Overcoming Physical & Emotional Challenges | Coleman Ruiz

29:58So you're in Newport. Does that have a portal to the Naval Academy? Yeah, if you graduate prep school, you're straight into the Naval Academy. Like they fully expect you to be there the next year. When junior year rolled around and senior year rolled around of high school, didn't anyone pull you aside and say, hey, you might want to like apply to a few other places. You might want to consider what you do if this doesn't work out. What did they assume you were going to do? They just head into the city of New Orleans and bust tables? Zero guidance, Andrew, really, like from my high school. And I think the ecosystem I was in, like people just didn't really know how to do that.

30:41You know, how to apply to schools. I mean, my parents obviously helped when I applied to the Naval Academy. But when I look at the system that kids go through now to go, you know, their process to find the best college experience, I never had one conversation with a guidance counselor about what to do. I just didn't. I mean, I just got very lucky. A few people, my high school wrestling coach intervened, I think at some point, and called the Naval Academy to speak to the coach to say you should give this kid a chance. But he didn't, they didn't know who he was, you know. I'm so lucky and so fortunate that I ended up where I ended up.

31:18It's why I took it so seriously. Like the focus with which I applied my time in high school, I took that to 10X degree when I got to Newport because I knew this was my chance. There's something magical to that. I can relate to that. So you're in Newport. Yeah. And describe what a day was like. Is it all wrestling? You're taking general education classes like one does in the first two years of university. Yep. So the way the prep school is set up for the Naval Academy is they're basically teaching you the first semester of the Naval Academy. So you take calculus, physics, chemistry. I think you take an English class, et cetera.

31:59And you go through like a pretty hellacious first couple of weeks because you're away from the flagpole where no one can hear you scream. You know, you're up in Newport. You're not in Annapolis where everyone's watching. and you do a couple hellacious weeks for an 18 year old who's never been in the military before so you're in the military technically if you go to this you're actually enlisted in the navy okay so they own you to some extent yeah yeah yeah they do okay and then you do you're wearing uniforms you're jogging in the morning you're doing salutes and marching yep you're bugling they're doing taps in the evening yep all of it got it yep and you live there's 300 people at the prep school.

32:36It's distributed basically amongst folks coming from the fleet. So guys who did four or five years in the military somewhere, and they're coming into the Naval Academy from the fleet and then athletes, and then sort of a mixture of other folks who need a little extra school. Right. And so, and then you do a full school year, you're competing. It's basically a red shirt year. That's not a red shirt year. I competed up and down the East coast against, you know, all the other prep schools and you finished that year in May. And then, you know, you're done with the prep. The prep year is fine. It's a little bit of a shock when you're 18, but it's fine.

33:10I've always been curious about these military schools and the people that go to them and what happens to people there. Did you have any sense of patriotism prior to arriving at this prep school? And did that sense of patriotism, you know, I'm talking like love of country, understanding the history of our country and its position in the international landscape, Are you thinking about that stuff? Are they feeding you that? Or is it really like wrestling, get through the march, shower up, go to the next thing? Is it very like plug and chug? No, no, the feeding of, and I really appreciated this, the feeding of those concepts starts when you get there.

33:47But I was deer in the headlights. I didn't think about my life in this way at all when I was headed there. I mean, what you get very early, because the school very quickly starts to bring really high-level accomplished people, colonels, admirals, whatever, generals, to expose you to these people. I do remember sitting there that within weeks, like this is way bigger than I thought it was in terms of how serious this situation is, you know, and how serious this ecosystem of people take this. Because I didn't have, my dad wasn't an admiral. He was a welder in New Orleans, you know. I didn't understand the bigness of it.

34:33One of the reasons I ask this is that various times throughout my life, I've had this experience of seeing people close to me doing incredible work. When I was a postdoc at Stanford, a Nobel Prize was given that one week to the guy next door to me. So you see him in the morning and you're hearing it on the radio. And obviously, I didn't have that kind of stature or talent in science. I think I'm a good scientist, but good enough to get tenure at Stanford. But then there are levels within the game. But there is something very special to the experience of having people close to you physically and in the same ecosystem as you described it, achieving amazing things.

35:10I also saw this in skateboarding. I mean, there were a lot of, let's just say, failures to integrate with normal life. But there were also some guys that I grew up with who started companies and set world records and had their pro models. And then if you zoom out from that and you go, wait, I'm in this community. It changes one's self-view about what's possible. So I think that's what you're describing. And I think it's such an important thing for people to experience at some point, even if the goal isn't to be at kind of world scale, for people to realize that the town they grew up in, the family they grew up in, that context can expand.

35:46Yes. And so do you recall being at this prep school and kind of third person in yourself and thinking like, well, I'm Coleman Ruiz. I'm from New Orleans. I went from this to this to this, the way you've been describing it. And I'm here and they're like, I'm around some incredibly impressive people. And I'm here. Like once you make that recognition that you're there, a whole bunch of things can open up. No, I actually came at it from the opposite way. And this has been a hard thing for me my whole life. And I have to watch out for this perspective is I felt like every day I had to wake up and earn my place there.

36:24I was never good enough for myself ever. so next day up is a restart to prove myself again on whatever standard i'm picking that day right looking back on it i realize it was somewhat arbitrary because it was just day by day i didn't think i'm coleman ruiz i made it here look i'm part of the secret i i was afraid like mike tyson talks about being afraid every time. I was afraid every day. And I fought for like a position in this place every day. Now that was adaptive in some regard, right? Very. Because to me it was, let's go. Like today's another new day and it's a hundred percent all in full go.

37:12I hope everybody's ready. Do you ever recall falling asleep at night and thinking like, well like i had a good day i had a good day or or i'm scared you know they're going to discover i can't keep up or i can't keep up all the time so a lot of fear i mean yeah yeah a lot of fear all the time and and some of it i do i i genuinely know and believe in andrew that it was well intentioned like i wanted to do a good job for the group whatever group i was in my platoon my squad in the case of the prep school you know that first experience I mean I was talking about this with with my wife the other day just because stories come up you know we had a 25th reunion at the Naval Academy and this kind of thing and um I was a really good runner for my group in high school like the people I was around I ran cross country when I was younger and anyway I did I suppose I'm going the other I sort of did have some level of confidence in my ability then I got there and like all these college cross country runners are like my son is now just crushing me and I think sadly because it was just sort of in me that fed my fear like shit I thought I was better than this clearly I suck I have to get to their level so um I did have a very well-intentioned excitement around just do a good job with the people you're around there's something fun to that and wild, you know, as we spoke about.

38:38Um, but I was operating out of fear for decades. But there was a, I need to get to their level statement in there. It wasn't, I can't keep up. I better find a different path. No, no, no, no. I knew I could, I knew I could get to their level with enough work, you know? Was that something that your, your father or your mother or both had instilled in you that? Oh, for sure. Yeah. And my high school wrestling coach was, let's call it maybe from the old school. If you worked hard enough, you could get there. So this is the essence of growth mindset long before Carol Dweck coined the phrase growth mindset.

39:18It's there. I'm not there yet. When I first read her book, I'm like, when people teach us to shit when we were kids. Yeah. Well, some of us got it. Some of us didn't. And it can be very context dependent. independent, right? I mean, I think that's one of the more important and often overlooked aspects of Carol's work and Allie Crumb's work is that we can develop growth mindset in one domain of life, but then another domain of life, we get, you know, kicked in the teeth once and we're like, I can't do that. There's a carve out where I can't function. Some people do that. Some people don't. And we don't understand enough about it to understand, you know, whether or not it's a global circuit, you know, and it's, there's a lot of context, but okay.

39:56So you're, you're hanging in there at least, you're surrounded by some very impressive people. There's a lot of structure. So we're a long way from the pre-wrestling days. Oh, yeah. Yeah. This is the opposite of chaos. Totally. This is structure. Yeah. You're told what to do every five minutes, more or less. And this is scary feelings. Fear is a scary feeling. But you're channeling it. And you said the unit of the day became important. It's like, what can I do today? Yes. You're not thinking about the week you're not thinking about the season you're not thinking about becoming some war hero down the line you're just 24 hours and do the next day yeah how was your self-care at that point or is that built into the system it's not built into the system and it was zero i mean it really was andrew like it was the old school we were not doing anything sophisticated back then i mean there's no we stretched and in the grand scheme of things it's going to sound weird because there still is a lot of you know primal nature to combat sports but in the grand scheme of things we were probably on the upper end of sophisticated like wrestlers jump rope they stretch they do aerobics you know um been in a sauna since 1993 you know it's like not purposeful not for to cut weight in a garbage bag, but there is some level of, some level of balancing out your training, you know?

41:29Wrestlers like to swim in the, like during the season, because you're getting out of that hot room. Like you end up accidentally doing some of these things, but there was no self-care. So you eventually go to the Naval Academy. 94. The actual Naval Academy. And that's where you met your wife. Yep. In 96, my sophomore year. So when you get there, what, what's different than the prep school? first of all it's big in the macro not just geographically big or footprint square footage wise it's big the concept is big you know like the superintendent of the school is a three-star admiral you hear about his career you know you're 19 years old you meet so there's two incredibly important people in my life at in those early years at the naval academy me.

42:23A guy named Doug Zembeck, who's dead now, who most people of my service time will know who he is. When I was on my recruiting trip to the Naval Academy and I was in high school, this is complete accident. Doug was a sophomore. We call them youngsters at the Naval Academy. He was a sophomore and we're the same weight class. So coach matched us up because it was my recruiting visit and my first, this is back to being wild, literally my first night on the grounds of the Naval Academy, I'm sleeping on Doug Zembeck's floor of his, of his room with his other two roommates. And sometime around three or 4 AM, I get woken up.

43:08It's like a bomb goes off. There's a bomb didn't go off, but there's 12 other gorillas in the room, all wrestlers, maybe one or two other guys. And Doug is hustling. I don't know any of these people, Andrew. Like I just met Doug the previous evening. We just flew into town. He wakes me up. He's hustling me to get my shoes on. Again, I'm just this high school kid. And then within two to three minutes, all 15 of these gorillas bolt out of the room and Doug grabs me and I'm just following them. Right. So we race out of Bancroft Hall. It's maybe four in the morning, 3.34 in the morning. We race out of Bancroft Hall, the barracks.

43:48We run across the parking lot into Lejeune Hall. And Lejeune Hall is the swimming facility and the wrestling room. That's it. That's the only thing that's in there, right? The doors, we run up to Lejeune Hall. The doors of Lejeune Hall are locked with a chain on the outside. And one of our Doug pulls on the chain so that the doors open enough at the top that the 142 pounder can climb up and like get inside that little gap in the doors. and run over and open one of the doors that isn't chained. This is what you'll later do professionally. I still have, exactly. And what I frankly did as a kid, like back in the day.

44:24And so I'm terrified because I don't know what's coming. You don't bother to ask, what are we doing? There's no time. There's just no time. Like these guys are, to me, they're full-blown war heroes. They're college kids, but I'm 17. They're 21, all these wrestlers. I'm hoping I'm going to come here and be their teammate. We run into Lejeune Hall, go to the second story. We climb up the utility ladder where Public Works goes to get in the ceiling above the white foamy ceiling tile things. So we're now on the catwalk where the HVAC guys would be working. And I'm starting to get a sense of what's coming.

45:06we go a couple feet down the catwalk everyone stops someone reaches over the catwalk and pulls one chalky ceiling tile out so now you can look over the edge of the catwalk and see right through the ceiling into the diving well remember the diving well has a 10 meter platform and then And we're another, I don't want to over-exaggerate this, we have to be another 20 feet into the ceiling. So you're above the diving board. Oh, we're way above the diving board. We're five feet above the ceiling, which is 20 feet above the 10 meter. Got it. And so, and now I've realized what's happening. And two or three wrestlers, you climb over the catwalk, get backwards, get your hands all the way down, and then very lower yourself in a reverse pull-up so you don't kick the ceiling tile.

46:04And three or four guys go, and you can hear them hit the water after what is a terrifyingly long time when you're, you know, my age. This is in the dark. Oh, yeah. No one's supposed to be in there. And then one of the guys looks over. When you're a recruit, you're called a drag. And they're like, drag, you're up. And I'm lowering myself, Andrew, and I kick the adjacent ceiling tile and it hits the dive tank and it turns into pancake batter and goes to the bottom of the pool. Oh, my. And one of my teammates is like, you motherfucker. One of my future teammates, you know, he's going nuts. I drop, I live, and this is back to Doug.

46:49I come up, Doug clearly goes behind me, but I don't hear him. and one or two guys are going nuts you high school piece of shit like you're gonna go down on the 15 feet and pick it all up and Doug comes up and he just blasts everybody he's our responsibility this is not his fault we brought him here like just totally backs me up

47:14and then the rest of the visit happens I end up there Doug's now a senior I'm a freshman

47:22and he's just the legend he was all-american and to this day andrew you need to hear this loud and clear like for all the people you and i both know and the people i've been around no other human in my life have i met with his physical and mental toughness not even close the guy was born in the wrong century is the way i describe him and he was like my mentor and he was my guy you know and uh he was killed in 07 marine yeah we'll talk about doug uh you've written about him yeah he's unbelievable so i feel like i know him a little bit thanks to you we'll get around to that uh for sure i think people are getting a sense of where we're headed so that's the to answer your question about like that, the bigness of the Naval Academy, that's how it started for me.

48:14Like everything was just on steroids, you know, all these kinds of people. I get the impression, at least up until now, that you're kind of just, you just go with what's right in front of you. A hundred percent. Like there, there isn't a lot of pause and reflect, although your rudder is not haphazard. It's not random. No. Well, yeah, I can say right now, you and I are as similar as I, you know, we may be in certain respects, like we're very different in this way. Like there isn't a, there isn't like a foraging, you know, in biology, we call them random walks. You know, a lot of, a lot of organization that comes out of biology is through random walks, like animal or human, like finds a node and moves.

