Navy SEAL: “Not Killing People Is Hard” - DJ Shipley

DJ Shipley is a retired Navy SEAL and former DEVGRU operator. What's life like after the Navy SEALs? After years of operating at the highest level, many veterans face a challenge they never expected: returning to normal life. When the adrenaline, purpose, and brotherhood disappear overnight, how do you find your footing again? Expect to learn what the hardest part about leaving military life behind is, why it’s so hard to turn off trained military hyper-vigilance, how DJ would end the war in Iran fast, the story of DJ’s suicide attempt and his path to redemption, how DMT saved DJ’s life, why divorce is just the cost of doing business as a Navy SEAL and much more… - Get a Free Sample Pack of LMNT’s most popular flavours with your first purchase at https://drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom Get up to 20% off Timeline powered by Mitopure (now at a lower price) at https://timeline.com/modernwisdom Get 10% discount on all Gymshark products at https://gym.sh/modernwisdom (use code MODERNWISDOM10) Get the brand new Whoop 5.0 and your first month for free at https://join.whoop.com/modernwisdom - 0:00 Why It’s So Hard to Leave the Military 4:21 The Pressure of Putting Others in Danger 6:31 Are All Navy SEALs Built for Combat? 9:53 Why Going Pro Early Changes Everything 20:57 Inside Life on 30-Minute Recall 24:54 Should Navy SEALs Have Families While Serving? 26:56 The Ugly Reality of Collateral Damage 37:20 Is the Modern World Incompatible With War? 42:27 How Could We End the Iran War Quickly? 48:38 Would Trump Make a Good Navy SEAL? 50:37 The Biggest Myths About Special Operations 56:56 How Lawless Is Special Ops? 01:00:34 Should the Bin Laden Raid Have Stayed Secret? 01:11:11 How Britain Treats Its Veterans 01:16:48 How Combat Changes You 01:22:42 Why Isn’t Sleep Optimised in the Military? 01:25:03 Does Compartmentalisation Ruin Relationships? 01:41:06 The Most Impressive Operator DJ Ever Met 01:43:56 The Formula for Building Elite Operators 01:45:20 The Drug Detox That Ended in Electrocution 02:04:18 The Psychological Challenges of Life After Service 02:08:40 The Trip That Changed DJ’s Life 02:19:25 How DMT Led to Redemption 02:39:26 Can DMT Lead to Bad Realisations? 02:42:38 Can Psychedelics Improve Your Health? 02:53:07 Why Mental Health Advocacy Matters 02:59:04 Where to Find DJ - Get access to every episode 10 hours before YouTube by subscribing for free on Spotify - https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn or Apple Podcasts - https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Get my free Reading List of 100 life-changing books here - https://chriswillx.com/books/ Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic here - https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/

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

• 0:00Chris Williamson?

  You've done a lot of hard things in your life.

• 0:03Speaker 01

  Couple.

• 0:04Chris Williamson?

  Why was getting out of the military the hardest thing that you've had to do?

• 0:11Speaker 01

  No one ever prepared you for it.

• 0:15Speaker 01

  When you get in the teams, any military, especially special operations, it becomes your identity. It becomes the only thing you do and it becomes a justification for everything you don't do. Why don't you do this? Because it'll affect the end state. When you transition away from it, you never thought it was going to be hard. You thought you were going to transition, you were going to find that same love and passion, the energy you had for being in the military. And then when you don't find it, it's a huge fall from grace.

• 0:40Speaker 01

  But I mean, you hear these fairy tales of this billionaire is going to pay you hundreds of thousands of dollars to live on his ranch and to do nothing but tell war stories and shoot coyotes and whatever, you know, any, any place you want to go, they'll pick you up because of your background, because of your resume and all these different things. And when you get out, you quickly realize that's all a lie. No one's going to pay you to do a compound assault. No one's going to pay you to skydive. No one's going to pay you to assault a cruise ship or whatever else you did. They don't exist. So I've spent my entire adult life developing a skill set nobody wants. What am I supposed to do now? I don't know how to do anything. You want me to go to Home Depot? Like, what am I supposed to do? I've avoided getting my picture taken for 20 years. I've avoided conversations with normal people.

• 1:22Speaker 01

  I don't have a Rolodex because I've never opened myself up to anybody who wasn't inside of that 12 man team. I don't have anybody. I don't know the CEO of Apple or Google. I don't know any of these people. There's nothing for me to do except contract. That's it.

• 1:37Chris Williamson?

  Which just keeps you in the same system.

• 1:39Speaker 01

  It's the exact same thing. You're with the same people, the same deployment schedules, same routine, and you just chip away until you're too old to do it anymore. And then you just fizzle out.

• 1:49Chris Williamson?

  That must feel to a lot of special operators like they basically can't ever leave.

• 1:54Speaker 01

  Exactly. Even the guys who do leave, the majority of them, they're either miserable or they transition to a job that's so similar to the military, it's like they're still in.

• 2:02Chris Williamson?

  What like?

• 2:03Speaker 01

  Contracting, agency work, Blackwater, triple canopy, stuff like that. You're basically doing a very similar job, just you get paid a little bit more. Or the guys just come right back in. We've had guys get out and go to Goldman Sachs and try to reinvent themselves. They make it six months, three years, nope, right back in.

• 2:20Chris Williamson?

  No way.

• 2:21Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:23Speaker 01

  They miss it that much.

• 2:26Chris Williamson?

  I mean, Wall Street trading feels a lot. It's probably the closest thing you can get to war in the finance world. But yeah, if the adrenaline of million dollar movements every couple of seconds on a market isn't good enough for you, you got to get back into something with a bit more of a kinetic energy.

• 2:43Speaker 01

  Kinetic energy is what it is. You need something where you have a little bit of risk of dying. Right? You've never felt more alive than when you're right on the teetering edge of death. And once you feel that and you survive it. Okay, more of that. Whatever that was, I need to feel that again. Didn't matter if it's skydiving, if it's combat, if it's whatever else. You're chasing the adrenaline dump. I need, I need to feel the adrenaline, whatever I'm doing.

• 3:08Chris Williamson?

  What does, what does that feel like?

• 3:12Speaker 01

  You ever been in like a bad car accident or almost in a bad car accident?

• 3:15Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 3:16Speaker 01

  When you get done, your hand shake a little bit. Oh, I can't believe I made it through that. It's one of those. And then it becomes, of course I made it through that. I've been training to make it through that. And then it's almost like an ego check, like how close can I come? Or how successful can I be with, with everything you do? How much can I plan? How much can I dedicate my life to buy down as much risk as humanly possible to be effective on the battlefield? Whatever that battlefield might be.

• 3:42Chris Williamson?

  He's saying that being a soldier, being a special operator is essentially

• 3:49Chris Williamson?

  a war equivalent of an extreme sport that people decide to do recreationally.

• 3:53Speaker 01

  Exactly. Exactly. You'd be surprised how many guys do extreme sports while they're in, or that was what they did when they came in, like mine was skateboarding. You got guys, Andy was big in the skydiving, base jumping, wingsuiting, all of that. How many guys come from the MMA world, ultra competitive worlds? And we get inside there. Okay. Well, if I mess this up, there is no bronze medal. If I mess this up, I'm going to die or worse, you'll die.

• 4:19Chris Williamson?

  Other people too.

• 4:20Speaker 01

  Other people not.

• 4:21Chris Williamson?

  How much of a different?

• 4:26Chris Williamson?

  Energy, does it give things if you're someone that's an adrenaline junkie that's happy to do dangerous things for yourself, but your decisions and your actions are almost going to put somebody else in danger too. Does that make it more exciting?

• 4:42Speaker 01

  When you're putting your friends' lives in danger, that's where it's not exciting. You're trying to buy down as much of that as possible. And it's really what I want you to do is just obsess over your craft where you can control all the variables because it makes it safer. And that's where a lot of the leadership really don't buy off on that. If you want to make skydiving safer, make it mandatory to skydive more. Like, and he'll tell you the same thing. The most dangerous person in the military is a skydiver with 180 jumps that thinks he is a ninja. He's not. If you want to make it safe, have thousands of skydives and jump every single week, jump every single month and stack those years over years. And then you buy down the majority of the risk. The same thing with

• 5:21Chris Williamson?

  And he's said he's done like 3,000, something like that, maybe even more.

• 5:25Speaker 01

  He's got to have more than that. I'm at 4,000. He's been jumping longer than me.

• 5:28Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 5:28Speaker 01

  No, I mean, but that's how you buy down the risk. Got to do it more. Got to fight more. Got to shoot more, got to jump more, got to operate more. So me and him, we had this conversation two days ago. And he goes, do you think if we limited how much combat people saw, you wouldn't have such a huge fall from grace, you know, anxiety, suicide ideation, all those things when they leave it. If you could compartmentalize them and not let them burn a candle at both ends, do you think that would be better off for them? I said, absolutely not. They need it. That's how you get really, really good. Could you imagine if, if I locked you in a room, I never let you play another team, and then you just played on the Super Bowl? In this Super Bowl, if you lose, you die. That's not very good. I want to play every single day. We're doing two a days the entire time, getting ready to go.

• 6:13Speaker 01

  Buys down the risk. And it increases your confidence and competency, entire team. That's where you see

• 6:20Speaker 01

  Level two unlock when everybody truly believes that you have covered all your bases. I couldn't burn another rep. I couldn't spend another hour. We're as good as you could humanly be. We're good. We're unstoppable.

• 6:31Chris Williamson?

  How many times have you been on deployment and seen somebody that shouldn't have been there? Based on expertise or disposition, you know, Andy came through and explained an awful lot about what his selection was like, and then he went back and was the guy with the bullhorn as opposed to facing it.

• 6:50Chris Williamson?

  And you think, well, this is supposed to weed out people that aren't supposed to be there. It's incredibly rigorous. But it can't be perfect and simply can't be perfect because it's unable to replicate what you're actually there to do. So yeah, have there been any times when you've got out there and thought? That guy's not, you shouldn't be here with us.

• 7:11Speaker 01

  There's definite times where you get people inside the team you wish were not there.

• 7:17Speaker 01

  You just do like you get there and you're like, man. But it goes back to, you know, I had a mentor. He used to talk about being clonable. Would we be better off if I had five of you? If the answer is not yes, then you shouldn't be here at all. I don't even want one of you. So why they might not be the best guy for the job, if you can compare them to all the other guys you've worked with. They're so much better that it doesn't really matter. The group and you know, the strength of the overall collective is going to make up for whatever deficiency he might have. If it's a cultural thing or a personality trait. Those are harder to navigate, believe it or not, because everybody can perform. But you're not going to find a guy that can't shoot, move, communicate, skydive, dive, do all the things. He might not be a ten where this guy is. But he's a solid eight, no matter what. His personality, I just don't like.

• 8:03Speaker 01

  And nobody else does either.

• 8:04Chris Williamson?

  So I was learning about the way that bands form. I've been thinking a lot about music over the last couple of years. And many times you might have someone that's a savant guitarist or an unbelievable bassist.

• 8:19Chris Williamson?

  But they're a shit hang on the tour bus.

• 8:22Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 8:23Chris Williamson?

  And what you don't see, I suppose, um, the job is not finished in the bounds of what you do professionally. It's well, how do you impact the morale of the team? And what's the energy that you bring when you're on your way to a job and on your way back from a job? And how do the debriefs, are you keeping in touch when you're not on tour? Whether you're a musician or a comedian or a special operator? Like, are you WhatsApping every so often? Are you kind of keeping that connection? And what's the sort of vibe that you get? Or do you just low key irritate everybody? Or is it just a mismatch of this one particular type of personality? Maybe if you were with a different group, your annoyances wouldn't annoy quite so much. You know, you could have people, there are certain people that are universally annoying.

• 9:08Chris Williamson?

  And there are some people that are specifically annoying, like idiosyncratically annoying.

• 9:11Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 9:12Chris Williamson?

  But whatever it is, it's like, hey, this particular node doesn't slot into this particular network.

• 9:19Speaker 01

  You get that.

• 9:21Speaker 01

  At a certain level, we do a draft. So when you get to the tier one organizations, they draft you. No discipline to you in football or anything else. They break you off, performance, performance, culture, trust, all those different things. And you might get a guy that checks into your team. He's there for six months, two years, whatever. It's just not working. Sometimes they will lateral transfer him to a different team. Perfect. Like his personality is perfect. The cultural doesn't clash and just everything makes sense for them. You see that, I won't say often, but often enough the way you remember it.

• 9:53Chris Williamson?

  Can you explain how the different tiers and things work? I have an understanding of this from the British side, but I've never really learned it when it comes to.

• 9:59Speaker 01

  Very similar.

• 10:00Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 10:03Speaker 01

  So you think baseline and everybody will say they are higher tier than they actually are. Right? So a lot of people will say that the SEAL teams are a tier two. They're not, it's a tier three. It's a lot of it's based off your parent unit and your response times to catastrophic things.

• 10:22Chris Williamson?

  So if you're anywhere on the planet within thirty six hours, you're quite high.

• 10:26Speaker 01

  Yep, or sometimes you're on a thirty minute recall. That's where you live for months throughout the year. Thirty minute recall, that page goes off, that text goes off, you're on an airplane in thirty minutes, you've got to go.

• 10:36Chris Williamson?

  No fucking way.

• 10:37Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Anxiety just boosts. But I mean, like, you know, really, it isn't much. And I was just talking about this not too long ago. You get more funding, but really what they do is for the tier one organizations, they cover all the logistics. They put you inside of Disneyland, all the ranges, all the assets, all the intelligence folks, the human performance, the best gems, everything you could imagine is inside of a compound, they stick you inside it and they try to lock you inside it. Just come here and only focus on the craft, because as soon as we tell you to go, you're gonna have to go at a hundred percent. Go, get ready to go. The other ones, it's a very similar workup routine. It'll be a year, two years long sometimes, and then you'll forward deploy, do operation

• 11:20Speaker 01

  for X amount of months, three, six, nine, twelve, whatever the unit deployment cycle is, you come back, rinse and repeat. In tier one organizations, it's just a constant revolution over and over and over again. It's amazing.

• 11:32Chris Williamson?

  How long were you doing that?

• 11:34Speaker 01

  I joined Navy in two thousand and two and I retired in August of twenty nineteen. So right at seventeen years.

• 11:41Chris Williamson?

  And how long?

• 11:42Speaker 01

  Tier one side, two thousand and ten till twenty nineteen.

• 11:46Chris Williamson?

  So you did nine years of being on call within thirty minutes, basically?

• 11:49Speaker 01

  Not the entire time, but every year you spend a significant block of that on the alert schedule.

• 11:54Chris Williamson?

  Right.

• 11:55Speaker 01

  It's amazing.

• 11:56Chris Williamson?

  Why?

• 11:57Speaker 01

  Because you matter. You wake up every day, you're watching the news, you're hearing all the intel breeze and you have a dude stuck up in your locker, up in the team room that you're actively just hunting with your friends all day long and you're just waiting for some dude to send out a text and you're gonna go, yes. So you know, have little co-words of the wife, like going fishing with the boys. Where are you going fishing at? I have no idea. But take off and go. That is, that is the coolest thing you can do in the military.

• 12:23Chris Williamson?

  Why?

• 12:25Speaker 01

  Because it's just like in the movies. You've seen the greatest war movie ever made, Navy SEALs. In the middle of that wedding, that's what everybody wants. I want to be in the middle of that. The pager goes off, gotta go, right now, right now, leave.

• 12:38Chris Williamson?

  And three people from the party leave.

• 12:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:41Speaker 01

  It's a lot of pressure, but it gives you a reason why. On those days you don't want to get up, you're gonna get up. Team deserves it. The mission deserves it. The nation deserves it. Get up and go. And now that I'm out, I get to see these savants throughout their craft. I guess go down and talk to Houston Rockets, Kevin Durant's over there and you get four gold medals. I mean, one of the greatest, is the greatest scorer in Olympic basketball history. And you get to see what they do day in and day out. The Steph Currys of the world, the LeBron James, Michael Phelps, Tiger Woods, all those people.

• 13:13Chris Williamson?

  Do you see parallels between what was constructed for you guys and what is constructed for them too?

• 13:18Speaker 01

  They just self-made it. They live in isolation. They broke out of routine. They just super exceeds everybody else's minimum standard. Because nobody else can maintain it. So if you, if I drop Steph Curry on that table right there, and I was like, walk me through a typical day in the life of Steph Curry. He's got a minimum shot routine. He's got his warmups, his workouts, his massage therapy, the cold plunges, like whatever he does, he just does it unbroken for so much longer than everybody else. That's why he's able to hit that level and maintain it for a 20-year career. Where the average lifespan of NBA guys, four and a half years?

• 13:50Speaker 01

  Coming up on 20. It's not a fluke. It's not luck. It's not genetics. Yeah, like, at a certain point, like people want to say, it must be nice. There ain't nothing nice about his schedule. Nothing. He's been living that unbroken. That's why you know his name. But I also say, like Michael Phelps, he's a freak. He's a freak. Genetically gifted, for sure. His discipline is why he has all those gold medals. If I would have given him a baseball bat at eight years old and never put him in a swimming pool, you'd still know the name. It's, that's why you see him on the transition and you're like, Michael golfing. He's an amazing golfer. Just imagine if you were doing it since he was four. He'd be Tiger Woods.

• 14:27Speaker 01

  The work ethic, the discipline and the passion it takes to hit that level, it's a universal.

• 14:32Chris Williamson?

  There's a, a cool thought experiment. Brian Klaas wrote a book called Fluke. And he's talking about realities that are convergent or coincident. And he's basically saying, if you were to run reality back a thousand times, in all of the other universes, in how many of them would you have got an extraordinary outcome? Talking about this.

• 14:57Chris Williamson?

  I get the sense that someone like Michael Phelps is like 900 of the thousand universes. He becomes world class in a thing. And the goal I think should be to try and construct a life where in as many universes as possible, you would have ended up with the kind of outcome that you're looking to have.

• 15:17Speaker 01

  I see the same thing. If you live the routine, if you look at every rep they've ever burnt throughout their entire life and you just replace with a different medium, that is the recipe for success. If there's 10,000 hours, they've logged so much more than, I mean, you break 10,000 hours down, four hours a day, it was at roughly eight years, break down eight hours a day, roughly four years. That's why I tell guys, once you get into your lane, if you sacrifice everything else for the first four years, you lay down those 10,000 hours, you can find a balance point for the rest of your career. That's just not what I did. That's what most of the guys didn't do. Drinking, partying, chasing women, doing the whole thing, you know, set your hair on fire and run around throughout your early twenties. Not what I wish I would have done. So you got to make of that

• 15:59Speaker 01

  time on the backside. Just be a pro, be a pro early.

• 16:04Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, a lot of the time, uh, at the live shows that I do, young guys typically, I come up and they hear me talking about, well, I'm, I'm trying to use other fuel sources than just putting my foot on the gas pedal. I'm trying to give myself time to be creative because there's leverage in creativity that there isn't in white knuckling it. In fact, we did manage to white knuckle something today, which is one of the few times in my history that I've white knuckled creativity, but it's very rare. And that's huge step changes because of what I do. Um, maybe if you were somebody that's doing a special kind of battle plan for you guys that's in the intelligence side, uh, and the, you're trying to come up with the perfect operation to reverse engineer

• 16:45Chris Williamson?

  exactly, that's it. You know, that's the guy that you probably actually need in a hammock for a couple of hours a day, just thinking about shit. But for the most part, and in most industries, and even him back in the day when he was learning exactly how intelligence assets move and what the different ways that this geographic region relates to this particular culture and what this guy did and his background, he was doing his eight hours a day. And young guys come and ask because they're hearing me talk about, I'm, I'm trying to use different, um, leverage functions as opposed to what I did for the best part of two decades, which was like nose grindstone, just like just doing that, eating shit. Um, and I'd be, I'd typically ask them, you, you look pretty young. How old are you? Because I'm 22. Like, bro.

• 17:28Chris Williamson?

  I don't mean to be that patronizing asshole that was to me when I was 22. But you're made of rubber and magic at the moment, like you're indestructible. You can do, you can do 14, 16 hour days for multiple days in a row. Then have one day where you have a bit more sleep and then run it back and run it back and run it back. And yeah, the, the gains of front loading your skill acquisition. And setting down those paths of least resistance. What do I expect? You know, how many guys that end up in the SEALs were probably in some form of sport as a kid? Some degree of disciplined routine, probably many.

• 18:13Chris Williamson?

  Now, I know that there's some, Andy's told me, just total tearaways seemed like, how the fuck is this redneck guy that never did? But even within them, you can see something, there's some sort of spark that seems to sort of lock them in. But yeah, defining your paths of least resistance by setting your habits early, I think is a, it's a superpower. It's a way, it's a superpower that you can give yourself.

• 18:37Speaker 01

  It becomes routine, it becomes easy. You don't even realize you're doing it.

• 18:42Speaker 01

  I, I have an,

• 18:47Speaker 01

  I have an amazing support group on social. It's amazing. I'm shocked with the amount of people that hit me up and they say this phrase, I just can't get up that early.

• 18:58Speaker 01

  You have a $1,200 phone in your pocket. The simplest feature on it is the alarm. Just set it. And he goes, I can't, man, I always hit snooze. I've never hit snooze my whole life. I have no idea what you mean, so I'll give him a tip. Instead of putting it next to your nightstand, because I know where it is, put it in the wall eight feet off your bed. Once you swing your feet out to unplug the phone, just continue the movement. Next day, lay out your clothes the night before. Get your bottle of water next to your bed, get your pills all laid out, everything you have to do in the exact order. You're going to get dressed and watch how fast your morning routine closes. Like I can be in and out of that house, rushed or not rushed, four and a half minutes. I mean, fast.

• 19:37Speaker 01

  But I've also had to live my life like that the whole time. It's like, as soon as you feel the momentum get created, you're like, I'm, I just have to follow the routine. Very easy. Like, I gotta get it early. I jumped in an Uber and I drove here last night just to make sure I knew where the building was, make sure I knew where the stairs were, right? I don't walk around, I don't be unprepared. So that's why I'm not late for anything. I show up, I dirt dive the night before, I know the traffic patterns, I know everything's gonna happen, and then I just show up and do it. Simple.

• 20:02Chris Williamson?

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• 20:43Chris Williamson?

  Right now, you can get a free sample pack of Element's most popular flavors with your first purchase by going to the link in the description below. Heading to drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom. That's drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom. Is it exhausting to have that on at all times and be unable to switch it off?

• 21:04Speaker 01

  I've been working the last couple of years, been dialing it down. I talk a lot about dialing it down.

