio before every episode. Plus, unlock bonus content like our extra intel segments where we ask our guests additional questions. Our new SRS onsite specials and access to an entire tactical training library you will not find anywhere else. And the best part? Patreon members can ask our guests questions directly. Your insights can help shape the show. Join us on Patreon now, support the mission and become part of the Sean Ryan Show's story.

• 3:10:27Shawn Ryan?

  Lot of dark stuff going on in the world right now and it's to the point where I don't even believe my own eyes anymore because I cannot verify what people are saying about all the political violence, the division. I partnered with this production company called Ironclad and we're doing an eight-part audio series on psyops, on why foreign countries, governments, maybe even our own government, would conduct a psyop on its own people. And I just think that, that this series is going to be extremely important because it's going to open the eyes of people on why these things happen. You can head over to psyopschool.com, order it today.

• 3:11:10Shawn Ryan?

  I think you're gonna get a lot out of this. Who's pulling the strings? Who's pulling them?

• 3:11:22Shawn Ryan?

  Alright Steve, we're back from the break. We just got done wrapping up your, your psychedelic therapy session. I'm just curious, I didn't ask you this before the break, but how are you on the booze?

• 3:11:35Speaker 06

  It's not an issue, yeah. My relationship changed with a lot of things. I realized that although I was kind of a slave to some of these things and these substances, I think once I repaired my relationship with myself, then those voids that I was trying to fill, like materialistic things like booze, and that need to numb disappeared. So I'll have a, I'll have a good hazy IPA with friends, but my, my relationship with it's never been the same.

• 3:12:04Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I've been at a drop for almost four years. It'll be four years this February.

• 3:12:08Speaker 06

  That's awesome, dude.

• 3:12:09Shawn Ryan?

  Since, uh, since my initial, and only, I began, uh, therapy session, but it's powerful stuff, man.

• 3:12:18Speaker 06

  Yeah, good for you for doing that.

• 3:12:19Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you.

• 3:12:20Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's such a great way to give yourself some self-love, so not, not pour poison into your brain.

• 3:12:25Shawn Ryan?

  Dude, it's like, when I did that, it was like, it just revealed to me everything that was poison or toxic, or it, it, relationships, drugs, alcohol, substances, all that. It just, it like fucking surfaced it all and put it right in front of my face without actually putting it right in front of my, it was like an intuitive, it was like a, a, a sixth sense was just acquired after doing that. But, um, but-

• 3:12:56Shawn Ryan?

  I know you have some concerns. It doesn't work for everybody. So I wanted to just dive into that with you as well.

• 3:13:01Speaker 06

  Yeah. Well, it's just a word of caution, I think, right? In the West, we have a bad habit of just overdoing everything, right? It's just like the Western consumerized world and the way we do, we think more is better. And we just have a tendency to take even the best things and almost bastardize them. So what I want to say is like, you know, something that hit on earlier, just the importance of integration, right? Just knowing that there's no shortcuts in this process of life, right? There's no shortcuts, right? You got to do the work. And just like you just shared, like, there's almost a knowing that comes to you, but the onus is on you to follow through with it. Just like you said, I'm not going to drink another drop because

• 3:13:42Speaker 06

  it's been revealed to me. Now I have a responsibility. But there's no shortcuts. The other part too is I want to highlight that it's like, you know,

• 3:13:51Speaker 06

  sometimes if you have other mental health conditions, it's important to be aware of that, right? Certain, you know, different mental health conditions, whether it be schizophrenia, things like that, right? If you go into this space, you know, unintentionally, you can sometimes do more harm.

• 3:14:07Speaker 01

  Mr. President, my company told me of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me. Tom Cruise is.

• 3:14:18Speaker 03

  Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us out. From the director of Birdman and the Revenant.

• 3:14:24Speaker 04

  What would happen if I stopped drilling? You're stalled, you're freezing there, that's what.

• 3:14:28Speaker 02

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 3:14:31Speaker 04

  I'm not the first then.

• 3:14:33Speaker 02

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a middle without parent.

• 3:14:37Speaker 04

  Priceline Negotiator.

• 3:14:40Speaker 07

  It's me, the.

• 3:14:41Speaker 04

  Priceline Negotiator.

• 3:14:43Speaker 07

  We don't need the jingle twice.

• 3:14:44Speaker 04

  What about a third time?

• 3:14:46Speaker 07

  Stop it. This is about vacation inflation and how Priceline negotiates amazing deals on hotels, flights, and rental cars.

• 3:14:53Speaker 04

  Seems like they just started.

• 3:14:55Speaker 07

  Yeah, but I didn't mention that you can save up to 60% off hotels in the Priceline app.

• 3:14:59Speaker 04

  Time to read the timeline.

• 3:15:01Speaker 07

  Fine. No one deals more deals than. Priceline. Please stop. Priceline. Touche. Priceline. Priceline.

• 3:15:08Shawn Ryan?

  You know, one thing that I've noticed, and it's not with anybody, and I'm not talking about anybody in particular, but.

• 3:15:18Shawn Ryan?

  I've had friends, acquaintances, one thing I've noticed with the psychedelic stuff is that, you know, you get, just like you were saying, in the West, especially with special ops guys, we have a tendency to overindulge in just about anything we get into. Oh, yeah. And, um, and what I've noticed is there, you know, with, with some, with some folks, they just keep fucking going back. They keep going back. And it's like, they're going back every month. They're going back every couple of weeks. They're exploring all the, all the other psychedelics, which I'm not saying exploring all the psychedelics

• 3:15:59Shawn Ryan?

  is a bad thing. I'm not saying it's a good thing. I've tried a lot of them myself. But I always try to learn from the experience and implement that into my life. And what I've noticed is with, with, with, with some of us, it's, they just want to live in that realm. Yeah. You know, and it, it's almost like, it's almost like that they give that realm more credit than the one that we actually fucking live in. And it's like, hey, man, like, this is where we all live. This is where your family is. This is where your friends are. This is where you need to fucking be. Mm-hmm. So, let's come back to reality. Absolutely. You know, and, and, uh, and they, and, and just like you were saying with the reintegration,

• 3:16:44Shawn Ryan?

  you know, the reintegration is the therapy sessions and, and reflecting on what you just experienced. And that, that should go on for weeks, you know, and, and, and people don't take it seriously and they just want to get back into it. And, and so, you know, if you want to heal yourself, then it, it, it is a lot more work than just eating psychedelics and hoping that everything miraculously changes right after that. So, uh, I think that's important to put out. Yeah. Cause I, I see that trend.