48:58And, and life is like this. Steve Jobs talked about not being able to connect the dots, except in retrospect. And I subscribed to that and his life was a bit of a random walk, but that we're guided by some central beam of, of uniqueness. Robert Green was when he was on the podcast talks about that. Your beam is, is more narrow, it seems. And the propeller behind that beam is a high RPM. Yes. That's very clear. And what I'm not hearing here is like, yeah, you know, at one point I paused and wondered whether or not I wanted to, you know, be here wrestling in the Naval Academy Or even what I might do when I get out.

49:37Am I going to work for an investment firm? What am I going to do? Your horizon seems to be about 24 hours at that point. Yeah, I hope not anymore, but at that point. No, at that point. I mean, I'm no psychologist, but it just seems like you're – it's not like you're playing checkers, but you're optimizing for a fairly short horizon. There's no question that's right. And the other part that was probably the most important to me, Andrew, was the person or the group. Because this is going to sound very arrogant, but when I got to – I'm going to this prep school. I'm going to the Naval Academy. I think on day one I'm going to literally meet the cream of the crop in the country.

50:21And that was not the case. And it was not the case at the Naval Academy. And frankly, it wasn't the case in the teams either. Like, I'm not saying I'm better than anybody, but I thought every single person when I got to the Naval Academy was going to be entirely focused on whatever our mission was. And I didn't even know what my mission was there. I just knew I was going to be told what Wright looks like. And Doug, not only did I meet him in high school and have the luck of having him as a teammate and a mentor, for me, he is what Wright looked like. So a focused beam and a propeller running at high RPM with the right, you know, quote unquote swim buddy, so to speak, was literally all I cared about.

51:02That was it. Everything else was white noise. Were there other interests at the time? I mean, presumably you listen to music every once in a while. I mean, I would, whatever. But didn't fall in love with it. Didn't feel the need to pursue anything else, learn an instrument, do anything else. It was, it was, it was a. That was it. It was that narrow beam. So you met your wife in 96? Sophomore year at the Naval Academy, yeah. And was she as driven? Is she as driven? I mean, she's obviously a very talented swimmer. Presumably works hard as well. Kind of interesting. I didn't realize until a few years ago that both of you were military.

51:42Yeah, she definitely just different, different driven. Way smarter, way more. You know, it's obviously not one-to-one for men and women, but way more successful by gradient standards. She's in the Navy Hall of Fame. She was Patriot League swimming champ. She was on the junior national triathlon team when she was 20, I think. Really talented in every regard. Ninth in our class, I think. First female graduate, number one female graduate, our class. Tell me more about that. How does that work? You have a, I don't even know exactly how the grading, first of all, her grades are, her academic success is just remarkable.

52:26And then you get a military grade and you get a physical grade, not for your athletics, I don't think, but it's like your PRT scores, which is your physical readiness test, all this military stuff you do. You get this other cluster of a grade that goes along with your academic grades. and she was number nine in the class and the first female graduate based on that cluster of grading and I mean she's an amazing person. Was her success in academics and swimming was that part of what drew you to her? No. No no she was just nice and you know I didn't really care about the achievement it doesn't it certainly sounds like I care about achievement because of the narrow focus but it wasn't really that you know she was just really normal in a group of a lot of abnormal people frankly like there's some kooks at these schools you know um and I'm probably in that category I don't know but everybody's just really different there you have this athlete group you have I mean you know Andrew I mean you you went to Stanford I mean some of the you know the group of Naval Academy and West Point like these schools who produce like the Rhodes Scholar level person, like that cluster of group, like at Navy, I remember they're super impressive.

53:44I mean, and then there's the rest of us like doing our best, getting pretty good grades and stuff, but there's very different groups inside, you know, the school. Yeah. Yeah. I looked at some of my colleagues, like a former guest on this podcast, Allie Crum, you know, she's incredible scientist, was a division one gymnast and is a licensed clinical psychologist, also maintains a healthy relationship with children in the home. Like, I just go, who are these people? I mean, every once in a while, we talk about the person with the quote-unquote extra gear. Some people just seem to have that extra gear.

54:18And I don't want to take anything away from Allie or anyone else's incredible work ethic that goes with what people perceive as an extra gear. Who knows if they have an extra gear or not? I always just want to know what their parents did. Yeah. And it turns out Allie's parents, I hope I have this right, but recollection of this is that her mother ran a theater group and her father was a martial arts teacher. Okay. So, you know, there's nothing that speaks to academics per se. And I find that really important to me and to highlight because I think people hearing this conversation and hear about people like Ali's and other examples like that, you think, oh, yeah, you got to come from an academic family to end up at a top tier institution or to win a Nobel Prize.

55:02In fact, there are so many exceptions to that, or you have to be a natural athlete or be born with some genetic gift or some extra gear, as it were, in order to succeed. But I think so much of success is the thing that you seem to operationalize really quickly, which is to really focus on that 24-hour horizon and where one has seen failure to just keep going. I mean, a big part of it is just to keep going, but also to make sure that you're continuing to go in a direction that is adaptive and functional. Because imagine had you not found wrestling and you had gotten into some group where the metrics of success were around dealing weed or doing something, which back then was highly illegal.

55:52now is very varying levels of legality, but you know, where the, where the points came back for effort in domains of life that could take you down into the gutter. And, and you see this. So I'm, I'm convinced that the work ethic is, is the fundamental piece, but there has to be that rudder and the rudder has to be pointed in the right direction. So along those lines, you meet Bridget. Yeah. And was it instantaneous? No, we kind of had a friendship first. I felt like at least we've discussed this. I mean, I instantaneously enjoyed her company. So I met Bridget in February of sophomore year. I was on the campus of Naval Academy.

56:26It's called The Yard. I was on The Yard all winter because the wrestling season isn't the shittiest time ever, right? It crosses over the holidays. You have to make weight during Thanksgiving. You have to make weight during Christmas. We were on campus, on The Yard, and it was easily waist-deep snow. And we were doing two-a-day practices. Everybody else is home on vacation. That winter, I considered leaving, and thank goodness for no cell phones and stuff, because I didn't know how to leave. I was like. You considered leaving, like, leaving the Naval Academy. Leaving the Naval Academy. I was just, but it didn't have anything to do with the Naval Academy, really.

57:02It had everything to do with that moment. I was miserable. Like, I was making, I wrestled 190 my freshman year, and Doug graduated. He was the 177 pounder, so sophomore year I dropped into his spot. I went down to 177. Fighting weight for me is, like, 193. But, you know, back then, Andrew, lifting a lot. I was 210 to 215 in the off season and I cut to 177 sophomore year. And I was just generally miserable. And if it was easy to leave, I probably would have. And then I met Bridget in February and I was like, fuck it, I'll stay. She's better than this place anyway. Having followed my high school girlfriend off to college and not gone to college when I got there, I just lived in the parking lot outside her dorm room.

57:52I can relate. You know, there's a – I probably wouldn't be sitting here today where not for Eleni. So at what point did you decide you wanted to aim for the SEAL teams? It's a great question. I mean, things, you know, as compared to – I had a gunnery sergeant in the Marine Corps at prep school who I thought, these are back to the first people you meet in this environment, Gunny Flynn. And he was great. He was super hard on us, but I obviously kind of loved that. And I thought I was going to go into the Marine Corps, and Doug wanted to go into the Marine Corps. I'm a freshman at the Naval Academy.

58:30He's my wrestling partner. Doug could literally tell me to jump off of a building. As long as he came with me, I'd do it no problem and enjoy it all the way down. Doug was going into the Marine Corps. I thought I was going to go into the Marine Corps. And I did a summer training in Quantico between freshman and sophomore year, and it was okay. It was good, but I didn't love it. and I met a couple other guys who were going to compete for spots in the SEAL teams who were years ahead of me but to answer your question junior year you get you can sign up and say I want to start competing for a billet we had 16 spots in my class I think there's 32 spots these days you know the force has grown since 9-11 obviously and um and I I want to say maybe 150 or so people.

59:17They put you through this weekend, overnight, two-day hell, two-day things at Navy. Some people quit. I don't know how many go to what we used to call mini-Buds in the summer between junior and senior year. You go out to Coronado and Bud's instructors, they still have it. It's called something different. You spend two weeks at the Bud's compound. They run you through a mini program. Some folks listening to this won't know the acronym. The acronym is Basic Underwater Demolition SEAL School. That's our school in Coronado. It's a screening process for who gets in, who doesn't. Yeah. And when you're at the Naval Academy, it's obviously different than guys coming into the enlisted ranks.

59:56You have this pool of people. 150-ish guys say they want to go. Sometime junior year, they run you through this weekend pretty hard at Navy because we have SEALs stationed at the Naval Academy. And then I'm just going to guess that goes from 150 to 80. maybe 80 guys go to the summer program in Coronado when you're still you know a midshipman at the Naval Academy I've never maybe people have quit many buds I don't know but I don't know if I really saw anybody quit the two weeks we're out in Coronado and then you get you know graded on your performance and stuff and then you come back for senior year and you go through a series of interviews with a bunch of seals who come out and do interviews and you don't really know what you're doing.

1:00:40And then they select down. I don't want to, again, overdo it, but it's probably seven, I don't know, maybe 50 or 60 qualified guys. They select you down to 16. And so to answer your question about when I got interested was when I knew I didn't want to go in the Marine Corps, I never, ever had the top gun fever thing. I wasn't interested in flying. I just wasn't interested in anything else but something super physical and that seemed like the best the next best thing and because I grew up in New Orleans and spent a lot of time in the water that wasn't intimidating that screens a lot of people out obviously yeah and got selected in the group of 16 and was at Bud's after graduation you know a couple months after graduation there's been a lot put out into the world around Bud's you know people have seen the log carrying and the boat carrying and the screaming and the set, screaming of the, the instructors and the, and the running and the, you know, clasped arms in the, in the water and hell week, no sleep and on and on.

1:01:48It's obviously tough. It, it calls 85 % of the people that go out there thinking that they are the, the absolute last person who would ever quit ring the bell, so to speak. You obviously got through a while back. you mentioned to me three things that you think predict whether or not somebody is going to get through BUDS. And before you tell us what these are, I just will just tell people that, yes, of course, you made it through BUDS successfully and went into the teams, a very successful career in the teams. But you've also been a BUDS instructor. So you've been on the other side of the equation too.

1:02:26What are those three things? Yeah, this was, as you know, this was very anecdotal, but it lined up. When I was back there in 05 as an instructor, I feel like we're not scientists, right? But I feel like we tried every correlating data pull that we could pull from pull-ups to run times to you name it, to regions of the country that people grow up near water. At least back then, nothing correlated. And so I was a first phase OIC, officer in charge. and so our team in first phase we can talk about what that is in detail if you want to but first phase is in charge of hell week you know hell weeks in the first two months of training and a couple of the guys said all this bullshit about this can get you through that can get you through i bet that every single person we talk to out here on the grinder has one of these three things they were a varsity athlete in high school or college their parents are divorced or they got suspended from school.

1:03:25I guarantee it. And we would walk around the grinder and ask. And I mean, you know, this isn't going to pass an independent review board, but it's got to be 90 to 95%. So that's incredible because, you know, so much has been made of buds and hell week. And just to just fill in a few of the blanks for those that aren't familiar, hell week is what it's five nights, no sleep. You get an hour or a couple minutes on, on one day, but you're basically in constant movement for about a week. You are. And that's when most people voluntarily ring the bell. And most of them do it before Wednesday. Okay. And I know it's got chaotic components, guns going off, blasts.

1:04:05It's got hard work, boring components. People trying to make it through have no sense of how long a run is going to last or what's going to happen. And you hear all this stuff like, okay, you just don't quit or you just go meal to meal. But what you just described is really interesting. Let's break those three things down because playing a varsity sport has certain elements. Having divorced parents has certain elements and getting suspended in school has certain elements. Let's start with divorced parents first. Because varsity sport, I think we can probably just quickly say, okay, there's structure.

1:04:45You have to listen to somebody. You have to be able to push yourself. You have to have some level of physical competence. Coachable. Mental competence work with others. So there's something there, right? And you presumably have to go through junior varsity to get there. So there's some oomph and required in any event. But the divorced parents piece is what's surprising to me. Still is. What – you have divorced parents. So do I. Divorces occur for any number of different reasons. what in the world do you think is the uh the consequence of or that of a divorced household that would predict so well at least in this back of the envelope measurement that you made but as an instructor that people would get through this excruciatingly difficult period of time for me it was one thing specifically i felt like i was alone if i didn't have the team so I don't know what it would be for other people but I was like if I don't have this team then what team do I have so I'm not leaving you could crank up the cold and misery as high as you fucking want but I'm not leaving yeah that hits deep um I didn't do buds I didn't even know what the SEAL teams were, but I certainly know the feeling of looking outside of the household for a sense of family and belonging and the feeling that like I'd much rather, like from almost from a place of joy, like I'd much rather die for these people, hopefully not with these people, but much rather die trying to save others and to do well in that than to quit.

1:06:29Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's a powerful thing that you just shine light on. I don't think of the hundreds of interviews with team guys, ex-team guys, BUDS instructors, et cetera, that are out there, I don't think anyone's ever highlighted that. I don't think I was aware of it then, Andrew, but I just, you know, again, it's in retrospect. Well, the retrospect is in large part what we're here for. To go a little deeper on that, I think that a lot of people have challenging homes. The parents aren't necessarily divorced. And we're talking, of course, about trying to understand the human spirit. Certainly not accomplishments per se, but the human spirit.

1:07:08So I think that a lot of people, especially nowadays, they look to their home life. And if, you know, God willing, they had a great home life. That is the base. It's like the touchstone for them that they can return to. But for a lot of people, even people who go home for the holidays or who touch in with their parents, whether or not they're divorced or not, they don't feel like that family unit is really a solid thing. Maybe they're in a place, I see this a lot, where they're the parent. They had to grow up taking care of the parents. I see that a lot. On both the male side and the female side, I see that.