• 21:07Chris Williamson?

  Really doesn't sound like it.

• 21:10Speaker 01

  You should have seen me before.

• 21:11Chris Williamson?

  Tell me, what was before like?

• 21:15Speaker 01

  You want to see a panic attack, grab somebody who is living that alert. Surgeons have it, ER docs have it. Like, if that phone rings, you have to go. Watch a dude who lives his life like that go to zero bars or his phone dies. Panic at the disco. Cause if that thing goes off and your phone is dead, there's no excuse for it. You're just constantly checking it all day. If, if your phone goes off in the next room, I jump in and grab my phone. Everybody else does too. Put it back away. Two thirty one.

• 21:44Speaker 01

  Try to fall back asleep. It's so hard to sleep because you're such on edge. You're waiting for that moment to come. You're waiting to spring out of it. You just gotta learn how to power down. It takes a long time, though.

• 21:53Chris Williamson?

  How, how exciting is being on a plane going out to do an operation when you've only had thirty minutes to get ready, but you've been thinking about it for a couple of months or years?

• 22:02Speaker 01

  It's amazing. I mean, even on the Hilo flight on a normal deployment, it's the greatest thing you'll ever do. It is like, there is nothing more set, nothing that I've found so far that can replace that feeling of sitting on the Hilo, flying thirty seconds out, you get the call and you just watch all the guys, thousand yard stairs. I mean, they might as well be smoking cigarettes with their feet kicked up. They are so calm, so ready to send it. It makes you feel eerily comfortable. I don't care what happens when that ramp drops. We are golden. This is great. But the pressure to get there, that's all it is. Like, a lot of it's,

• 22:39Speaker 01

  it's kind of like meditating. You sit on your Hilo, the wine of the engines, the smell of the fuel, nobody's talking, guys will put in iPods, or they won't, they'll just sit there and they'll kind of just blank stare at you. You'll think about everything you're about to do. The moment you land, when you get off the Hilo, where are you gonna sit? The Hilo back blast, blowing all the dust all over your hair. Everything. You think about every single detail. So when you get there, if anything happens, I've rehearsed this fifty thousand times. It feels like I've, it feels like you're on Neptune at a point. There's not a single detail you have not thought of, that I haven't thought of, that we all collect that we have not thought of. So if anything goes wrong, switch. Just make it happen. But you have to think about it a lot. You have to be obsessed.

• 23:23Speaker 01

  You don't find a lot of guys that do that job who have extracurricular activities. I mean, when I got there, they make you sign a piece of paperwork. Not gonna try to get a college degree, you're not gonna try to get a real estate license for your first four or five years, I forget what it was. We just want you to do this, nothing else.

• 23:38Chris Williamson?

  So they realize the price of obsession and the benefits of obsession?

• 23:42Speaker 01

  And even if you don't, once you get there, when you see the guys that have been doing it, it confirms it. They are amazing. They just are. You think, growing up, you know, in that community, spending all that time in the teams and then getting to the, you know, the varsity level, that it would be roughly the same? It couldn't be further apart.

• 24:04Speaker 01

  Everything they do is purpose built. Everything they don't do is purpose built. Their morning routine, the workouts, the recovery, what they drink or don't drink. And then how they compartmentalize stress. I've never seen anybody do it better.

• 24:16Chris Williamson?

  How so?

• 24:17Speaker 01

  They can block it out. No matter what happens. You're on, you're on the middle of an op, you come back, you've been gone for four and a half months and you have an email, your wife just left, you took two kids and moved to Missouri.

• 24:30Speaker 01

  You go right back to work. I'll solve that when I get home. They won't even care. They don't even think about it.

• 24:35Chris Williamson?

  You've seen that happen?

• 24:36Speaker 01

  More times than I can count.

• 24:39Speaker 01

  Compartmentalization is like number one strength. How bad is it going right now? I don't know. I don't even think about it. Just block it out. It's hard to do though. When you get a family and you get all the other people that are drawing your time and attention, your bandwidth, it becomes hard to block out.

• 24:54Chris Williamson?

  I'm surprised in some degrees that there isn't a rule that you are not going to get married or start a family while you're inside of the forces.

• 25:02Speaker 01

  I said that for years. In a perfect world, they wouldn't.

• 25:06Chris Williamson?

  You know, K-pop, K-pop stars aren't allowed. They sign away on their contract when they go get created as a group. I think it might even be to be celibate, but it's certainly to not have a partner, absolutely to not get married, absolutely to not have kids. One of the interesting things, South Korea's got the lowest birth rate in the world. And one of the reasons that some demographer friends of mine think that that's the case is that the single most powerful cultural export and cultural influence in Korea is K-pop. And all of the K-pop stars are by contract, unpartnered and childless.

• 25:46Chris Williamson?

  But if you can do it to people that do coordinated dances on stage, I would expect that there would be a tier that you would get to where the government says, hey, while you're here, I'm afraid you're in K-pop mode.

• 26:04Speaker 01

  I used to always say, if you could build a lab and you could build nothing but premium assaulters, what would you want them to be like? James Bond, orphans, no wife, no kids, no external commitments, just focus on this craft. I mean, that's why when you look at James Bond, he's not.

• 26:20Chris Williamson?

  Nah, he's focused on fucking women.

• 26:21Speaker 01

  He is, but he's not, he's not getting married. He has nothing. So you get the hybrid between him and Neil McCauley from Heat. Can't get attached to anything. You can't walk away from 30 seconds. You feel a heat coming around the corner. It's that kind of comparison. But then what do you want them to be able to do? Because you can't have it both. You can't have people that have no empathy. Because you want this Captain America, this superhero figure that saving babies and killing the bad guy and rescuing princess and all this nonsense. Is that really what you want? It's not what the enemy have. They don't have it at all. What do you want? And I feel like people can't make up their mind.

• 26:56Chris Williamson?

  It's really interesting, you know, the last few years, we've seen war get that any.

• 27:03Speaker 01

  I've been waiting so long to drink one of these.

• 27:05Chris Williamson?

  Okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna allow you to enjoy this without me distracting you.

• 27:09Speaker 01

  Just in case you're one, you can't find these in Virginia Beach.

• 27:16Chris Williamson?

  There it is.

• 27:16Speaker 01

  Cause that's good. Good for you. Congrats.

• 27:19Chris Williamson?

  Thank you. You know, we've never seen

• 27:25Chris Williamson?

  kinetic encounters be as widely broadcast as Russia, Ukraine, Middle East. Even this year, this year, rockets going through Dubai hotel windows and stuff being shot down over airports.

• 27:44Chris Williamson?

  I'm kind of fascinated by the collateral damage that is, has always been a part of war. The, or another way to put it would be sort of the ugliness, even forget the collateral damage, because I'm aware that with modern war techniques, you would like to think we can minimize those, there can be precision that's done. And I think you get into a discussion that's probably pretty, pretty honest there. But another one would just be, there are certain elements of war, many elements of war, that are just messy and very ugly. And that includes the people that are doing it. And

• 28:25Chris Williamson?

  It's strange now to think that there's a level of sort of sanitization that

• 28:35Chris Williamson?

  many people from a country who want to, who wouldn't want to be invaded or attacked are also unhappy with the, the people who are doing it on their behalf, who are the shield or the spear that are ensuring that they stay safe.

• 28:53Chris Williamson?

  I don't like the way that they're doing it. It's being done in a, a manner that seems uncouth or barbaric or insufficiently empathetic. And I'm, I'm just interested in what you think about this additional level of, of scrutiny around not just what happens, which is one part of it, but the way that it happens too. Like, I, I, I want you to, I want you to care more about this. And you go, for every percent that I care, my effectiveness goes down by however much, more than a percent, I would imagine. Um, how do you come to think about that?

• 29:34Speaker 01

  From the US side, and I'll say from the Five Eyes side, so UK same way. You put these soldiers at such a disadvantage tactically because you're trying to mitigate all the risk to civilian populace. They put that first and foremost. So anything, like collateral damage, that is the number one thing they're concerned with. They don't want to kill women. They don't want to kill kids. They don't want to kill innocent bystanders. And they put you at significant risk to try to avoid that. They didn't do it in World War II. They didn't do it anywhere else, but they're doing it now. I just wish people would shut their TV off and just say, thanks. Like, you don't really want to see what happens. You don't. You're not going to pick up a gun and go do it. You want to sit here and shine a bright light at us and point fingers. I see what they're doing in Austria. I have Ben Robert Smith and I've watched him, I watched the UK do with my buddy Jamie.

• 30:20Speaker 01

  And just, you string these guys up like they're criminals.

• 30:23Chris Williamson?

  What, what is it that's happening with this example?

• 30:26Speaker 01

  War crimes and stuff like that. Like my buddy Jay 22 SAS, him and his whole team got wrapped up on a triple murder charge saying they killed innocent Afghans who. Had AKs, were shooting at them, enemy fighters, and they spun up this whole campaign. They gave him a Silver Star equivalent for the operation. And then two years later, he can't come to the US.

• 30:46Chris Williamson?

  Because he's go record?

• 30:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, so we've been trying to fight, we're trying to fight it right now. We're trying to get someone to give him a visa to let him come to the US. And right now, it won't.

• 30:57Speaker 01

  It's crazy. Now Ben Robert Smith and SASR in Australia, they're doing the same thing. He got the Medal of Honor. Like he is a, he is a legitimate war hero and they're trying to string him up because they're saying he murdered Afghan civilians.

• 31:11Speaker 01

  I haven't seen any, anybody get, I've never seen a murder, never.

• 31:17Speaker 01

  People don't do that. It's not a thing. And people think it is in World War II is a thing. World War I is a thing for sure. Vietnam, probably a thing. It's not a thing now.

• 31:25Chris Williamson?

  Why?

• 31:27Speaker 01

  Too much technology. Too many eyes in the sky, you can't do it.

• 31:30Chris Williamson?

  You feel like you're under CCTV surveillance the whole time?

• 31:32Speaker 01

  100% you are.

• 31:33Chris Williamson?

  So you're saying that it's not, it's not necessarily the guy, that guys wouldn't want to?

• 31:37Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 31:37Chris Williamson?

  Or that guys wouldn't? It's that the likelihood of you being caught is so high that you know, if I do this?

• 31:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:47Speaker 01

  And I don't want to confuse murder with actual war, but what you would classify as murder, to me, isn't murder. That guy has an AK, he's shooting out of a second story window at us. And if we go in there and kill him and he threw the gun six feet that way, you're saying he's unarmed. No cousin, he was just shooting at that window. He just shot one of our dudes. And now you're saying because I plugged him, I gunned six feet over there, that he's not an enemy combatant? Yes, he is. They know how to play the game. They're screwing with you because you've never played it.

• 32:15Chris Williamson?

  The, okay, tell me, tell me about what's happening from a enemy combatant standpoint, where they're trying to manipulate those rules?

• 32:22Speaker 01

  Because now they know that, because we fought that war for way too long. Starting Afghanistan, it spilled over to Iraq. So you'd see these guys, they'd shoot out of the windows, you'd run in, you'd do a whole raid. You can't find a single gun in the house. Like, how is this?

• 32:36Chris Williamson?

  When I was outside the house, I saw you with a gun. Now I'm inside the house, I don't know where the fuck they are.

• 32:39Speaker 01

  I don't know where it is. And you find a false wall with RPGs, explosives, everything in there. Oh, well, yeah, he's got a drop cloth, pulls it down, throws it on there, slams it back up. There's a big poster or painting behind it and you just don't check. And now we get really, really good at searching houses. Now we really get to see him. But somebody else comes in there, you plug a guy in the corner, you take your photos. There's no gun next to him. You're going to jail for that. There was a gun in here. No, his wife grabbed it and shoved it in there. That's how it happened.

• 33:05Chris Williamson?

  Why do you need to take photos? To justify the kill?

• 33:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, because ultimately you're going to pay them money at the end of the day. Every person you shoot in Iraq, Afghanistan gets the cash payout.

• 33:16Chris Williamson?

  Well, they don't.

• 33:17Speaker 01

  The family does.

• 33:18Chris Williamson?

  Right.

• 33:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's crazy.

• 33:22Chris Williamson?

  Whether they're a combatant or not?

• 33:24Speaker 01

  Whether a combatant or not.

• 33:25Chris Williamson?

  How much is the money?

• 33:27Speaker 01

  I don't remember off the top of my head. I mean, for a while, I think we were paying like $5,000 for a door. If you blew their door, you had to pay them money.

• 33:32Chris Williamson?

  It's expensive door and I've seen some of the doors on video in Afghanistan. They don't look like $5,000.

• 33:37Speaker 01

  No, they don't. But I mean, to them, it's monopoly money. They just throw it out there. Winning hearts and minds, winning hearts and minds. Why? Why winning hearts and minds? I'm not here to win hearts and minds. I'm not here for that at all. I'm not. Not a bit. I don't care about hearts and minds. And I know that makes me sound cruel. I'm not cruel. I'm one of the nicest people I know. But you can't play the game like that. You can't. Must go both hands tied behind your back. It's crazy because now they've been in the system so long, they know exactly how to manipulate it. They know exactly what to say. They're going to get thrown in jail for two weeks, get three, they're going to get fed three times a day, more than they ever have in their whole life, hot shower, clean bed, air conditioning, TV. They'll get released and now they know the exact process.

• 34:17Chris Williamson?

  When do they get thrown in jail?

• 34:18Speaker 01

  Whenever you arrest them.

• 34:19Chris Williamson?

  Right, okay, so you're basically, you're basically glorified police.

• 34:23Speaker 01

  Yes. Unless you, unless it's Osama bin Laden, like somebody else, like an actual terrorist network. If you're just out there, door to door, gangbuster style Baghdad 2005, just hitting every house, you're just wrapping up as many military age males as you can. You find the AKs, you have all the atmospherics, you know what they're up to. And if they don't have a gun, you're wrapping them up.

• 34:44Chris Williamson?

  What's atmospherics?

• 34:46Speaker 01

  Oh, I mean, all their deep, so everything they're saying on cell phones, emails, radios, you have all that, so you build out your profile. So I know exactly who you are. I know exactly who your neighbor is. I know you're banging his wife. I know everything. So when I get there, you don't have a gun. I wrap you in, take you in for questioning. You don't give us anything, but now you know exactly what our tactics are. You know where I have to put you, you know exactly what to say to get released in forty eight, seventy two, two weeks, whatever it is. They go back out there, they spread the gospel to all their friends and now they know. And they get really good.

• 35:15Chris Williamson?

  It's like the Somali day cares of the Middle East.

• 35:19Speaker 01

  Now, don't get me started on Somalia.

• 35:23Speaker 01

  That's a place you never want to visit.

• 35:25Chris Williamson?

  Why?

• 35:27Speaker 01

  Hmm?

• 35:27Chris Williamson?

  Why?

• 35:29Speaker 01

  You ever seen Black Hawk Down? Most realistic movie I've ever seen. That's exactly how it is.

• 35:35Chris Williamson?

  Awesome.

• 35:37Speaker 01

  It's lawless. Do whatever you want to. It's like Lord of the Flies. They can do whatever they want to.

• 35:43Speaker 01

  Like if I dropped you in Mogadishu right now, Bakar Market, right now, they'd cut your arms and legs off.

• 35:48Chris Williamson?

  Why?

• 35:49Speaker 01

  Cause you're white.

• 35:51Speaker 01

  Nobody's gonna stop them. Why wouldn't they?

• 35:54Speaker 01

  Cut your head off, put on Al Jazeera, burn American flag, they'll go off and chew a bunch of cotton, go to sleep, wake up tomorrow and do it again. They don't care.

• 36:02Speaker 01

  It's, it's lawless.

• 36:04Chris Williamson?

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• 36:45Chris Williamson?

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• 37:18Chris Williamson?

  And modern wisdom at checkout. The

• 37:23Chris Williamson?

  like mutual level of danger that you need to be able to match on both sides. But.

• 37:33Chris Williamson?

  If you are made to adhere to a particular set of rules that basically makes you less effective at your job and more likely to be injured or killed.

• 37:47Chris Williamson?

  All in the name of optics. It's a weird one, man. It's a weird one because I understand that you're supposed to be better, right? You're supposed to go in adhering to the law. It's the same reason that seeing a police officer who's texting while he drives feels particularly egregious. Like, hey dude, you enforce the law, okay? I feel like you're supposed to adhere to it.

• 38:10Speaker 01

  Come on, baby, you're better than that.

• 38:11Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 38:11Speaker 01

  Put the phone down.

• 38:12Chris Williamson?

  Yes. However.

• 38:19Chris Williamson?

  I wonder whether or not the modern world is incompatible with some of the ugly things that need to happen in war.

• 38:27Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. And anybody who's been Afghanistan, anybody who's been Iraq or any of the wars, they know. If we really wanted to win that war, we could win it fast.

• 38:39Speaker 01

  They don't want us to win it fast. I don't know who doesn't.

• 38:42Chris Williamson?

  Tell me more about this. What do you mean?

• 38:45Speaker 01

  If you grabbed all the five eyes, so US, UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand. If you just grabbed us and dropped us into Iraq and said, you have six months to close out the entire thing. Could we? 100%.

• 39:02Speaker 01

  They don't want us to, and I think that's for a bunch of different reasons, but one of them is you don't want to see what that actually looks like. Like, you don't want to watch special operations and all of this, the whole military might push through Fallujah and clear it all out. They don't want to see what clearing Fallujah actually means. Like, when you hear the Marines cleared Fallujah, they don't know what that means.

• 39:22Chris Williamson?

  What does it mean?

• 39:23Speaker 01

  They went door to door and killed every single male that was still there. Everybody who's willing to fight, they killed them all. That's how you clear the village. So they gave them, told them the time, get out by this day. If not, we're pushing through and anybody who's left to fight, we're going to kill. And that's what they did. That's how you do it. People don't want to see that. People don't want to live that. They don't want to realize that's a reality. So all your grandfathers are fighting in World War II. I promise you, they weren't handing out Hershey kisses and handshakes. It's not what they did. They had flamethrowers, for God's sake.

• 39:55Speaker 01

  You think they're getting us a flamethrower now?

• 39:56Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 39:57Speaker 01

  No.

• 39:57Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 39:58Speaker 01

  We can't even use Claymore mines. There's a whole bunch of stuff we used to use back in the day and because it's now it's too cruel and unusual. Geneva Convention threw it out. A bunch of munitions you can't use, rounds you can't shoot people with, a bunch of different weird stuff.

• 40:11Chris Williamson?

  Is that being adhered to by the other side?

• 40:13Speaker 01

  No. No, they're blowing you up, they're doing whatever they want to, suicide vest on children like they do whatever they want to. That makes it very, very hard to fight. So for you, you run in, you're a dad, you're a husband, you're a friend, you're an uncle, little kids all around, you have no idea if they have a suicide vest on now or they're holding grenades for their father, you have no idea.

• 40:35Speaker 01

  It really makes you lose trust in people. Cause now you don't know. As soon as you drop your guard, one thing happens, you're like, I'll never let that happen again.

• 40:45Speaker 01

  Technology advances, you get new pieces of tech and now you can see through clothing, you can buy down the risk a little bit, but they get very, very smart. See the smart bombs, they try to sneak through TSA all the time.

• 40:57Speaker 01

  They understand exactly what we're trying to do. And you're trying to counter it every single day.

• 41:01Chris Williamson?

  How frustrating is that as someone whose life's on the line and also is trying to dedicate their career to doing this well?

• 41:07Speaker 01

  It's a big cat and mouse game. I move my piece here, you move your piece.

• 41:11Chris Williamson?

  So you've just, you've kind of accepted this as the cost of doing business that you're going to have to adhere by a set of rules that the other side doesn't have to. You're not allowed to pick the ball up, you have to kick it.

• 41:20Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 41:20Chris Williamson?

  But they're allowed to pick it up and run with it.

• 41:22Speaker 01

  Hmm. That's exactly how it is. It's like, do you really want us to win or do you really want us to engage in this 20 year war because of all the technological advancements that you come out of that war, advancements in armament, ISR platforms, body armor, life-saving medical devices, but really war creates a lot of money. A lot of people became billionaires really, really fast because of the war. They said all these companies sprung up and Raytheon, Boeing, everybody is involved. Everybody's making just piles and piles of money.

• 41:52Chris Williamson?

  And he's saying that uh protracting out, extending an enmeshment between two different sides, that's the sort of thing that would continue to grease the wheels of that. And blasting through quickly would end the money printer.

• 42:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it's like what, it's like what Trump's doing in Iran right now. He doesn't want to be in there for 20 years. I want to go in, I want to smash you, show you I'm not going to take this shit anymore and then I want to leave.

• 42:20Speaker 01

  Is it gonna work? I have no idea. We've never tried it before. We always get putting these long drawn out conflicts that we know you don't need to.

• 42:28Chris Williamson?

  What would you do if you wanted to end the war in Iran quickly?

• 42:32Speaker 01

  Oh, you don't know what I'd do.

• 42:34Chris Williamson?

  You're allowed to. This is hypothetical only. We're playing Sid me as civilizations and you need to end it quickly.

• 42:43Speaker 01

  Nobody's gonna like my answer.

• 42:47Speaker 01

  It's just not. It's not. If I say one thing, then I'm on the Israel side. If I say this and I'm against it.

• 42:53Chris Williamson?

  Okay. Let's forget that. Let's forget that. Let's say imaginary country in somewhere that's in the Middle East that doesn't exist.

• 43:04Speaker 01

  Are they building nuclear weapons?

• 43:05Chris Williamson?

  Sure.

• 43:06Speaker 01

  Threaten to use them?

• 43:06Chris Williamson?

  Sure.

• 43:07Speaker 01

  And we know they have them.

• 43:08Chris Williamson?

  Sure.

• 43:11Chris Williamson?

  Press the button?

• 43:11Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 43:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. There's no other way. You see, it's drawn into a 20 year campaign doing the entire thing. Or all the countries all come to a line and like, we can't let this happen. We can't. We can't.

• 43:32Speaker 01

  Everybody agrees? Okay. Can't do it anymore.

• 43:35Chris Williamson?

  And what if you? What if that's not a threat?

• 43:40Speaker 01

  How would it not be a threat?

• 43:42Chris Williamson?

  They don't have it. They don't have the materials. They're not able to make it. The nuclear armaments on the other side is not a concern. It seems to me like if you're unable to use that unless you can drop the fat man equivalent.

• 43:58Chris Williamson?

  Then it becomes a much more difficult operation because then it does look a lot more like presumably door to door stuff.

• 44:06Speaker 01

  Or you could just fly in black ops or some really cool dudes and multicam and snatch a president out of their house on a Monday and call it a day.