• 3:17:16Speaker 06

  Yeah, we're not being good stewards of the medicine either. Like, I believe that God created this world perfect and everything that we need is here. And luckily for us, there's been some indigenous people that have been holding on to this stuff for a long time. Right? We're actually finding a lot of value. And many of them that I've worked with and spoke with, they've been told to bring this to the West, because we need it. Right? The guys that I've worked with down in the Amazon, they're like, the jungle told us that if we didn't bring this to you guys, that we were going to lose the jungle and everything else. You went down to the Amazon? Yeah. You did this shit out in the woods? I have not done it in the Amazon, but I have worked with some Titus from the Amazon, right? Pretty intimately. And that's what they share is like, hey, it was a calling that God essentially told us that we

• 3:17:57Speaker 06

  got to heal the West, and if we don't start figuring this stuff out, then everyone's going to lose everything. Damn. Yeah, but that grounded piece is so important. You're right. We're exactly where we're supposed to be right here. To think that you need to be anywhere else is avoidant. Right? And we end up, they end up becoming avoidant in that. They use this as a scapegoat from this reality, but we're, the work we're supposed to do is here. Yeah. Right? And you gotta do integration, and it's gonna be for the rest of your life, too. Yeah. Right? There's no checks in the box here. Yeah, someone shared with me one time, it said, be wary of unearned wisdom. Right? And I caught myself, even myself guilty, trying to chase in that space, something else. Be wary of unarmed wisdom? Of unearned wisdom. Unearned wisdom. Yeah. What does that mean to you?

• 3:18:39Speaker 06

  That means like, uh, trying to, to seek out the answers, right? Trying to seek out things that, like, because in that space, like, you get connected to some stuff, right? And maybe some wisdom comes through. Or maybe thinking that there's something else, or that you need to have all the answers. Right? And not just trusting that you're exactly where you're supposed to be. Maybe if you're religious, trusting that there's a God's plan. And when you start trying to dig deep, especially in psychedelics, to figure out all the answers, like, you want to know the answers of God. Right? I think you can really find yourself ungrounded, as you referenced. And you can find yourself really struggling to be back in this world. Can be very difficult to re-assimilate here.

• 3:19:22Speaker 06

  And I've seen a lot of people suffer over the time, right? To include suicides. Where they were there, they probably figured out everything they needed to hear and learn in the first one or two sessions, right? But they kept going back, kept going back, and then you watch them just kind of fade, fade in front of you. Do you think there's a spiritual aspect to psychedelics? I do.

• 3:19:42Speaker 06

  I do, and I believe that, right? It's really easy with the medicine space to look at the science, right? Just look at the science and the neuroplasticity and all that. But the reason why I feel so strongly about it, because it was so important to me. So I'll just disclaim that. Like me being able to be reconnected to God in this process, like it's hard for me to deny that. And then that connection that I have and continue to foster each day is what keeps me on the path.

• 3:20:07Shawn Ryan?

  Do you believe you are in a spiritual realm when you're under the medicine?

• 3:20:12Speaker 06

  I think so. Yeah, I do believe so. There's something there that we can't quite explain. There's something to it. But you hear so many stories, man, and they say the same thing, right? How could you fabricate a psychedelic hallucination for everybody, right? It's like wherever you go is very predictable, like you've been there before. And it's just something I can't really explain without sounding too woo woo or crazy.

• 3:20:34Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:20:34Speaker 06

  But I do believe there's something like it's a real, real space, whatever it is.

• 3:20:38Shawn Ryan?

  I think there's a dark component as well. It needs to be very fucking careful.

• 3:20:43Speaker 06

  Goes both ways, right?

• 3:20:44Shawn Ryan?

  What you're playing with inside of those experiences.

• 3:20:47Speaker 06

  Yeah, you're opening yourself up to a lot of stuff. That's why it's like having intention of going in there, not just doing the stuff recreationally.

• 3:20:54Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:20:55Speaker 06

  It's not a game. You know, the, the titans that I've worked with in tradition, the person that was dealing with the ailment or the distress or the grief didn't take the medicine. The shaman, the tita took it. And in that space, they would work on where they need to heal and help the person.

• 3:21:11Shawn Ryan?

  Really?

• 3:21:12Speaker 06

  Yeah. And then over time, it started integrating where like, especially it was a Western thing where the actual person that was there seeking the help would take it. But this might happen, you might take, do this once in your lifetime, right? Maybe two times, max once a year. And now we got people in the space and they're doing psychedelic retreats every weekend. It's, our body wasn't built like this. The medicine wasn't designed for that. And it's kind of that Western ideology around it where we're like, just doing too much of a good thing becomes a bad thing. And, you know, I just wanted to kind of raise people's awareness of that, that none of this is a game. It's a very powerful medicine, but it must be respected. And the real work is you, you're the magic. There's no magic there. It's just a catalyst to get you to reconnect and do the work and that's your choice.

• 3:21:55Shawn Ryan?

  Well, thank you for sharing that.

• 3:21:56Speaker 06

  Yeah, thank you, brother.

• 3:21:58Shawn Ryan?

  Where do we go from here?

• 3:22:00Speaker 06

  Yeah, I think, you know, as I had that experience, I started to reveal, like, realize some things here. Right? And that's, that's this mind-body connection, which started leading me towards kind of going into the space of being a therapist and a coach.

• 3:22:15Speaker 06

  Yeah. One of the other things, too, that kind of led me down that path was, there's a couple of things, and I referenced Dan Brown prior. Being my best friend and my ride or die, and I talked about us making that pact together that we would not commit suicide. With Dan, um, sustained a very bad traumatic brain injury. Right? He's right next to him. He took a full, like, point-blank RPG back blast from one of the ANASF right there that threw him off a HESCO barrier and onto his head, and then received multiple TBIs after that, in that gunfight. And when Dan came back from that deployment, he wasn't the same. Right? He was having a lot of anger outburst, was just being really combative with leadership, and they didn't know what to do with him.

• 3:22:56Speaker 06

  And they were going to discipline him, but ultimately, he, he got discharged for a full, uh, medical retirement, which, which he deserved. But over the course of that time, of us being friends and transitioning out, me contracting, even finding plant medicine. Um, Dan was just having some difficulty, man. He was having some difficulty. Um, he went to the NICO clinic, he went to all these things. Like, if there was any stone left to turn, he had turned it from breathwork to meditation to just really modeling what it looks like to take care of themselves. But over the course of that time, he, he started to unravel a little bit. And, um, I think whatever was damaged in his brain from that TBI, you know, ultimately led to him taking his life.

• 3:23:39Speaker 06

  Damn, man. Yeah. And I, I remember, man, I was, you know, he had had some bouts, some tough bouts of mental health. You know, I had to fly out to Montana one time to get him, because he wasn't doing well. And it was just really tough to show up for him and to really take that that time with him. And I knew like for Mitch, my brother, I messed up so many things, man. Like I had so many regrets from not just like going and getting him initially, from not being as compassionate about what he was going through. Cause I didn't understand it at the time either. But I was trying to do that tough love thing that I'd done with him so many times to keep him safe. He didn't need any of that. He just needed me to be present and everything was a cry for help in hindsight. So when Dan started going through this process, like I really took it on. I said, I gotta do it right this time.

• 3:24:23Speaker 06

  I gotta try my best. But as as time went, he just started to just not do very good at all. Right up to the point where I received that phone call from his wife and I knew. And dude, I was laying in my bed and I remember she called me and I hadn't talked to Dan in probably a month. Cause he just kind of went radio silent. He'd moved from his house in Idaho. Um, we got on stage like hanging out with his brother in Reno after that. And then he ended up moving out to his family's house in Arkansas. And they were out in a, you know, 40 acre ranch, beautiful Amish country. His parents are salt of the earth, just tremendous. And I felt like deep down inside, that's exactly where he needed to be. Right. He's going to get out in nature and he was just going to be able to clear his head and things were going to be okay. But it just didn't end up being that way.