1:07:42Um, so you're saying that one strong predictor of getting through is a feeling of people want essentially making it their, like almost like biological identity to get through. It was certainly the case for me. I mean, when I got, again, I don't really like to overdo these things because it tends to feed the mythos a little, but when I got to Bud's Andrew, like I, when I got to the Naval Academy had a very strong sense of this is my chance. And you know, you develop over the years and you spend time thinking about this and having mentors. When I got there, that was very much my first time of, you better bring the nastiest shit on the planet because I'm not leaving here.

1:08:29Like, it's just not, I'm not, I'm just not going, you know? And there's a Navy bit to it too. Like I didn't want to do anything else in the Navy. So back to fear, I was afraid I would get stuck doing a job I didn't like, but there's some people are not wrong, you know, about buds. There's some very difficult days where you do start to wonder, like, is this really worth it? And I, and that I never once thought about quitting. It never crossed my mind because I just had these other things that i really had to do for myself and my life or else i felt like i was going to have nothing and so again i don't think operating out of fear is particularly adaptive but sometimes it you know the bit in your teeth is useful yeah certainly in my own life i could say you know getting real scared about being 19 and essentially realizing i'm not good at anything i'm not good at anything and i was terrible at a lot of things and some of those things were taking me down a dangerous path.

1:09:32I'm grateful for the fear piece. It scruffed me. And let's talk about the suspended in school piece. First of all, that implies getting caught. Yes. Not just misbehaving, but getting caught. What do you think that's about? So we're really talking about a sense of rebellion against authority or the system that one finds themselves in. which is super important for our line of work. Like for me, again, I can only speak for myself. For me, it was the wild fuck you factor. Like you have to, there's just a nasty reality of the work we had to do. You know, I was in from 98 until 2011. In the SEAL teams.

1:10:13In the SEAL teams from 98 until 2011. Everybody knows what was happening between 9-11 and then. It's not that it didn't stop happening. I know, you know, from my own experience from 03 through 2010 was extremely intense. And obviously the military has rules and we need rules. And you follow the laws of armed conflict and you follow the rules of engagement. There's no question about that ever. But the shit that happens to you out in the field for real does not follow any pattern. And so if you are a complete, you know, non suspended from school rule follower, I'm not saying you won't be successful.

1:11:01I'm sure plenty of people are. But in our line of work, if you ask people, most of them had a weird streak as they were coming up. Like they have a little bit of a side eye when somebody tells them this is how stuff is. Like maybe it's like that. But you don't know that. And where it really became clear for me, Andrew, was, look, at every stage in your development, you're still looking for what Wright looks like. And when I was a – I'm now a Naval Academy graduate. Not that that means anything special. But I'm smart enough. I'm now in my 20s. I'm at Bud's. And I have this recollection later. People are always telling stories about the teams.

1:11:42And when you're a new student at Bud's, you kind of believe everything the instructors tell you because it's pretty impressive shit. And then you find out later when I checked into SEAL Team 3 and you actually start to understand the arc of the job. It's like all these guys were telling training stories. Those weren't real combat stories. They never said that that was a story from training. And so my point is like what you hope guys are getting it now, but what we didn't get a lot of was the real story in a sense. Meaning I will say definitively my first combat deployment was 03 when we invaded Iraq.

1:12:22I was a platoon commander. We invaded Iraq. And I remember within a week of being in that situation thinking not one single instructor had the experience to mentor and coach me on this. Not one. And so you have to go back to that wild, suspended, fuck you factor mindset. Like all your silly rules about how the military works, none of that shit's happening out here. Like all this other stuff is happening that doesn't have anything to do with your training manuals except for the things you don't violate, which is to your best of your ability, stuff happens, but the rules of engagement and laws of armed conflict, everything else is a toss up.

1:13:06The tactics aren't, that's not a toss up, but you know what I mean? Like the environment is completely chaotic. It's a new sport. It's a brand new sport that no one coached you on. and it's high risk, high consequence for you and your teammates, but also for the other side. I mean, every 15 seconds is a new consequential decision. Yeah, because you obviously don't want to kill civilians on the other side either. Of course not. Yeah. So you obviously get through Buds. You probably weren't surprised given your mindset. You probably weren't surprised. No, I wasn't surprised. at this point i'm maybe building a little self-confidence and don't just operate out of fear but happy presumably oh yeah yep and let's i feel obligated to ask well i'm just curious to ask that you you know you've been in a system of military for a long time is there a a bigger um pull of patriotism there or that's just it's there but i mean are you thinking about country or are you thinking about team you think about the day yeah I mean at this point you know I'm fully indoctrinated in a sense you know the Naval Academy really does give you a sense of again bigness and you meet people from World War II and Vietnam and you know an amazing guy which you know we can cover later I don't I wasn't around when he was coming up but Colonel John Ripley is a guy who won the Navy Cross in Vietnam um the book the the Bridge of Dong Ha is about him He knew my, this is back to my Uncle Jim who introduced, he and my Uncle Jim were buddies.

1:14:46And I met him, he's since passed away. I met Colonel Ripley when I was a plebe at the Naval Academy. I work with one of his sons now, friend, teammate, mentor. He's a great guy. Colonel Ripley, he's a legend. Like this guy's a Navy Cross winner, should have won the Congressional Medal of Honor by all accounts. If you read the book, The Bridge of Dong Ha, you are going to have no ability to understand why he's not dead. And these are the kind of people you meet. So back to the patriotism, you know, thing. By the time I was in the teams, I knew where I was sort of in this ecosystem. Admittedly, though, what I didn't really have, Andrew, because I mean, I love the country, of course, but it wasn't.

1:15:36again I didn't grow up with a dad who was like you know this was always in our house or it just wasn't that big of a thing this this came for me after 9-11 obviously but yes the patriotism and the importance of the jobs there but when I remember checking the SEAL Team 3 what would emerge very quickly for me because we had Vietnam vets in the training cell at SEAL Team 3 and just some amazing people, what I realized right away was, okay, playtime is completely over. And that was very useful, like early lesson. Not that anyone was fucking around in buds, like you know it's serious, but you meet a guy like Master Chief Martin who's got 100 combat missions from Vietnam.

1:16:17He's about to retire. He was like the third person I met when I checked into the team. And you suddenly are like a kid again where there's just no fucking around. So you're in the teams, presumably liking the work. Loved it. Loving the team component. It's hard. It's unpredictable. And that's part of the fun. It's amazing. Yeah. The job's amazing. You do a number of different deployments. Mm-hmm. And at some point you get called to try out for the tier one, tier one division within the, within the SEAL teams. Maybe just explain a little bit of what tier one means. And, you know, we don't want to speak in code here, but we, you know, just inform people that there are levels within the teams and that, yeah, tell us what tier one is.

1:17:12Yeah. Well, I'll just refer to a special mission unit. It's probably the easiest. We have a bunch of teams on the East and West Coast, as a lot of people know nowadays. This shit was not public knowledge years ago. Yeah, so you've got these different units within the SEAL teams. Yeah, so you have to raise your hand. You know, I was 10 years in, Andrew. I had been platoon commander during the invasion of Iraq. We came to Monterey. I went to school. I went back to be a BUDGE instructor. It was 10 years I felt like it was time to, you know, take my shot. It's a little risky because it's hard to make it through.

1:17:46you know, green team and stuff at the special mission unit. It's a nine-month advanced training program. You're 10 years into your career. You're not 22 anymore. And not everyone gets called to green team. Not everyone can go. You can't say, I want to go. I want to try out. You can say you want to try out and you do a pre-screener. Okay. So the command training staff, I'll call it the command for purposes of this conversation because I'm familiar with that term for us. The command training staff comes out. They put you through all this stuff. Some of it's psychological. Some of it's physiological.

1:18:14I don't think we did a blood test, but they checked, the trainers checked everything on me, which I thought, this is actually a description of why the unit's tier one. I was, even in the pre-screening, it was the first time, the way I joke about it is like, I really felt like I was doing what was in the brochure. Like it was real varsity stuff, you know. I'm presaging a later conversation that we'll get to, but at this point, had you ever sat down with a psychologist and done a therapy session? That was no therapy, but I sat down with a psychologist because they put us through the battery, the Neopir, the Raven, stuff like that.

1:18:48They're asking you, how do you sleep at night? How do you feel? All that, yeah. What do you dream about? How much do you drink? And you say, two beers a week. And you're lying. Everyone's lying. Yeah. But now it might be two beers a week. Now it's zero. Zero. Yeah. Right. But yeah, so it was a good screening process. I was like, oh, shit, these guys are not messing around. This is exactly what I wanted to do. and the physical tests ramp up and uh coincidentally i worked for him later still friends with him now on my interview board was uh brit slabinski who won the congressional medal of honor brit was on my interview board and he's a great guy and so yeah then you just wait and if you get picked up you go out you know to the east coast and you're really rolling the dice because i was on the west coast you move your whole family sell your house you may not have to sell your house but we did and you move and you're going to do a nine-month advanced training program at the command just to get into a tactical unit you know which we call squadrons and the best way tactically for me to describe the difference and look my time at team three was amazing i'm not diminishing it but let me just use free fall military free fall for anybody who's you know even done civilian free fall so it's jumping out of jumping yeah so if you go if we go to the drop zone and we go jumping, right?

1:20:04FAA regulations have you jump at 12 ,999 feet because as soon as you go above 13 ,000, you have to use supplemental oxygen, which is not a huge deal, but it's a pain in the ass for the airplane to have it. And so 99 % of your, all your jumps, well, at any standard drop zone, your civilian jumps are going to be below 13 grand. For all of our jumping at SEAL Team 3 is below 13 grand. It just makes the training more efficient. And you'll jump during the daytime, maybe a little night jumping. You'll probably have some lights for safety. And if you look out of the airplane, you would be able to see the orange T on the drop zone, right?

1:20:42That's your standard jump profile. Maybe you'll jump with some weight. You'll certainly jump with your weapon, probably your helmet, but not all your jumps because you're bringing guys from zero to be able to do tactical military free fall as a group. When you go to the command, your jumps are from 25 ,000 feet you do 30 minutes of pre-breathing on oxygen helmet night vision zero lights an attack board that has your navigation system on it 100 pounds of gear your weapon your oxygen all your shit and 45 dudes piled up in a c17 and you drop miles away from the drop zone because your overground speed at 25 ,000 feet is hauling ass, you know, because of the wind.

1:21:30And if you take your hands out of your gloves at 25 ,000 feet, it's curtains. Like you're not going to be able to use your fingers because it's so cold. And you jump from way away, obviously, and all your jump is completely blacked out. Everybody turns IR lights on, their helmets and their infrared light. So you can see through night vision. And you got to fly that canopy multiple, multiple miles and land everybody on a drop zone. You know, that's if you take every tactical thing we do and expand the same way you would expand free fall, that's the difference at the command, which is like I was I want to own this when I was at team three, because you think about this.

1:22:10I had many, many moments where I was thinking, oh, fuck it, man, those guys aren't that much different. Like we're we're super high end. Right. And we are. and then when I got there I was like this is this is another level what what percentage of people that go to green team get through and get sort of uh I think I had 65 in my class you don't drop that many maybe 10 guys didn't make it or something maybe 15 ish so then you were why do they call it tier one? No idea. It must have some official reason. Like, cause if you go into like real documentation, Andrew, like there's, there's echelons in, you know, at this, this command is echelon this, this command is echelon this and the military Congress sets end strength numbers.

1:23:01It says the Navy you get at the one time, cause it took some class, the Navy had like 355 ,000 people. And that's the Navy's end strength. And they have to distribute those numbers across everybody in the Navy. So I don't know why it's called tier one, but I think it has a, you know, has a reason. So you got through, you were accepted, and then you're doing very different sorts of things than you were doing previously. Very. So my understanding is this is largely counter-terrorist work. So all the work in the military and SEAL teams is high risk, high consequence, but now it's special operations, as the name implies, where things have to be worked out on a case-by-case basis.

1:23:53It's highly unusual. It was unusual before, but now it's highly unusual circumstances. What was it like to be there. Did you like that family? I loved it. It was the best place to work. And this is 2000? This is 06 through 2011 for me. Okay. So it's post 9-11 through 2011. Yeah. Okay. So I'm sure a lot happened and most of which we can't and won't discuss. and that's not what's important here. But clearly you met and worked with some amazing individuals. I happen to know because we've spoken before and we have some common friends in that arena that you had both the privilege of doing this work and this really important wartime, but also the unfortunate experience of being close to and working with quite a lot of people that were killed.

1:24:55Yep. How many? So, I mean, I don't know why I did this or why anyone does it. It's way over 40, but I try not to over-affiliate myself with a larger group than I actually knew. But the people that I personally knew, Andrew, it's exactly 40. and um and we could spend probably weeks detailing how impressive uh each and every one of those people was in their individual cases that this is perhaps a an opportunity to um put a call out there's a wonderful book i think an important book that isn't so well known in the in the array of quote-unquote military and seal books um which is the book about adam brown yeah a fearless book I heard they're going to make it into a movie, but, but what I, um, what I like about the book is, um, actually has very little to do with the SEAL team.

1:25:52Totally. That's the best thing. Is that Adam, um, had a serious, serious problem with addiction that he masked at times and it came back to pull him under various times while he was in the teams. And, um, I know you worked with Adam and you're close. My green team. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, that's a great book for anyone that wants it, a different sort of book. it's really about addiction and family and his discovery of the path out of all that his tenacity is incredible awesome awesome book human about an awesome awesome human so you do those years um and then you know what happens when you know 40 people close to you die I have to imagine involves that you get pretty good, unfortunately, at taking what each and every one of those is a tragedy and just continuing.

1:26:52Yeah. So let's just talk about that for a bit, if you're willing. Yep. So guys are getting shot and blown up, and you're close with them, to say the least. And what was your role in the aftermath? math? Like, like how, what do you do? You, you, you go to a funeral, you, you, you, um, toast a few beers and then you go back to work. I mean, it's, that's kind of, you know, in the most simplistic terms, Andrew, that is exactly what happens. Um, there's obviously, you know, a lot more that goes on, but if you script the diary, so to speak, it's it wasn't you know a funeral every three months but on average if i averaged out because i've done this in you know excavating the last few years we were at a funeral memorial effectively every 90 days and um in that time period but it wasn't obviously you know that simple like for for me and our family doug was my first super close teammate killed and it wasn't in the teams right i'm now at the command i was back from afghanistan from kandahar this is way before the marines built up 100 kilometers west of kandahar we were operating six of us with like 180 afghans kind of the Wild West back then.