• 44:12Chris Williamson?

  That's happened recently.

• 44:14Speaker 01

  Pretty cool job.

• 44:15Chris Williamson?

  Do you know much about? Did you? Were you excited sort of tracking that?

• 44:18Speaker 01

  Oh, I was. No. But nobody jumped up faster out of their chair and cheered than I did. I was so stoked for him. That is a, that's a cool op to do.

• 44:26Chris Williamson?

  Why?

• 44:29Speaker 01

  Snatched the president out of his house in the middle of the night like no one else is pulling that off. Nobody. Do you think anybody's gonna fly a Blackhawk and land in the White House lawn and run in and grab Donald Trump and bring him out? No.

• 44:40Chris Williamson?

  I think lots of people have probably thought about doing that.

• 44:42Speaker 01

  Nobody's going to pull that off. Nobody's pulling that off. That that is a unicorn raid.

• 44:47Chris Williamson?

  Are you, yeah, are you surprised by what was done, what you know about how it was done?

• 44:55Speaker 01

  No.

• 44:56Chris Williamson?

  Pretty standard procedure? Just done at a very, very elite, precise level?

• 45:00Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. That's what they do. That's what they do. Everybody, everybody who was involved in that was like me and everybody else who ever did that job. You are praying that that is gonna happen. You're praying.

• 45:12Chris Williamson?

  That's your Super Bowl.

• 45:13Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. If if you had an opportunity, and I promise you, they'd also say, no, Andy'd say the same thing. Right now, you want to be on the helo? Yep. Cut off a finger. Done. I'd cut it off right now, jump on Hilo and I'd, 100%. Yeah. I mean, that's the only reason you're on the planet. You want to do things like that because no one else can pull them off. It is, but it shows the, really, the strength in military. But he will do it. He will. My last, my last rotation was Trump's first one. And I don't know what he says on those phone calls. I don't know how he he avoids conflict. And I think everybody thinks he just wants to go to war, wants to go to war. We got spun up on a really

• 45:56Speaker 01

  big op that I ain't gonna talk about, so don't ask me. He canceled us on the ramp. We were getting ready to jump in and send it, and they canceled us on the ramp because he worked it out with a phone call. I don't know what he says. I don't know what he does, but he does something. Probably says something like, don't make me do it. I'll do it. Don't make me. Somehow they come to their senses and somehow they solve it.

• 46:17Chris Williamson?

  That's one of the.

• 46:20Chris Williamson?

  Like kind of catch 22s of having a leader who seems to be at least somewhat predictable and a bit bombastic that you he actually might press the button.

• 46:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:35Chris Williamson?

  You know, people are severely concerned that he might run for a third term. Right. That would be kind of the domestic equivalent of doing this. But even the fact that you think that he might be the sort of guy that would go for a third term, that's internally. And what do you think he would do to someone that's the enemy? And I I don't know whether anybody on the planet has the IQ to play like seven dimensional chess of I'm going to construct this incredibly unpredictable, very gregarious outgoing guy who seems to say things that almost might be like a WWE character if they were the president.

• 47:19Chris Williamson?

  And then what that means by playing that game is that people will believe that I'm going to be like that so that then I don't actually need to use the threat because they believe the threat more, not because they think that I'm aggressive, but because they think that I'm kind of crazy.

• 47:34Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 47:35Chris Williamson?

  I mean.

• 47:36Speaker 01

  That's what I don't realize. Is he crazy? Or is he just crazy enough to make you believe he'll really do it?

• 47:42Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. Or will he? Crazy or genius is the question.

• 47:45Speaker 01

  It's hard to know, but I mean, you know, we said.

• 47:46Chris Williamson?

  Effective is what matters most, right?

• 47:49Speaker 01

  Effective. He's avoided more conflicts than anybody I ever served under.

• 47:55Speaker 01

  He just has. If people knew the amount of conflicts he's avoided, they'd give him more praise than I do.

• 48:00Chris Williamson?

  But he's not able to talk about them.

• 48:02Speaker 01

  He just doesn't. I don't know why.

• 48:04Chris Williamson?

  You think that it would be something that he could flex, that he would be able to talk about this was how close we got to this thing. We have come to a deal, da, da, da, da, da.

• 48:10Speaker 01

  I think he's done that so many times, it's just lost in the ether. Like, he didn't even think about it.

• 48:14Chris Williamson?

  It's just a Thursday.

• 48:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's like, ah, like the whole Maduro raid thing. He's like, yeah, send him. Do I think he lost sleep over that? No. I mean, like, he has full trust and confidence in the force. Yeah, you know what? I'm sick of it. Send him. Knox Mount, great job. Get some all cheeseburgers and yep, see you guys on Tuesday.

• 48:36Speaker 01

  I think it's, yeah.

• 48:38Chris Williamson?

  I don't, based on what I know about Trump, he's not the picture of health. From a, a, a physical training standpoint.

• 48:44Speaker 01

  No.

• 48:45Chris Williamson?

  Psychologically, do you think that he would make a good special forces operator?

• 48:49Speaker 01

  No.

• 48:49Chris Williamson?

  Why?

• 48:54Speaker 01

  His ego gets in trouble quite a bit. I don't know if.

• 49:01Speaker 01

  If he wasn't the leader, I don't know how good he'd be as a follower.

• 49:06Speaker 01

  If you don't have overall say, how well can you get in line?

• 49:10Chris Williamson?

  And that's why the ego gets in the way.

• 49:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, if it's not your plan, will you still adopt it as your plan? That's, that's the thing a lot of guys have an issue with. That's where you see the ego come in. And. I had a mentor, actually really good friend. His name's Brad Gary, retired out of the team not too long ago, an amazing guy. He says a quote, culture eats strategy for breakfast every day. It does. You can have.

• 49:33Chris Williamson?

  Does he run the mind gym? Does he run the Navy SEALs mind gym?

• 49:37Speaker 01

  Um, he was definitely there when it.

• 49:39Chris Williamson?

  What's his name?

• 49:40Speaker 01

  Brad Gary. He was on Sean Ryan not too long ago.

• 49:43Chris Williamson?

  I want to say, is it Brad Jacobs that did some mental training stuff? We had, we had a.

• 49:51Chris Williamson?

  No, who's the guy that works with Psychon? Rob Moore helped to publish his book. Fuck. Brad Simon. Anyway, um, yeah, culture eats strategy for breakfast is so true. Well, it's just aligning the incentives, but it's aligning the incentives at a group level. Right? Hey, this is how we do things. Not we need to just enforce these things. This isn't happening top down. It's happening bottom up. But we also have the routines that are built in top down.

• 50:17Speaker 01

  Exactly. I don't know how well he'd do if he wasn't one coming up with a plan. If he disagreed at all, how loud would he vocalize it? I don't know.

• 50:25Chris Williamson?

  As an only child, I can fully empathize with Donald Trump in that regard. If it's my way or the toys are going out of the prem. I've had to learn to, you know, desensitize, deprogram that. What do you think's the biggest misconception that civilians have about what special operations looks like day to day?

• 50:49Speaker 01

  I think a lot of them watch the expendables and think that's what you do all day. Picking your teeth with a bowie knife, throwing stuff in there, or it looks like Zero Dark Thirty, walking around playing horseshoes with pop collars and camis, just

• 51:03Speaker 01

  more routine than you think it was.

• 51:07Speaker 01

  More structured than you think it was, but a lot more lawless than you think it would be. More like a

• 51:15Speaker 01

  more like a professional sports team than a military organization.

• 51:18Chris Williamson?

  That's what it feels like.

• 51:19Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. I mean, you're rarely in uniform unless it's a promotion or unless you're at a funeral. You don't put them on. Most guys are relaxed grooming standards, long hair, big beards. You don't take your photo. You're not on social media. You're not writing books. You're not. You just live that life. And to them, it's no different than playing on a professional baseball team, football team. They show up every single day trying to earn their seat at the table every single day. And they put the group before themselves and everything to do. If you do that, you'll be a successful player. And I've never met anybody that was worth his weight that was not obsessed. Nobody that I would ever clone that didn't wake up every day and go, I can't believe I get paid to do this. You don't get paid a lot.

• 52:01Speaker 01

  But if I'm honest now, and I think everybody would say it too, 90% of the time, if you had the financial means, you'd pay to do that job. Like if there was a, if there was a club you could join and do that.

• 52:13Speaker 01

  I'd swipe plastics so fast. It's an amazing experience.

• 52:18Speaker 01

  But

• 52:20Speaker 01

  I think a lot of people think that, um, you're kind of like a caveman. There's no empathy.

• 52:27Speaker 01

  You know, people aren't well educated. They're not well read. They're just

• 52:32Speaker 01

  grunts, too many tattoos, say too many cuss words, get too much Copenhagen, spit on your floor, kind of just brutes. All the guys I worked with, all the guys I looked up to, they are

• 52:45Speaker 01

  They're more philosophers than anything else. Some of the conversations we've had around those tables have absolutely changed my life. Just training methodology, just thought provoking conversations, like the way they analyze targets and people and navigating human terrain, like I've never seen anything else like it.

• 52:59Chris Williamson?

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• 53:41Chris Williamson?

  30-day free returns globally with global shipping, plus a 10% discount site-wide. Right now, you can get 10% off everything by going to the link in the description below. Heading to gym.sh/modernd wisdom and using the code MODERNWISDOM10 at checkout. That's gym.sh/modernd wisdom and MODERNWISDOM10 at checkout. Have you seen this chart before?

• 54:06Speaker 01

  I have seen that chart.

• 54:07Chris Williamson?

  I'll explain it to you. So it's the prevalence of violence perpetrated by IQ standard deviation. So 70 to 79, 80 to 89, all the way up. And basically, it's asking the following question. Have you been in a physical fight or deliberately hit anyone in the past five years? That's the question. And the prevalence as a percentage is linear going down. And when you get to the middle of the distribution, it's somewhere between 11.4 and 7.9%. So what's that? Let's call it 10%, something like that. 10% of people with 100 IQ have hit somebody or been in a physical fight within the last

• 54:51Chris Williamson?

  five years, and it goes down and down. But if you're talking about wanting somebody who has got quite elite mental capacities as well.

• 55:01Chris Williamson?

  5.2% between 110 and 119, 2.9% between 120 and 129. And I saw this tweet that said the percentage of guys with 130 plus IQ, who both enjoy books and bar fights is incredibly small. And that is why you can't mass produce elite special operators for the military.

• 55:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, it tracks. I don't have a 130 IQ for sure, but I do like reading books and punch people in face for sure. Nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with that.

• 55:34Speaker 01

  They're way more constrained than you would imagine. And then sometimes they, um,

• 55:42Speaker 01

  a lot of times you don't want them to be. Like to me, my special operations guys don't have flat top haircuts. They don't blouse their boots. They don't say sir, they don't salute. They have all the ability to do those things, but the job's filthy. Like, why would, why do I, I don't want a Kindle doing that job.

• 55:56Chris Williamson?

  Is it seen as sort of unnecessary pump in circumstance and, uh,

• 56:07Chris Williamson?

  ritual that doesn't contribute to the outcome, like to, to jump through those hoops to do the?

• 56:13Speaker 01

  Oh, you mean play the song and dance?

• 56:15Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, of course. Yeah, yeah. Yes, sir. No, sir. The clean shaven, the no tattoos and stuff like that.

• 56:21Speaker 01

  They only do that as punishment. Anytime anybody does anything wrong, cut your hair, shave your face. It's why we hate it. That's why most guys, when they get out, they grow a beard, grow their hair out. They're like, I am sick of this. I'm never doing that again.

• 56:30Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 56:31Speaker 01

  They run that for a year and then they shave it all and whatever they go back to normal.

• 56:36Speaker 01

  But no, I mean.

• 56:37Chris Williamson?

  It's the you can't tell me what to wear mum equivalent of being in the special forces.

• 56:42Speaker 01

  Have you ever seen the main? It's got a bunch of green berets sitting around, hands in pockets, hands in pockets. The only reason I went to selection. I want to be able to put my hands in my pockets and spit Copenhagen on your floor and grow a beard. No, like I, I want to be a one percenter.

• 56:55Chris Williamson?

  And you're allowed to do special things. You said, uh, it's more lawless than people might realize. What do you mean by that?

• 57:03Speaker 01

  Everything's black and white. Special operations find a way to live in that gray area, but gray area navigation tours running every 30 minutes. We will find a way to navigate through the gray area to get to the interstate. As long as we know what the why is, what we have to get accomplished, we'll find a way to get there. And sometimes it's not pretty, but I mean, I'm, I'm pretty honest. I'll break every rule in the book right now if it puts a team in a better position, even if it puts myself at a disadvantage or threatens my career, maybe my life. If it's good for the group, I'll do it anyway. But not lawless in a sense like people don't, people aren't murdering people. There's no rape, not a lot of drugs anymore, like, but not a, there's not a whole lot

• 57:47Speaker 01

  of guys who transition to be police officers.

• 57:49Chris Williamson?

  Too constraining?

• 57:51Speaker 01

  Too constraining. I don't want to be constrained. I, I don't like it. Cause everybody asked me when I got out, like, I don't want to be a cop and go to FBI. Absolutely not. I love those guys. They're amazing. Nothing but respect. I can't do that job. I'm in the gray area too much. You're saying, but I'm open and honest about it. I don't hide that a bit.

• 58:10Chris Williamson?

  I think this is what I was trying to get at before, when I said, um, the modern world being incompatible with some of the ugly parts of war. That, um, if you're focused on outcome, if you're focused on the ends, the means can sometimes become up for debate. And the ends are often not scrutinized, but the means are by people. Does that make sense? Yeah.

• 58:33Speaker 01

  And I'm trying to, I can't find a way to word this. I've never seen anything in my military career that I would even put morally questionable on any level. Not for a cop, not for a fireman, not for a school teacher. Everything has always been above board, but there are times where you just want to hoist a black flag and start slitting throats. You just do, but I can't believe we're going to put this dude in the back of his helicopter and let him loose. I, I can't believe we're going to let him do it.

• 59:05Chris Williamson?

  Because you know that he's a bad guy?

• 59:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. Or some of the things you see, some of the things you know that you're doing, you have, because it's not an assault on you, but some of the stuff they do with children, it's, it's so disgusting that if I, if I didn't have that flag in my arm and I was just a tourist, I'd kill you. If I get away with it right now, I just kill you. But because I have this flag on my shoulder, now I can't. And now I resent the flag because I can't do to you what I know needs to happen to you.

• 59:31Chris Williamson?

  How does that feel that

• 59:36Chris Williamson?

  systemic constraint when you've got righteous anger?

• 59:41Speaker 01

  It's hard, man. It is. It's hard, especially when you've lost friends or, you know, extortion one seven happened in August of extortion seventeen, had a whole troop get killed. Kilo got shot down, killed everybody on board, thirty one guys. Having to back those guys up on deployment in that exact same place, living in their beds. If I'm being told that I just want to kill everybody and to not be able to do it, it's hard. Because you have the opportunity. It's like,

• 1:00:15Speaker 01

  at least not do anything bad now. Okay, I guess I put you in handcuffs, they're on a halo, drop you off here, they'll put you in detention center for ten days, they'll release you. Like,

• 1:00:25Speaker 01

  okay, they wouldn't do that to me. If they wrap me up and put me in handcuffs, they would saw my head off in fifteen minutes. Now we all know it. It's not fair.

• 1:00:34Chris Williamson?

  Have you been tracking this fallout after Rob was on Andy's show, talking about the Osama raid?

• 1:00:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:43Chris Williamson?

  What do you make of that?

• 1:00:48Speaker 01

  I hate the fact we're even talking about it, if I'm being honest. Like, they did such a good job about not talking about it. I mean, Rob was my first team leader. So, I know Rob. I owe a lot to Rob because Rob drafted me and brought me in.

• 1:01:07Speaker 01

  I wish nobody would have ever said a word. When they left to go on the raid, I didn't know where they were going.

• 1:01:12Chris Williamson?

  Were you on compound or whatever it's called?

• 1:01:14Speaker 01

  I was in his team. Yeah.

• 1:01:16Chris Williamson?

  So you didn't get chosen?

• 1:01:17Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:01:18Chris Williamson?

  Motherfuckers.

• 1:01:18Speaker 01

  Two juniors. Yeah.

• 1:01:20Chris Williamson?

  How?

• 1:01:21Speaker 01

  You know, we'll say we rack all the teams, we'll say there's seven guys, one to seven. They took twos and above and took them all from every team. Those are the guys.

• 1:01:29Chris Williamson?

  Oh, interesting.

• 1:01:30Speaker 01

  It's the first time they ever did it.

• 1:01:32Chris Williamson?

  So it's closer to being, and how many, how many people in total are?

• 1:01:38Speaker 01

  Can't talk about it. Not.

• 1:01:39Chris Williamson?

  Okay, fine.

• 1:01:40Speaker 01

  We'll talk about it off screen, way less than you think.

• 1:01:42Chris Williamson?

  Cool. So it's closer to me, what it sounds like, I'm loving the sports analogy. It's more like. Having a league of teams. And then you've got the Steph Curry or the Kevin Durant from each team.

• 1:01:57Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:01:57Chris Williamson?

  And then you're able to take the top filtering. Does that not create, surely that must create a um.

• 1:02:04Speaker 01

  Lot of animosity, lot of resentment.

• 1:02:07Chris Williamson?

  Uh, it's some of that, but yeah, because you know, hang on, who the fuck, what's I'm number five and six, am I?

• 1:02:15Chris Williamson?

  More so complexity that the verticals of the teams have got culture. Baked in and as you start to take people, I'm, I mean.

• 1:02:26Chris Williamson?

  Perfect example, when players come together to play for their national team.

• 1:02:31Chris Williamson?

  When they've played for rivalrous.

• 1:02:35Chris Williamson?

  Uh, local teams. That doesn't always work well, like, and sometimes. A team which has the maximum.

• 1:02:45Chris Williamson?

  Player stats for each individual player, but not the cohesion. Doesn't necessarily perform as well as a vertical team that does have the cohesion with. Uh, somebody that's got less experience or whatever. Look at me.

• 1:02:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:59Chris Williamson?

  Sat in the stands, talking about how the special forces should be run.

• 1:03:03Speaker 01

  I mean, that's how it's always been run. Take a team, take a troop, take a squadron, whatever it is, and you go out and do the thing. They cherry pick from inside of the same squadron and none of us knew. I don't know. If we knew they were spinning up on something and they would tell us like it's some bullshit training mission. But it was my first cycle. I had just gotten through selection and all of them are like. Enjoy your first rotation. He's like, you ain't missing shit. Trust me, this is going to be a dog and pony. We're going to waste our time and nothing's going to happen. Promise you. About five days before they went to go do the thing, we all came in, had a big blowout. You know, dudes are buying new watches, buying thousand dollar sunglasses because they didn't think they were going to come home. We all thought they were going to go get Gaddafi. So when Obama walked out and did News House, and I was in my living room with my wife,

• 1:03:48Speaker 01

  with my shooting buddy on speakerphone, and as soon as he said it, screaming like so proud.

• 1:03:54Chris Williamson?

  Because you knew that that was.

• 1:03:55Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. So happy. Never been more proud of my fucking life. Oh, my God. And then we came back and everything started to roll out. News cameras everywhere. They're coming to people's houses. They're out in town. You go get a beer. They bump into you like they're constantly trying to dig in to see who you are. They're trying to film you. I mean, it it became a zoo and it stayed like that for a long time.

• 1:04:16Chris Williamson?

  Has it ever been more highly scrutinized than around then?

• 1:04:22Speaker 01

  No, it was unlike anything else I've ever seen.

• 1:04:24Chris Williamson?

  That kind of launched the seals to some degree, I think, in the public consciousness.

• 1:04:29Speaker 01

  I mean, they had a couple of big ones before then, you know. They had June 28 with Marcus Luttrell, Lone Survivor, that got into fanfare. I mean, that was an operation gone wrong. In 2009, they had Captain Phillips. They rescued Nurse Alabama. That was another huge one. Same squadron. So, yeah, like been knocking these things out for a bit. So when that thing happened, the thing that pissed us off the most is right after you gotta think, May 2011, that happened. August 2011, another squadron gets shot and shot with an RPG, whole troop goes down. The amount of people and the people today that say that was an inside job.

• 1:05:07Speaker 01

  I wish I could launch you in Afghanistan to a raid and kill you. It is the most disrespectful thing I've ever seen.

• 1:05:12Chris Williamson?

  Why do they think it was an inside job?

• 1:05:14Speaker 01

  Because apparently that squadron knew too much about the UBL raid and we gotta kill them off. The fact that people say that.

• 1:05:22Speaker 01

  You got 95% of those guys are all married. So now all their kids, they all read that shit. They read those comments. They watch those YouTube videos. These disgruntled fat army guys talking all this nonsense. And now they don't know. It's like, Mom, did the government kill Dad? No, no, no. He's like, this guy's a green brain. He says they did. Like, oh, my God, here we go.

• 1:05:41Chris Williamson?

  It's the.

• 1:05:41Speaker 01

  Spins his hateful narrative.

• 1:05:43Chris Williamson?

  It's the Sandy Hook parents equivalent in reverse for war.

• 1:05:49Speaker 01

  It is. Cause a lot of doubt, though. Cause a lot of doubt in people. You're like, that's absolutely not possible. It's not possible. No one would ever do it. Nobody.

• 1:06:02Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it seems to me, I mean, again, sat in the rosette of the stands, talking about what the fuck goes on in the American military, a country that I've only just moved to.

• 1:06:14Chris Williamson?

  The fact that things are heavily scrutinized, that war stories have got a kind of allure and romance and sort of sexiness to them, means that the dose response of information being put out is so unusually magnified. And yeah, with the Osama bin Laden raid, you have every single second of potential information is going to be just, it's game tape. It is like game tape in some World Cup final.

• 1:06:45Chris Williamson?

  And there's a critical mass that you can reach of information. And when you get even close to that, you basically have a kind of nuclear self sustaining reaction where it just generates more and more and more. And yeah, I watched, I watched Rob talk on Andy's show and I'm like,

• 1:07:04Chris Williamson?

  if nothing else, this is going to create an awful lot more nuclear reactions.

• 1:07:09Speaker 01

  Really wish you wouldn't have said it. You think about all those guys that are still in, they're the ones that are gonna have to deal with them. I had to deal with it. And Rob does Rob things, you know, guys got out and they wrote books. If you weren't in that command, when those books dropped, you have no idea the hell we all went through.

• 1:07:29Chris Williamson?

  Why?