• 3:25:08Speaker 06

  You know, he'd had some bouts of psychosis and so came to some of that process. But when I got that phone call first, his brother Sam called me and um, I didn't get that call. But I woke up to his wife calling me Christina and I knew. As soon as I picked up my phone, I saw the missed call from Sam and I saw Christina, I knew deep down inside. So I ended up taking that call and um, like he did it. Yeah, he did it. And I was faced with the dilemma here, man. I wanted to be mad. I wanted to be angry, want to jump up and grab the bottle, want to go to the gym and hit the punching bag. But I said, you know what, Steve, I have a choice to do it different now this time. It's like this time, for the first time in my life, I'm gonna give myself permission not to run away from this.

• 3:25:52Speaker 06

  And I'm gonna lay right here and I'm gonna fill every bit of it. And dude, I laid in that bed and I cried, bro. I cried. Just deep guttural, just crying, just sobbing. And just cried. And when I felt like I couldn't cry no more, I cried more. And I probably laid in that bed for four hours and just laid there and cried. And dude, when I finally got up out of that bed, it felt like something was different. Like I felt like I was lighter. And I just started kind of laughing and crying. And I was talking to Dan. I was like, dude, even in your last act, you taught me something else. Right? And he helped me see the importance of the grieving process. And why it's so important that we don't hold that type of stuff in and we grieve well. And that's something I don't think we do in the West very well either. It's a very sterile process when someone passes.

• 3:26:36Speaker 06

  Right? We don't get to sit there with them and go through it as a community or anything. It's just very sterile. Where you do this, do this. You're at the funeral. Now they're in the ground. And it's like, kind of people just do what they do. And I had a huge revelation of what grief looks like. And how it could look like and how you can move through that process and heal. And it'll actually heal other things. Right? It's like it can be a catalyst that just draws out all this unresolved grief. And as you keep working through it, it's like you can actually heal in such a tremendous way. So I just kind of looked up at the heavens and I told Dan, thank you. I was like, thank you, brother, for this last lesson. Right? To really understand this. I might have carried this grief for the rest of my life. Until this opportunity to just cry like I just did. And it's been a big part of me kind of moving into the being a therapist, man.

• 3:27:22Speaker 06

  Really understanding, building my practice and my code about what I believe this is supposed to look like. And grief work's just been a huge part of it with so much loss that I've experienced.

• 3:27:32Shawn Ryan?

  Dan, man.

• 3:27:35Shawn Ryan?

  How did you get into coaching, therapy, stuff like that? I mean, it sounds like Dan put you there.

• 3:27:43Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 3:27:44Shawn Ryan?

  But what was the process?

• 3:27:46Speaker 06

  Yeah. So at this point, I was still, I was almost done. I was actually applying to PA school. Yale had a pretty good program. So I'd already submitted my letters of recommendation. I was still kind of hell bent on going and being a PA. And uh, one of these days, my wife's gonna kill me for telling the story, but it's okay. She uh, me and my wife decided that we were going to eat some mushrooms together. Right? The kids are at my in-laws and we're gonna spend some time and we had never done this before. Right? So we decided to take just a very small dose of, of, of psilocybin mushrooms. Right? We're gonna spend time on the couch and just reconnect and watch maybe The Wizard of Oz or something cute. Right? We had this cute little plan. But very quickly into it, things started not really going our way.

• 3:28:30Speaker 06

  Maybe I didn't do a good job of dosing or whatever it may be. But very quickly I realized, I'm like, uh-oh, like I don't know if this is gonna be sustainable. And two, like my wife started kinda acting a little bit different. She stopped, she stopped me and she said, you know what? She says, Steve, I gotta tell you this. I'm like, alright, Miha, like what is it? She's like, I feel like you're selling yourself short. I feel like you wanna go and be a P A because that's what you've always done and that's the easy path for you. Right? You wanna do that because that's what you're good at and you don't even have to try. She's like, but you're missing a gift. She's like, Steve, when you talk to people, they listen. She's a therapist at this point. She's like, you're always on the phone with everybody that needs something. They always call you and you spend hours and hours talking to these people. And she's like, you have a gift?

• 3:29:16Speaker 06

  She's like, and I have to tell you, like if you go be a P A, you're selling yourself short. You're doing the world a disservice and everyone, and people need you.

• 3:29:25Speaker 06

  And I got so mad at her, dude. So mad. Really? Yeah, cuz I'm in this space and I'm extra open, right? And she's just dissolving my reality. I did have this game plan. I had been working through this process through contracting, like the parts of the story is like, I'm coming back from these trips contracting and I'm on the, the contract and I'm typing papers till three in the morning. Right? So in between doing all that, I'm saying, I'm still doing homework. I never stopped doing all the work. And I'm like, dude, she's sitting here telling me that everything I did was for nothing. And I was so frustrated. I'm like, why would you do that? Why would you say that? Like, you know, this is what I wanna do. And I didn't talk to her for three days, man. I was so just disrupted by it. And then I finally sat with it and I was like, dude, I think she's right. Think she's right.

• 3:30:10Speaker 06

  And because of her, I chose to like come into this space. I was like, you know what? Maybe it is time for me to come into this space. Also, I'd had so many encounters with therapists and stuff that just didn't. I felt like they they didn't understand who I was, like I didn't jive. They just wanted to give me pills and I was like, maybe it's my time to step into this space. Maybe she's right. I can't keep blaming everybody else about this. I need to be the person to take it up. And I started um working on being a therapist. So I enrolled in a marriage and family therapy program and started just really becoming obsessed with this stuff, this mind body connection.

• 3:30:49Shawn Ryan?

  What have you learned?

• 3:30:53Speaker 06

  Oh, man, so much, dude, so much.

• 3:31:00Speaker 06

  You know, what I've learned is just a deeper form of compassion for everybody. Just understanding we're all humans just trying to figure this out. Right? We're all just humans trying to figure this out. And none of us really know what we're doing and we're trying our best. You know, sometimes we can hold people in a higher regard or we we expect it like even like say my mom, for example. Right? Me thinking that she's supposed to was supposed to just have it all figured out when I was a kid and it was an illusion. But really, what I've gotten to see working in this space is like, dude, everybody's dealing with something. And everyone is just doing their best and it's um. We're all on our journey.

• 3:31:39Speaker 06

  And being able to see people on their journey and just have compassion for it, just really think we need more of that.

• 3:31:47Shawn Ryan?

  How did you start?

• 3:31:49Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 3:31:50Shawn Ryan?

  Who was your first person?

• 3:31:51Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 3:31:51Shawn Ryan?

  If you were a coaching, therapy. Who was it?

• 3:31:56Speaker 06

  Yeah. So when I started working on this process, become a therapist, right? I'd just come through the psychedelic experience. So for me, an easy segue was to get in with them and start working as an integration coach, like with Heroic Hearts. Started working with the Mission Within, going down to Mexico. So I'm learning these things in school, right? And then I'm seeing these things happen in real time by way of the medicine. And I'm starting to, it's all starting to come together. Just like how I combined like my my love for cars and the human body. I started to see what was happening in real time. What I got to witness was validating what I was learning at school. So it became very easy for me. Right. So I started working initially down in Mexico.