1:28:27And Doug was killed that summer of 07. And I got a phone call from a friend. I was standing in my kitchen in Virginia Beach. And it was like,

1:28:42like the whole scaffolding of the world was just gone. Because at that age, and here I am, like I'm some kid. I was in my 30s. but I'm thinking you know things get more and more serious as you go like at that time but when Doug was killed and I was a Paul Bear in his funeral and you know we came up to Annapolis he was living in Annapolis because he was working it's it's now been publicly released which is nice for Pam because she can talk about it more he was working at the agency and um when after his funeral and just the days around that. And then I go back to work. And what I mentioned earlier about Doug and what I knew about him just as an operator, he had been a company commander in Fallujah.

1:29:31He was on the front page of the LA Times. Like Tony Perry is a reporter in San Diego. He was in Fallujah following Doug. The guy was, and Doug is not a, like a public people. People were just attracted to him to tell his story. I have so many stories that I heard later from his bosses, his regimental commander, you know, told stories about his unit in Fallujah, his sergeant major and his amazing guy. I've talked to him about like what went on in Fallujah. Doug's just a fucking legend. I mean, he was awesome. And the dominant thought after his funeral was if things, it's not that you don't think they're serious.

1:30:08And I mean, just about life, Andrew, it wasn't just about combat action and hard deployments. It was about if Doug can be killed, all fucking bets are off. They're all off. Like, if I didn't respect the rules before and didn't think society was particularly ordered in a way that I respected, you know, shit that I think is made up, I knew when Doug was killed that it's all fucking made up. Like, he was supposed to be the immortal one. And if he's not, none of us are. Like, everything has to be reevaluated. You know, how old was I? I was 32. And you've got kids at this point. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yep. Yeah, Ollie wasn't born yet, my youngest.

1:30:56Because you now have three boys. Yep, three boys, 21, 18, and 14. And the older two were born. My middle son was two at the time. Did it occur to you at the point when Doug was killed or maybe some other point that at some point you could die? Oh, I mean, that's what I mean, Andrew. Like I, you know, personal work and therapy afterwards. It was then that I started looking over my shoulder, just in general. Like everything was suddenly like has to be watched with a vigilant eye. Something that close friends, close male friends of mine have told me, these are friends that are married with kids. And I've heard this from people that were in the military and as well as those that weren't, was that it was very important to them to marry somebody who, were they to die, they knew their kids would be well taken care of.

1:31:58Oh, that one's not even, there's no question about that. Yeah. So that was like a primary criteria. And I think in your line of work, I mean, that must be especially important because the probability of dying is, well, let's face it, is much higher. As my sister who doesn't like sharks once told me, she said, you know, the best way to not get eaten by a shark is never go in the ocean. You know, there is a way to limiting probabilities. She'll swim in the ocean a little bit, but the point being that when you're in the military and you're shoot, move, and communicate is a big part of the job description.

1:32:33And the enemy is also taught to shoot, move, and communicate that there's a decent probability that you could die. So did you ever think, okay, well, if I die, my kids are okay because Bridget's solid. Or were you still just operating on this 24 hour schedule that you had adopted way back in the seventh grade? No, I think, well, maybe I'd have to ask her that question. I think I was backed away from the 24 hour ledge a little bit. I knew that the boys obviously would be taken care of with my wife like that was never even and never crossed my mind probably until you just asked the question that was almost just like table stakes um back to this adaptive but maladaptive behavior when Doug was killed I just realized I had to work even harder to try to stay alive.

1:33:32Because if you met the guy, there is, I'm going to say it probably multiple, there is not a fucking human on the planet that was as tough and as focused and as hyper-dialed in to how to do the job 100 % effectively as he was. and it happened to him, you know. And I just never – it's almost embarrassing, Andrew, to say I never thought about it like that until Doug was killed. And yet – and I'm not challenging that at all, of course. I mean, life, circumstances, the other team gets a vote too. Totally. Right? I mean, somebody can be seemingly indestructible, oh so capable and talented, and get t-boned at an intersection and die right like like that yeah we've known people like that all of us that you know you hear these things that's why they're called tragedies yeah we just we just like to put it in context we have to remember is part of the beauty of taking a young person and taking all the ingredients that a person comes into special operations pick your service i'm not i'm agnostic i mean some of my best buddies are army marine corps like i'm agnostic to the service head is it when you end up at a certain point like and you look back you realize for 10 or 15 years i've been indoctrinated in a very adaptive way to believe that i'm immortal because if you didn't you certainly wouldn't jump out of aircraft at 25 000 feet with no lights and you for hell for sure wouldn't go into some of these fucking towns we go into and end up in these firefights.

1:35:15Like you have some weird – I'll speak for myself. I was entirely convinced that I couldn't be killed. And just because I was in some way, Andrew, convinced that our training was so good that that shit wouldn't happen to us. Let's take a step back for a second and acknowledge the truth all around that set of statements, which is that I think most people can think of the government and the training programs as honing the body, but it's probably not lost on you at this point in your life that you were a weapon. Your mind became a weapon, right? Your body became a weapon. You were a weapon of the military from the inside out, and the statement you just made encapsulates that.

1:36:09and that weapon honed itself for a long time but then that's what the military is it creates weapons and of out of humans and i'm not demonizing the military whatsoever i want to be very clear i realize that statement could be construed differently but um but that mindset encapsulates that so um so with the other guys i want to make sure i finish your question so it started with doug and then you know i don't know what direction you want to go here specifically but then it just kept going, Andrew, right? Like at that time, Doug was 07. And then we went to Iraq in the winter of 07, 08, which was complete mayhem.

1:36:45And the troop was, I mean, my, my troop in the winter of 07, 08 were like fucking superheroes. And a guy named Tommy Valentine was the troop chief. and we got home and he was killed in a parachute accident after all that shit we went through badger a guy named mark carter was killed in that deployment we got home and tommy was killed in a parachute accident and me and a guy named dutch we went up to minnesota to notify tommy's parents and his sister and his brother and we're not the navy calls them cacos like casualty assistance officers, these are jobs in the military where you're trained to do stuff.

1:37:30You know, one of the things that's amazing about us is if a guy gets killed, we send a team guy there. But think about the team guy. Like, it's great for the family that you send the team guy, but we don't know shit about sitting with a family who's about to be notified that their son, in this case of Tommy, was killed. Britt went to Christina's house, his lab, Britt Slabinski, he went to Christina's house and me and Dutch went up to Minnesota. And I'm shaking right now. Like I was shaking the whole drive. We had to get to International Falls all the way up north. The Valentines are incredible people.

1:38:07And, I mean, notifying a family was just – it was brutal. And so this is 08, and then it just keeps coming. it's nate and it's mike and it's lance and it's extortion in 2011 and in the middle of that adam gets killed right like tons of people know about extortion because it was a one helicopter obviously full well maybe we just just briefly want to mention that was august 2011 as i recall Yes. Yeah. August of 11. Yeah. So, but in 2010, Adam is killed.

1:38:46And I got a phone call and I wasn't best friend. I mean, Adam had some very close friends to come in that I don't want to make some, anybody give the impression that like me and Adam were boys. We were, we knew each other well, right. We went through green team together. He was in a different squadron though. So you sort of get separated a little. And I got a phone call in the middle of the night from one of my buddies who's still in who is another legend and um I answered the phone and it's midnight I knew something was wrong and we were kind of in this pattern then and you're like actually a few of the commands were like our partner command and a bunch of other guys we work with in other units it was a hard time like guys were fighting hard overseas and um that just comes with the consequences we know you know and I get the phone call in the middle of night I'm like and so this guy tells me you know get your uniform you need to come in something happened and I'm like I fucking know what happened like tell me who it is and they you know didn't want to say it over the phone which I get and uh I I had like one of those moments where I told him no I can't I can't do that again like you have to get somebody who knows what the fuck they're doing and he just didn't let me off the hook you know get your shit and come come into the command because you got to do all this prep stuff and um I walked into the conference room I mean I remember it clear as day and I walked into the conference room and I could see it on everybody's face again this is 2010 now they were more terrified than I was and these are You know, civilian guys, guys who retired are now civilians.

1:40:29They work at the command and amazing people. And they looked like, I don't know if you've seen Peter Jackson's remake, They Shall Not Grow Old. Oh, you have to watch it. They Shall Not Grow Old is Peter Jackson took real World War I footage. Oh, I did see that. Yeah. And he put the color in the lip reading. And there's a scene. I don't know if it's Battle of the Bulge or exactly. there's a scene where um this young unit army unit is about to go up over the top and you know run across the open field and the camera pans over and there's a young kid with his rifle in front of him the bayonet affixed to it his helmet on his lips are sort of flat and pursed and he everybody in that conference room looked like him when i saw that movie later i'm like every single person looked like him and they told me it was adam and we were going to go notify kelly his wife and he had little ones at that point savannah and nathan yeah they were small and um we knocked on she had a sort of a stained glass like window and i could see her at the top of the the stairs

1:41:51that was the worst man it was the worst

1:41:58so we sat with kelly and a bunch of other guys were there of course it wasn't just me and we did our best and i learned later and you know reading paul's work dr conti and other people and like that was it dude I was like a um I don't know if it's a locust or whatever that sheds their skin I literally like left a shell of myself on Kelly's front porch and walked out of my skin it was that was tough that was tough and so that was kind of the tempo to answer your question like it wasn't exactly every 90 days but almost every 90 days from 06 to 2011 for me I got out in the fall of 2011 it was memorial at the theater memorial at the people's house you know and our neighbor across the street in Virginia Beach she lost her husband in 07 so one house over so she was best friends with us you know and so you are trying to live two lives you have this military life with all these consequences where every bone in your body is telling you to go full spartan like no not that the spartans didn't have families because they did whatever did nothing else like just cut off every other thing in your life completely you have to go do this and you have to do it full on because clearly all bets are off like we're barely making it through.

1:43:33We're losing our best guys. And how the fuck do I survive if at this pace? And so because we're all in the same community in Virginia Beach, you're around it all the time when you're home, you know, and you should be because you're supporting your teammates, families, and that's important. But it was just, it's almost like a dream. You know, when I think about it now, how do, how did we live like that? How does anyone live like that? and I know you know my experience as the military people go through you know all sorts of tough situations in different walks of life but I have so much compassion for anybody who's trying to live in an environment like that where you know you are going on the next deployment and you know I mean look Andrew we left Bakuban in 08 before Tommy was killed three fucking weeks later guys are getting blown up in the same area like and they're they got all the debris from us they knew exactly where to go but it was just such a kinetic environment um we it was almost like you couldn't stop it you know it was just like the balls rolling and when I think about people overseas and you know different situations that countries find themselves in right now um I can feel it for for them you know what they're what it takes it's a So it's an intense environment.

1:44:58Yeah, certainly that comes through. I think years ago you said to me, and this will be an important way of setting aside which side people are on, whether or not you side with one group in the Middle East or the other, or you feel for everybody, that one of the things that you said that really rung in my ears for a long time is that the warriors on both sides, in their own minds, each and all of them are just doing what they think is right for them and their families. Totally. You cannot erase that fact. Like whether or not the government of this country or the government of that country or group was correct or incorrect, whether or not you're even talking about a terrorist cell versus a military, a formal military group or special operations group, that in the minds of the warriors, they're doing what they truly believe is right for them and their families and sometimes country as well.

1:45:57And when I heard that, it was sort of a, you know, it's sort of an obvious statement on the one hand, but it's a very important one, I think, to the psychology that, you know, everyone's fighting tooth and nail because they believe that they are right or they're just fighting tooth and nail for whatever reason. And that was an important thing for me to hear and i think about that a lot when i see any news stories about international conflict or terrorist military conflict terrorist civilian stuff even people there's something about the human brain people get this into their mind like this is my job and they're doing it doesn't justify it right but going back to this thing of being a weapon yep humans can be trained as weapons and and it's often not the weapons themselves that are making the decisions about where to go and what to do.

1:46:42Sometimes it is. At this time, Coleman, what's going on with the three boys with Bridget? I mean, your boys have turned out really well. They're amazing. They're amazing. And there's no coincidence there. And obviously, it was a team effort with you and Bridget. But there are a lot of things about the way the scenario you're describing here that speaks to like, how can a home function? But obviously it functioned well. And, um, you know, it's, uh, it's remarkable, but it can't be due to chance. So the, were you able to compartmentalize like the moment you hit your front door, your dad at home, your husband, your, um, and was that a pause in a conversation with yourself at the front door?

1:47:31That's just something that becomes reflexive? I mean, I, I think it was just reflexive. It wasn't really a pause at the front door. And admittedly, the story I would like to tell is that I was super Zen about it. And I had this process and I would come home and I would take this off and put on regular dad things. And I think I was just, by the same level of effort that we put into what we were doing, Bridget and every other wife, mom, at least the ones that I knew, they put that level effort in as well. It made our home life just very comfortable. So it was easy. Like I didn't have to go through some process, right?

1:48:26It was, this is how I remember it. It was easy for me. I don't know if it was easy for Bridget. She would have to answer that question. It was easy for me. And so I felt like for the most part, like I was, I wasn't like platoon commander dad, you know, some movie, you know, the great Santini type dad, you know, I think Pat Conroy wrote the great Santini. His dad was crazy, apparently. Or it's like, that's what he writes about. It wasn't like that. it was more of this this home is such a relief and Bridget is so dialed that I don't have to unfortunately hard for Bridget I don't have to do anything you know the time that I'm here I can be here and then you know go away again and and so it's as we know what trauma does to the mind like there are many many stretches of that time period that i just don't remember and i and what i do remember is mostly obviously the fun times the front yard the whatever playing with the boys um doing rough housing and going on vacation and stuff but the when i was in the grind when we were in the training cycle of our cycle or deployment or whatever i don't really remember sections of it.