• 1:07:30Speaker 01

  Oh, anybody who had association with them, we had guys combing the ceilings for bugs. You know, they leave listening devices. I mean, it was, it was so, because nobody knew who was feeding them information. So once they separated out and they started writing the book, they're like, okay, well, somebody's communicating with them. They knew too much active information that is happening now. And you could tell with some of the emails going back and forth. They were following guys home.

• 1:07:54Chris Williamson?

  There was, there was, I didn't realize this. Uh, some of the people who had been in and then got out and were then allowed to talk about what had happened, included information that they couldn't have known had it not have been passed on from people who were still inside. Wow.

• 1:08:13Speaker 01

  Then they got to be just pointing fingers and shit like, you're talking to them, you're talking to them. Can we just go back to work, man? Let's just go back to work. I wish nobody would have ever said a thing. Just kill him, put it up on news, he's dead. Don't say how, don't say it was a compound raid, don't do any of that.

• 1:08:27Chris Williamson?

  Don't say how, don't say who.

• 1:08:28Speaker 01

  But then on the same side. We gotta be honest, everybody who's in special operations right now, today serving, the only reason you're in there is because you read a book, you watched a movie, or something from somebody in Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Black Hawk Down.

• 1:08:44Chris Williamson?

  Isn't that

• 1:08:44Speaker 01

  That's the only reason.

• 1:08:45Chris Williamson?

  Isn't that strange?

• 1:08:46Speaker 01

  It is. You're telling them not to, but the only reason we're all in this building is because somebody like him wrote a book.

• 1:08:52Chris Williamson?

  Have wanted to become Navy SEALs? How many people have become Navy SEALs?

• 1:08:55Speaker 01

  Because Not, well, not many, but a lot of people have tried.

• 1:08:59Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:00Speaker 01

  I mean, somebody asked me today about David Goggins. And they're like, what do you think about David Goggins? And I'm like, when I was in the teams, he was different because he was a, he was a poster child. He was an athlete for the Navy. I'll say between David Goggins and Jaco, those two people have probably put more people in the services over the last 10 years than anybody else in the last 50. They just have. Millions and millions of people have read their books, seen all of that. They've become cops, firemen, Navy SEALs, they've joined the Coast Guard. Yeah, they all do. Like, they did it right. They did a good job. They put them up on a pedestal. They weren't talking about war stories. They weren't doing all this stuff.

• 1:09:39Speaker 01

  But you take that and then you take the actual operational side of it and like, well, you're okay with they do that. But you can't do that. Why?

• 1:09:47Chris Williamson?

  I don't know if people are okay with anyone. There's a

• 1:09:50Speaker 01

  Oh, they aren't.

• 1:09:51Chris Williamson?

  There's a degree of, and I only, I'm on the real periphery of this shit. But my YouTube every so often feeds me veterans talking about veteran drama shit. And it seems like there is a kind of noble silence that's expected of anybody, especially as you get up toward the higher tiers too. And it would be an interesting question to ask those people. Would you rather people adhere to the noble side? Would you rather veterans adhere to the noble silence? Or would you rather have however many more million able-bodied men

• 1:10:33Chris Williamson?

  trying to serve their country or their community in the police or the FBI or the special forces?

• 1:10:42Speaker 01

  It's hard to figure out because you look like the UK, very, very small.

• 1:10:47Chris Williamson?

  Not very, very small. Not very, very small.

• 1:10:50Speaker 01

  Very, very small, small.

• 1:10:52Chris Williamson?

  I'm not gonna disagree with you.

• 1:10:53Speaker 01

  But England is small and how they conquered all of that, pretty, pretty incredible.

• 1:11:00Chris Williamson?

  Yep, the accent helps.

• 1:11:01Speaker 01

  They do, the accent helps. They don't give their military enough credit. There's not enough people growing up in England that want to grow up to be in the services.

• 1:11:10Chris Williamson?

  Dude, there isn't this I need to, it is unbelievable to me. I remember the first time that I started coming to America and the first time that I got on an internal domestic flight from somewhere in America to somewhere else in America. And you hear them come over the tannoy and they say, uh, we would like to invite, uh, active military and first responders, uh, to, to or whatever it is to get on the plane first. I'm thinking, I have never, ever heard that. The idea of a veteran community. Uh, I once wore a Black Rifle Coffee shirt, uh, getting onto a plane, this a few years ago. And, um, it's, uh, cocky green with gold print, like classic sort of military come thing. And it's got the American flag on one arm.

• 1:11:54Chris Williamson?

  And as I walked past, there was an older gentleman, really nicely dressed, one of the early rows. And as I walked past, a

• 1:12:02Chris Williamson?

  bigger guy, short hair, said, thank you for your service. I'm like, uh, and you know, there's all of these people behind me and I'm like, I, my T-shirt has just given me stolen valor and I have no idea how to fucking wipe this. I might want you to, uh, I must remind, I'm actually British, like, uh, there was no way for me to, but I remember thinking, there is such a, uh, reflexive response, especially maybe among older generations to just revere people who served in the military. And it is whatever the opposite of that is, like actively ignored, uh, or kind of looked down on as if you did something a bit stupid. Like, uh, you weren't smart enough to go into whatever else.

• 1:12:46Speaker 01

  That's why you joined the military.

• 1:12:47Chris Williamson?

  That's precisely, that is exactly how the British military veterans are seen, exactly how they're seen.

• 1:12:54Speaker 01

  Big population in America, same thing. But now they appreciate it because we got attacked here and nine 11, a lot of people have forgotten about that, but I mean, I try to remind the guys often, the only reason we're not speaking German is because of the military. We are. The only reason we're all actually free is just because the military, nobody really wants to uncork that. So the reason we're free right now is because nobody really wants to fly over here and find out. That's it. They just don't. If we did not have the military that we do, we would have been taken over a long time ago.

• 1:13:25Chris Williamson?

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• 1:14:07Chris Williamson?

  that I've ever stuck with. Best of all, you can join for free. Pay nothing for the brand new Whoop 5.0 strap, and you get your first month for free. And there's a 30 day money back guarantee. So you can buy it for free, try it for free. If you don't like it after 29 days, they just give you your money back. Right now, you can get the brand new Whoop 5.0 and that 30 day free trial by going to the link in the description below, or heading to join.whoop.com/modernd wisdom. That's join.whoop.com/modernd wisdom. Can you try and find, it's gonna be a little tough to find, it's a short, a YouTube short, and it's a guy talking about, do you know who has the number one navy in the world? And do you know who has the number two navy in the world? Do you know who has the number three air force in the world, and the number one, and the number two? It's a guy kind of

• 1:14:52Chris Williamson?

  ranking all of the different things. He's on a podcast, and it is so fucking cool. I think the US Coast Guard is the fourth biggest navy in the world. And then the navy is the first biggest navy in the world. And then something else is the second biggest. It's like, this country has got, and he basically makes the point.

• 1:15:14Chris Williamson?

  The reason America as a country is so overpowered militarily. And every time that I think about that, I also think about that video. I can't remember who the Admiral is. But the someone else will raise your mothers and daughters for you. You know that video? It is, there's a metro booming like hip hop edit of that, which is kind of a bit gratuitous, but it's.

• 1:15:42Chris Williamson?

  Holy shit. I mean, if you want to talk about. What the sort of best elements of American culture? Yeah, let's go, let's go on that one. Actually, with the Black Rifle head, I'm sure this will be good.

• 1:15:56Speaker 02

  We have been honed into a machine of lethal moving parts that you would be wise to avoid if you know what's good for you. We will not be intimidated. We will not back down. We've seen war. We don't want war, but if you want war with the United States of America, there's one thing I can promise you. So help me God. Someone else will raise your sons and daughters.

• 1:16:21Speaker 01

  Bro, bro, I got goosebumps. Oh, burn them to the ground, dude. I love that.

• 1:16:26Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, that's it.

• 1:16:29Speaker 01

  Bro. Fixed bayonets.

• 1:16:30Chris Williamson?

  That's one of the, that's one of the sickest lines.

• 1:16:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean. Freedom isn't free. Freedom ain't free. You have to be formidable adversary. If not, they're going to take everything you have. They just don't. You gotta be ready.

• 1:16:47Speaker 01

  Stay ready.

• 1:16:49Chris Williamson?

  What are some of the adaptations that normal people might not realize? Special forces operators go through when you become hyper optimized for combat?

• 1:17:00Speaker 01

  Depends on how far they take it. Some guys adjust their entire lifestyle. Everything, people they associate with, the time they wake up, the time they go to bed.

• 1:17:09Speaker 01

  The majority of the guys are suffering through something. It could be alcohol, it'd be prescription pills, it could be injuries. Everything.

• 1:17:18Chris Williamson?

  And what are they typically? Coping with what, what's the thing that is causing them to use? The injuries obviously makes sense, but psychologically.

• 1:17:31Speaker 01

  I'd say for me.

• 1:17:35Speaker 01

  I'm probably the quintessential dude. Kind of represent everybody. I'm not a unicorn by any means. I'm a product of the culture. Hard time sleeping. So you start taking Ambien every night and then that doesn't work.

• 1:17:48Speaker 01

  Your memory starts getting shot. Too many TBIs. You get put on Adderall and now you're taking uppers and downers and then all the pain elements and start avoiding surgery and then.

• 1:17:59Speaker 01

  If you have a hard time trying to balance being a full-time husband, a full-time father, being a full-time Navy SEAL or pilot or whatever else you're trying to do. So you start to compartmentalize everything. I can't be a husband. I can't be a father right now. I can't be a best friend. I can't be an uncle. I can't be a son. I can only do this one thing. So I'm going to compartmentalize everything else. I'm going to shift it away. And then when I get done, I'll reintegrate. As soon as you try to reintegrate, you can't. The wife's off her routine. You're late for the bus stop. She's got her whole schedule set and now you drop back in and you just screwed it all up. Now you don't feel like you're at home. So what do you do? You just run back into work. Start pouring all your time back in there and you feel this big dissociation between the thing you're actually fighting for. Because now I can't even be around it because I don't feel at home there.

• 1:18:44Speaker 01

  I feel like I'm staying in Airbnb. I feel like I'm staying in my aunt's house. Like I'm trying to keep creep through the kitchen. Like I open up the refrigerator. Didn't have anything that I want in here because I haven't been grocery shopping in eight months.

• 1:18:57Speaker 01

  Well, now I'm too ashamed to ask her to buy this or buy that.

• 1:19:01Speaker 01

  And you're on another trip. I think people will be shocked with how much the guys are on the road. Minimum 270 days, 325, 350 a year. I mean, they are gone, gone, gone. And even when you're there, like that typical morning, we'll call it day in a life, random Tuesday in Virginia Beach, up at five, clearing the gym, 5:30, workout, 5:30 to 6:30, eat breakfast, go do a recovery session. That could be a float tank, a cryo chamber, e-stem, cold plunge, whatever. Go back up, 10 a.m. briefing, train for three, four hours, eat lunch, train three, four hours, eat dinner, drink a couple beers in the team room, go back home, 9 p.m. Kids already in bed. Your wife started taking a shower. She's watching Netflix. You go in, you're asleep in 20, 30 minutes or at least half asleep.

• 1:19:47Speaker 01

  You wake up four, five, six times a night. Can't really fall asleep. Wake up five o'clock, do it again. Over and over. So your kids don't see you for pretty much the entire week. If you're lucky, you'll come in 6:30 at night. They're in bed by eight. You're two-hand texting frantic, you're trying to pack your stuff, trying to do laundry, about to leave in a day, like you're just never really truly present. And that's when everything else starts to happen. The injuries stack up, sleep deprivation stacks up, you're on a shitty diet, now you're drinking too much, you're popping these pills. And it doesn't feel like you're doing to excess. The doctors have given you this stuff, you just keep eating them. Like, oh, I feel better. Three or four days, you feel worse. Like, eat another Adderall, wake up and do it again, do it again, do it again.

• 1:20:28Speaker 01

  And a lot of it is, it is egocentric because everybody around you is better than you are. And you feel like, I have to see them see me work. Like, I want you to notice that I am in here before you, I'm staying here after you, and I want you to know that I know I'm not great, but goddamn, I'm trying. It won't be for a lack of effort, it won't be for a lack of commitment or discipline. I'm going to show up every day trying to be better than I was yesterday. And that's what everybody has. You just get really used to just being inside of that thing. And you sacrifice. Guys become the best at hiding injuries. Catastrophic injuries.

• 1:21:03Chris Williamson?

  What are the most common injuries?

• 1:21:05Speaker 01

  Shoulders, hips, knees, TBI, neck, low back.

• 1:21:09Chris Williamson?

  And what's this from? From shooting?

• 1:21:11Speaker 01

  Everything. Skydiving, climbing, the boats, everything. It just, it's rough, man. It's rough on the body. And now you don't sleep. And when I say don't sleep, I mean realistically, like actual sleep? Two hours a night? Like, you don't sleep. And a lot of that is, you think when you go overseas, we're on vampire hour, so you don't see the sun for three to six months, however long you'll be overseas, but you wake up at five in the afternoon and you drank coffee all night. You get back home at 5:00 AM, you eat breakfast and you try to go to sleep. Now the sun's up, your body gets that dose of vitamin D, and now you're just chasing it.

• 1:21:49Chris Williamson?

  Are you using light therapy? SAD lamps or any sort of equivalent when you're over there?

• 1:21:55Speaker 01

  We didn't have Wi-Fi for my first three or four deployments, no. Nice, it should be better now, but back in the day, they couldn't even, they couldn't even prescribe you vitamin D because it was a hormone replacement. That's where they classified in the military. Now it's different, but I mean fingernails falling out, hair falling out.

• 1:22:11Chris Williamson?

  Why?

• 1:22:11Speaker 01

  Not seeing the sun for six months, like literally not saying it.

• 1:22:15Chris Williamson?

  He turned into a bat.

• 1:22:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. And you feel like death, face all sucked in, food's terrible, like you got a food allergy or like, dude, I can't, I couldn't eat a boiled egg right now if you gave me a million dollars. I've eaten thousands and thousands of hard boiled eggs, thou, I'm not exactly thousands of them. You get overseas, you're like, I can't eat this food, dude, I can't, what are you eating? Hard boiled eggs and white rice, three times a day, I'm just gonna keep going. It's exhausting, man. But.

• 1:22:43Chris Williamson?

  It's surprising to me that everything would be so optimized. In the buildup. And then seemingly so. Like under optimized, once you get out there, like, and also, why, why is no one, the, probably the single biggest performance enhancer for anybody is sleep?

• 1:23:02Speaker 01

  Because you don't always get to dictate when you're gonna go.

• 1:23:05Chris Williamson?

  But when you're at home and you're training, how come that's not my prioritized?

• 1:23:10Speaker 01

  You gotta think about. So see on a training schedule, we'll say you get up at five, you run through the entire day and we'll say you're doing a night profile that night. You're not even gonna get geared up for that night profile until eight thirty at night. That's gonna go until two, three in the morning. So when you wake up, you're still gonna clock in into a full normal day. So you can either come in at six, you can come in at seven, or you can come in at five and just live the exact same routine. So a lot of guys have hammocks in their cage area, put a sleep in the cage. No kidding.

• 1:23:38Chris Williamson?

  Into the cage.

• 1:23:40Speaker 01

  Probably a quarter size this room, everybody has their own, so all your gear's in it, guns, bullets, bombs, all the stuff is in there, but they'll string up a hammock and they'll just sleep in it. Guys, Tempur-Pedic mattress on the floor and put a sleep in it.

• 1:23:51Chris Williamson?

  Because it's easier than having to commute to go back home to then come back because you're losing half an hour each way or maybe more.

• 1:23:57Speaker 01

  I go in, I wake up my wife, my alarm clock goes off, she's like, why are you getting up? You gotta have this awkward conversation, jump back in the car, just drive back in, rinse and repeat again. So a lot of time, guys just stay there.

• 1:24:09Speaker 01

  You get used to it, but when it's happening in the moment, you don't realize what it's doing. Like you'll watch your weight fluctuate, like, you know, everybody gets overseas, everybody tries to get big and jacked on deployment. You come back home and it's like, I can't maintain this. I'm not sleeping. I'm not eating right. All the stuff starts to happen to you. You start to road a little bit of yourself. You go on these stints where you get really, really jacked in great shape. Like, oh, I can maintain this. But your sleep is garbage.

• 1:24:34Chris Williamson?

  Like you pushing too hard?

• 1:24:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it's one of the, like, if I talked to anybody else, like, you're doing too much. You need to break it down. You need to take two weeks off. Don't do anything physical. My mental health will just spiral out of control so fast. I have to stay on the routine because if not, then my confidence drops. So I know I need to sleep. I know I shouldn't do anything in the gym today. I know I shouldn't. But if I don't, my confidence drops. Then what? Then what do you want me to do?

• 1:25:00Chris Williamson?

  Feedback loop.

• 1:25:02Speaker 01

  Vicious.

• 1:25:03Chris Williamson?

  Is your mood and health better when, because it seems like being overseas in some ways might be a little bit easier because there aren't the distractions. You're sort of locked in.

• 1:25:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:14Chris Williamson?

  But you're also vampire mode with shitty food and all of the other issues.

• 1:25:20Speaker 01

  Best time you've ever had in your life.

• 1:25:23Speaker 01

  Being overseas. Most guys will tell you they sleep better. Now, when I, now, because I'm out, I've got a bunch of different modalities that help me sleep better now. But I sleep way better overseas than I do when I'm in town.

• 1:25:33Chris Williamson?

  Even now?

• 1:25:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. We are. Always. You just do.

• 1:25:39Chris Williamson?

  I can't remember what movie it is. Maybe it's Rambo or maybe it's The Expendables or something. And I know it's a cliche, but it sounds like it might be true that there's a guy who comes back home after he's been on deployment or he's been on some sort of operation and he's struggling to sleep in the bed. So he decides to sleep on the floor and just put his arm under his head. And it kind of feels a little bit like that. You become conditioned to have one particular type of environment and one that's objectively better.

• 1:26:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:08Chris Williamson?

  Is subjectively like alien.

• 1:26:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. Man, I miss it. You make me time travel right now.

• 1:26:17Speaker 01

  It is the most fun you'll ever have in your entire life. It is like even all the bullshit, the sleepless nights, ambient, whatever else. I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world. Give me $10 million right now to erase those memories. I wouldn't touch it. Not a chance, dude. But in the moment, it all seems like it's worth it. I just wish I was able to find a better balance point. Because for me, I wasn't able to. I had, I had too many things that were weighing on me, too many things in the family. And it, it became so much easier to be overseas and to isolate. Not throw up family photos, limited times you're going to FaceTime, limited times you're going to call home. Because in the moment, the last thing I want is for that window to light up. I've got to run over there and deal with it. And I don't want to think about orphaning my kids, making my wife a two-time widow.

• 1:27:02Speaker 01

  I don't want to do that. I can't have that inside of me. So it sounds selfish, but I've had a lot of amazing mentors that have said the same thing. If you think that I'm thinking about my wife on that helo flight in, I'm not. If you think I'm wondering what my kids are doing, I'm not. I'm only thinking about that dude because I've been staring his face for the last 72 hours. That's the only thing I'm thinking about. The helo flight in, the walk in, the patrol, atmospherics, everything. That's the only thing I'm thinking about.

• 1:27:30Chris Williamson?

  It's a compartmentalization again. It's an interesting study that I learned about, um, that was looking at attachment styles. And they brought people into a lab and in classic psychological study fashion. The study began before people realized the study began. They're in this waiting room together. And over the far side is a computer and the computer begins to just drift a little bit of smoke out. Small amount, like it might be about to catch fire, something like that. Before they'd gone in, they'd done an attachment style assessment on all of the people that were in there. And there were some that were anxious, some that were avoidant, there were some that were securely attached. What was interesting was the anxious people were the first ones that noticed that the smoke was coming out of the computer. But the avoidant people were the first ones out the door.

• 1:28:13Chris Williamson?

  And that explains why you need in a, you know, Dunbar number 150 person tribe. Why you need a variety of attachment styles. You need someone that's hyper vigilant, who's always watching that ridge where sometimes the animals or the enemies come over. But you need other people that are decisive. And one of the skills. That the avoidance side seemed to have is an ability to compartmentalize. So the anxious people would be more likely to think, I mean, it's okay. Should we, can we leave? Are we allowed to? Whereas even people like, it's just a wily coyote. It's just a puff of dust and they're gone. And um, what I thought was interesting about that was I imagined that I was putting together a a police force or something.

• 1:28:57Chris Williamson?

  And you want the SWAT guys and the E R's. You want them on average to be avoidant. You want them to be able to compartmentalize what it is that they've got going on. Like, no, I don't need you right now. This person needs me to look after them. But you want the detective to be anxious. You want him to pay a level of attention to things where they can't switch either thinking and ruminating and ruminating.

• 1:29:23Chris Williamson?

  It was behind the kitchen door, you know, like that's, and it's, it's just interesting to me that

• 1:29:30Chris Williamson?

  the things which you are praised for in public, you pay for in private. And your inability to switch that sort of stuff off, you know, like those adaptations that you've gone through and the same traits and focus that make elite operators effective can probably make normal life and relationships extremely difficult.

• 1:29:53Speaker 01

  It does, because at a certain point, you start to think that everything is just a time sucker, a bandwidth suck. Like right now, this conversation we're having, it doesn't make me better at work. It doesn't. In fact, it just makes me want to go to work to avoid this right now. It really makes you just want to stay on the planet and not come home. So I don't have to deal with this shit. And then you start to spit in venom. Talk about trauma, like it sacks up inside you, gets the right, you guys got yards of beer in the UK here? That's just trauma. Starts to come out of your mouth. It's, it's hate, it's hostility, it's all this stuff. And before you know it, you can't control it every time you go home, just launching it.

• 1:30:29Speaker 01

  Well, the only place I never launch at is at work because everybody else is the same as me. We talk about the same things. We only speak in movie quotes. We're on the same workout routine. We fight together, shoot together, sleep together, do everything together, and I never feel like I'm outside of the group. I never feel like I'm a bother, ever. Every time I come home, I feel like this is not my place. It's not my place because I'm never here. You don't realize that where you're inside it. Like, I don't realize that I've been gone for 300 days this year. I wonder why I don't feel like this is my house. Like, every time I come home, you change the, you change, why do I have all these pillows? Every time I come home, there's another pillow. Change the bedspread and all this stuff, like, you just, you never really feel like you're there. You just recompartementalize, right back to work.

• 1:31:10Chris Williamson?