• 3:32:42Speaker 06

  Started working with veterans that were coming through the process, started helping them like coached them through it. Right. I got to witness a little bit more. I got to see a little bit more and learn a little bit more. Right. Learning some of the basic stuffs like just the fundamentals of meditation. Have you heard of the Wisdom Dojo?

• 3:32:56Shawn Ryan?

  No.

• 3:32:56Speaker 06

  Yeah, so.

• 3:32:57Shawn Ryan?

  Wait a minute. Yes.

• 3:32:58Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 3:33:00Shawn Ryan?

  I've done it.

• 3:33:01Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 3:33:02Shawn Ryan?

  Yes, I've done it.

• 3:33:03Speaker 06

  Awesome.

• 3:33:03Shawn Ryan?

  That's the meditation course, correct?

• 3:33:05Speaker 06

  Yeah, for veterans, for soft veterans. Yep. So I get introduced to people like them. And I start learning how to meditate and teach people how to meditate and I see another level of healing happen. Right. Just little things like that, doing breathwork stuff. I ultimately started, um, from there, I transitioned because I'm impatient, right? But I ended up transitioning to working on a research team for Kadima Neuropsychiatry down in La Jolla. They're working on the LSD trials for general anxiety. So next thing I know, I'm sitting in a room for 12 hours, working with patients that are on research medicines, which is LSD, and I'm seeing them shift. I'm seeing them change. I'm listening to what's coming up with them. I'm hearing them talking to their, their younger self, the children, like the, the child self of them. And it's revalidating more stuff that I'm learning. So it's just compounding and reiterating.

• 3:33:51Speaker 06

  And I'm becoming even more obsessed with it, right? And it just, it made school even easier. So I'm working through that process because the, uh, master's program's two years, so it takes a little bit of time. And then as I kind of near the end of that, I get introduced to, uh, a dude named Miles, right, who's a good friend of mine, who introduces me to a guy named Tom Sauer. Have you met Tom Sauer before? No. He's that EOD officer that started, uh, uh, a clinic, veteran owned, veteran operated for, um, dual diagnosis. So for people suffering from substance abuse and then mental health disorders. And Tom's model was that we would go anywhere in region for the United States and bring veterans to care.

• 3:34:33Speaker 06

  Right, so I end up getting hired, Miles introduced me to Tom, Tom hires me and I get this job where I'm flying around the west coast of the United States for veterans in need, where their family or someone would call and as long as they were connected, I would hop on a flight, fly to North Montana and get them and escort them back to treatment. Holy shit, that's awesome, man. Yeah, no more were the days that we're just gonna say the VA is just gonna handle it and, you know, people dying in the parking lots or whatever, right? As soon as we could get that authorization, me or my buddy Brennan were on a flight and we were escorting veterans to treatment. And dude, I was like falling even more in love with it, right? Learning more about the substance abuse space, right? Just the demons that that brings to the table, right? And getting people to come into their house and just seeing how they're living and

• 3:35:17Speaker 06

  getting to see them graduate and have that zest of life again and that sparkle in their eye. And I was just like learning more and more in that process. But on one of these trips, we were working up into Montana, so we're working with the Blackfeet Nation up in Browning, Montana. Have you ever heard of that? No. The tribe? Yeah, it's as far north as you can get. And Montana is beautiful. But we're working with a tribe up there. That tribe has the most veterans of any tribe in the United States. And they were having issues getting support from the VA, right? They would try to go to the other town VAs and they just treated them like second-rate citizens, right? And just pretty much left them up there to that reservation to their own devices with no support. So as we went up there to work with a couple of veterans

• 3:36:02Speaker 06

  that were bringing to treatment, me and Brennan and Tom started to see the inadequacy of what they deserved up there. We started becoming advocates. So we'd fly up there every time they'd have a town meeting with the VA there. And we just started becoming representatives and helping support them. Tremendous people up there, salt of the earth. One of the times I got a consult or an authorization to come pick up one of the Blackfeet Nation, he was a prior Marine, I was flying up there and it's hours from Missoula up to Browning. So I get up there, I drive all the way north and I get there and the guy's gone. And they had a small, kind of like, small treatment center up there. It wasn't designed for long term. And I show up and I meet my liaison. I'm like, hey, where's he at? He's like,

• 3:36:44Speaker 06

  he disappeared, man. He hit the bottle with his cousins the other day and we haven't seen him since. Like, well, what am I supposed to do? Like, we'll hang out for a couple of days and see if he comes back. So I stayed there overnight. I realized, old buddy's gone. We ended up getting him into treatment later, but this was kind of a dry hole for me. So I have to start my journey back south. So as I'm driving, driving south, it's many hours back, I'm gonna go down, hit Missoula or Kalispell, and then come back down to the airport. I'm driving and um, I see this river coming off the mountain. Right. And one thing about Dan Brown that I shared about was he was a madman. He couldn't resist the cold body of water. He was obsessed. He was a cold plunger before it was cool.

• 3:37:25Speaker 06

  And I'm driving down and I see this flathead river and it's all snowmelt and I'm like, oh, I bet it's freezing. I just pull over and I strip down in my chonies and I run and I jump in that river. With Sean Ali there, jackhammer shivering and it was like, almost like a baptism. And I sit up from that water and I look and I see all these bear signs where it's like, do not get in the river, the bears will eat you. And I'm like, well, I didn't think that one through, but here I am. And I sat there and I had this epiphany and it was almost like something came over me and it was like, hey dude, you gotta get out of California. You gotta get out of California. Right. It's like, there's too much chaos here and like, we need you to, to do something else. And I was like, oh God, like, I don't even know what that means.

• 3:38:06Speaker 06

  So I get home from that trip. It was a long trip and I come in and I tell my wife, I'm like, hey, meha, I think we need to leave California. And she's like, I'm feeling it too. Like COVID was rough on all of us, just from the loss and just seeing the chaos and everything being locked down. Our kids having to be on virtual classes and just seeing them falling apart, not being able to understand why they have to do class on computers. And we ended up buying a house in my hometown in Alabama. So we pack everything up on a whim, pack all our bags and move to Alabama from California. Drive across country and we start setting up there. I had a game plan that I was actually gonna go work at a research facility or research department at UAB Birmingham.

• 3:38:47Speaker 06

  And I'd been liaising with him. They were gonna be working with five MEO DMT to work with veterans and things like that. So I was like, hey, I'm your guy. I did the MDMA assisted therapy course, the five MEO assisted therapy course. And I was like, really coming into this and I had experience working on the research team and working with a mission within and her a cart. So it seemed like a no brainer. But I get there and dude, it just starts falling apart. Starts falling apart. I'm realizing they had some DEI restrictions there and they weren't going to pay me any money. Um, I don't know. I didn't even know what DEI meant, dude. I was like, what's that mean? Um, but either way, it was just not working out. Luckily for me, um, the guy I worked with at, at Miramar going and picking up the veterans, his name was Brennan.