1:49:46So a lot, far too many, I guess even one would be far too many, uh, doorbells ringing on doorbells. You decided to get out. Uh, was that a conscious decision based on time, conscious decision based on like, I would like to have the rest of my life. you're done i like to call it a regret you know but it's just kind of emblematic of where i was it was the right decision i do not regret getting out at the 13-year mark not for a second it i needed it we needed it as a family um it was a snap it was a snap decision it was like a what do we say 24 hour just 24 hour horizon i was standing on the ledge of the 24 hour horizon All right.

1:50:35And you said, what year was that again? That was the fall of 2011. 2011. Yeah. Okay. So that's about four or five years before you and I met. Yeah. Yeah. So extortion, we can just, we don't have to touch into it too deeply because people can look it up, but this was a massive loss of special operations, included a lot of SEALs. It was basically a helicopter shot out of the sky with a grenade, right? Yeah. RPG. RPG. people can look it up if they want to and there's a lot of material out there about it it can only be described as a tragedy so and I'm not trying to make light of it I just think we could do there's a lot to explore there in a different discussion in case you're out now the probability that you're going to die is much lower provided it's not what my nervous system said right but you're out and what do you do?

1:51:31Meaning, what do you do with all that energy, the energy of the way you've been operating up until now, these intense battle rhythms, vampire schedules, as you call them, but also what do you do with all the energy of what happened? I think this is where I think our conversation really hopefully has been related to other people as we've been going, but that, you know, sometimes I stop and I'm like, I know I'm supposed to process all this stuff, you know, that's happened, but it's like, what do you do when so much has happened or when something's happened that, you know, you have to move on from, you know, you need to compartmentalize, but that lives in our nervous system.

1:52:15So are you thinking about that? No, you're Coleman at that point you're just uh you're just going forward it's just fucking crazy i mean i just didn't know you know it's 2011 doesn't sound like that long ago but still in 2011 this was not a topic for conversation you know and i took maybe one week to process out i turned in my gear i I turned in my badge and my next visit to the command years later, I had to be escorted on by people I worked with in the same fucking squadron. Like, so within a matter of one week, I'm a stranger. Like I can't get on the base. There's reasons for that. I get that, but I'm just using it as a, to make the point.

1:53:01There was nothing dishonorable about how you went. It's just that there's security reasons. You can't just drive on the base anymore, you know? And this is like emblematic of, of course, I didn't talk to anybody about it. not even Bridget, but at the time, in those first, call it, couple of years or even couple of months, I don't know, the question you just asked me is a question I was asked, like, what do I do? Like, not with work. Like, what do I do, period, with life? Like, how do I manage my time? And I'm not some bumbling idiot. It's not like I was walking around the neighborhood, like, trying to figure out where my house was.

1:53:39I had just been in that environment for so long, to your point,

1:53:45that I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what to do with my thoughts, my feelings, my, you know, I could go to the Buddhist five aggregates, my thoughts, feelings, perceptions, physical form, like all these things I've learned about and thought about later that have helped so much. I didn't know what to do with any of it. Like I didn't know what to do with night sweats. I didn't know what to do with, I thought the term PTSD was the, was the biggest fucking joke on the planet until I read all the symptoms. And I'm like, wait, wait a minute. Sounds familiar. And so it's that. And so I remember like even the little things that kind of make the point of the big things.

1:54:23I didn't know how to get a dentist. Like I just go to the dentist in the military. You know, I thought when I was walking around the food line that somebody was going to call me and say, come back to the base because like the bubble went up. You just, I had zero context and didn't have the, not even just the courage, but know who to ask, right? It wasn't the mentoring. One of the most important books in my life in the last 12 years has been Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces for the back end of The Hero's Journey. And - I haven't read it. I know I should. I know I should. You should actually listen to it.

1:55:00You should listen to it. It's better to, I've probably only listened to five audio books in my life. I prefer to read in paper because I can take notes in the margin. That book is better listened to. Hero with a thousand faces. The hero with a thousand faces. Could you just highlight a couple of the things that you took from the back end of that that somehow shifted your mind toward like, like cued you. I'm thinking Coleman Rui's circa 2011 is like, like, what do I do now? And then something cues you. There's like a beacon someplace. It's like, I always think of this like a texture of something.

1:55:32and you're like, oh, I want to, you know, you want to feel it more to get a sense of what it is. Is that about right? It was in that case for sure. So Joseph Campbell wrote that book in 1949 and The Hero of a Thousand Faces is effectively the 17 stage hero journey, which by the way, George Lucas says and has said many times publicly, he built the arc of Star Wars around the 17 stage hero's journey. He credits Joseph Campbell's book for helping him. And if you ever read it or you go through the 17 stages or you see it or watch a short video anybody you'll see how damn near everybody's life which is why it's called the monomyth he describes it as the monomyth or the cosmogonic cycle a little weirder term for it um but what he lays out in the book is i don't know maybe supposedly 2 000 years of culture across multiple cultures book is incredibly complicated in that sense.

1:56:28Andrew, when I, so I listened to it audio first and I went back to it and listened to it in paper. I could not believe how a human could put this narrative together, honestly. And so, but the summary, I struggle with the first 10 stages a little bit, but I'll try to come back to them. If you look at the image, when you lay out the 17 stages, the way it's in a circle is the ordinary world and the extraordinary world is on the bottom of the page. And there's a horizontal line. The diameter of that circle goes horizontally across and the extraordinary world's on the bottom, the ordinary world's on the top.

1:57:02Okay. And so let me talk about the back end of the journey first, because what I was mostly concerned about with when a friend pointed me to that book was my return to the ordinary world. And he told me, Coleman, you got to read this book. And so the back end of the hero's journey in the return section is three, seven stages of the 17. It's the ultimate boon, which is you learned something big in life. It depended on everybody learns something where you sort of realize that something big happened to me. That's the ultimate boon. And you have this incredible desire to do something with it. It's either knowledge or it's experience or whatever.

1:57:43And the ultimate boon you have, and you feel like this life thing. And then the next stage is typically refusal of the return. You really don't want to come back to the ordinary world because you feel that there is some level of consequence that maybe you can't handle or somebody won't understand. Or maybe it's too mundane. Maybe. You'll feel adrift. Totally, yeah. And this is in the description of the stages, what you just described as part of that description. The next stage, you're coming up back into the ordinary world on this return is magic flight. And the way it's described in, you know, myths or in real life is you have to escape that extraordinary world and take one more dangerous flight or sneak away or something is catapulting you to take that ultimate boon and fight against that refusal.

1:58:41You're taking magic flight. Amazing. And then there is, is it, it's assistance, I think. Yeah, it's like assistance from a, like a special power or something, which could be your own or somebody else. right and then and then suddenly you're into the last three which is crossing the return crossing the return threshold into the ordinary world master of two worlds where you finally realize through help and or process where you can hold these two opposing life experiences in place and then the very last stage 17 is freedom to live and when you can i'm going to give you my little pet theory in a second.

1:59:30When you can work your way through those stages, you can have the freedom to live. What I realized potentially happened to me, just my internal feelings about, you know, my coming in out of the military and back is if you skip or you don't figure out how to deal with the refusal to return and, and you just pick, I'm going to call it the next big thing you catapult yourself into a new cycle and you never finish and one of two things has happened you're either two people trapped in the ordinary world or you're one person trapped in the in two worlds i don't know which it is like it's either two worlds in one person or it's two people trying to live in one world but shit gets crazy right because you just haven't done the cycle and it sounds very mystical but if you read here with a thousand faces like this journey is not new Like this is thousands of years of very typical human cycle.

2:00:30Now, if we go back to the top of the circle, let me try to scream through the first 10, which will be very obvious for Star Wars fans. Just think about what Luke does. And I'm not like a super Star Wars person. I've seen the movies, but it's a call to adventure. Most of us have a call to adventure of some sort in our life. Refuse the call, help from a mentor, crossing the first threshold, the belly of the whale which is described as when you first truly separate this was me leaving for college when you first truly separate from the ordinary world road of trials meeting the goddess, temptations, atonement with the father, apostasis, which is kind of like dying a death while you're still alive and then you're into those return stages and when I first read that book Andrew I was like I'm trapped in the return I'm trapped somewhere in the return just emotionally and one of the places that I was absolutely trapped in the return was I didn't have the mentor to help me cross the threshold.

2:01:42I knew I had to move on in my life. I knew I had learned something extremely valuable. I knew that there was a way through because people across thousands of years of humanity have done it. I don't think I'm special. And I never had the mentor. I got mentors later, you know, a couple years out. and it reminds me that in the so I got out in the fall of 2011 in the summer one of my very good friends who lives in Connecticut he works in New York he brought me to a lunch at some fancy club in New York with a guy named Buddy Buka Paul Buddy Buka who won the Congressional Medal of Honor he's a West Point grad he won the CMH in Vietnam I'd been around a lot of you know famous military people lunch was very normal but buddy was amazing it was a normal lunch we didn't talk about much like impact we didn't talk about combat action or whatever there was a green velvet set of stairs we were leaving the club the upstairs we were coming down the green set of stairs if i remember buddy's a little bit shorter than i am he reached out his left i was on his left he reached out his left arm i was a stair one stair below him he stopped me i turned to my right to look at him he looked at me he said son you have it you know that you have it pts and you're gonna have to deal with it and we left i got in a cab and i left and i remember thinking you might have it but i don't because that's the old days like we're we were prepared for this shit i was still convinced that i'm good like nothing happened to me nothing in the military happened to me that's just normal stuff and all of our training it's a story I told myself all of our training prepared me for that like this the rest of my life is just gonna nothing bad's gonna happen because I'm good whatever that meant and when I started to learn more and read more and talk to people who are helping me I remembered buddy telling me that and back to those return stages andrew it's just incredibly important for me to understand that my journey is not special we are part of a long history of evolution that people who go through very challenge and i mean the 17 stages in joseph could not be more accurate to like to my life particularly the return and of course if one looked from the outside they would agree with your mindset then and say you're alive you certainly done very hard things extraordinary things you're married you got three kids they're thriving ptsd post-traumatic stress disorder and things like it because i don't think any single acronym or diagnosis can capture anything i think paul conti made that very clear to us in the mental health series these are names by necessity but it's a framework certainly taught me something.

2:04:44Absolutely. And certainly those who haven't been in the military, maybe had a seed event of something challenging or whatever it is, many people struggle with these kinds of things that live inside them in their nervous system. They pack it down, maybe they don't, but that was inside you at that point. I think you and I first got acquainted in somewhere around 2016 when you and some other folks from tier one community and related communities started coming to lab and my lab and I never really talked publicly about my lab has been involved with various things in Canada and the U.S. I'm not trying to create any mystique there but it's not not a point of interest what we did and and but I recall at that time just thinking like this guy's just an amazing team guy but in any event um you know we got to know each other a bit and my sense then was like it's like a that's kind of indestructible right you know and now i realize nobody's indestructible we're flesh and bone but um but if we may let let's let's fast forward a bit to a couple of years later.

2:06:01If you're willing to talk about it, maybe talk about some of the evolution that happened. So you started working a job, you're getting back into civilian life. And I recall a conversation about this time of year, probably about three years ago. Yeah. And you had done what a lot of vets from tier one operations have done and are now doing, which I actually have mostly a favorable outlook on, which is there, now these are, I wanna be very clear, legal and sanctioned explorations of the psychedelic space, right? And I remember you called me and you described the experience that you had had and some of the connection with warrior culture that that had helped emerge for you.

2:06:59So could you could you explain what happened there? You know, probably the entry, Andrew, is as important, you know, meaning it's not all about books, but this is actually another thing I've really learned. You know, I was very intellect and achievement central. and as you can see how easy the emotion comes out now i kind of very frighteningly understand people who like feel stuff a lot more it's a whole other landscape it's miserable low way yeah it is and yet it's i i agree i it's a very uncomfortable space uh you know but we'll get we'll get there it's a journey for me i put it that way so you know there's a bunch of other, I'm a voracious reader.

2:07:42I really enjoy it. And, you know, my entree and little window into the world of getting that kind of help came from a lot of different areas. I found in our area, a craniosacral therapist who it still seems like, because I mentioned it to people and it sounds fringe to them. It's a very light touch, not even chiropractic-like, and it's closer to myofascial type of massage some some tapping yep yeah some very light on the top of the head the part i actually love the most is the back of the neck sort of manipulation is you're lying down relaxed yeah you're clothed super easy in terms of that um a couple years of that just because of athletics i love massage and that's kind of my entree and um so through the body somatics yeah which frankly in many ways is my favorite back to the physical orientation to the world is what's useful to me.

2:08:40But also, I mean, I read Sam Harris's first book, End of Faith, in 2006. And so I've followed him for 15 years, religiously, read all of his books, Lying, Moral Landscape. And his, I don't know him personally, so public stuff notwithstanding, that's not important to me. But waking up and I took an online course with Robert Wright, who wrote Why Buddhism is True, but that's really not what he's known for, you know, Princeton professor. He's so funny. He's very humorous. And I started to work my way into, I don't have some like, I don't want people thinking of some like whiz bang, like spiritual practice that's whatever, you know, but it became very interesting to me, Andrew, this, I needed to find, I started to realize I needed to find a way to back away from the 24-hour ledge.

2:09:36Like that super hyper focus. I needed to get a little bit of perspective. One of my favorite short videos is Richard Feynman's Pale Blue Dot. I needed to just back away. That reminds me. Thank you so much for talking about time-space bridging, I think, the other day. We'll cue people to that clip in the caption. It's a way of taking oneself out of one's immediate sphere of vision and literally looking further out into one's environment and then back again as a perceptual exercise of understanding that as our visual field expands, our perception of time also expands, the binning, the chunking of time.

2:10:17Yeah. That and my and your conversation years ago about horizon and activating the parasympathetic system instead of sympathetic, I just very slowly started to realize I needed to back away from the small picture and the reading and the craniosacrum and the size. And I was still not really getting consistent real help, but I thought I could do it through educating myself intellectually. And I thought it was time to, and it was, it has short-term consequences, but long-term it's been amazing to, you know, deal with the plant medicines in a controlled and curated environment. And that experience was super safe and quite amazing, actually.