  Also, you're asking an awful lot of a partner, right? You're saying, hey, this connection that is going to be almost entirely severed, except for a few brief moments here and there across an entire year. When I come back, I want you to immediately drop into this. I've got my problems to go through, but I don't want to have to deal with the problems that you've got because that's additional capacity that I've already blown.

• 1:31:34Speaker 01

  Well said. This is exactly what it is. So now when I talk to the guys, I tell them, like, unless you lasso a unicorn, which I did, I mean, she was into it. She was in the Navy. She was married to a SEAL that got killed. Her dad was a SEAL. She knew the culture. She knew what she was getting into. I wanted.

• 1:31:50Chris Williamson?

  It's like she was bred to be the wife of a SEAL.

• 1:31:53Speaker 01

  For sure. It's like, I wanted that picture-perfect life. I wanted my dream job. I wanted the house, the 2.5 kids, the Labrador, the white picket fence. I want everything taken care of. And every time I come home, I just resent it. Like, I know this is what I want, but you need so much attention from me that I cannot give you. And she just kept going. She'd show up. If a tree fell on the house, she fixed it.

• 1:32:18Chris Williamson?

  Navy SEAL wives.

• 1:32:19Speaker 01

  I don't know how to do anything. I don't know who cuts my grass. I don't know who to call if a tree does fall on the house. She does. She handles it all. So I got to focus on Minecraft the whole time. What sucked is trying to reintegrate. Because now it's like, hey, job's done. I've got a couple of weeks off. Let's all be a happy family. And I don't know how to do it because I can't shut off. You're too hypervigilant. I'm on a 10 all day long. I'm two-hand texting, checking my phone, checking my phone, checking my phone. Hey, I was going on vacation. I can't go on a vacation. But no, you just came back from the deployment. I was going on a vacation. I'm not going on a vacation. I'm going on a jump trip.

• 1:32:53Speaker 01

  I gotta get better at Scott Avenue, not sitting in the Bahamas. I don't know what that does. Does make me better at CQB. No, not doing that. So we avoided that for the majority of our marriage. We just said, I couldn't justify it. That doesn't make me better at work. Doesn't. I wish I would have done it. But I tell the guys, if I would have spent my first four years really focused on the craft, I probably wouldn't have thought that I needed to burn all that time and all those reps later on in my career.

• 1:33:20Chris Williamson?

  I don't know, man. I, I, I

• 1:33:24Chris Williamson?

  I understand what you're saying. I get the feeling that that might be a comforting myth.

• 1:33:29Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:33:29Chris Williamson?

  To tell yourself that if only I'd done it another way, I could have made it work in this manner later on. Uh, I, I get the sense that it is less like the pursuit of mastery and more like an addiction to work, that I just need to keep it going. Obviously, again, I'm now in road trip at the fucking back of the stadium. Um, I, I know enough people. I know people in bands and bands are the same. You're on the road for 180, 200, 250 days of the year. Jimmy Carr is, I think he's doing 425 shows this year.

• 1:34:06Speaker 01

  What?

• 1:34:07Chris Williamson?

  Cause he matinase the shows. So he'll do a, a 6pm show and then an 8pm show. Uh, he did, how many fucking dates did he do? He did like a hundred, a hundred and something dates just in Australia. Uh, it's absurd. It's absurd. Uh, but

• 1:34:22Speaker 01

  It has to be obsessed. Have to be.

• 1:34:24Chris Williamson?

  You do. Uh, and the same thing goes for, uh, the, the interesting thing about the comedian thing is typically they're traveling on their own, they're traveling with one warm-up, warm-up and tour manager. And I think there's a minimum, uh, uh, minimum sort of group size that you need in order to be able to make a micro culture. And I think that's what really embeds people into it. Might make it easier in some ways, but probably makes it harder to integrate. Makes it easier on the road, but harder to integrate when you get back. Uh, and that's where, if you look at, uh, people that are in bands, people that are in sports teams, professional sports teams, uh, that is what's particularly difficult, I think, because you have created this new life, which you and your five bandmates, it's you and squad of 15. And that's us. And this is what we do. And that reintegration

• 1:35:08Chris Williamson?

  is incredibly difficult, I think, to bring that back across. I think that's where, that's where the struggle comes in. Uh, but yeah, man, I

• 1:35:18Chris Williamson?

  The prospect of trying to come back and doing this thing that you know that you care about and that you know is noble and that you're doing for the right reasons and that you're trying to make the world and your country a safer place and to then come back and to have struggled to, I mean, again, as you said, you've got as, it sounds like as close to a gold standard partner, fucking bred for this, uh, that maybe bred more to be a SEAL's wife than you were to be a SEAL, uh, by the sounds of things.

• 1:35:48Chris Williamson?

  It really does surprise me, I'm not, I'm not suggesting this, but it does surprise me that if the military cared that much about the integration and the performance, because presumably if there'd been, if everybody had had a partner like yours, which still had shit ton of difficulties, the guys, there have to be many, many levels of hell below the one that you did when it comes to what's happening relationally, that can't improve their performance when they're away. So if that's the case, why, why aren't the army trying to have some sort of X Factor pop idol thing for, hey, we are going to help you find a partner and we're actually going to help you and your partner to make sure

• 1:36:33Chris Williamson?

  that for the person that gets into a relationship with a special operator, they have the psychological accoutrements that are appropriate for them to actually be able to deal with this and they're going to be able to support you, which would make you into a better person. It seems to me in very few areas, it's such an overbearing, uh, like incursion into somebody's life, right? Like, you mean that you're going to try and like, like screen partners so that, I get that, but when you're talking about, oh, the most important military operations on the planet, I mean, if you're covering everything from, you said, I's are dotted, T's are crossed, every single bullet and bomb and tactic, and I've worked thousands

• 1:37:17Chris Williamson?

  and thousands and thousands of jumps and I've drilled this thing over and over again.

• 1:37:23Chris Williamson?

  A huge impact on your performance is going to be your relationship to your kids, what reintegration looks like when you get off duty, who it is that you choose as a partner, all of those things. So I don't know, maybe this is too softly, softly skills and you can always just like spit and sawdust and grit your teeth and Ambien and Adderall your way through it. And it kind of doesn't really matter that much because like, okay, whatever, there's going to be some collateral damage that occurs relationally, but fuck it, the guys will just show up. Anyway, that's why we select people who can compartmentalize and put that stuff to one side. But it seems to me that even the capacity for compartmentalization could be used more effectively if it wasn't being drained relationally. That all makes sense.

• 1:38:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. You know what the divorce rate in the SEAL teams are?

• 1:38:07Chris Williamson?

  No.

• 1:38:07Speaker 01

  Over a hundred percent.

• 1:38:10Chris Williamson?

  Because people get remarried and then run it back and then get out again. Brilliant.

• 1:38:14Speaker 01

  The first guy, first troop chief I had on his fifth.

• 1:38:18Chris Williamson?

  That's impressive.

• 1:38:19Speaker 01

  My business partner now is on his third. Totally normal. Most guys have been divorced at least once, at least once.

• 1:38:27Speaker 01

  It's just, it's cost doing business. And a lot of that is because guys come in so young. Like we did a thing where we didn't take any guys that were in the Navy prior. You had to come in basically off the street or straight out of college. We didn't want guys had any fleet time. So you think the majority of the kids that show up between 18 and 21, 22 years old, more than the majority of those guys do, they marry their high school sweetheart, some chick they met in college, some chick they met in San Diego, who's there on college, whatever. And then you move her to a place she's never been, no support system. And then you leave her there for an entire year by herself. You come back home, you're distant, you're not connected with her and you just keep putting her through it over and over. She has one deployment, maybe two, and she's like, I need for you to get out. He ain't getting out for you. No, he didn't even know your middle name, for being honest. Beat it. Get a divorce. You're not worth it right now.

• 1:39:12Speaker 01

  I'm on this speeding bullet train on my fingertips right now. I'm not jumping because of you. I'm not.

• 1:39:20Speaker 01

  Sacrifice must be made and usually you sacrifice the ones you love the most. That's what I did. Those are the times I regret it. I wish I would have had a better balance point. But in that time, I couldn't justify it. I couldn't. I didn't have it in me. And I think that's kind of the excuse I came up with. If I would have lived, if I would have had the mentors I had later in my career, when I first got in and I would have followed their path, would have found the role models. I'm going to sit there. I'm going to ride your coattails. I'm going to live your routine. I think I would have found a balance point.

• 1:39:49Chris Williamson?

  What would have been the biggest differences?

• 1:39:53Speaker 01

  Really just being a pro. I'm going to live a routine from the day I show up to the day I leave. Not going to drink to excess. And that's really the difference is there were so much eighties and nineties special operation spillover when I came in the early two thousands. Drinking, fighting, fucking. That's what you did. You you traveled around like you were in the Rolling Stones. Every bar you went into beating up college kids, stealing their girlfriends, doing that over and over and over. Cause you're single. It's fun. It's normal. But you're not training at full capacity. Like we're training hard and then we're going to burn this thing to the ground. Later on my career, the guys that were just, they set the standard for the most lethal people you have never met in your life.

• 1:40:33Speaker 01

  Two drinks in a single sitting. That's it. You never saw him drunk. They never wore flip flops. They beat the brakes off you 24 seven, three sixty five. They could always perform on demand. And they they truly just lived it. Were they the best husbands and fathers? No. I hope they are now, but it certainly appeared that a lot of them had a balance point. But they had been living this professional life like a LeBron James or Kobe Bryant, the whole time from nineteen years old.

• 1:40:58Chris Williamson?

  Rockstar life.

• 1:40:58Speaker 01

  Exactly. They were a monk. Like you never saw him at a bar. They were never shitfaced. They never got a DUI. And they could send it.

• 1:41:06Chris Williamson?

  You don't need to say who it is. They might be active or out now. Who is the person that? What is the archetype of the person that's been most impressive to you? The single operator that you've seen? What are they like?

• 1:41:21Speaker 01

  Probably the most clon- wow, man, I can't even say that.

• 1:41:25Speaker 01

  Like the best guy?

• 1:41:30Speaker 01

  I don't know how, um, I don't know how they are at home. You think you know how they are at home because of how they interact. Cause you gotta think, man, the majority of those people you spend a decade together with. New guys will come in and out, but most of the guys, when you're spending seven to eight years unbroken, just together, hopefully it gets a 10 year mark and then you have to rotate out. The best guy I have ever seen, the most well-rounded.

• 1:41:54Speaker 01

  In amazing shape, an amazing high school wrestler, transitioned over to MMA, an amazing skydiver, amazing shooter, culturally, if you could mass produce and make a thousand of him, I would press that button right now and I'd drop him on every corner of the earth. Just the best, but he lived that routine. His routine, and here's where you know the difference, everybody. You talk to anybody who's ever worked with a SEAL, if we get overseas, we come to a new base, very first thing we ask for, where's the chow hall, where's the gym? Chow hall and gym, I'll figure out everything else after that, chow hall and gym, where is it? Everybody shows up and everybody does a lift, everybody. I don't care if you're a marathon runner, whatever, they all do fitness first thing in the morning and then we focus on hard skills for the rest of the day.

• 1:42:37Speaker 01

  That dude and a bunch of other guys would show up, they would get that lift in, they'd go straight over to Fight Club, they'd do Moe Tire BJJ for an hour, they'd jump in a cryo chamber, they'd jump in a float tank, they'd get ESTEM work done, soft tissue work, they'd go eat breakfast, then go upstairs for the 10 a.m. meeting, then do CQB for a four hour block, eat lunch, another CQB for a four hour block, eat dinner and go home and be a husband or father. They did that unbroken the entire time I've known him, long before it was cool. Long before you could look at guys like Michael Phelps or Steph Curry for inspiration. They lived that routine unbroken. Because you go on these pockets, like you go on these trips, shooting trips, jump trips, whatever. And we'll say you go to Arizona on a three week trip, the guys who hate jumping might do.

• 1:43:22Speaker 01

  Fifty to seventy five jumps in three weeks. The guys who are really into it will do two hundred and fifty. They jump all weekend, ten, twelve jumps a day, every single day, unbroken. And they're just stacking their resume over and over and over. So when you call them, like, hey, I need you to pull this off. There's no warm up. There's no mulligan. I can't go back and rejock. Like, I can just send it all day long. That's how they lived. And when you look at him, like, if I could just press the clone button and make a thousand of you, I could do anything.

• 1:43:50Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:50Speaker 01

  Like, you want to end, you want to end the Iran war?

• 1:43:52Chris Williamson?

  Regime.

• 1:43:53Speaker 01

  Done. Right there.

• 1:43:55Chris Williamson?

  That's a good, that's a good question. That's a good question. For most, uh, for most conflicts, what is the number of special operators, tier one special operators that you need to be able to topple pretty much any regime in the world?

• 1:44:10Speaker 01

  How big's the regime?

• 1:44:12Chris Williamson?

  Uh, let's say the size of, it can't be Russia or China, because it's going to be insane. Like, the size of any normal midsize country with a, like, semi-competent military, like Middle East-y type stuff.

• 1:44:26Speaker 01

  It's not even really operatives, supporting assets. It's a helo pilot, it's a drone pilot, it's the air coverage overhead, it's everybody in between that makes the whole mechanism roll. But when we get off camera, I'll tell you how many guys there are. It's so very small. Like, if people knew how small it was, they wouldn't even think it's cool. They're like, it can't be like that.

• 1:44:43Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:44Speaker 01

  It's somewhere in between astronauts and F1. There ain't many, dude. I mean, there's not. If you look at the whole scope of the military, zero, zero, zero, zero, one percent. Like, we're not talking hundreds of people. It's very small.

• 1:44:57Chris Williamson?

  Wow.

• 1:44:57Speaker 01

  So when you get them in there, it's like, you don't need a whole lot. I mean, on your typical, you know, I'm dating myself with Afghanistan and Iraq, but I mean, your typical assault on however many people in a four-story compound, twelve people. Twelve people, you can do anything. You don't need a lot. You just need twelve really badass dudes. They can get it done. Just let them loose.

• 1:45:20Chris Williamson?

  Who were you the day after you retired?

• 1:45:24Speaker 01

  Hmm?

• 1:45:25Chris Williamson?

  Who were you the day after you retired?

• 1:45:28Speaker 01

  Lost and alone. I was coming off a pretty bad injury. I had a really cool transition. Got out on a Friday, and on Monday morning, I was starting a contract with the Air Force. Three weeks before that, I'd been electrocuted, so went through a bunch of surgeries and got really.

• 1:45:45Chris Williamson?

  You'd been electrocuted?

• 1:45:46Speaker 01

  God, have you not heard that fucking story?

• 1:45:48Chris Williamson?

  No, tell me the story.

• 1:45:49Speaker 01

  God.

• 1:45:52Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:45:56Speaker 01

  I get in a bad jump accident.

• 1:45:59Speaker 01

  Dislocate my shoulder, it spins through, shreds the entire thing. And now I'm on a medical retirement board. So I've got to get all these surgeries. In the process of that, they found out I was taking all these medications, a bunch of them you couldn't take together. So this new doc comes in, he's like, hey, we had a serious problem, dude. I was like, what is it? He goes, you can't take these four medications together. It'll give you a stroke and you'll die.

• 1:46:22Speaker 01

  Well, I've been taking those for nine years now. I ain't had a stroke yet. And he went, okay, here's the deal. I'm going to send you to Walter Reed. It's this nice program. You'll love it. It's a, it's a medical detox facility. So you're going to go there, we're going to wash you out all the meds. We'll put you on a couple ones. You maintain long term. We got to get you all these meds. What it really is, is a psych ward. So I show up there, bright eyed, bushy tailed, really just a shell of myself, but not realizing what I'm going to do. And they start taking my shoestrings, take all my stuff. And I'm looking around like, what is going on here? And then, you know, had these nice nurses, but they were fighter pilots in there. There were green berets in there. There were all these people in there. And you could see him, like, one of the guys had really bad Parkinson's. He had an injection

• 1:47:06Speaker 01

  ride out of a fighter jet. I mean, jammed up, like, couldn't speak, nonverbal. And I'm looking around like, why am I in this room? Like, I'm good, dude. Like, I didn't realize how far I had fallen, like, what I looked like at the time. Face all sunk in, 185 pounds, just like, not who I used to be. So he put me in this hospital bed, essentially strapped me down for 31 consecutive days. And I do a full med washout. By day three or four, I'm in full detox mode. I don't realize it. I think I have food poisoning. I'm thrown up into bed, pissed all over myself. They're changing my sheets, blotting me with the wet napkins. I mean, doing the whole thing. I just keep apologizing. I'm so sorry. I don't

• 1:47:47Speaker 01

  know what I ate. I don't know what I ate. You know, day four, five, six, gets this pretty black nurse and she's like, oh, honey, you don't know what this is? No. And she's like, it's gonna be okay. I was washing out of all those medications I was on.

• 1:48:01Chris Williamson?

  Can you say what the meds were?

• 1:48:03Speaker 01

  Everything from Atabol, Cymbalta, Zoloft, Prazosin.

• 1:48:10Speaker 01

  With the big pain meds, tramadol, Toradol, Percocet, Vicodin, everything. Everything and anything you could be put on, I would say.

• 1:48:18Chris Williamson?

  That sounds like something that might give you a stroke, yeah.

• 1:48:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I wasn't taking them in excess. I wasn't chewing them up. I wasn't snoring them, but I'd wake up and I'd take them all day long. But I had such bad TBI after this injury, really photophobic. I wore sunglasses basically all day, every day. If I looked at those things, I'd get a crazy headache. I'd get sick. I'd throw up. So we're going through all these different protocols. They washed me out of these meds and I wanted to die. When I finally felt what true sobriety was, because I was under this illusion, because I'm not drinking in excess like I did when I was in my teens and twenties, I'm good. I didn't realize popping all these pills is the equivalent of drinking a 12-pack every three hours. And that's what it is. I was stoned under the influence of a narcotic or under a prescription medication 24/7/365 from 10 until 22.

• 1:49:04Speaker 01

  So this is, this is 2018, 2019 now, something like that. We get washed out of these meds and while I'm in there, it's probably day 15 or 20, the Red Cross comes in. They're bringing in dogs, I mean, dog therapy, all this stuff. And she goes, can I get you anything? And I was like, I don't know. She's like, hey, we're doing art therapy next door. What about a skateboard? Can you give me a skateboard? She's like, yeah. She brings me a change of clothes. They sneak me out of the hospital and there's a skateboard shop right outside of Bethesda, Maryland. I can't remember the name, but I think it's Siren or something. We walk in there, she sees my armband and she's like, what's going on? I was like, you have a skateboard in here? He gave me two off the wall. I sanded them down, went back, painted them, papier-mache, all this stuff.

• 1:49:48Speaker 01

  And that's what started what Tribe Skates was. It was my transition out of the military. I'm gonna make.

• 1:49:57Speaker 01

  My mental health version was, instead of painting masks or anything else, I'm gonna paint skateboards. So gonna get a skateboard team, gonna start mass producing these things, all this stuff. But for me, it was the creativity of doing that. In that process, I found fracture burning. You ever seen that?

• 1:50:13Speaker 01

  You take a microwave transformer, you pop it out and you splice jumper cables into it. Then you hook it to an octopus outlet and you flick the switch. So if I sand down all the lacquer off this table and I drove a ten penny nail in there and there, I clipped these two things on and I poured Coca-Cola across this table. It would burn the wood grain and they would all connect, right?

• 1:50:32Chris Williamson?

  Make a cool pattern.

• 1:50:33Speaker 01

  Oh, a sick pattern.

• 1:50:34Chris Williamson?

  Right.

• 1:50:34Speaker 01

  I burnt everything. So I'm burning these skateboards and I am, I'm knocking out some of the coolest piece I've ever seen, ever. Getting really good at it. I don't realize how dangerous it is though. I'm not an electrician. I don't know.

• 1:50:48Chris Williamson?

  I'm not an electrician either, but it sounds dangerous.

• 1:50:50Speaker 01

  It looks more dangerous than it sounds. If you see the machine I was running with, it is so sketchy. But, you know, I'm not on Google, I'm not on YouTube, I'm not looking how dangerous it is. There's no chat GPT.

• 1:51:01Chris Williamson?

  Why are you doing this?

• 1:51:02Speaker 01

  Anywhere and everywhere. In my garage, in my backyard, everywhere. I'm just burning hundreds of skateboards at this point. And I've got my retirement date, it's supposed to be like August 31st, 2019. We're on Father's Day, so what is that? July, June, July, whatever that is, June?

• 1:51:21Speaker 01

  It's Father's Day morning. I've been burning since four, five thirty in the morning till my time. Got up early, knocking them all out. I mean, I got stacks of these things. And around, I'll call it eight o'clock in the morning, my mind isn't the sharpest anymore. I get a call from an EOD guy, so bomb tech in the Navy, explosive ordnance disposal. They have a retirement ceremony that's going on and he's got these huge paddles, like these eight foot oars. And they wrap them all up, this decorative string and do all this stuff. And he's like, hey, can you burn them for me? And I was like, yeah, dude, come over. He comes over. One of the critical elements on fracture burning is you can't have lacquer. No stain, it's gotta be bare wood. If not, it'll melt the lacquer, it screws up the entire piece.

• 1:52:03Speaker 01

  He comes over with this eight foot ore. I'm like, oh brother, you gotta, you gotta sand that off. So I unplug my machine. He plugs in a sander and starts sanding it down, getting it all off. I'm cleaning up my boards and part of that process, I've got them on easels. And I'm spraying them with the hose. I got a big wire brush and I'm knocking off the ash out of them to clean them all out, hose them off, hose them off, hose them off. So you can imagine my backyard, I've just got skateboards everywhere drying in the sun. I've already washed off, there's standing water all over it. I'm essentially sitting on a concrete pad burning these things. And we get done, my wife bangs on a window and she's like, hey, it's Father's Day, gotta go eat breakfast. Last burn. Both my kids are in a bay window from me to that TV away watching me.

• 1:52:48Speaker 01

  I turned around. He had finished sanding. He'd unplugged his machine and plugged mine back in and it flicked the breaker. So they're laying on the ground live. I don't know it because I never let anybody be around me when I burn. So I mean, you can put these things in your mouth. It's not hooked to any electricity. So I grab him. I go to readjust him and

• 1:53:08Speaker 01

  lights me up. I got him in both hands. I contracted so hard. It shattered my collarbone. It shattered my scapula. It blew out of my finger, blew out of my palm, top of my head, came out of my thighs, one next to my ass. And right when I held it, right when it popped, I took a step back and I landed in that giant pool of water, ankle deep. Blew me up in the air and shot me across the yard, still holding on to these things. Him, because he's an EOD guy and he's smarter than me, had the wherewithal to unplug the machine. So when I wake up, I'm on the flat of my back. He's right in my face. He's like, do you know where you are? On the ground. And I remember exhaling and seeing smoke come out of my mouth. My hair was real long the time. It's all standing up, hair smoking.