• 3:39:28Speaker 06

  He knew Max, who's the head of sales for Sharp Performance. And Max is good friends with Ben and Andrew, who started Sharp Performance. And he told Brennan about it and Brennan kept telling me. So he'd be on these trips to go pick up veterans. He's like, hey, have you heard of Sharp Performance? It's like, it's this veteran company that's helping first responders. He's like, they sound really cool. And I'd always be like, Brennan, I don't have time for all this stuff, right? It's like, what are you talking about? We, you know, I have plenty of work here. So prior to moving to Alabama, I reached out to Andrew Sakmar at Sharp Performance and told him, hey, you know, I heard you're kind of building this company. Um, I like what you're doing. It makes sense. It resonates with me and I would like to come on as a coach. And he's like, absolutely, dude. So I came on as a coach. Luckily for me, as I came to Alabama and things started kind of

• 3:40:12Speaker 06

  falling apart there, um, I was able to kind of dedicate some more time to joining that team. Um, and, and really just working on building Sharp Performance. Right on. Yeah. Can you go into Sharp Performance, exactly what you guys are doing? Yeah. So Sharp Performance is a company that was started by Andrew Sakmar and Ben Curly. Um, Andrew is a, a 14 year Green Beret officer who sustained some injuries over his time, which ultimately led to him being non-deployable. And as he was realizing, like, he's not going to be able to be a Green Beret anymore. Um, he had to figure out a new path, just like we had to, like, what's this new purpose going to look like? What am I going to do, um, to give back, even though knowing that his identity is being stripped from him? So, long story short, as he

• 3:40:55Speaker 06

  goes to business school to try and figure out what that next chapter is going to be, you know, he's reaching out to veterans, uh, guys that he worked with. And a lot of them went into law enforcement and firefighting, so first responders. And he started checking in with them and started hearing their stories and he had like some revelations. And one of them was just the fact The time between a cop or a firefighter's worst day on the job and them having to reintegrate with their families or wear a different hat or whatever that looks like is like minutes to hours. Whereas no matter how bad our days were in theater, it's weeks to months before we have to come back and reintegrate. And he was like, dude, that's gotta be insane. But that's gotta be some insane mental gymnastics to be able to keep it over a course of thirty years of going from your worst

• 3:41:38Speaker 06

  call on earth to maybe a call that's just a benign call. Or going from that worst call on earth to like showing up to mama and the kids hours later.

• 3:41:45Shawn Ryan?

  Did a T-ball game.

• 3:41:46Speaker 06

  Yeah, at a T-ball game exactly. And he was like, dude.

• 3:41:49Shawn Ryan?

  One minute you're scraping somebody's head off the pavement, and the next you're cheering for your kid at a fucking T-ball game.

• 3:41:55Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Every day. This is happening every day. The news doesn't always do the best job about highlighting that type of stuff, but um, while he was in special forces.

• 3:42:07Shawn Ryan?

  One minute, you're talking to a poor girl that just got gang raped by twenty-five dudes, and the next minute, you're trying to fucking go on a date with your wife. Like, it's, it's like that.

• 3:42:23Speaker 06

  Yeah. Or you get into a complex situation where you need to use your weapon, and now you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. Now it's hitting every broadcast, mainstream media outlet on the world, showing that you're one of those guys killing a poor person, right?

• 3:42:39Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:42:40Speaker 06

  Yeah. That's not to disclaim bad behavior, right? But oftentimes, it's like that's in the back of their head too, where they can't even feel confident defending themselves.

• 3:42:47Shawn Ryan?

  People don't even, they just, they can't put this shit together in their head. They don't realize, like, that guy just had to kill somebody twenty-five fucking minutes ago.

• 3:42:56Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 3:42:59Shawn Ryan?

  Now he's at, doing school counseling for his kid.

• 3:43:03Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 3:43:04Shawn Ryan?

  You know, whatever it is, you know, it's, it's, it's that. It is. That's how it is.

• 3:43:10Speaker 06

  Yeah. And Andrew, once he realized that, he was like, dude, this is crazy, right? This is not, not cool. It's not fair. And then seeing the bureaucracy, the politics around it. You know, oftentimes dude, I think about like our police officers are almost like our Vietnam veterans. Where they don't get a vote and a lot of the stuff that's going on and, and people just wanna blame them as the bad guys always. And it's just tough to see it socially. Um, while Andrew was in SF, he got introduced to like some training. So as he was in, he was in a little bit later. Um, they were teaching operators how to like down-regulate their nervous system. Teaching them how to do like visualization exercises and things like that to kind of make the mind sharper and more resilient.

• 3:43:53Speaker 06

  And he said, you know what, like, we need to bring that to our, our first responders. It's like it helped him out being an operator and helped him get through his like kind of medical challenges and stuff that he had to deal with. And he had this real like calling to bring that stuff to them. So they created an app that had all this training from special operations on there. All these different exercises and that started in the beginning. Right? And I was bringing that to them, like hoping that he can make a difference and try and help out this group of people.

• 3:44:22Shawn Ryan?

  How was that going?

• 3:44:24Speaker 06

  How is it going?

• 3:44:24Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:44:25Speaker 06

  It's going great, man. Going really good. Yeah, we started off like kind of with that idea with the app. But then what we also realized and what, what they realized early on was that there was kind of a missing component when it comes to the coaching part. So it's, it's one thing to have an app and have these exercises, but what, what they realized was there's a gap of like on the mental health side as well. Of having someone there that kind of understands what's going on. So they started incorporating the coaching portion and hiring coaches and that's where I kind of came on. Where not only would they have access to this app that helps them do these exercises, but now they got a person that looks just like them. Has this.

• 3:45:02Shawn Ryan?

  Go ahead.

• 3:45:02Speaker 06

  Has the same look in their eye that they don't need to explain themselves, right? That we're not diagnosing them or assessing them for fit for duty, but almost can hold a sacred space for them to start processing this stuff.

• 3:45:13Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:45:14Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 3:45:14Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm. So how does, how exactly does it work? I mean, like I, I kind of, I kind of talked about at the beginning, at the beginning, but. So you guys are in 10 different states and over 75 different departments or, or, or military units. And so the way I understand it is.

• 3:45:35Shawn Ryan?

  A coach goes into the fire department, the police department, the sheriff's office, the military unit, the whatever it is, right? Am I correct?

• 3:45:46Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 3:45:46Shawn Ryan?

  And but the coach, the coaches aren't your typical therapist. They're not

• 3:45:52Shawn Ryan?

  somebody that graduated high school, when got their degree, became a therapist, and bam, now they're talking to you who, we just went through your story, you know? And, and so you, these are, these are people, every, all the coaches, to my understanding, are, are

• 3:46:14Shawn Ryan?

  military, fire, LEO, first respond, it's people that have been through, they've lived it, they've seen the shit, they've lived it, they did the job, they fucking understand what's going on. This isn't like

• 3:46:30Shawn Ryan?

  some therapist that's just going through the motions that never had any drama in their lives. They can relate. Am I right?

• 3:46:39Speaker 06

  Yes, sir. Yeah. Which I think is so key, is one of the biggest gaps is, is that part, like they call it cultural competency, right? Where the therapist actually understands what they do for a living. And when you, if you get a therapist, no matter how well intentioned they are, if they don't understand, right? They don't understand the dark humor, right, that we all have, right? They don't understand the unique coping skills that we have to do to survive this type of work, to do the mental gymnastics we have to. They're real quick to wanna just diagnose you and label you. Right? Heaven forbid they just label you with PTSD and slap that button and now that has repercussions. Right? Can you carry a weapon now? Right? Do they have to sideline you on the team? Which creates barriers to that, man? Because if you don't trust that process, why would you use it? And that's what a lot of people are in this space are coming up against, right?