2:11:05The weekend or the three or four days was super intense, but I didn't leave there thinking, again, I kind of thought, I'm good. That was great. Yeah, a couple things. One, we've covered psychedelics on this podcast before. I say this not for liability reasons, but just really to emphasize for people's safety to protect them. Plant medicines are illegal most places still. This is changing. MDMA has been filed with the FDA as a potential treatment. It's not yet legal. These things have great power to heal in the right circumstances, and they also have great potential to harm in the wrong hands or circumstances.

2:11:50as people with potential for psychosis, et cetera. But with that said, I remember I was on, I was driving, I was on a phone call with you around this time of year, three years ago, maybe it was four, but I think it was three years ago. And I said, what was your experience with Ibogaine DMT like? and you said, you know, it was among the most profound experiences of my entire life. And I recall you saying that you felt that it had connected you through time to all the warrior cultures that had preceded you, not just US military, but all warrior cultures. And you sounded great. You sounded like better than great.

2:12:42You weren't high, but you just sounded like, man, like something had synced up. And I thought, well, this is great. And I hadn't explored plant medicines, at least not in a long time, because I had done the recreationally as a youth, which I do not recommend. It took me down a bad path. And more recently, I've explored them in controlled conditions, but I thought, awesome. You got this new job. You're, you're you did some very controlled and again, physician assisted Abigene DMT experiences. And you're telling me how great everything was. And then about, I think it was about three, four months later, I got a very different call yeah and um if you're willing you know i remember that call um maybe you can tell me about that yeah so i mean this yeah the experience it it was incredibly powerful you know humor such a powerful way to get through hard times is why i'm laughing yeah but it really was andrew i mean to be fair to thousands of years of you know people having experience with these things we often joked about like what poor sucker reached down and grabbed that root for the first time and chewed on it the iboga tree boy he found out or she or she yeah to be fair to be fair probably you know some session that wasn't supposed to go that direction and someone chewed on the wrong route but um it was extremely powerful um i've heard that you know the 5 meo for some people is not much it's like black for me it was just liftoff and um i saw an entirely perfect geometric mosaic in light blue and white.

2:14:41And that was the warrior culture connection. Like that whole 20 minute ride was just something else. As you know, I haven't done it. Noetic is the word. Noetic. Yeah. That people use. It's very difficult. I don't have the language for it. And a couple months later, the bottom dropped out. Yeah. And I want to talk about that now. I also want to emphasize, I know a good number of people that have had the same experience you did with Abigail DMT through the Veteran Solutions Group. And I know Marcus and Amber Capone very well. Actually, a bill just got passed in Congress that Dan Crenshaw helped spearhead to bring funding to use of psychedelics for PTSD treatment in military.

2:15:32And I should mention, because this was interesting to learn that that bill was highly bipartisan. I'm not going to name off the names, because if I do, there's going to be a lot of cringing, screaming, and yelling. But it's like, if ever there was a bill that was supported from both sides of the aisle with the most diametrically opposed names who came together around that funding, it's that bill. And just striking. And so this is a very bipartisan thing. So I will say a number of people have been greatly benefited by the veteran solutions work. Um, but, and we can't causally link what happened to you afterwards to that at all.

2:16:13There's a lot of contextual stuff. Um, so we're not doing that, but we're, we're an open book here. Um, and I think that's a great group, by the way, veteran solutions is amazing. Um, a few months later, you said the bottom dropped out. So what happened and when did you start to notice it? And then maybe we can talk about that phone call. Yeah, I think, you know, looking back, Andrew, I think a couple things. Most people who call me about, you know, friends who say, hey, should I go do this? I initially tell them, well, 100 % of the time, I tell them no until. Until you get – I was having this conversation last week with a guy who I never met before.

2:16:57you need to stabilize your situation whatever your situation is through some very slow deliberate dr conti level help because in the case of i'm happy to see that some people are using just a wider spectrum of on-ramp not the nuclear option to start i can tell you unequivocally abigene and 5M, MEO, DMT, two days apart is the nuclear option. And it's not right for everybody. I'm not a scientist. There's no question. That cannot be right for everybody. That just doesn't make any sense. There's other ways to enter, I believe. And when you say the Conte option, well, just for those that didn't see the series with Dr.

2:17:37Paul Conte, we'll put a link to in the show note captions. But what Coleman's referring to is talk therapy with somebody highly skilled. Yes. And perhaps also prescription medication, if that's necessary, maybe hormone therapy, if that's necessary, that's up to the physician, but clearly talk therapy with a skilled clinician. I believe I needed, I don't know what other people need. I needed a mentor to help me contextualize what I was coming from and what I'm going to. And my experience, you know, with the plant medicines was it kicked the door wide open and took that beautiful ice sculpture, perhaps at a person's wedding, and shattered it on the floor.

2:18:24And I was, again, left alone, my fault, not anybody else's, left alone to figure out how to put that ice sculpture back together, piece by piece. And my belief is I could have avoided that by having a much more deliberate process. So when suddenly the ice sculpture was on the ground, and every bit of intellect that I built over, you know, however long, four decades, I was, I was flat on my back. And, and as, as I told you, Andrew, and I've been, you know, really verbal about with so many friends who only want to talk about it in quiet circles, which I totally understand and, and respect. And if you want to talk about it in a quiet circle, like email the Humor Like podcast, and you can give them my cell phone number because I know how important it is to people when they're in that stage is um that was another thing that I never thought was possible for humans it was severe depression severe and and I was so because I guess I just never thought about it again or never had a mentor the shocking thing Andrew was how shocked I was it was like if I had known something like this was real not that I would to listen to anybody if they said it.

2:19:45But the most shocking thing was that, again, this could happen to me. And when it did happen, I was completely unequipped to deal with, it took, forget how we forget every other thing in my life. It took 10 ,000 X the energy of anything I've ever done in my life before to just put my feet on the ground in the morning. I could not PT. I couldn't run. And you're like, I could not fucking function. I did function somehow to some level, but it was so terrifying. I just have, for anyone listening who has been through, I just have such incredible respect for people who have dealt with it and have learned to get through something like that depression oh yeah or any pick to pick the title right whatever tough situation someone's in emotionally I have such tremendous respect for them because I would have been years ago the guy who like just tighten up your boots and get to it it's not possible like you have to get help from people who care about you and you have to like you have to step back away from the problem set somehow and work through it, you know, step by step.

2:21:06One of the most helpful things, and I feel so fortunate that I never really had like the chemical dependence thing. It was easy for me to stop drinking. When did you decide to stop drinking? It was around three years ago or so-ish. Prior to this lapse into depression? No, no. Right during. Yeah, right during. You just figured alcohol is a bad thing right now. Yeah. And I mean, look, you and I have been friends for a while and I do some of the things you and I have discussed and I hear you talk about publicly they were just good reminders you know um one of the things I absolutely hate but I do every day which is wait 90 minutes to drink coffee oh it's the worst I cannot tell you how much of a difference that's made in my energy throughout the day and the drinking was similar you know I I like look I'm just going to drop it for a couple weeks and then suddenly my sleep's better my fitness is better you know so you know we all even my friend you know you chat about stuff oh what are you doing at this age you know i'm approaching 50 that helps you stop drinking everything else like all the other recommendations come second at least for me um was that pretty easy for you to do because i know there's a big big culture of drinking in the teams yeah i was just lucky so um so my point there is you know the just the respect i have for people who who work through stuff like that and i was going to say the reason i referenced the drinking is because i started reading a lot about the 12 steps a a i've never been to a meeting but the simpson the ptsd and the 12 steps i'm like oh my god this is me like i need to go through these steps in my own way not for you know not for drinking but for whatever this low grade the way i've described it is you know the buddhist obviously called dukkha it's unsatisfactoriness this low-grade irritation that I carry around every day.

2:22:58The one amazing thing that that couple of months did for me, and the way I describe it visually, is if someone cut me from neck to belly and filleted open my chest and took a propane torch and scorched me from the inside and then put me back together and said, start over. That's how it felt. That's literally how it felt. I mean, I could not believe, Andrew, and you can obviously, you know, Dr. Conti can articulate this better. I couldn't believe how emotional pain could be so physically painful. That whole experience, again, the shocking part was the shocking part. I just didn't think it was real.

2:23:41And so then when it was, and I'm like, how many fucking things do I have to deal with, you know? And I realized everybody deals with a lot of stuff. And it was challenging. And then slowly, you know, it got better and better. And guys like, you know, friends, very close friends, a very, very small, tight group were... And what people do when you finally tell them and you think, oh, this guy's going to, he's never going to talk to me again. They do the opposite. They rally immediately for you, you know. and then guys that aren't in your inner circle necessarily helping directly and they're in the next circle because now this is very weird back to like the feeling thing i can not 100 of the time but a lot of guys in my community if i speak to them and they're in a bad spot i can detect it within five seconds just the tonal and kind of like the tempo and when you tell that ring of people, not your super inner circle, they dump it immediately.

2:25:05As soon as you open the door, they're like, hey, man, I had a couple of tough, like, months, you know? Boom! They're right in, for the most part. They open up. Yep. And that really scares me, Andrew, because I know, like, if we need to flip the switch this afternoon, like, we can flip the switch. Meaning? Meaning like I can go to old school 20, you know, 15 years ago. That's what you and I have discussed in the past is kind of come back to, you know, the fighter mentality is the problem with that, the hardcore, intense, focused. That's easy. Like it's so easy to do that tough stuff. That's easy.

2:25:50This is the hard part. and that's what you know was so challenging it was to go to people who normally we do you know the yeah yeah let's do this let's do that let's do something crazy okay well tell that same person who you've built persona identity you know around them and with them they're like you're this guy and then you have a tough spot now you have to go tell them the opposite like I'm really not doing well it's terrifying it's terrifying and i uh but i i second with with both arms um your statement that when we actually open up to somebody trusted uh hopefully a friend or somebody close to us but like some people go to clergy or a or any number of the different resources.

2:26:45And those resources really are out there at zero cost. They really are there. If one has to look a little bit, sometimes a lot, unfortunately, but they're there. My experience has always been, and in observing others, that there's something about the human spirit that wants to help. And sometimes that help comes from somebody who's really been through it. But even if somebody hasn't been through it, there's something in our nervous system that sees real pain in somebody. And contrary to what we think, they don't judge and think that everything that the person who's hurting was before was a fraud.

2:27:20The contrary, they see it as an act of strength. But it feels like hell to reveal that. And I totally agree. I think all the tough stuff, all the anything physical is like a fraction of the emotional pain. And thank you for highlighting the physical aspect of emotional pain, especially if one isn't accustomed to it. If one isn't accustomed to it.

2:27:51If you're willing, you know, how bad did it get? I mean, the call we had suggested it was bad. I sometimes refer to a line. And I'd be lying if I didn't admit that I've seen that line a few times in my life. I've been right up next to it a few times. And now if I ever see it, I know to do many things when it first comes into my visual sphere. The line, of course, being the point which one is considering taking their own life. Something that happens far too often, even once as far too often. And we've sort of skirted around this topic. After all the wartime stuff and the gunfights and people dying and the doorbells, been a lot of friends of yours and some of whom I know, but most of whom I don't, but - Two this year.

2:28:42Who continue to kill themselves, to put it bluntly. Where were you at with respect to that line? Because depression is one thing. There's mild depression, there's severe depression, there's recurring depression, there's manic depression, and on and on and on. But ultimately, that's the thing that hopefully everyone's seeking to avoid. And it's a, yeah, how close were you? I would say there was probably, I really want to say one day. And the truth is, it was one day. It lasted one day. Being that close to the line. But it only takes a moment to go. That's the scary thing, right? And it probably lasted a couple of weeks, but there was only, back to the buds thing, like I never thought about quitting.

2:29:27I thought about it one day um what was the thought i don't it was i mean sort of like the classic symptoms andry i i was up all night sweating and shaking and um it's back to the shock of it it was okay i actually was able to like one of two things is happening either i am fundamentally bad there's no way you can feel this bad and be good. So one of two things is happening. Like I'm just bad, a bad person, which I know is not true or something bad got inside of me that I have to get rid of. And I don't know how to get rid of it. And so sweating, shaking, you know, up at three in the morning and legitimately thinking, this is just the scariest thing.

2:30:21And for anybody in the situation, you think with every ounce of your being that people are better off without you and then somehow thankfully through chemistry neurobiology past learnings I stepped back away from that very quickly but the feeling of putting me up to that line didn't go way. I just intellectually was able to, it was kind of where the maladaptive behaviors, you know, back to training work in your favor, which is I'm not quitting. Like this can't be just me, even though it did feel like just me. I mean, you suddenly become the core of the entire existence of the universe. You think like you're it, you know, but in the negative side of it, not the adaptive side of it um because the pain is just so extreme and um but I was able to back away from it and then over I'm so grateful to so many of my friends I can't imagine how many hours if we collect up those hours how much time I spent with them on the phone um and one of my in the like in those really hard weeks maybe a little bit after that injury one of my buddies was actually just talking to him yesterday because I had time in the car.

2:31:47The tough love side of it, when you're feeling that poorly, is a little tricky. Like I wouldn't, I probably wouldn't deliver tough love unless I really thought the person could handle it. I think it's, you got to really deal with kid gloves at that, those moments. But one of my buddies told me, if you do something to hurt yourself, you will have proven to every person who knows you that you are a fucking liar and a fraud. everything you've been about your whole life is a fraud and Andrew I was we were on the phone I was like whoa my god he just went 10 ring I mean dead center and it that was a pivot like that really helped me a lot that's what you needed I mean I at that I don't I don't know that that's what I would have needed um I recall when we spoke uh because I obviously not professionally trained in any of that.