• 1:53:51Speaker 01

  Hands are all smoked out. I'm like, Jesus Christ. He's like, how do you feel? And I was like, shoulders dislocated, something. I mean, shoulders like hanging down the hair. The whole thing shattered, pieces. I stand up. I try to walk, um. I try to walk around for a bit. I tell the old lady, go get my keys. I'm going to drive myself to the hospital, typical team guy fashion. She's like, you're an idiot. She's yelling at me. I'm telling her to shut up. Kids are running around, everybody screaming. He's trying to break down the machines. My kids don't run out. We get around to the corner and I've probably got to walk maybe thirty, forty feet to my car. Not far.

• 1:54:25Speaker 01

  Date myself a movie quote. You seen Kill Bill? Do you know the five finger death touch she does? She takes five steps and he falls and dies. That's what happened to me. I stood up. I walked on the side of my house. I took one big step. She's inside. I can hear her run around with the kids trying to tell them all like, hey, dad got hurt. You gotta take him to the hospital. Your mom or grandma's gonna come over. He's trying to break down the machine. I take a step and everything goes

• 1:54:50Speaker 01

  jet black on the periphery. I'm like, fuck, fuck, fuck. I take another one, close in again.

• 1:54:57Speaker 01

  I don't want to die in Virginia Beach. If you ask anybody who's ever met me, that is my number one fear. I do not want to die in Virginia Beach, no matter what. Don't let me die there. I take my third step. I'm in a toilet paper, too.

• 1:55:10Speaker 01

  This is gonna be it. I take one more. Total blindness. I can't see anything. And my eyes are as open as big as I can get them. I can't see anything, dude. Ears start roaring. I'm on the side of this house, panic at the disco. I'm not screaming. I'm just freaking out. Like, I'm looking up. I can't see an ounce of daylight. Oh, my fucking god. This is it. I'm blind. Oh, my god. I start hyperventilating over and over and over, as loud and as deep as I can. Probably thirty, forty seconds in my mind, it's got a drifting off, and I see a little pinhole light. Yep, I just stare at it. I keep power breathing.

• 1:55:46Speaker 01

  And it opens up, opens up, opens up, and then boom. Like, I have superhuman vision. I can see everything. I can see the texture from the brick from forty feet away. I mean, I can see anything and everything, and I can feel everything. Like, I can feel my wife walking through the house. I live in a big brick house. I can feel her walking through it. Like, it's... Ask anybody who's ever been electrocuted, you start to feel weird stuff. He gets me up in that car, not let me drive to the hospital. We drive. It's probably three miles from me to our local hospital, like, the big one. Hit every single pothole in Virginia Beach. It was like he doubled back to try to get in. If you ever had a collarbone broken or shattered,

• 1:56:27Speaker 01

  that's the move, man. You can feel it. You move around. The whole thing's just hinging. I mean, arms basically just swinging around. It's terrible. We get in, get into the burn unit, and that was in time during COVID. So, everybody in there has a mask on. Virginia Beach has probably the most gorgeous nurses on the planet, but you can only see their eyes. Beautiful mascara, crystal blue eyes, and now I can see it all now, so I'm processing it. Fingers are inside you. I mean, they're doing all this stuff. They're moving my shoulders around. I'm screaming at them. I'm telling them to stop. And I'll never forget. I tell them this. They all laugh at me. This nurse swings her beautiful eyes in front of me, and she goes, "Mr. Shipley, I am so surprised you still have a penis."

• 1:57:09Speaker 01

  Jesus Christ. And she's like, oh, honey, when guys get electrocuted, everything comes off. Fingers go off your nose, your ears. Like if you hit it with one side, your whole opposite arm will get blown off. Like it opens up your rib cage. And she goes, and what we can tell right now, outside of what's blown up on you, like you're good.

• 1:57:27Speaker 01

  So I make it through that, make it three or four more hours. They've got to lift me to a different burn unit. Very specific. And when I get inside that one, this, um, this ER doc comes in, he's like, hey dude, I'm probably two, 230 pounds at the time. I just rebuilt from this gnarly shoulder surgery. Been in the best shape I've been in very long time. So I feel like Superman, except now I'm in a hospital bed. He comes in, he goes, hey, do you know what Rabdo is? I said, yeah. And he goes, when you get electrocuted, your body goes through, it produces an enzyme very similar to Rabdo. All your muscles liquefy, they go septic. I gotta cut them out or you'll die. Okay. And he goes, so I gotta come back every hour. And when your blood marker, that enzyme hits a certain level, I gotta start cutting you up.

• 1:58:13Speaker 01

  And I'm sitting there, I'd been through so much, so many injuries, so many surgeries and all this stuff. I'm like, when you say cut me up, what does that mean? And he goes, pecs, lats, quads, hamstrings, delts, biceps, triceps, shoulders, everything has to go. The bigger, I gotta get it out quick. Cause once it liquefies, it's gonna go fast. I'm like, how sure? And he goes, as sure as I know the sun's about to set in three hours. Like happens to everybody. Right?

• 1:58:39Speaker 01

  Oh my God. He leaves the room. I start hysterically crying. My wife is bawling and I just wanted a gun next to me so I could shoot myself. I, the lowest I'd ever been, I was already struggling with depression, everything. I'd leave that hospital bed, comes back in an hour later, checks my blood. So far, so good. Back in an hour, back in an hour, back in an hour, back in an hour, doing the whole thing. And he came back in probably five, six hours later and he's like, hey dude, for whatever reason, not only is your enzyme marker not getting bitter, um, just not a trace up in your whole body. He's like, we scheduled you for surgery next Tuesday. Going to put in a plate and like 15 screws in your collarbone. You can go.

• 1:59:23Speaker 01

  I mean, I was in a hospital for four or five days, but yeah. Survive that, survive the electrocution, did all that stuff. And that was really kind of the premise for Tribe Skates. That's how the whole thing started. It was all art therapy and. Yeah. That um, that was the worst, man. I had to rebuild my thumb. My tendon got attached to the nerve bundle. So my thumb got fused like this for about a year. I had to do a Z link, then open the whole thing up so I could actually move my thumb again. Caught my shorts on fire. Like it was um, it was dicey dude. That was um, that was my transition. So when I transitioned out of the military, that's what I had to do.

• 2:00:01Speaker 01

  So by the time I actually got my Diddy 214, you are retired on a Friday. Here's your retirement paperwork. I started a job the very next Monday. I couldn't even put on body armor because I just had surgery. So I had foam plates and trying to teach these guys CQB. Arms and two slings, just trying to pretend like it wasn't there. So I'd, I'd show up with double slings. I'd take them both off and I'd just stand there. Holding my kit like this because I couldn't move my arms. That's how I had to teach. That was my transition. Just hiding injuries.

• 2:00:29Chris Williamson?

  About as gold standard as you could get for making it worse than it already was.

• 2:00:33Speaker 01

  The worst thing that's ever happened to me. I had the best transition. You know, working with the Air Force was an amazing experience. That transition, that fall from grace was.

• 2:00:43Speaker 01

  Nothing I've ever seen. No one ever told you about it. I thought it was going to be the best thing that ever happened to me. Grow your long hair. I'm going to smoke weed. I'm going to do whatever I want to. Military doesn't own me. Yes, yes, yes. I've never craved anything more than I wanted to be back in. I know exactly what everybody did. I do not want to be a civilian. I need to get back into work as soon as humanly possible and it wasn't an option.

• 2:01:06Speaker 01

  Now what do I do? What do I do now? I don't know how to do anything else. And that's when you really realize I've been developing a skillset that is useless to everyone else. Nobody needs this. Think Elon Musk is gonna call me like, hey, I'm thinking about building a tier one assault team. Want to be on it? That phone call is not coming, dude. Nobody needs you. And now if you get out and you get on social media and you ever talk about you did, then you get bastardized by the community. You write a book, now everybody hates you. Open up a podcast, everybody hates you.

• 2:01:35Speaker 01

  What am I supposed to do? I don't know how to do anything. I didn't go to college, didn't get a real estate license. I don't have a relationship with my wife, don't have a relationship with my kids. I've sacrificed everything to try to be as good at this one thing as humanly possible. And I was trying to do it for 30 years. And now at 17, I don't have it. I don't have any transferable skillset. What do I do? Spiral, spiral, spiral.

• 2:01:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, you didn't have any sanity to check. I had no group, no reason to get out of bed at 5:00 AM. I didn't have anything else. So when I'm laying there in rehab, I'm at my house, all gimped up. I get a knock at the door.

• 2:02:12Speaker 01

  I answer the door, it's my strength coach, Vernon Griffith, best strength coach in the fucking world. Oh, I love this guy. He was my guy that brought me back after the the shoulder injury from Scott Ivan. Brought me all back and he shows up and he's like, oh God, he's still milking it? Shut up. We're like gimping in my kitchen, I sit down and I am, I'm really feeling sorry for myself. Like I do not want to play the game. If my hands weren't as bad as they were, I probably would have killed myself. I couldn't do anything. Like I couldn't even pull a trigger, Mike. I didn't know how I do it. And he's like, well, if you're done making excuses, what can you do? Nothing, dude. I can do nothing. He's like, please can you walk? I was like, I can barely walk, yeah, I mean, I can walk. He's like, can you move your hands?

• 2:02:56Speaker 01

  Hands are all bandaged up and I was like, yeah. He's like, can you curl your wrist? I said, yeah, but I'm in double slings, like I can't do a bicep curl, I can't do anything. He's like, cool. Pulls out this blue two pound dumbbell about that big and puts it in my hand. He goes, extend it, curl it up.

• 2:03:13Speaker 01

  Pre niche your wrists, same thing. Looks like we can do wrist curls and 20 minute walks. We did that every single day, multiple times a day until I could pressurize my upper body and then we got back in the gym. Belt squatting, doing nothing with belt squats and lunges for eight weeks. Surgery all healed, now we can do upper body and then we just stayed on that exact same routine. So as low as I was, the only reason I was as low as I was is I didn't have a group. I don't have a group now, what do I have? I've got my family now. I don't have my routine. Get back on the routine. Back in the gym, living the exact same routine I've lived my entire life, surrounding myself with people better than me, naturally started to pull me out of the depression. Anytime I've ever hit that bottom again, it's because I've been outside of my routine,

• 2:03:56Speaker 01

  where I put my individual needs, what needs my group and the guilt started to really affect me. So I don't try to over complicate anymore. So my transition out was terrible. My rebuild looked exactly like it's been every day since I was 15 or 16. Back on the routine, don't break it, no matter what. Yeah, that's me, uh, that's me getting electrocuted. Terrible.

• 2:04:18Chris Williamson?

  And what about the psychological changes? You know, I, I understand that physiology and psychology are very closely linked for you, but I think,

• 2:04:30Chris Williamson?

  50% of pro athletes get divorced within one year of retiring from their sport. I would imagine that the same thing is true for bankruptcy. I would imagine that the same thing is true for drug use, for reckless driving incidents or deaths.

• 2:04:51Chris Williamson?

  What were the biggest challenges that you were facing psychologically?

• 2:04:56Speaker 01

  I wanted to kill myself from probably 2013 up until

• 2:05:02Speaker 01

  2020, 2021, every day, every day, all day. And I didn't have a reason for it. I didn't know why. I was always a guy, I always looked down on people who committed suicide, just always. I'm like, what a selfish thing to do, like cry me a river. Cause you see these guys, you know, like, you've got your dream job, your wife's a 10, 10 fingers, 10 toes on both your kids, like they're star athletes. Like there's nothing for you to be upset with. Like, how could you do that? Why would you do that? And they never even know, so you never know.

• 2:05:32Speaker 01

  Until it happens to you. It's just so hard to wrap your head around. I just woke up every day. I just didn't want to play the game. I want to hit the big reset button on Nintendo and start over in a different life.

• 2:05:42Chris Williamson?

  And that was both in service and out of service and during transition.

• 2:05:47Speaker 01

  The medication helped for a little bit. So it was like, it was that quiet noise in the back of your head just kind of subsided. It was always there. I'd wake up in the morning like, nope, nope, just override, go to the gym, override and go to the gym, go to the range, do this, stay active like a shark, just keep swimming. Every time I stopped, things got bad. Don't stop, just keep going.

• 2:06:05Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:08Speaker 01

  But once everything happened, we came off all those meds. I still had to be on quite a few of them. I wasn't, it wasn't a full med washout. We came off the hard like painkillers. So I could feel all the pain. I was still on Cibalta, still on Adderall, still on a bunch of these things, blood pressure medications to stop nightmares, all this stuff.

• 2:06:27Speaker 01

  It's hard to quantify with how bad it was. Just

• 2:06:32Speaker 01

  everything you loved before you didn't have anymore. Didn't have the group. There's no group chat. No one ever can tell you to put it on again. There's no purpose. And now I don't have a job. What am I supposed to do now? I never planned on getting out. I never planned on not doing anything less than 30 years. I was just gonna do it forever. Cause there's nothing else for me to do. I don't like anything else. I don't have another hobby. I'm not a scratch golfer. I don't want to be an entrepreneur. I don't want to do a podcast, don't want to write a book. I don't want to do any of that. I just want to do this and now I can't. What do I do now? I don't know. Circling drain over and over. But I mean, now that you're out, smoking a bunch of weed, doing a bunch of stupid shit, started cheating on my wife, started doing all the things that I shouldn't have done, all the

• 2:07:15Speaker 01

  things I didn't do in the past, I started doing during that transition. And it just, it ruined everything.

• 2:07:22Speaker 01

  Everything I tried to avoid my whole time in, I did as soon as I got out.

• 2:07:29Speaker 01

  Right? Like, everything, like, everything that everybody does to get them divorced, they've usually been doing their whole career. I'm the opposite. I didn't do any of it until I got out and I was like, "Yeah, I have no purpose. Might as well just burn it to the ground."

• 2:07:43Speaker 01

  I wanted to be divorced because I didn't know how to reintegrate with my family. I loved her, loved the kids, didn't want to lose what I had, but I didn't know how to integrate because I didn't have any practice. And I never looked at it like obtaining a skill set. Let me talk about being a good husband, being a good father, being a good friend. It's a skill set. You need repetition in order to be good at that. Like, how you gonna, how do you raise kids? You gotta be there. You gotta show up. How are you gonna be a good husband? You have to be there. Like, the pen pal thing doesn't work in reality. You have to live together, and I didn't have any experience doing it. So when I transitioned, like, "What's a job I can get right now that is gonna get me out of Virginia Beach and away from this?" Not because I don't want to be there, but because I don't know how. And in my,

• 2:08:26Speaker 01

  in that version of myself in that moment, the easiest thing to do was to separate. Let me get a job that's got me back in Arizona, skydiving as much as I can, working these contracts, like, let me just stay busy. Yeah, it's safe. Let me get out of here.

• 2:08:40Speaker 01

  Worst thing could happen. Hmm, started a spiral. She got to the point where she was gonna shit can me. Like, she was over it. All inside of a year, just like everybody else. And that's when I found out about Mexico. I began five MEO DMT and all the things, and that was really like her last call for prayer. "If you love me, you'll go to Mexico and do psychedelics."

• 2:09:03Chris Williamson?

  She find it, or you?

• 2:09:04Speaker 01

  She found it.

• 2:09:05Chris Williamson?

  No way.

• 2:09:06Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm. She sent it over to me. It was a friend of mine, Marks and Amber Capone, amazing. We were in teams together and he went out to the West Coast and started preaching the gospel about I began in five MEO and everybody on the East Coast said the same thing, you know, we're all wearing car hearts and flannels dipping Copenhagen. We're like, typical West Coast. Yep, he left the East Coast, he left the motherland, he went out west, and now he's crazy. No.

• 2:09:31Speaker 01

  I'm so glad I went.

• 2:09:33Speaker 01

  So glad I went. We sat there and we watched this little infomercial. We knew their whole story. Like, we knew the ugly truth and everything they had been through and he was so open, so honest, so transparent, like. Okay, well, he seems okay. He seems like he's got a really good balance point and you call him on the phone and he sounds amazing. He was one of those dudes back in the days when I knew him. His eyes were as black as your shirt. If you wanted to topple a regime with just a single individual, like no rules, no mercy, you just launch him. He was vicious. Like one of those things like.

• 2:10:08Speaker 01

  You ever walk through the SPCA and you see these pit bulls, faces all scarred up, you're not going to stick your hand in that cage and try to pet it. That's what he was. He ain't like that anymore. He can still be that guy, but he has full control over it. And I think that's what everybody wanted, like. I don't want to lose my edge. I don't want to be a pacifist. I don't want to regret everything I've done, but I can't control this version of me that I've now created.

• 2:10:30Chris Williamson?

  I just don't want to be at the mercy of it.

• 2:10:31Speaker 01

  Exactly. He found control. Man, if I go down there and lick this poison dart frog or whatever they're doing, maybe it'll work for me. So, that's why I went.

• 2:10:41Chris Williamson?

  What was that experience like?

• 2:10:45Speaker 01

  My life was unraveling in the moment, like.

• 2:10:51Speaker 01

  Everything that could be going wrong in my life was going wrong right then, like everything. I was leading multiple affairs. One of the girls was pregnant. Everything that could be going wrong in my life was happening right then at that moment. I went down to Mexico with no intention of coming back. I didn't want to. I have a picture of my phone post Mexico of me standing on a cliff's edge. Looking down about 80 feet, jagged rocks underneath it. I came this close to jumping. That's after Mexico. After, because I knew what I was going home to. I was like, this isn't going to work. I'm just going to jump. There's no reason if I slip and I fall right now, she'll get all my, all my medical, she'll get my life insurance. It'll just be an accident because I am not going home to face this music.

• 2:11:32Speaker 01

  But we went down there. I went down with a bunch of heavy hitters, probably eight, 10 guys. This little compound in Tijuana, they had a bunch of teen guys, we call it holding space. They're cooking the meals, they're sitting with you, kind of walking you all through it, but it's a five day process.

• 2:11:50Speaker 01

  You get down the first day, they give you a drug test, which is kind of ironic. It'll make sure you're not on Adderall stimulus. So you have to come off of all the meds. That was the thing that I didn't realize was going to be just like being back in that detox hospital. Coming off Cymbalta, if you've ever been on.

• 2:12:04Chris Williamson?

  What is that?

• 2:12:05Speaker 01

  It's an SSRI, but it's um. It's really for pain management, for everything else. But I was on that heavy doses of gabapentin. So when you're on that combination of gabapentin and Cymbalta, they call it the jolts. When you come off of it, your nervous system starts firing again. So you'll sit there and you'll just do this.

• 2:12:22Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 2:12:22Speaker 01

  Just driving around, you just.

• 2:12:24Chris Williamson?

  Like hypnotic jugs in a way.

• 2:12:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:12:26Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:27Speaker 01

  But it's super frightening because you can't control it and you don't know they're coming on. So you'll like go to get a cup of coffee and you'll jolt. She's like, what the f- what's going on with you? And I was like, I don't know. I don't know. It's happening. But now there's no Adderall, there's no stimulants, there's no pain meds, there's no Ambien, there's nothing. So now I'm a shell of who I thought I was. And now I know I am really truly dependent on these meds. I was probably on. At the time I went down there, probably forty, fifty. The overall, I was taking sixty pills a day. We weaned off a couple of those things. The Prazosin for nightmares, a couple of those things, but the core remained a lot of pills.

• 2:13:04Chris Williamson?

  This is after you'd been washed out of them previously?

• 2:13:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, because a lot of them, you have to stay on them. Like for them, like you're never getting off Adderall, you're never getting off Cymbalta, you're never getting off this, never get off that. So we're still on them all. But now I have washed off of everything completely in. When you're truly sober for the first time, you get to realize the life you've lived and the injuries you've taken. Because now there's nothing masking it. Feeling myself get up in the morning was humbling. Gimping around, limping, just everything hurt, fiber mile jack, barely hold a pencil, like hands just shaking all day, like. It's embarrassing. From who I was a year and a half ago to who I am now, a shell. Like, I don't want to do this, dude. I don't. I didn't want to go to Mexico. I kind of went just to shut her up. But yeah, I had no intention of going back.

• 2:13:53Speaker 01

  We get around to they give you the piss test. You get one night of sleep, the very next day is you're gonna do I have a game. So it comes from the aboga plant, West Africa. Grind this little shrub, you take these two pills. You write down some nonsense on a piece of paper you wanna burn, like things you're trying to get rid of. I can't write down any of my stuff because nobody in my group knows that I've been cheating on my wife. Nobody. They don't know I've got a girl pregnant. They don't know any of this stuff. It's just me now. I dropped that thing in a fire.

• 2:14:21Chris Williamson?

  Can you remember what you wrote?

• 2:14:23Speaker 01

  Um. Self. Think what am I trying to get rid of? Myself. Drop them fire and let it go.

• 2:14:32Speaker 01

  Boom. We go upstairs. They've got this sound booth going. It's like these disco lights are going crazy. They've got this yoga practitioner in this white linen thing. She's gorgeous, but she's playing these bowls. She reminds me of Ursula in A Little Mermaid. She whoa, doing the whole thing like it's a lot to take in and for us. It's so out there. It's so foo foo like you're looking around the room at all the people that are in there and everybody's from your old line of work. You're like, did you ever think we'd be doing this bullshit? Like, I'm so glad nobody knows we're down here.

• 2:15:07Speaker 01

  I lay back down. And if you ask the guys, I probably made it 15 minutes, started snoring. Dead asleep. Thought I was asleep. That's when the whole thing started to happen. And it's so weird. Because some guys don't see anything, but the medicine goes to your body regardless. It kills all your addictions in a single shot. I don't care if it's heroin, gambling, sex, porn, women, whatever it is, all your addictions are gone in a minute. So I dipped, just for reference, I dipped two cans of Copenhagen every single day from the time I was 18 up until that morning. Every single day I dipped two cans of Copenhagen. When I woke up from I've again, I've never touched it again. I love Copenhagen. I would put in Copenhagen right now. I can't even get it to form in my mouth.

• 2:15:53Speaker 01

  It's like my body is auto rejected. I can't do it. I miss it. I didn't drink coffee for six months.

• 2:15:59Speaker 01

  I want to drink coffee. I'd get it right to my mouth one. No, I just wouldn't drink it. Weird.