• 3:47:24Speaker 06

  They're afraid. Starts talking about this stuff. So we bring coaches that have a similar walk of life. They're not diagnosing them, they're not assessing them for duty, and they can sit there and hold a sacred space, right? We hold confidentiality really high, too, right? Where they can come in and start offloading this stuff and have a spot where they can start working on themselves.

• 3:47:44Shawn Ryan?

  Does this information, does this stay with you and the, and the individual? Or does this get, does anything get reported to their leadership? How does it work?

• 3:47:54Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 3:47:54Shawn Ryan?

  Is the leadership involved?

• 3:47:56Speaker 06

  Yeah, well, the leadership is involved, right? In, in a lot of ways, but, you know? We do hold confidentiality in the highest regard. So what that means is, you know, outside of the preservation of life, right? If someone's got a plan and means to take their own lives, we're going to breach confidentiality and reach out to their wellness and support system there because we got to preserve the life. But outside of that, what we report back to their departments is only utilization reports. Right? So we'll let them know this number of people in your department are working on the app. This number are working with a coach, right? But we won't release any PII to them, no personal information. And we sure as heck would never tell them what we're talking about in sessions. Right? Because if we're a spy tool for the department, no one's going to use it, right?

• 3:48:40Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. How does?

• 3:48:44Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, how does it work? Are you in there with them every day? Are you just always available? What is, what is, what does the day to day look like? Yeah. At a department that hires sharp performance?

• 3:48:55Speaker 06

  Yeah, so something that's really cool, and I credit Andrew for building this is like, as a part of that app on there, they have the whole roster of coaches. Right? So one, we're meeting the needs of this demographic, these first responders that need it absolutely. But what we're also doing is creating a marketplace for coaches like us. People that get out of the military, that don't know what to do with their hands in this upside down world and want to find a new purpose of serving. Right? So we'll hire them on and they become a part of our coaching marketplace and roster. So once a department signs with us, they get access to that app that has all the training. It actually has all their resources from their organic department as well. And then they have access to a whole list of coaches. So anyone in that department can go on the app and look through there and find Steve Bunting and say, I want to work with Steve.

• 3:49:38Speaker 06

  Click on me, they see all my availability and my time and book a session with me. With them, they get unlimited sessions, right? They get unlimited access to all the coaches. So if they want to work with me for five weeks and they want to work with another coach on leadership, they want to work with a coach that's from a fire department and they're a firefighter, but they can do that as well.

• 3:49:56Shawn Ryan?

  No shit? So this is, this is a marketplace of coaches with?

• 3:50:02Shawn Ryan?

  With your resume attached.

• 3:50:04Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 3:50:04Shawn Ryan?

  So they can, they can read your bio and say, this is who I relate with.

• 3:50:08Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 3:50:09Shawn Ryan?

  How many coaches do you guys have?

• 3:50:10Speaker 06

  Yeah, we have around 50 right now, but we're hiring by the day. Right as we continue to grow, that's going to be a continual process is probably the majority of what I do right now is the head of coaching is finding the right people.

• 3:50:22Shawn Ryan?

  How many people do you have applying?

• 3:50:24Speaker 06

  There's lots. Yeah, I think we have probably already 25 on standby that we're not even going to get to until January 1st.

• 3:50:29Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit, that's awesome.

• 3:50:31Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 3:50:32Shawn Ryan?

  How many, how many, uh, how many departments and military units are showing interest in this? Are you, are you guys getting a wave of that?

• 3:50:39Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. In places you wouldn't even expect.

• 3:50:42Shawn Ryan?

  I brought you guys up to the secretary of army.

• 3:50:45Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 3:50:46Shawn Ryan?

  It's like, hey, you guys need to be looking, seriously, brought you up to my local sheriff too. I don't know if you ever reached out, but I mean, I love what you guys are doing. I think it's long overdue.

• 3:50:58Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 3:50:58Shawn Ryan?

  Long overdue.

• 3:51:00Speaker 06

  Thank you, man.

• 3:51:02Shawn Ryan?

  So are you guys, um, is there ever a point in time where actually in the department, meeting, meeting the, the the workforce face to face?

• 3:51:14Speaker 06

  Absolutely. Yeah. A big part of like what we're doing is we don't want to be just another resource that we just drop on their desk and expect them to manage. Like every relationship that we have with each department, it's like, it's a, it's a real relationship. So oftentimes even some examples, we've had some, you know, officers that were on our platform that were lost in the line of duty. You know, it's important for us to show up, right? We create all kinds of different things, whether we go up and we teach a class on just operator syndrome. Right? Which I actually haven't even talked about that, but things about operator syndrome, we'll go into a class on that. We'll go up and do a class on just, um, resiliency. There, there's so many different ways, but we, we try to be an intimate part of a collaborator in their department, not just a resource for them.

• 3:51:54Shawn Ryan?

  How are you guys received when you show up face to face? Is, I mean, is this, is it, is it? Standoffish, are they immediately interested in what you guys are doing? How is, how is, how is, how is it building their trust?

• 3:52:08Speaker 06

  Yeah, I think in the beginning, they're not too sure who we are. You know, we might just be another, a group that's trying to, you know, harvest the resources of the first responder community. But when we get in, we tell, part of our rollout and our presentation is we tell our story. We share a little bit about what we've been through. And then, once we do that, man, there's so much mutual respect between our communities. Like, we're so grateful for what our first responders do and they're grateful for what we did in the military. And it's a very unique combination that works out really well.

• 3:52:38Shawn Ryan?

  Damn, that's awesome, man. So what's operator syndrome? I've been hearing a lot about this. And I've heard of Chris, Chris Free, right? Could I say it?

• 3:52:47Speaker 06

  Yes, sir.

• 3:52:48Shawn Ryan?

  I've heard a lot about this guy.

• 3:52:50Speaker 06

  Yeah, man, so when I first came on to the team and we're trying to build out this program, it was like, it was a, it was a big task. Like, how did, what, what does this look like? You know, we're not doing therapy, we're doing coaching. How is this different? And like, it was, it was a lot of pressure to try and figure out what that looks like. And we were learning it by the day. But prior to me working with Sharp Performance, I'd met Chris Free. Chris Free was a PTSD researcher for the VA for quite some time, for a long time. So he really understood the proclivity for them to want to slap that PTSD button. But as he was doing that work, he's starting to think, he's like, dude, we're missing some things here. Right? It's like, it's easy to slap this button, but I think we're overlooking some stuff. And he hit, hit immediate resistance, right? These guys are like, this is what we do. It's PTSD, like either get in into the line or, or you're out.

• 3:53:34Speaker 06

  And he said, adios. So we stopped working with them and he started reaching out. And through some mutual acquaintances, he started to meet some operators. Right? Some guys are like, hey, I think, you know, some, this guy might be interesting for you to talk to. So he started working with some guys from Damn Neck, started working with some guys out of Fort Bragg. And he started listening to them, started hearing their stories. And from the research that he did, um, working with the VA, then he also had some research grants. He started realizing that there's like some physiological things that were being overlooked. And had some suspicions about things like your endocrinology. Right? So he'd start working with him, he's like, hey, you should go get your testosterone checked. And they would come back and they bring the data back and all their testosterone was low. Right? He'd say, you need to get metabolic, cardio metabolic paneling and check out how your heart's doing.