2:32:40I just remember thinking, how do I put in this, this into language that Coleman's going to understand? And I just said, you know, I think, uh, your goggles are, I know one thing for sure, which is that your goggles are foggy. So you got to, so you have to outsource your decisions now. I think you might've also told me to outsource my identity. And, and that helped a lot because um it was that idea of you have foggy goggles you're clearly like not on stable ground everything you believe about yourself just let it be the spokes of a wheel that somebody else can hold for you for a period of time I was like well I can do that and then my other buddy I didn't want to be a liar and a fraud I was like I can do that and yeah I mean I'm grateful for the opportunity, but unfortunately I had a few circumstances where people close to me were at that edge and I'd be lying if I'd say I've been at that edge.

2:33:41So I knew where, I had some sense of where you were at. And under those conditions, I don't think there's a playbook. I mean, obviously when people have a plan and they're thinking about implementing that plan, those people need to be put under protection from themselves. Fortunately, it didn't come to that. yeah and you know a few friends just did the basics Andrew which was I really wanted to talk to you at that time because I knew you would give me some advice you know I was so uncertain about just the I'll just say the chemistry but the chemistry and like something is not right yeah and you know different friends offer different and some friends just sat and listened to it all and when I think back it's like I would take a bullet for them because they just took it you know and let me offload it it's it's an amazing experience for people let people help you which I was never willing to do no and you were we have to highlight something that might have been overlooked earlier because we went through it quickly but that you were you know you were commander of a unit so So you're head of a family.

2:34:49I know Bridget's also head of family. There's a trade. You try. You go back and forth. Right, exactly. But you're used to leading and protecting others. And I think it's awesome that you're able to have access that raising your hand and asking for help. You have to. It's such a sign of strength and skill. And it feels like the exact opposite in the moment. The exact opposite. And then we go to these narratives like, oh, if I've ever done that in the past, people didn't help. We come up with a million excuses. But in the end, it's such a thing of strength to do that. So you did ratchet yourself out of that very, very dark hole.

2:35:37Slowly. and um i i want to place this in the context of this uh hero's journey yeah would you see that you talk about that the magic flight that you're against you like the refusal you won't go back but so it was accepting it seems that there was that some pieces of you needed work yeah that there was this ptsd this gentleman that you mentioned yeah saw that and you refused to kind and deal with it. And so shine a light on it and, um, God, the universe, whatever your beliefs are, um, forced you to see it. Yep. And you went to the very bottom, but not out the bottom. Yep. What was the process of putting things back together?

2:36:23I mean, really, I mean, a lot of it, Andrew was cutting out. I, so as a practical matter, I mean, I'm going to go, just go back to regular therapy because I don't that I mean my therapist is amazing she so you're not you at what point did you enter a quote-unquote therapy immediately then so you got a quote-unquote therapist because oh yeah yeah I mean effectively you know and Bridget and I had multiple at some point it was it was Bridget was like this is this is it like full-time help effective immediately and i knew it was necessary but if i'm really honest like i would have avoided it i would have somehow like tried to gut through the situation without like full-time help and i mean once a week therapy yeah so the idea of sitting down with somebody and talking about past present and maybe some ideas of future was was worse to you than jumping out playing at 3 000 feet or going into a gunfight?

2:37:24Not even close. Not even close. And... Hearing yourself say that, do you realize how... Ridiculous. Well, how untrue that must be at the physical level, but the nervous system doesn't know. To quote Dr. Paul Conti, the limbic system that experiences or creates this sense of fear and dread doesn't know the clock or the calendar. It's like if you go – meaning if you experience that, there's the idea that it's going to go on forever. I think that's the fear. That's correct. Yep. That's exactly right. Thank you for saying that. The fear was this will go on forever. But so yes, I just did not want to – back to Bessel van der Kolk's.

2:38:14when I read this word in his book, Body Keeps the Score, lexithymia, if that's a real thing, where you can't put language to, you know, what's going on.

2:38:26I didn't want to put language to it. I couldn't. I just didn't feel like it. Like, I just felt like gutting through it. And then I got, you know, once a week therapy, amazing people. And I don't know, Andrew, the first three months was you know I mean gutting through I just couldn't I couldn't seem to shed that emotional like burden of pick the category of stuff from the last let's just say 20 years it was just and but it was all I couldn't stop it from coming out and obviously that's a good thing and so that just continued and every day got and when I say this is the tough part for at least me and I know a lot of guys like me, the gains are minuscule, you know, but things improved slowly but surely.

2:39:20Were there ever moments where you felt you were drifting backward? Not really. And that's, that was nice. You know, you see that there's some stall, you know, plateaus. You don't have to share this, but because I'm a believer that talk therapy can be very effective. certainly that's my experience. I wouldn't be here if it weren't for two in particular amazing people who really helped me along the way, but in that way. But I do think there's a place at times for pharmacology to assist the process. I know nowadays people hear SSRIs and they demonize those. I'll come clean. And then maybe if you feel like it, you can.

2:40:02I hit a bout of depression during my postdoc did a short run of Welbutin and Rupropion, which is more of the dopaminergic, noradrenergic agonism, mostly adrenaline noradrenergic. It really helped. It nuked my memory at the dosage they suggested, which meant I had to take a very low dose. And then eventually I came off. And I think that that's one thing I learned from Conti, which is that most of these medications were designed to help people get over a bump, as opposed to be taken continuously. Some people need to take them continuously. I have been able to be away from that for a long time. But I think pharmacology can help.

2:40:41Oh, yeah. I think I'd have to go back and look. Four months maybe of pretty low dose of Wellbutrin. Thanks to – yeah. Yeah, that's about right. Yeah, thanks to my buddy Jimmy. I called him and asked him what he thought. And he said, well, you use a gun sight on your weapon, don't you? And you use glasses if you can't see. No, I need reading glasses. You need glasses if you can't see, right? It's like, just fucking take the Orbutan, man. Chill. Like, just get it. Get some space. Back to the space-time bridging concept. Just get back away from the danger for a few months. That really helped. And that's very different than the backing away from the danger with, say, alcohol or drugs.

2:41:23And look, my stance on cannabis is some people can use it safely. Most people probably cannot, but some can. but there's something different about the drugs that have an addiction potential or the drugs that disrupt sleep. Like ultimately, if you look at people who commit suicide, and I've spent a lot of time with this literature, in almost every case in the preceding weeks, there's a disruption in sleep schedules, meaning disrupted from what they were doing prior to that when they were not feeling suicidal. So then you think about alcohol disruption of sleep, even if you think you're sleeping.

2:41:57And like there's a story, like a common theme starts to emerge. So you stabilize sleep. You were getting some dopamine and noradrenergic assistance from the low-dose Robutrin. And you're basically also just letting it all out with a therapist. With a therapist. And the thing that strikes me as to your point about my resistance to therapy versus jumping on airplanes or whatever, the most important people in my whole life since day one have been people that have helped me coaches parents friends boom doug work colleagues the guys that i work for now like other you have all these people helping you and then you hit this thing that's so unusual i'm like i don't want anybody to help me and i don't want to tell anybody about it it's like what is that andrew That was the, it's like, what is that?

2:42:50And it's not like I wasn't in these environments where I've been coached and mentored. I've had coaches and mentors on my ass my whole fucking life. Like instructors, you know, it's a nonstop. And I, I don't know. I like, I couldn't, I just couldn't do it until I did it. And then, and you know, it's been a process since and I'm super grateful for it. And I don't know where we are in the journey, but in terms of like the hero's journey, but I hope I'm at freedom to live some version of it because with my re this is dangerous because I only say this like with my really really really close friends I know this is going to more people in my club I feel like a completely different person and none of that stuff really ever goes away it's all a process right and I'm never going to stop the process but I don't even recognize myself in some ways anymore.

2:43:44And that's been a good thing because in those times when I was just on the 24 hour horizon, sometimes I just did not know what the fuck was going on other than exactly what I was doing, you know? And it's just an odd experience to be in a different place. and it's scary to know that without that experience and without people really kind of forcing me to get help and things forcing me i might be doing the same stuff which is a hard way to live you know or worse or worse you might not be here or worse which has happened to many of our buddies you know and i want to go like retroactively hug them and collect them up in like a net and say, guys, just stop for a second.

2:44:34You know, like we, it doesn't, it doesn't have to go there. Yeah. I feel that the yearning in that statement, I suffer from a terrible, very destructive, debilitating desire to travel back in time and fix things. It's like, I know I don't have, my graduate advisor, who unfortunately all three of my graduate advisors are dead, but she used to say, my time machine's broken. Anytime I'd raise something, you know, the coulda, woulda, shoulda, my time machine's broken, and we know that, but I felt that statement in every cell of my body. It's clear you would. But you're also, in sharing this experience and this information, you're doing that now.

2:45:26in what we call in biology in the intero grade fashion and you know somebody many people are going to hear this and and cue to the the recognition of what's happened to them hopefully before they get to that line yeah you have to and you just gotta tell somebody you know it's like it's crazy how simple that is andrew i mean months like i can't tell anybody i can't tell anybody well and maybe we drill into this a little bit deeper because i think that this really speaks to the global experience of being human where unlike a physical wound, where if you see bone exposed, you're like, this is pretty serious.

2:46:05We all have different thresholds for what we can tolerate in terms of pain and seeing ourselves wounded. We all don't have to decide what's the difference between hurting and injured. But when it comes to psychological stuff, we don't know. We also are dealing with a world now where some people feel psychologically injured by everything. So that's the extreme there. But I think what comes through, and I think people need to perhaps highlight in their minds, is when something's kind of nagging or scratching at you beneath the surface, that voice, what do you think that voice is? I call it the low-grade pain.

2:46:41okay for me it was there was a low grade just slight hot burning starting in 07 probably before that but it was for me it was a weird mix Andrew of like an uncertainty a seeking a this just doesn't feel right like it has to be fixed there has to be an intellectual and achievement way to sort of get around this is where the buddhist writing and thinking really helped me a lot there has to be a way around this low-grade unsatisfactoriness somehow my sense for me and I'm obviously not you know the Dr. Conte in the room just because of all the things I've learned and how it it it just had to be this constant I'll use the word trauma but for me it was it was like something had to happen to our system obviously it does something happens to our system that is a little bit of a boom there's a shock there boom and then a buddy gets killed and then you it's not even always with depth and you have extreme firefight or, you know, close call.

2:48:01And then it's just boom, boom, shock, shock, shock, shock. It's almost like getting TBI for the nervous system. It's just a constant high. To me, it always felt like that constant high end. Now, if you keep going, perhaps, if you never recognize any of it and you just keep jacking the dopamine and the adrenaline your whole life, maybe you can just never recognize it. But for me, when I shut the engine off and I decided it's not really how I wanted to live. And I was trying to work out of that low grade, whatever I was residue that I was left with. It was like every time I came from home from deployment, I would get sick that night.

2:48:43Like I would have a fever that night, headache and fever. And, um, I tend to get sick at the end of the year. Last two years, it was Christmas. This year it was Thanksgiving. And, um, you know, Bridget and I always joke about it. It's cause I slightly turned the engine down a little and then the, you know, the immune system. Yeah. That's the way it works. Everyone thinks stress depletes the immune system and indeed it can. But if you think about it in evolutionary adaptive, you know, ways, go, go, go, go, go allows you to stave off the infection or at least to not have the symptoms of combating infection.

2:49:17And then when you relax a little bit, go on vacation, boom, you get sick. which is not to say constantly stress, but you need to modulate. Right. You got to modulate. But when you're on deployments, you don't have the option. No, you don't. You're in gunfights every day. Yeah, so as soon as you turn it off, you get sick, right? But for me in this particular instance, what do I think it is? I think it was all of those experiences at once, turning the generator all the way off or the electric panel fully off, and then it just all came out. Well, for people or anyone listening who is facing that feeling, that underlying feeling, or who is challenged with like a breakup, loss of a loved one, fear about the future, languishing because they don't know what the future holds, or the feeling that, quote unquote, so much has happened.

2:50:15or some combination of those five things, where do you think the healing process starts? I hope, again, back to the hero's journey, I hope for every single person that it's not a rock-bottom moment. But it seems like if you follow a lot of enough people and you hear enough stories, you've talked with Dax, right? Dax Shepard. Yeah. He talks about it nonstop. Like, unfortunately, I think a version of bottom is where the process starts. All the people I know, the stories they tell me, the process started when they hit some version of bottom. What's the quote that I love is, you don't change until the pain of staying the same is worse than the pain of change.

2:51:04Amen to that. I have experienced that more times than I would like to admit. And that brings me actually to this more macroscopic question. My understanding of the hero's journey from, obviously I haven't read or listened to the book, is that we don't complete this cycle and then rest at the ordinary world where we are living in bliss and peace forever. We actually have to go around that wheel over and over and over again. Hopefully not going to bottoms that put our lives in danger, but it is not a process in which we ever really get to cruise. So let's orient Coleman Ruiz in that cycle. You seem to have returned to the ordinary world.

2:51:57For those listening and not watching, whenever you described the feeling of getting through, but also that people assisted you, you smile. as friendly a guy as you are i think in the first three years i knew you i didn't see you smile once that's probably true i didn't see you smile once i just thought like and these like tier one team guys they're they're serious they're locked in they're locked in but um you smile a lot now yeah so i think you're back in the ordinary world um what are the things you're watchful for um like like you're not drinking you pay attention to your sleep you always trained you always did it you call it pt but physical training yeah yeah cycle run swim yeah lots of kettlebells yeah every morning uh i train probably five out of seven days and the two days that i don't train i'm in i have a sauna at my house i'm in sauna at least for an hour so funny how uh team guys talk about getting into cold or getting in the sauna like it's just a regular thing like they're They never post it to social media.

2:53:05For them, it's just part of the routine. Yeah. But I say that because I think a lot of people think it's like this esoteric biohacking thing. Wrestlers and people in the military are custom to like sauna cold, sauna cold, just like cardio lifting weights. It's not this esoteric thing. No, no, no. I mean, I think on average there's a sauna in Finland for like every single person in the country. So we didn't invent some amazing recovery process about doing sauna. Right. What do you think it is about physical movement that helps the mind? Obviously, I consider it necessary, but not sufficient. Like you need to do the talk therapy, the working through, the writing, the reading, the introspection, the talking to other people, maybe pharmacology.