• 2:16:06Speaker 01

  So I'm laying there, this whole experience starts to happen. You hear these bees buzzing, all this stuff. And I remember parts of the dream and it'll, it'll flashback every now and then. But it was like I was free falling through a vertical wind tunnel. And these dresser drawers were opening up and they were just distant memories. But you could shift your body over and fly and fall into it. And now you're inside, like it's realistic, it's studio-ish. I could feel the temperature, the humidity, the weight of the T-shirt, everything. It was so bizarre. And you could just sit there and relive it. Like whatever's happening right now, I could just sit here being third person, just watch it. I could drop into who I am and watch the interaction. I could drop in the other point of view and live it through their eyes. Even if they're yelling at me or whatever, I could be them and feel the rage.

• 2:16:52Speaker 01

  Understand why they were that mad and agree with them. Like, you fucked that up. You deserve that. I'd be doing the exact same thing. And it builds a lot of empathy. You're like, I totally get it now. I get why you were so mad. I get why I did this. I get why I did that. And it made you come to terms with a lot of your mistakes.

• 2:17:12Speaker 01

  That lasts for 16 hours. I mean, like you were in, you were in the medicine. I woke up the very next day. And I have never wanted to teleport home so bad in my whole life. I've never been homesick. I've said I'm homesick. I don't get homesick. I don't. Now I get homesick because I've got a good relationship, but back then, never.

• 2:17:33Speaker 01

  And that was the weirdest thing because I knew how much chaos was waiting for me back at home. Because all this stuff is going to uncork. Right? She's going to find out about all this stuff. There's no other way around it. And that was really the realization is I'm going to have to go home. And if she doesn't know, I'm going to have to tell her. That's just not going to be met well. They give you a full period. It's called the gray day where you're kind of navigating the medicine. You do group circles and all this stuff. And we sit around this big group. I woke up like eight AM the next morning, like fired up, ready to go. I'm Chatty Cathy now. Like I didn't want to talk before. Now I want to talk. I want to know what happened to you inside of that medicine because the shit that happened to me, I gotta let out. We sit around that room and all the guys started talking and I'd

• 2:18:15Speaker 01

  known most of these guys for my entire career. Like my best friend was in there. My business partners were in there. I mean, like, we really know each other. And only a couple dudes knew how bad it was. Like, I mean, I had episodes while I was still active where I was sitting in my guest room with a trash bag sitting next to me. I was gonna put it over my head and shoot myself in the head to not make a mess so she could resell the house. Like, I've told that in confidence to several people. They were all in that room and they were like, oh, man, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I can't believe that was happening to you. La la. That next morning, me too, me too, me too. And I was pissed. I was like, you were gonna let me shoot myself in my guest room and you were never gonna say me too. What's going on with you? And they start to open up and they start to talk about past trauma, childhood stuff,

• 2:19:00Speaker 01

  sexual abuse, everything. You've been carrying that for 40 years. He's like, my wife doesn't know. My kids don't know. My parents don't know. Like, you start to see the correlation, the compartmentalization to the ultra extreme. Like, at a certain point, you have to be able to share something and we got so used to just not doing it. You just held it inside. Then you do five MEO DMT. You ever done five MEO DMT? You should. You should. It's not like anything on this planet. It is, uh, it's super fast. It takes no time to build up. But they set you down and it's supposed to be a purge. And knowing everything I know now, and I've been down quite a few times now, and I've taken guys down and hosted a medicine forum.

• 2:19:46Speaker 01

  Everything that conjured up from I began, if I would not have done five MEO and I would have went home in that state, I probably wouldn't be here. I had not come to terms and accepted everything that I did. I wanted to go home and confess and do all this stuff. I was disgusted with myself.

• 2:20:06Speaker 01

  Every, every vile thing I'd ever said to my wife or my kids or relationships I had sacrificed in compartmentalization, I felt so guilty for it. And it was like that yard of beer, just trauma. It's coming out of my mouth. It's like, you know, those moments where you're sitting there brushing your teeth, looking yourself in the mirror and you're like, DJ, I can't believe you've done this. I can't believe this is your reality. Like you've actually done this and you have to live with this shit now? How? How did you get so far off track from where you were to this point now? And you're sitting there, literally staring in the mirror just like this in disbelief, like I can't believe you fucking did this. Like this is, you're really gonna have to live through this.

• 2:20:46Speaker 01

  I can't, I can't do it. I don't want to go home. I don't want to look at her. I don't want to break her heart. I don't want to lose the things I have right now. I don't want to face reality. And it kind of gets you worked up into five MEO DMT. And we laid back there and you smoke out of this crack pipe and it looks so intimidating. Like it's in a little glass vial. I mean, you're heating it up like you're smoking a crack rock. And as soon as you lay your head back, when you exhale, it's like your whole body consolidates into a single spark and then it explodes. It feels and it looks like, you know, when Star Trek is taking off those trails, it's like that. And then you end up in stratosphere, just surrounded by whatever. It is the craziest thing. But the guy told me,

• 2:21:30Speaker 01

  when you go, he's like, hey, whatever happens, let it happen. If you think you're gonna die, die. If you think you're gonna explode, explode. If you think you're gonna drown, just drown. Just one big exhale and let it take you. In the moment, you don't do that. In the moment, you're trying to hold on to it, hold on to it. So I would throw my arms out, I would scream and then I'd ball up and I'd cry. 10, 15 minutes of like the ugliest crying you've ever seen, uncontrollable, like throwing out crying. Cry so hard, do you throw up? I woke up and I sat up and he looked at me and he went, that wasn't it.

• 2:22:06Speaker 01

  What you mean that wasn't it like that was everything I had. He's like, hit him again. You want me to do that again? He's like, hit him again. I did six rounds of that dude. Back to back to back, over and over. And on the sixth one, this nurse came over, little Mexican nurse, super cool. And it was a team guy sitting off to my left or right. And he's like, you want to die, right? I said, yeah. He goes, then kill yourself. Do it right now with the medicine. Like, stop messing around. Stop with all the theatrics. Stop crying. Just do it. Kill yourself right now.

• 2:22:40Speaker 01

  It is true. I don't want to go home. I don't want to confess this. I am. I'll do it right now. I'm going to smoke this with the intention to kill myself and I'm going to hold my breath until it kills me. Cause I'm not going home. Give me that thing again. And now I went through with the intention. I'm going to close this whole chapter out. So I envisioned the smoke was purple. And as I'm smoking this thing, I can feel it going through my whole body. I'm trying to push it down to my tippy toes. I'm trying to coat my whole self. I held back and I held that thing as long as I could. I could feel my eyes starting to flutter. Like, it's really coming on. It feels like there's a, it feels like there's a cell phone this big behind your sternum and the whole thing starts to vibrate. You're like, you can't take it anymore. As soon as you exhale, the whole blast off happens. And when that one happened, it killed me.

• 2:23:22Speaker 01

  Killed my ego. It reset the whole baseline. And when I opened up from that one, she looked at me and goes, that was it. How you feel now? And I was like, I've got to get home. I got to get home right now. I got to see my old lady. Got to see my old lady. Got to see my girls right now. Got to get home. Got to get home right now. And then everything else kind of fell apart from there and we brought it all back together and

• 2:23:46Speaker 01

  it was rough, man. It was so rough. It was so worth it though. If I wouldn't have gone down there, I wouldn't be here. Hundred percent. There's not a chance. Not a chance.

• 2:23:57Speaker 01

  You gotta go.

• 2:24:00Chris Williamson?

  You're really not selling it to me.

• 2:24:01Speaker 01

  Bro.

• 2:24:02Chris Williamson?

  Okay, let's say somebody's, somebody's listening and they go, I'm not on sixty meds a day.

• 2:24:08Speaker 01

  It means me.

• 2:24:08Chris Williamson?

  I'm not ex-war veteran with a ton of PTSD from being shot at and shooting at people and stuff like.

• 2:24:16Speaker 01

  I don't have PTSD from that at all. Not an ounce of my experience, not a single piece of it had anything in the military. It went from my childhood, zero to sixteen, gapped it, and then it picked me up when I transitioned up. Gapped the entire experience. I've been on, I've done IBCOMI four or five times and five EMO DMT. I've never had a military experience, ever. Nothing. Trauma's trauma. The last time I went down, I went down with co-ed, males, females, civilians, women, everybody. Everybody's on the exact same path. You got trauma, that's how you get through it. That is fifteen, twenty years of therapy in five days. It's unreal.

• 2:24:55Chris Williamson?

  We've recently seen Trump sign that bill to fast track research and he's got, literally got ex-Seals stood around him.

• 2:25:04Speaker 01

  Did you not watch our film?

• 2:25:06Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 2:25:07Speaker 01

  Okay, so Marx and Amber, they're all part of that thing. They're really when it kicked off that whole initiative. We did a documentary, it's on Netflix called In Ways and War. And that's really where the whole thing started from. Everybody got hooked up on there and got a bunch of Green Berets and a bunch of regular military fighter pilots are all in there. And we just keep success after success after success. And you see it and you're like, why are we not doing this? They've been doing it for thousands of years. Like, why are we not letting this go? And it's often a bunch of spillover stuff from the fifty, sixties and seventies about psychedelics are bad and they'll rot your brain and.

• 2:25:39Speaker 01

  I don't know, man. I, but I know it works and I know that I'm not on a single medication. Nothing. Not a pain pill, not an SSRI, not an Ambien, nothing.

• 2:25:51Speaker 01

  Nothing.

• 2:25:53Chris Williamson?

  What do you think happened?

• 2:25:55Speaker 01

  It killed everything I had inside me that was bad.

• 2:25:59Speaker 01

  All my addictions, everything. So I'm not addicted to anything. Anything I do now, it's because I want to, which isn't necessarily always a good thing. So I like to do some bad shit too, but it resets the whole baseline, like everything that I was struggling with, it swiped it all away. That becomes an issue if you try to reintegrate. And that's what I tell the guys now.

• 2:26:20Speaker 01

  The version of me that came back from Mexico was so far out from the person and my wife had become accustomed to for the last 10 years. She didn't believe it.

• 2:26:29Speaker 01

  If you watch the film, you'll get to see it in real time. When I was going through the I beg you, my wife hacked my phone. And found out about all the affairs. Simultaneous. So I don't have my cell phone for five days. So the whole time I'm going through, she's getting lawyers. And divorcing me, boxed all my stuff, took it to the shop, dropped it off, drew up divorce papers.

• 2:26:50Chris Williamson?

  It's a hell of a reintegration.

• 2:26:52Speaker 01

  Custom. Got an ultrasound photo. She's got it all. She saw everything I had done. Now, action. So when I come out of the medicine. They give your cell phone right before you cross the border, they give you a little script to say like, hey, I'm

• 2:27:08Speaker 01

  I'm so happy to be on the other side of the medicine. I can't wait to come home and see you and explain everything. It's just too much to put into a text or into a phone call. So I'd rather just not talk until I see you live. That's what you're supposed to say. So everybody goes out there, I'll call their wives. Hey, hey, hey. Straight to voicemail. Well, typical, my wife never answered her phone. Anyway, text her, doesn't go through.

• 2:27:30Speaker 01

  Caller, nothing, nothing, nothing. Like three, four hours, nothing. I'm getting ready to fly home. We're going from San Diego to Atlanta, Atlanta to Norfolk. We leave, we land in Atlanta. As soon as I power on my phone in Atlanta. I get a notification, the password, your Instagram has been changed.

• 2:27:50Speaker 01

  And I flick it over and it's my ghost account. I'm like,

• 2:27:55Speaker 01

  now the password to email has been changed. I was like, oh, no. Shit, I'm not even going to have a chance to tell her now. Like now there's no integration. Now I've lost everything. I went out to Mexico. I've got this new version of myself, but I'll never be able to show it to her. She's not taking me back after this. And then everything kind of went from there. Dicey dude. Dicey.

• 2:28:20Speaker 01

  You want to hear about it?

• 2:28:23Speaker 01

  We land in Norfolk, we drive into the shop. I get out, my other two business partners time, all their families are out there, all the employees are out there hugs and kisses and I can feel the tension. The other wives know. A couple of the employees, they know because they've seen my wife bringing in boxes for the last three days stacked in my office. Still haven't got a hold of her, but I'm still not totally sure. Like there's a chance that by some freak mystery.

• 2:28:50Speaker 01

  And then I get into the building and I walk upstairs and I open up my office and I mean floor to ceiling, there must have been 25, 30 boxes. Everyone was perfectly folded, socks, underwear, black t-shirts, normal t-shirts, jeans, this, this, military, everything I owned was in those boxes. My.

• 2:29:11Speaker 01

  I looked over and the other two wives are standing out there with my two business partners and like, what's going on? They have no idea. And I slept the most like.

• 2:29:19Speaker 01

  Gave him a hug, kiss him on the cheek. I was like, see you on Monday. Fist bump, knowing I was never gonna see him on Monday, went straight downstairs, got a big armory. Grab my pistol, shove it in the waistband, jump in my truck and drove. Got in my car and I was driving out to, um, it's a private beach on the backside of this military base. We used to have a house, we lived out there. It's a one-shot road and it's probably about a 20-minute drive. And I was probably 10 minutes into this drive and it terminates, it's a dead end. And she was tracking my cell phone. We had shared my iPhone, so she knew where I was going and I got about 10 minutes down and she called my phone. And do my heart rate is at 190, it's like. I can't pick it up. And I almost didn't, it's like.

• 2:30:02Speaker 01

  I pick it up and I was like, hello? She goes, where are you and what are you doing? And I said, Patsy, I, I, honey, I don't have the strength in me. I don't have the strength to see you right now. And she's like, where are you going? I said, I don't want to talk about it. Um, I'm just so fucking sorry. And I hung up the phone.

• 2:30:20Speaker 01

  Made it down there and backed into a parking spot and I put on a song. And I told myself at the end of the song, as soon as it was done, I was gonna get out. I was gonna walk down the beach, the water's edge, waist deep water, and I was gonna shoot myself in the head. Close the whole thing out and just be done. No, no goodbye, no sad story, no nothing, just let me close this thing out and be done. And as soon as I backed in, she had already told two or three of the wives that lived on that road that I was driving down there. They had jumped out with their husbands and had flanked me and were staged all around the vehicle. Cause they didn't know what I was going to do. I guess they were gonna try to apprehend me or something.

• 2:30:57Chris Williamson?

  What was the song you chose?

• 2:30:59Speaker 01

  Experience by Ludubico.

• 2:31:02Speaker 01

  You ever heard it? Yeah, you have guaranteed. We'll pull it in a little bit.

• 2:31:09Speaker 01

  That song had probably. God, man, thirty seconds left, maybe. Maybe thirty seconds left. And she called again and I looked up and she was right there. Driving down the road, it's like, oh, fuck. Sitting on the back of my truck, she had a pistol right next to me, just waiting for the song then. Here we go. She pulls right up, walks over. I've never seen anybody as strong as her, ever. And she walked right up, opened my legs up and walked up, essentially crotch to crotch and leaned over and pulled my sunglasses off. And then exploded in hysteria. My eyes were crystal clear, they were green for the first time in a decade and she saw it. She knew that something had happened.

• 2:31:47Speaker 01

  And we just laid there or stood there, held each other and just balled and she backed up and she goes, how the fuck could you do this to me?

• 2:31:58Speaker 01

  I don't know. I don't know. I don't have any excuse. Went through the whole thing and, you know, I told her, I was like, I know there's no way we're gonna work this out. I know there's no way you're ever gonna let me see my kids again. I know this, I know this, I know this. I just want an opportunity to say goodbye to them. And.

• 2:32:16Speaker 01

  She said, DJ, we've come so far right now. Like, we've been through so much together. We've been together since I was twenty-two. We've been through so much right now. We don't have to stay married. You can't close this out right now.

• 2:32:31Speaker 01

  We'll solve it tomorrow.

• 2:32:33Speaker 01

  Let's go. Get in the car. Let's go home. Let's see the girls. Let's pretend like this hasn't happened and we'll deal with it tomorrow. Let's not ruin this for them. They're excited to see you. Let's just, we'll shelf it. She put all that shit on the back burner. Right after that, she goes, but before we do, I want to hear it. I want to hear everything.

• 2:32:56Speaker 01

  Everything what? Every detail, every ounce of it. Every single person, every single date, tell me everything right now. That way I never have to ask you again.

• 2:33:07Speaker 01

  And I did. We sat down and we went through everything I had done, all the affairs, everything. And we got through it right then. We went back home that night, reintegrated with the kids and we sit down on the edge of my bed and I scrolled to my phone and every person who was of conflict or potential conflict, I block and deleted their contact. Everybody, family members, anybody. Anybody who had been toxic in my life that I'd been trying to foster that relationship or anything else. They're different in SEAL teams. I need to control the controllables and right now, all of this is a bandwidth suck. And I'm not doing it ever again. That one guy that every time he calls, my heart kind of drops a little bit like, God, what does this guy want? Block and delete, block and delete. Probably 150 people, gone. And then I told her, I was like, we don't have to stay married.

• 2:33:52Speaker 01

  We can get divorced, we can do whatever we want to. I'm just asking you for one singular day to show you that I've changed. And then the day I don't, I want you to shit can me as soon as it happens. We went and signed paperwork, signed a post and up, all this stuff. I'm like, as soon as I do anything. She's got the house, she's got this, all my assets, give it her, take it all. I don't want a single thing. I just want one day and I take it set. I take it one day at a time, every single day. It's been the greatest thing to ever happen to us. We, our relationship is so badass now. If if you sit in a room with me and her together, we'll be your two favorite people. She is a fucking unicorn, man. She is. She is truly my best friend now.

• 2:34:33Speaker 01

  And I feel so guilty because I put her on the back burner for so long because I knew that I could. She never left, never straight away. She is the ultimate team wife. And I just, I refuse to see it for the longest time. That is the thing that haunts me now. I don't have any PTSD. People go, oh, thank you for your service. Like, don't thank me for my service. Like, I would have paid to do that job. Nicole, you must be so torn up on the things you had to do. But no. No, not a bit. I loved every ounce of it. Even the bad stuff, I loved it. I love the people I sacrificed to be able to do the selfish things I wanted to do. Her, most of all. Hard man. But I'll tell you what, that medicine, that is, that's the only reason. You don't get to navigate through that with marriage counseling and talk therapy and

• 2:35:17Speaker 01

  date nights every Tuesday. That ain't gonna get you through that. It's not. And that was our big conflict is I had changed so much over those five days that she thought it was bullshit. She's like, there's no way you went from that guy to this guy in five days. Like, I don't know how else to show you, except you gotta go do a journey. I got her to go down and do psilocybin and five MEO DMT.

• 2:35:42Chris Williamson?

  Why the, why not the ibogaine?

• 2:35:45Speaker 01

  She thought ibogaine would be too strong for her. I'm gonna get her to go do ibogaine with me. We're gonna do a couples journey together at some point, but I got her to do to essentially the same people. Psilocybin, five MEO, and then we did it one together with psilocybin MDMA and five MEO. By the time we finished those, she knew exactly what was. She's like, he's changed. For sure. She's like, you can't. Like, I just did psilocybin and she is so different from the person she was. But everything made sense now.

• 2:36:15Chris Williamson?

  Why are you continuing to go back to do more ibogaine if you think that you've already made the realizations that you needed?

• 2:36:22Speaker 01

  The second time I went down there is because I was taking somebody else. One of my buddies really on the struggle bus about the end at all. And I was like, hey, man, I'll go with you. I had no intention of doing the medicine with him. And when I got down, he's like, what do you mean you're not going to do it? I'll do it. Give it to me. I threw it right down. No prep, no warm up, just sent this. Hey, man, I told you, like, there's nothing to be afraid of.

• 2:36:44Chris Williamson?

  You cold barred either.

• 2:36:46Speaker 01

  Send it. I've gone down there two or three times to host, like you'll cook meals.

• 2:36:51Chris Williamson?

  Keep on getting rushed into it.

• 2:36:53Speaker 01

  And then this last time we did it for the film. I had a buddy of mine that got shot up really bad on my second deployment. He was like an idol to me. And he was just struggling really, really hard, man. And I convinced him to go down there and I told him, I was like, I'll stop whatever I am doing. It's in the film. And I was like, anything, I don't care what I'm doing. If I'm going to send a fucking Rogan and you call me, I'll get up in the middle of the interview. I'll fly to San Diego and we'll go together. And he did. I couldn't believe he did. He called me. He goes, whenever you're ready, I'm ready to go.

• 2:37:21Speaker 01

  How's Saturday? And he's like, if you'll fly out here, I'll go. I was on a plane in 24 hours. I flew out there, took him down to Mexico, did the whole thing.

• 2:37:29Chris Williamson?

  It's funny that you're on a hair trigger alert to go and kill people around the world for quite a while. And you're on a hair trigger alert to go and save people. And I began now.

• 2:37:35Speaker 01

  Amen. Like, I get so much more benefit out of saving people through mental health than I ever did killing people. And I love killing people. Best job you'll ever have. But now, you know, he got through that whole experience. And then we made it probably another year and a half. And he was ready to go again. And it's the same thing. He's like, I don't know if I could do it again. I'll send it. It's all right. We went down again. I flew out to San Diego and I cold called him and I was like, hey, man. Do you remember when you said you needed me to go to Mexico with you? And he's like, yeah. I'm in San Diego. The bus leaves for Mexico in 30 minutes. Don't let me down. He did. His girlfriend dropped him off, gave him to me, numbered a backpack, we went down to Mexico and he's never been better.

• 2:38:19Speaker 01

  I don't know, man, but I do know that it's magic. When you take that medicine, you cannot believe it grows in the earth. You can't believe it. I can't believe that people have been using that for thousands of years and it has not been more mainstream. You can't quantify it. There's nothing on this planet. I've taken every drug there is, everything. I've taken a bunch of weird stuff too during the transition. There's nothing like that. Every ounce of your addiction is gone instantly. It's crazy.

• 2:38:48Chris Williamson?

  What about for people who don't have addictions?

• 2:38:50Speaker 01

  Everybody has addictions. Sometimes it's your own ego. Whatever you have going on, depression, suicide ideation, substance abuse, women, whatever it is, whatever your thing is, you just don't feel right anymore. I'd go do that.

• 2:39:05Chris Williamson?

  What's the case for not doing it?

• 2:39:08Speaker 01

  If you're not healthy enough to do it, you got some pre-existing heart condition, you weigh 500 pounds, can't go do it. Cause it drops your heart rate really, really low. I got a low heart rate anyway, like in the low 40s and mine drops in the high 30s. I mean, it drops low. But man, I'm telling you.