• 3:54:18Speaker 06

  Check out your gut health and these things and you come back and get more data. And as he started to learn more and hear more interviews, he worked with around 300 operators. He was like, oh, man, he started to see this framework. And he started to see the gap between our physiological needs and PTSD and where that gap is. And he's like, dude, if we don't start addressing these physiological things and raising awareness about it, we're never going to get ahead of this PTSD or suicide issue. So he started going all in on that. He ended up publishing his paper in 2020 and that's when his name started getting out. Then he also, once he stopped working with the veterans, so it was operator syndrome because that was the first group he worked with. He went and he worked with law enforcement and fire. And he started doing research with them and he started seeing the same thing, man. No shit. Yep, that same framework.

• 3:55:03Speaker 06

  And what essentially operator syndrome is, it's easy to get wrapped around the term operator, but it's what's called high allostatic load. So high stress on the body over a long duration of time and how it manifests like mentally, physically and socially. Right? So if you work in a job that's high stress, high demand, you're not sleeping, you're not eating well over 30 years, you can start to see where like in this framework, these things will start coming up. And Sean, when we share this with firefighters and cops, they're like, oh my God, you just told me my whole life. I just scored a 100 on that operator syndrome framework checklist. Right? So early on in that, I was friends with Chris Free Prior and we end up reaching out to him. I said, hey, you know, Chris, this is what we're doing.

• 3:55:45Speaker 06

  And your book's been great and that paper you put out's amazing and it really resonates with what we're doing. And we think it resonates with, with who we're working with, with law enforcement and fire. You know, would you mind if we use your framework and would you mind joining the team? And dude, he didn't even think twice. He was like, absolutely. So we brought him on and we kind of built our program around that framework of operator syndrome. And it's just been a seamless integration that just makes so much sense. Like I couldn't be more grateful for him joining our team and just helping us. Cause it's all science back to, right? The data's there for everybody that that's important to, we're not just doing some wazoo stuff. And at the end of the day, it's really basic. When you look at it, it just makes sense. Damn. Yeah. I should bring him on, huh?

• 3:56:28Speaker 06

  He's awesome, man. One of the most humble human beings I've ever met.

• 3:56:32Shawn Ryan?

  I know. I've got a lot of mutual friends that, uh, that know him. Never heard anything bad about him.

• 3:56:38Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 3:56:38Shawn Ryan?

  Other than from the VA. They don't like him very much.

• 3:56:41Speaker 06

  Yeah, well, he's disrupting some things for them.

• 3:56:44Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:56:45Speaker 06

  In honor of us, though.

• 3:56:49Shawn Ryan?

  Sounds like a great dude.

• 3:56:50Speaker 06

  Yeah, he is. Yeah, we've become good friends over time.

• 3:56:55Shawn Ryan?

  Good, man. Good. So fifty, I'm sorry, did you say fifty of fifty coaches at Sharp?

• 3:57:02Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 3:57:02Shawn Ryan?

  In ten different states.

• 3:57:04Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 3:57:04Shawn Ryan?

  Where do you, I mean, where else do you guys want to go?

• 3:57:08Speaker 06

  Yeah, man, we want to work with everybody. You know, for us, it's kind of multifaceted. Like, one is meeting the demand and the needs of these high-risk professions. Right? But it's not just law enforcement and fire. Like, when we think about the framework, like, high stress, it's like, dude, look at what the air traffic controllers just had to go through.

• 3:57:25Shawn Ryan?

  Hmm.

• 3:57:26Speaker 06

  Right? Where they weren't getting funding and they have one of the, like, undeniably the highest-stress jobs out there, and now they're not getting paid. Right? There's a lot of injustices across our country with so many different people, whether even just be the hospital staff, like nurses, the things they have to carry every day. Right? It's like, even though our hearts here in this space working with law enforcement and fire, but it's like, I see this as a human condition. How much stress we're put through every day. Just pick up your phone. It's designed to stress you out. Go on any, you know, mainstream media. They're, they're just stressing everybody out all day. And I think every, every bit of what we're teaching people and we're showing up for is like, helpful to anybody in this experience. The other thing, dude, is, like,

• 3:58:08Speaker 06

  is having something like, an opportunity for purpose for a lot of people. You know, especially like our veterans. Like, they get out of the military and it's like, what do you do? You can go contract. Like, you can do some of these other things, but for a lot of people, they feel lost here, man. They feel lost. They feel betrayed. You know, us pulling out of Afghanistan was really tough.

• 3:58:27Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:58:28Speaker 06

  For everybody. And there's a lot of people out there looking at the system, looking at the bureaucracy, and they don't know where they fit. And in that can be a little bit of despair. What we want to do is provide a spot for them of hope, a place where they can come and practice what they preach, where they can show up for others, use that wisdom that they earned, share their story, right, and help, help their fellow person, because people like us don't get to stop serving. We're servants. And the idea that we're not is like, kind of ridiculous to me. And I think that's a part of the problem, where guys think they're just gonna go fish for the rest of their life. It's like, dude, you're a servant, right? You're the casceria class. You're a warrior, right? And it's time for us warriors to show up for each other, right? We can't keep yelling at the academics or the politicians to save us. It's time for us to step up and be there for each other. And I think

• 3:59:13Speaker 06

  that's the way it was always supposed to be. So we're trying to build that up as well, like hitting it from both sides.

• 3:59:19Shawn Ryan?

  Damn. You guys got a lot of work to do.

• 3:59:21Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 3:59:24Shawn Ryan?

  How's your schedule? How busy are you as a coach?

• 3:59:28Speaker 06

  Dude, I, I say this almost every day. I'm busier than I've ever been.

• 3:59:32Shawn Ryan?

  Oh shit.

• 3:59:32Speaker 06

  And it's the first time in my life I'm not miserable about it.

• 3:59:36Shawn Ryan?

  Well, that's, that's, that's, that's positive.

• 3:59:38Speaker 06

  Yeah, man.

• 3:59:39Shawn Ryan?

  Um, that's fucking awesome. That, that, that's what you're doing, I mean, for a living and that there's 49 other guys and women, um, you know, doing it too. How do you vet who, how do you vet your coaches?

• 3:59:57Speaker 06

  Yeah. In the beginning, you know, there's such a deep network of transformational coaches, working with the mission within, Hurrock Hearts, and you know, those, those guys and girls really get it. So we started with our first test spot, kind of leveraging them, reaching out to them, sharing what we're doing outside of the medicine space, because we're not affiliated with medicine work, right? We're, we're not affiliated with psychedelics or anything like that, just to the sensitivities of the United States, right? And we respect those limitations. But we brought a lot of those transformational coaches over. And the conversations they were having was just exactly what those firefighters and cops needed. So we were very successful in that space. But as we continued to grow. It's important for us to have good coaches, but the right coaches. So some of the vetting process, one is like, usually it comes through referral.

• 4:00:40Speaker 06

  So we already have our tremendous coaches and if they know someone's a good coach, then we'll start talking to them and usually bring them on. We'll leverage some of these veteran nonprofit groups. And then also for open source, like kind of applications. It's really important for us right now where we are in growth for them to have some coaching experience. Right? Some form of certification, some experience, just because we don't have time to teach people right now how to be coaches. The other part is that I need to hear your story. Right? You need to have a story. Like you need to be affiliated, you need to have been a prior first responder. Right? Prior military, prior spouse of military or first responder. Cause that's a huge gap that we're so heart led and that's to support the women of first responders too.