• 2:39:26Chris Williamson?

  How many people come out and have had an experience that's so difficult that they're not themselves anymore in a bad way? Cause I've heard about this psychic fracturing where people take LSD or psilocybin, THC can do this for some people.

• 2:39:43Speaker 01

  I've never seen that happen unless people reintegrate back into the same toxic situation. So that's what I really try to encourage guys now, like if you think you can go down and take these four pills I have again and smoke around at DMT and go back to that same toxic marriage and go back to drinking a 12 pack a day and it's going to iron out, it won't. So that's what a lot of guys don't realize is you get a lot of guys come back from there and they get divorced. They realize like, I've been married to this toxic chick who hasn't been my partner for 20 years. They get back to her like, it has been you. I've been miserable this whole time, not because of me, but because of you. And they get divorced and they flourish. Or they come back and they realize that their addictions got there, alcohol got there. Most of the guys quit drinking completely. Like Rob quit drinking completely.

• 2:40:26Speaker 01

  Like I was a professional alcoholic for a long time and it doesn't serve you. It's not a superfood. It's not going to make you better. I'm about social drinking. Like I enjoy consuming alcohol. I just don't do it right now for a variety of different reasons. But if you do the work, especially the work going up to it, talking with the therapist, really getting your mind right, really, really thinking about your intention of what you're trying to get accomplished and really lean in heavy, like no different going to a yoga retreat, like really, really live it, like be a method actor. Like if Daniel Day Lewis was gonna take Ibergain, live it like that. The benefit far outweighs the risk. It just does. I could not imagine not having it. I couldn't imagine. You gotta go. I'll go with you.

• 2:41:07Chris Williamson?

  Fuck you, dude.

• 2:41:09Speaker 01

  You, me, Huberman? Come on, baby. I told him the same thing. I was like, you wanna go down there? I'll snap my fingers. I'll get you down there.

• 2:41:15Chris Williamson?

  I've been talking to him. I mean, he, uh, he knows he's been.

• 2:41:19Speaker 01

  Conor McGregor just went?

• 2:41:21Chris Williamson?

  That is a really interesting one. So I knew, I knew first hand, second hand, third hand, that Conor had gone. And then I had it in the back of my mind. I was like, hmm. I heard that the way that he was convinced to get across there wasn't that he was going to go and do Ibergain. I also heard that he didn't have a particularly good washout period in advance of it. Uh, now, what was interesting was that video, a bunch of videos that were on Twitter went pretty viral of Conor coming back. I have been saved. The

• 2:42:00Chris Williamson?

  Lord has spoken to me and a ta ta ta ta. And I was like, that's some Ibergain talking.

• 2:42:07Speaker 01

  Everybody's like that when they get back. Everybody wants to become a psychic healer. Like they wanna do all this weird, they just do. But I'll be honest, 50% of the people that leave Ibergain, they get their coaching license to integrate people either pre-integration or post-integration.

• 2:42:23Chris Williamson?

  Well, you've done it. And I mean, you're a front end of the funnel for it now, right?

• 2:42:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I didn't go to any, I don't wanna go down a rabbit hole, the whole thing. I don't do the whole coaching thing. But I mean, I've coached dozens of people to go down there now.

• 2:42:34Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 2:42:36Speaker 01

  Because I know it works. I mean, I've tried everything. I've done still eight ganglion blocks, I mean, 14 inch needles.

• 2:42:41Chris Williamson?

  I've done, I've done two SGBs.

• 2:42:44Speaker 01

  I've done, I've done everything, dude. I've done everything that you could possibly do.

• 2:42:47Chris Williamson?

  SGB's fucking gnarly.

• 2:42:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, right. That's better. That one actually worked. Still a ganglion block didn't do anything for me except give me a droopy eye for eight hours.

• 2:42:56Chris Williamson?

  It is kinda funny. The droopy eye is funny.

• 2:42:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:43:00Chris Williamson?

  Do you get both sides? Do you one after the other or do you just get one?

• 2:43:04Chris Williamson?

  You would have done it on separate days. You wouldn't have done it together?

• 2:43:07Speaker 01

  I did three total.

• 2:43:08Chris Williamson?

  You must have got both sides. There's no way that they would have done three on the same side.

• 2:43:11Speaker 01

  No, no, they did just three on the same side.

• 2:43:13Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 2:43:14Speaker 01

  I didn't feel much benefit, but I was also heavy doped up then too.

• 2:43:19Chris Williamson?

  That might have managed to counteract it a little bit.

• 2:43:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:43:22Chris Williamson?

  There's an interesting one for me with the, the satellite. One thing that I wish that I hadn't done, I was using laughing gas, I was using Knox while it was happening. And I wish that I hadn't, because I wish I was able to, uh, like feel the onset more. Um, that transition I think would have been interesting, but, uh, I mean, you're not able to think about much when you're like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, so you're not a hooker that's filled with fucking NOS.

• 2:43:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:43:49Speaker 01

  Do you remember the needle going in?

• 2:43:50Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 2:43:51Speaker 01

  The pop?

• 2:43:51Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 2:43:53Speaker 01

  Dicey.

• 2:43:54Chris Williamson?

  That'll wake you up.

• 2:43:54Speaker 01

  Dicey. Well, he came in, he broke that needle out and showed it to me. I was like, you're gonna shove that through my throat? And he's like, oh yeah, it's fine. I get it up on the TV screen.

• 2:44:01Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. Yeah, you can watch it. I was, I was turned faced the ultrasound, watching homeboys slot it in between two vertebrae.

• 2:44:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:44:09Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it's fun. Uh, one thing, one thing that I did get from that, which was interesting, uh, my HIV went up by about forty percent overnight and it held for months.

• 2:44:19Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 2:44:19Chris Williamson?

  That was pretty interesting. Uh, may also explain just how tuned up some bits of my nervous system were.

• 2:44:25Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 2:44:25Chris Williamson?

  Um, it's interesting. It's interesting, man. You know, I, I mean, Austin, which is kind of the home of the psychedelic spiritual tourist. And, uh, it's given me an interesting

• 2:44:42Chris Williamson?

  relationship, I think, to using psychedelics for healing. Uh, in some ways it has made it more normalized, but in other ways it's made it feel a little bit more like a fashion accessory. And it to anyone else that's ever been in a communal sauna here in Austin, they know exactly what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the fucking ancestral trauma that they felt through their animus. I'm like, ah.

• 2:45:10Chris Williamson?

  I saw you in here two months ago and you're the same asshole that you were from back then.

• 2:45:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:45:15Chris Williamson?

  Uh, and that's the integration side, but I don't think I've ever heard anybody talking about I began. So there may be a dose or a compound or a plant that you can take, uh, which is inescapable from a

• 2:45:30Speaker 01

  That one is.

• 2:45:30Chris Williamson?

  From an integration perspective, uh, but what, what made me think about the SGB was the integration window that you have for the SGB is real important. Right. Six weeks after that, it within six weeks after that, that's sort of re imprinting.

• 2:45:47Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I

• 2:45:49Chris Williamson?

  it's interesting to me to think about this sort of stuff, uh, especially as someone who cares an awful lot about mental health, who thinks about it a lot, who is a proponent of people going and doing therapy of doing CBT or ACT, uh, of people doing talk therapy and getting in touch with their emotions. I wonder whether part of it is, I almost certainly part of it is fear like, fuck, like that sounds scary. That sounds really scary. And what if something bad happens? Which is exactly what you're going to try and work through, which is the ambient fear of what if something bad happens, which is exactly how you're existing through the rest of your life.

• 2:46:26Speaker 01

  No balls, no blue chips. Anything worth doing, it's got to have a risk component to it. It's not worth doing at all. I mean, what are you afraid of? You're keep being the same depressed version of you has been for the last decade. I mean, get to be willing to make a change and that's what a lot of people won't do. They won't drop their ego. They go to the medicine, they come back and like, there's nothing wrong with me. Like, I can drink. I can drink. I'm totally in control. Like, you probably shouldn't know. He's like, I'm only going to have two or three every now and then. Two to three turns to six really, really fast. Ask me how I know. Don't do it. If you're not really, really going to lean in hard, don't waste your time. Don't take up somebody's slot. It already costs a lot of money. There's thousands of veterans and first responders that are on a list to try to go down there right now.

• 2:47:09Speaker 01

  And you, because you have an AMX card are going to jump the line and you're not going to take it serious and you're going to give I began a bad name. Don't. If you really want to do it, do it like a professional and go the whole way. Like really, really do it. I've never seen anybody who is really focused on all the

• 2:47:28Speaker 01

  all the training going up into it and really focused on the post treatment integration, who hasn't had a phenomenal outcome.

• 2:47:34Chris Williamson?

  What's the?

• 2:47:36Chris Williamson?

  Percentage of success and what's the amount of change?

• 2:47:39Speaker 01

  Oh, um, they have the numbers for sure. I would say depression is.

• 2:47:48Speaker 01

  God, you probably pulled up on chat GPT. I'd say, um, I'd say as far as depression PTSD symptoms, they're reduced by eighty or ninety percent instantly. Like people that they can't even get out of bed. They they couldn't even sit in his room because they're sitting behind him. I mean, just so hyper that you can't even be around him. That to baseline normal, you'd never even tell who they are. Never tell. I mean, guys who

• 2:48:13Speaker 01

  they break out in hysterics crying all day. They don't know why. They won't tell you why. Baseline normal, twelve hours.

• 2:48:21Chris Williamson?

  How long does it feel?

• 2:48:23Speaker 01

  It feels, you mean, how how long does the high last? Like when you're done?

• 2:48:27Chris Williamson?

  The trip?

• 2:48:29Speaker 01

  Um, depending on how you are, your body weight, twelve to eighteen hours. Some guys go longer.

• 2:48:34Chris Williamson?

  What's the felt sense of that? Many years? Or does it feel like you're there for sixteen hours?

• 2:48:38Speaker 01

  It, you lose track of time pretty quick. For me, it feels like it's by quick, but it also feels like you've been there for a lifetime.

• 2:48:47Speaker 01

  But man, like you can stand up, like you know where you are. But here's the interesting thing, and everybody who's going down there will probably tell you the same thing. You wear eye shades. You can sit up, lift up the eye shades, look around the room, know that's you, know that's him. I can see the nurse. I can wave like, hey, I need to take a piss. They'll unplug your leaves. You're hooked to an EKG machine, all this stuff. They'll hope you go in the bathroom, like.

• 2:49:08Chris Williamson?

  And then you can go back in, so to speak. So you can, there's a little bit of a pause.

• 2:49:12Speaker 01

  Well, some guys will have an experience during their trying to take a piss. And now they're like swirling around, they're screaming, like they're in the thing.

• 2:49:18Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 2:49:19Speaker 01

  But the weirdest thing is, guys will talk about it, you'll you'll be sitting there and all of a sudden you'll hear your neighbor, he'll say something, you'll look over at him, you're like, what? You have a full conversation and then you realize you have the eye shades on. You look up, but you can see him. You lift him up and he is in the position you can see with the eye shades and you watch everybody do this.

• 2:49:41Speaker 01

  They'll lift them back up and they're like, I can see right through the, I swear to God, you can have a full conversation. That guy will wake up and he's like, what are you saying? But I, I don't know. Put the eyeshades back on, you're like, God, were they on, were they off? Like, you can't tell. You can see right through them.

• 2:49:56Chris Williamson?

  It's different between a boger and ibogaine.

• 2:49:58Speaker 01

  A bogus root plant, it comes from essentially the same thing. I don't know if it's the chemical makeup or whatever, but, but it's the root of the boga plant.

• 2:50:07Chris Williamson?

  And it's two capsules.

• 2:50:09Speaker 01

  If you want to take a boost, you can take two or three.

• 2:50:11Chris Williamson?

  Right, but it's, it's just literally.

• 2:50:14Speaker 01

  Two pills. You go in, you take them, like 15 minutes, you burn your little paper. By the time you walk upstairs, you're like,

• 2:50:21Speaker 01

  man, I don't feel anything. And then, and you'll watch everybody do this.

• 2:50:25Speaker 01

  Okay, better sit down, they'll give you like a maraca, you start banging this thing, you're staring in a mirror and you can watch your whole face start to move around.

• 2:50:33Chris Williamson?

  Typically staring in a mirror is bad advice when you're on psychedelics.

• 2:50:36Speaker 01

  You think it would be, but that's how you reconnect with yourself. That's how you know the experience is happening, but you'll see everybody, they're sitting there beating this maraca and they'll come by and like, you feel anything yet? And you're like, I'm not sure. And you're like, you've been here for an hour and a half. You're definitely. They're laid down, you better lay down, put the eyeshades on, you lay down.

• 2:50:52Chris Williamson?

  Funny.

• 2:50:53Speaker 01

  But for me, I don't move. Most guys purge quite a bit. I had a guy just went down, he threw up so hard, he threw his back out, like couldn't walk. They're not throwing anything up though. It's all their trauma, but anybody in that room, they'll give you, it's like a big bronze bowl and you'll throw up and you'll hear them. Ting. You'll hear it bounce, you know.

• 2:51:18Speaker 01

  There's nothing in there. All the practitioners will tell you about it. He's like, that's your trauma hitting the bowl.

• 2:51:24Speaker 01

  It feels like you're throwing up buckets of vomit. There's nothing in there. You've been fasting the entire day. There's nothing in your system. You're not throwing up at all. That's all your trauma.

• 2:51:32Chris Williamson?

  Wow.

• 2:51:32Speaker 01

  Purging it over and over. Same thing with five MEO. You get them just purging this bucket, nothing's coming out, but it feels like it is. Like you feel like I'm filling up this five gallon bucket. Like you better dump it.

• 2:51:42Chris Williamson?

  What's the relationship between the ibogaine and the five MEO?

• 2:51:46Speaker 01

  Twenty four hours of separation. I don't know if they have any correlation. They've just paired these two together, but this one particular clinic. It's amazing.

• 2:51:54Chris Williamson?

  What's this? You mentioned if I'd just done the first one, the second one, what, what, what is it that the five MEO does that you didn't get from the IBG?

• 2:52:02Speaker 01

  Think about, think about everything you've compressed, everything you've compacted down, your trauma, you just buried it way down deep, like stuff that happened to you in five or six, that you don't even remember you've buried. And I began it all comes to surface. It gives you a photographic memory from the past, like you relive it all, like it's on a four for anything you never thought you'd remember. You relive them right then, right there. And now it's flipped. So all the present trauma is now at the bottom, all the stuff in the past is up top, and now you can't get away from it. I would just go home with that. I don't want to go home with that. The five MEO let you strip it all away. So when you smoke that, it empties your cup, it dumps it all in one shot. It's like, you feel fifteen pounds lighter, you wake up next morning, you're like,

• 2:52:46Speaker 01

  I, I feel amazing. I'm not on any drugs. I'm stone cold sober. I got no nicotine, no caffeine, no drugs, no alcohol. I've never felt better in my entire life. Even though my life's in chaos, I feel like that mean, everything's just on fire.

• 2:53:00Chris Williamson?

  I'm fine.

• 2:53:00Speaker 01

  I'm fine. I'm good. Yeah, man. It's great. It is so wild, dude. It is.

• 2:53:07Chris Williamson?

  I'm really happy, Fyman. I'm really, really happy that you found something that's a new mission as well. Not only something that seems to have improved your life, but that you've been able to dedicate yourself to making other people's lives better as well.

• 2:53:18Speaker 01

  It's great. I just came back from Moody Air Force Base down in Georgia, talking to those guys, the whole base, talk about mental health and all those guys. And it's cool because they expect you to be a certain thing. And when you get out there and you're like, we're just going to talk about mental health, like, nobody wants to talk about it. Same thing when you were in teams. Like I asked them all, how many guys in this room have struggled with mental health? It's over a thousand people in the audience. Nobody raised their hand. Yep. I'm used to this. I was the only Navy SEAL with PTSD or trauma or depression or anything. So this will go over well. But we talked, but I mean, the amount of DMs I've gotten, even from the Sean Ryan thing and now all the other ones, it's only mental health. And it's some of the craziest stories.

• 2:54:01Speaker 01

  But I'm glad because when I was on my island alone, when I was in that guest room with that trash bag and that pistol about to do that thing, no one came for me. No one ever said me too. No one ever stood up, got in front of the microphone with the bright lights on and said, it's okay not to be okay. No one ever said that to me and we talked about everything, not that. You think every, we talked and done everything together, except talk about that shit. And I wish we would have, it would have made us so much better, would have made us truly a dynasty.

• 2:54:34Speaker 01

  I just, I want everybody else to be better than me. I want you to understand that is perfectly normal and that is part of the game you play. If you're in the military, you're a first responder and those are the guys I really get to see the most now. I mean, GBRs can probably train fifteen hundred, two thousand cops a year, but I do speaking engagements, firemen, the stuff those guys deal with day to day.

• 2:54:56Speaker 01

  I feel guilty inside the military. I always love firemen, always love cops. I love people of service. I love doctors, nurses. I love all those. I never knew what they dealt with, not cops, especially not firemen. Thank you for your service. I appreciate you guys. If anything happens, I'll call nine one one. I never thought about the horrible things they would see and then they're going to be home within twenty five minutes.

• 2:55:22Speaker 01

  Firemen fishing kids out of a bathtub because the mom ran out of her pain meds and drowned all the kids in bathtub. Forty five minutes later, he's giving his own daughter a bath. Compartmentalizing that, not telling his wife, not talking about with anybody, the boys at the station ain't talking about it. They just, same thing we did. That's when I go and I reintegrate with those guys. This is your super team. This is your dynasty. You could potentially be in the same department for twenty years. Why are you not having open dialogue conversations? Why am I not able to tell you every one of my deepest, darkest secrets? You're not, you're not leaving tomorrow. It's just us. It'll make you a super team. You could build a dynasty right here, but you gotta do it through open communication. You have to be able to say the shit and nobody else is gonna say. And it only takes one of you. That's why I push those 20 minute walks. I push the routine.

• 2:56:07Speaker 01

  I push mental health, the importance of it. And say it. It's totally normal. This is part of the game. You can't run into burning buildings for 20 years and not be scarred by something. Can't do it. Can't walk around with a gun in your hip, arresting bad guys and seeing the terrible things that people do and it not affect you. It's supposed to. For you to think that you're just gonna override that because you're such an alpha male. That's not gonna work, dude. Ask me how I know.

• 2:56:32Speaker 01

  Like, I thought I could override anything.

• 2:56:33Chris Williamson?

  Patient zero.

• 2:56:35Speaker 01

  Patient zero. I've seen some terrible things, dude. And I've buried them down.

• 2:56:39Chris Williamson?

  Interesting to me that when you're going through a journey on plant medicine, the classic sort of overachiever, I will be able to hold this down mentality. Andy was talking about this when he came through. He was saying he'd created an identity of never being the guy who quit. I don't quit. That's not what I do. And that caused him to stay in a marriage for like a decade that he shouldn't have done. But it's interesting that when you get to a situation like you're in Ibergain, that pattern that you've spent an entire career and a life putting together, which is that clenching, that tightness.

• 2:57:22Chris Williamson?

  That didn't come in or it wasn't able to hold on.

• 2:57:27Speaker 01

  I tell the guys now, that's why I recommend Ibergain for

• 2:57:32Speaker 01

  the alpha male types, the guys with a super strong ego, because that's, because I've tried them all. That's the only thing stronger than the ego.

• 2:57:39Chris Williamson?

  You can usually try to wrangle it when using something else.

• 2:57:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I can power through anything else. MDMA, weed, whatever, ketamine, I can power through all that. Not that. You are not going to be able to power through that. You just can't. Like whatever it's going to show you, it's going to show you can't steer it. You can't navigate it. You can't go, okay, cool. I'm going to sit in this black box and I'm, I'm going to think about nothing for 18 hours. Can't do it. You can't think about the things you want to think of. I tried to put myself in a black helicopter with all my friends and tried to relive all this stuff and see dead friends. Zero. Zero. That's all I wanted to see because I thought that is where my trauma lies. I was like, well, clearly it's, it was my love of the job. It was because I was so professional and I was such a patriot and now the loss of that, that's why it's caused all

• 2:58:27Speaker 01

  this. Nope. Not a bit. Nothing was traumatic about my service. Nothing. I think the majority of the guys, it's not the service. It's the fact you left it. You lost your number one love. That's what it is. You're suffering from a heartbreak. Nothing PTSD. I didn't do anything that I'm ashamed of, that ever really messed me up. I mean, I've seen a lot of terrible stuff. It doesn't keep me up at night. Not a bit. That medicine, not saying it's a cure all, but if you've tried everything else and you haven't tried plant-based medicine, probably give it a shot.

• 2:59:04Chris Williamson?

  Where should people go if they want to find out more?

• 2:59:07Speaker 01

  About plant-based medicine? If you're a veteran, I would go to Veteran Solutions

• 2:59:15Speaker 01

  or Ambio Life Sciences for straight ibogaine and five a meal. Trevor and Jonathan,

• 2:59:22Speaker 01

  the best clinic I've ever been to. It's on a private compound, right over the border. They've got shuttles running back and forth. It's super safe. Best food you're ever going to eat. I mean, Michelin quality food, amazing, in-ground pools overlooking the ocean. It's an amazing facility, but it's probably a 25-person staff. They've got multiple houses that are running consecutive and they do it all week.

• 2:59:43Speaker 01

  It's a cure-all, man. They do the sweat lodge, they do everything. If I had to give anybody a gift, it would be the power of a 20-minute walk. And if you have tried everything, call MBO Life Sciences. Changed my life, man. That and Merry Unicorn.

• 2:59:56Chris Williamson?

  It's a beautiful story, man. I'm really glad that you're still here.

• 3:00:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, me too.

• 3:00:01Chris Williamson?

  Where should people go to keep up to date with everything you're doing as well?

• 3:00:04Speaker 01

  You can check out GBS Group on all the social channels, YouTube, Instagram, all that. If you're trying to find me personally, it's DJ Shipley. I am only on Instagram. I don't do anything else.

• 3:00:14Chris Williamson?

  Okay, man. I really appreciate you.

• 3:00:17Speaker 01

  I appreciate you.

• 3:00:18Chris Williamson?

  Thank you. All right. See you next time, everyone. Dude.

• 3:00:21Speaker 03

  Mr. President, my company tore 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. Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 3:00:41Speaker 04

  What would happen if I stopped brewing? You stop, you freeze to death, that's what.

• 3:00:46Speaker 03

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 3:00:49Speaker 04

  I'm not the first then.

• 3:00:50Speaker 03

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17 out of 10 without parent.