• 4:01:18Shawn Ryan?

  You guys are supporting the women too?

• 4:01:19Speaker 06

  The spouses, yeah.

• 4:01:20Shawn Ryan?

  Spouses?

• 4:01:21Speaker 06

  Yeah, probably shouldn't be just like women, but yeah, the spouse of them. Yep. And, um, cause that's huge for us. We learned that all firsthand. But we finally came through our healing and we looked at our wives and said, oh man, like we drug you through a lot and you deserve it too. And they oftentimes get overlooked that that, that cop's wife is going through a lot too. Every day he, he signs up for a shift and he leaves. Right? Coming back changed after every shift. It's a lot there. So it's important for us to show up for them too.

• 4:01:48Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, this is so new in the, the, um, at least I've never experienced anything like, I've never experienced somebody like this coming into a unit that I was in. What, you know, how are you guys approached? What is, what are like the first questions that people have for you? Is it this, I mean, do you see a lot of commonalities? I mean, you know what I'm, I would imagine it takes a minute for somebody to reach it, or maybe it doesn't, you know? But what, how, how is that experience?

• 4:02:17Speaker 06

  No, it is. It is something new. The biggest question we get is like, what's the difference between this and therapy? Which is like a fair question, right? It's like, what is, what, so you're doing the same thing as our therapist? It's like, we're not, right? Coaching is very much different. You know, we're not, we're not diagnosing you or assessing you, right? And that, that's one of the bigger things is like, what, is this replacing therapy? Like, are we just supposed to do coaching instead? But we're not doing that. We're collaborators, right? We believe like, if they're working with a therapist and they're working with a coach, it can absolutely, it's like a force multiplier, right? With coaching, we like to work on the basic stuff, like getting your sleep dialed in, getting you down-regulating your nervous system, getting your diet in check, moving your body again.

• 4:02:59Speaker 06

  And a lot of times on the therapy side of the house, those are the things that are missed, right? They might do a mental exercise or whatever it may be, based on their ideology and what their practice is, but all those smaller things get overlooked. So where we come in is almost like collaborative with that process, right? And allowing them a space to just kind of feel safe talking about this type of stuff.

• 4:03:18Shawn Ryan?

  Do they ask you about your background?

• 4:03:20Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah, yeah. Very, you know, not as much as you would think, though, to be honest with you. Yeah, now that we've kind of got a reputation, I do a lot of the rollouts when we present to the department. So a lot of people get to hear my story. But oftentimes, you know, we're in six, seven sessions and they're like, oh, Steve, you were in the military, right? And it's like, yeah, once upon a time, right? But they have enough trust in our process right now that they'll, they'll show up. And it's not as important for me to share my story all the time now.

• 4:03:50Shawn Ryan?

  Do you, do you see, do you see a community within the community that, that needs more help than everybody else? I mean, is it firefighters? Is it police? Is it military? Is it first responders? Is it nurses in the ER? Or I mean, or is it all, everybody just needs it?

• 4:04:09Speaker 06

  Yeah. I think one thing I didn't notice before, um, doing this work, is how much the firefighters and cops are hand in hand, right? How much like 90% of the calls, they're both there together, right? And the chances that in California, there's a lot of firework, right? So that, you know, firefighters in California do more firework, you know? Um, but oftentimes, like, they're on the same calls. Right, the same calls of someone's shot, they need medics there, right? So it's like, it's very much uh integrated in a way that I wasn't quite aware of prior to doing this work. So they equally share that stress and that burden. And I think, you know, between you and me, like, I really feel, I do feel for the cops, man. I do feel for them. You know, we live right next to LA. I'm just seeing some of the things that they have to deal with every day.

• 4:04:54Speaker 06

  It's like, I don't understand how you could do it. Right, but they still do.

• 4:04:58Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:04:58Speaker 06

  They still believe in it. They still show up and they're willing to risk their lives for strangers. Knowing that no one's gonna thank them and that everyone's gonna criticize them. And they're just some very special human beings, man, to be able to do that. We need them so much.

• 4:05:10Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:05:11Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm.

• 4:05:13Shawn Ryan?

  What do you guys need? What do you need at Sharp?

• 4:05:16Speaker 06

  Yeah. Dude.

• 4:05:18Shawn Ryan?

  How are you guys getting the name out?

• 4:05:19Speaker 06

  Yeah. Things like this. Yeah, we started our own little podcast to help people try to share their stories. Give, you know, first responders an opportunity to share their story. Very much modeled off of what you're doing.

• 4:05:31Shawn Ryan?

  Right on.

• 4:05:31Speaker 06

  It's just so beautiful to allow people this space. I'm grateful for it, so thank you. But, you know, we're working really hard. And I think just kind of getting the word out is just so important right now. To help people know that they're not alone, that there's hope. There's people out here that really want to serve them. That we've dedicated our entire lives to doing this for the rest of our lives to show up for them the best way possible. I think that's, that's all we could ask right now.

• 4:05:55Shawn Ryan?

  Right on, man. Well, ever since I connected with Ben, I've been uh, I've been cheering you guys on. Everybody I talk to that I think that, that I think could use this. And um, I hope it's helping. And if it's not yet, I know it will, so, cause I'll just get louder.

• 4:06:13Speaker 06

  Yeah, thank you.

• 4:06:15Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you, man.

• 4:06:15Speaker 06

  Man, we're so grateful for that.

• 4:06:17Shawn Ryan?

  Seriously, um.

• 4:06:23Shawn Ryan?

  It was an honor, man. Like, this, this, your story and everything that you've come through is uh, wow. Wow. And um, you know, and we, we, we, we also talk a lot about generational trauma on, you know, talked about with Prime. Talked about it with a lot of, a lot of the people that have been on here and that have been through this and, and, you know, it's just, there's people on my team. Uh, they're here today that, that have had fucking horrific childhoods and uh.

• 4:07:04Shawn Ryan?

  Congratulations, man.

• 4:07:05Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm.

• 4:07:06Shawn Ryan?

  I'm being serious. Um, it's just...

• 4:07:10Shawn Ryan?

  I just love seeing people that did... Have been through that, their parents have been through that, their grandparents have been through that, and when I see somebody that breaks that fucking cycle, it just makes me so happy. And... And, uh... And proud. Like, it's just fucking... You're a good person, man, and you've come through a lot, and you're

• 4:07:35Shawn Ryan?

  pouring a lot of good into this world. So, it's an honor to know you and to meet you and to interview you, man.

• 4:07:41Speaker 06

  Yeah, thank you, Sean. I'm very grateful for every bit of it. I'm very grateful to be on this path and have this purpose. So, yeah, thank you for the opportunity, brother.

• 4:07:50Shawn Ryan?

  My pleasure. God bless.

• 4:07:52Speaker 06

  Thank you.

• 4:08:06Shawn Ryan?

  No matter where you're watching Sean Ryan's show from, if you get anything out of this, please like, comment, subscribe, and most importantly, share this everywhere you possibly can. And if you're feeling extra generous, please leave us a review on Apple and Spotify Podcasts.