2:53:45But it does seem to be so important for resetting us. What do you think it is about physical movement? I mean, since it might go back to John Rady's little anecdote in Spark, You know, the sea squirt, I guess, swims around. And then as soon as it does whatever it needs to do, it just dies when it stops moving. Oh, yeah. So the sea squirt is this aquatic animal, aplysia, as it were, that when it lands on a rock and stops moving, it actually digests its own nervous system. That movement is the great Nobel Prize winning scientist, Sherrington, that said that movement is the final common pathway. That movement is the way that the nervous system tells the brain and rest of nervous system that it's still needed here on Earth.

2:54:27Which I like. It's like a – it reminds us of our own utility. Yeah. In a neural way. I mean whatever that is. And you're right. The chemistry and the neurobiology of it all. This goes back again, going back to seventh grade. I was at the end of the rope on the detentions and the suspension. And I have this very clear memory that before my dad got home, like I ran laps. I don't know how many, but a lot around the block. And by the time he got home, I was like, whatever my punishment is, I'm good. Like, I'm not worried about it. That physical activity for me all the time. I don't want to overdo the runner's high thing, but whatever that is, that's what I think it is like when I'm in motion or my heart rates up for the most part everything's fine and I'm clear-headed and I cannot be again dropping drinking I can't be lethargic and sit around like I have to you know take care of myself in that regard um I watch my sleep super close if it gets past 10 30 I'm in like a full-blown panic I need to get to a pillow.

2:55:35The basics, like I don't do anything crazy, really. You eat what you want. No, no. I would say on the neurotic scale of things, that's probably my most extreme. There's probably a little bit of cutting weight, kind of like eating disorder issues, if I was guessing. Not that extreme. So you eat meat, vegetables? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I'm a really light eater. I eat like a bird and probably eight times a day, maybe more. Eight times a day. Oh, easily. I'll have, you know, thanks to you, I'll wait an hour and a half to have coffee, which is miserable. You're welcome. But it's amazing. Thank you. It's helped me so much.

2:56:16Well, you know, I take some shit for it because some people say, do I have to? Well, if I train first thing, then I'll have my coffee first thing. It was really to stave off the afternoon crash. But a lot of people find that experiencing that natural wake up and look, it's 90 minutes. It's not like cutting out for two days or two weeks. Michael Pollan, I think, quit coffee. And I was like, why in the world would you do that? Would you quit coffee? Yeah, why in the world? I love coffee. Love yerba mate. I always have from first sip, which by the way, I had my first gourd of mate, caffeinated mate when I was four.

2:56:50There's a picture of me and my grandfather's that. That's hilarious. Argentine side. Yeah. Yeah. So, but the point here is that, you know, these practices, these things, I think they involve a little bit of discipline, but they really can't have an outsized effect, I think. Oh, my goodness. Yeah, it's incredible. I mean, the eating thing and then maybe, you know, one more mental thing in this regard. I'll probably have maybe an avocado in the morning. And then two hours later, maybe one hour later, I'll have sliced cheese and an apple. And then. So you're a light grazer. Really light. I probably have the smallest plate at dinner in my house.

2:57:33We've always been in great shape. Like visually, you're tall, you're lean, you're strong. Yeah. Yeah. I think we're realizing now that you can still train on, you have to be like gorging oneself with calories. Yeah, especially now, right? Like we're both approaching 50. It's actually surprising how much I've discovered we can do on how few calories. And I'm not trying to like test it some crazy way, but then just eat throughout the day. And, you know, macro life experience, Andrew, I just cut a bunch of extra bullshit out of my life. big and little things like I don't I try to just do my job and you know do a good job at it and hang out with my people friends and and family and uh all the extra shenanigans like I'll maybe do you know I was always doing some big race or some big mountaineering adventure or I was just piling stuff into my schedule i might do one race in like in the spring everything else is casual work really hard at it i like cycling a lot it's one of my favorites and go hard but i'm not trying to race cat two or you know win some event or that release of extra bullshit in my life has been as big as anything else and your boys presumably take some time and attention in Yeah, they're great.

2:58:55Yeah. Your son's a runner, university-level runner. A lot of our conversation gets to some kind of core features of being human and the psychology of challenge and thinking one or others are invincible, discovering that none of us are invincible, but that we are renewable. You clearly illustrate that. Uh, there's, uh, there's clearly a message that everyone is gleaning from this, many messages, but, um, like what if any revision, uh, or, um, adaptation do you think we need of the, of the concept of, of being a man, growing oneself into a man? You know, I'm not a gender studies, sociologists, psychologists, neuroscientists, but setting all the sociology and the nomenclature aside, like if you had a short list of things, like it seems like you believe that it's important to be able to do hard things, but sometimes those hard things are not the hard things that you aren't.

3:00:10We think they are like sitting down and telling one story being more terrifying than than going into gunfights overseas. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's funny that the prelude a little bit is I'm not a gender studies scientist either or a sociologist. I stay away from most of these conversations, you know. But they're barbed wire. Yeah, they just – people seem to be so over-activated over stuff. It's very odd. But for me and my life experience, Andrew, it's range. Like to use David Epstein's book title, right? its range. And I've noticed this so much because of parenting and watching my boys grow into men.

3:00:54If I think about, I'm going to come back to range. If I think about myself at 17 or 18, not my parents, not my coaches, unless I really wanted it, you could not fucking tell me what to do. You can't tell me what to do now. Like if I want it, I love the mentoring and the teammateship and the things that get you where you want to go. But if it's something I don't want to do, I'm not doing it, you know, no matter what. And so if I think about that in terms of being a dad or manhood is, let's take it back to my kids. Like I think one of the most important parts of my job is to release the grip and take the reins off and just barely keep them inside the boundaries of alive.

3:01:43You know, because they're going to make all their own decisions anyway, and they have to. And so I think a big part that I see and I saw myself a lot for years was we overgrip sometimes as men like we are so afraid of losing control in an already uncontrollable world that we overgrip everything. And I overgripped everything. And suddenly when I'm not overgripping stuff, things are going better. and um when it comes to range it's okay for me it's okay to have your tough guy moments your fighter mentality moments I would never want to lose that because no matter how much help I get when I'm out with my family or my wife or my boys my head is on a fucking swivel and if somebody touches them it's curtains and we need to keep that because that is just a part of life like you have to be, you cannot move through life with blinders on.

3:02:46Like there are people who are not good people and it's okay to have range and have that in your toolkit. What I don't think is okay to do is to let that slice of the traditional, whatever you want to call it, aggressive manhood be your whole life. Like that's just not functional. You know, it's not good for relationships. It's not good for parenthood. So every other little tool you can put in that toolbox that takes you all the way over here to what we might consider, oh, Coleman's going to, he's soft now. No, no, don't mistake my kindness or weakness. There's a category for everything. And I think that makes you such a much more complete person.

3:03:26Um, it's made me a more complete person. It's, it's difficult. I feel like I'm brand new at being able to do other things in my toolbox like you and I like this part's easy I can go jump to that in a nanosecond this part over here of normalizing you know life across across a whatever 80 90 is it's really hard to sort of excavate the normal shit but that's what I think we need to do you know I mean And it's okay to be kind and calm and gentle. And, you know, there's nothing wrong with that. And I'm guessing the word surrender probably held a far different meaning for you in the past. A lot of what you're describing is surrendering to the realities of life that we can't control everything.

3:04:18And just how painful it is to undergo that surrender. And here I'm talking to myself, too. It's a process I'm still deeply involved in. You know, as somebody who's tried to, you know, go rung over rung as best I can. Doesn't Andrew speak to our, like, evolutions? Like, that is so difficult, at least for me and guys like me. I'm putting you in my group here. That is so hard to do. Like, that just tells me more about the evolution of our male system. Like, that part's so easy and this part is not so easy. But man, it's a battle to remind myself, slow down, listen, just the basic shit. You don't have to go attack every problem like a fist fight.

3:05:02It's tough. It is tough. And I think that the more that I resist surrender, the more that, well, I believe in God, so I'll just say God. but God, the universe or whatever it is for people. But for me, the more that God places me in circumstances that make the act of surrendering harder. Like if I would just do it on my own, it wouldn't have to be so hard. I wouldn't have to, a good friend of mine, I'll mention my name, Tim Armstrong. He just said like, you gotta hit every branch on the way down. You know, he was telling me I had to, you know, he's like, you're a stubborn punk rocker, you have to.

3:05:37And he was talking about himself too. Like there's certain, there's certain phenotypes where we have to, but, but they're like the universe just screams out. You don't have to, you can actually just like lower yourself down on a rope to the ground and walk away. But, but then there's that stubbornness. But I think that the stubbornness has its evolutionary adaptations too. And, and the hero's journey, nothing in the hero's journey says that the transitions between these different states are linear, are of equal duration, are of certainty, only that they exist and that there's no way, as you pointed out before, to skip steps.

3:06:13You can't skip. I couldn't skip. If somebody skips, I mean, it's like you hit everybody. Nobody skips. And whether or not somebody tries to skip through psychedelics or through being the toughest or through the acquisition of money or just focusing on family, you know, family obviously is super important, but that's not going to accomplish the other aspects of, of the, of the journey. It's a huge part of it, but it's not, it's not the only part, again, necessary, not sufficient. Yeah. It's like, again, it's the 12 steps or some, I'm not that experienced in it. I just read about it a decent amount.

3:06:45It's like hitting every branch but you got to follow the steps, man. Or you can live with that low grade pain nonstop. You know, it's, it's not a good way to live. No, because it, because even if you're not conscious of it, it erodes you in ways that are very destructive. I wasn't conscious of it at all, you know, until the universe, as we say, came in with a fucking wrecking ball and said, fine, you're not going to listen. Sent you all these messages, you're not going to listen. Okay. I think it's important that we at least briefly touch on where things are at right now, because it would be remiss for us to give the impression that like, you're sitting there meditating you're drinking your coffee 90 minutes late late after you wake up you're uh sitting there in bliss and thinking about all the great things that happened how you made it through like there's still a lot happening right now so um to the extent that you can share um you're working all the time you're what what are you doing nowadays as a vocation i was in private equity for a while before i met you uh running a company for companies for a really good friend of mine named Tom Ripley, amazing guy.

3:07:58And then I stepped away because I was exhausted and I didn't know how to say it. I didn't know how to tell anybody. Like I needed to escape again, take magic flight somehow, you know, and, um, and he and I are incredibly close. Like he was one of the guys who is in that super tight inner circle. Um, and then I came back to it, um, with, you know with this team that I'm on and I serve as the chief operating officer at Lyd Sports Group the largest brick and mortar licensed sports retailer in North America we have 2 ,000 stores during the holiday we have 8 ,200 employees and amazing team the private equity firm that I work for is an amazing team and the company is an amazing company and just incredible group of folks um and so yeah I work a lot I was out here doing store visits in San Francisco and LA and that's it's all good and I think um I do those little things all day long all the time but no I am not sitting on a mountaintop like most days there's no meditation at all Andrew it's meditation as a workout Tom and I throw kettlebells around multiple times a week and um I do those other little things, but the difference for me is I'm okay with it.

3:09:17And I say that because I was incredibly busy, you know, before when I first got out of the Navy and I wasn't okay with it because I thought, again, this is back to the hero's journey. I thought like the return to ordinary life was going to be sunshine and rainbows. Like, look, I have the ultimate boon. I had this big experience. Not that I wanted to be like front and center in the media, but here I am world. It's calm out here, right? Like we get to chill and have a good time and sleep and nothing is stressful in the real world, right? Wrong. I just wasn't ready for that. Like I really genuinely thought that it was just going to be easier.

3:10:02And so when we talk about the low grade pain injury and like the, you know, what is that? To me, that was one of the biggest frictions, like, holy shit. I did all this stuff, all these deployments, lost all these buddies, and there's no fucking rest. Like the regular world, it's not, it's supposed to be easier. At least that's the story that was in my mind. Going through all the stuff we just talked about. Now I'm okay with it. Like I like it. I know how to manage my life. I know how to manage my time for the most part. I have a different relationship with my teammates and my mentors and my bosses and my own work life.

3:10:42And I love it. Like, I feel like I'm back to in a very different way where I was when I was in the squadron back in 07. I feel like I'm on, I hope this doesn't get clipped, but for me, I'm on another level. Like, I really feel good about where I'm headed. And I haven't felt like that since I went into college. You know, I felt like shit was just deteriorating. And now it's not, which is nice. Well, the beauty of what you just said and everything you've shared today is that, I don't know if it occurs to you or not, but you've been providing mentorship to millions of people in the form of sharing your experience of your own hero's journey.

3:11:31And I want to thank you for making it so clear as to what your experience was and being unafraid or perhaps afraid and doing it and telling us anyway exactly what that felt like. Even better in that sense, you know, and stepping into that fear. but also making it so clear that while your life experience is extraordinary, SEAL teams, tier one teams, all of it, that everyone's life has these components of extraordinary and the opportunity for extraordinary and the return and renewal through the ordinary world. so much of what you shared is has meaning regardless of people are male female young old so thank you for being a mentor today and um for having the the bravery for stepping out into the the quote-unquote ordinary world which is oh so unordinary unordinary and um if you're willing I think it'd be great to have you back in maybe a couple of years and see where you're at.

3:12:44Meanwhile, you and I will be in touch often as we frequently are. Thanks, Andrew. Appreciate it. Coleman Ruiz, thanks for everything you've done. Thank you. Thanks for everything you're doing. And thanks for coming out today and sharing with us what real life's about. It's always great to see you. Appreciate the time. It was a joy. Thanks. Likewise.

3:13:36us. on the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comments section on YouTube. I do read all the comments. If you're not already following me on social media, I'm Huberman Lab on all social media platforms. So that's Instagram, X, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Threads. And on all those platforms, I share science and science-related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the content of the Huberman Lab podcast. Again, that's Huberman Lab on all social media platforms. If you haven't already subscribed to our Neural Network newsletter, Our Neural Network newsletter is a zero-cost newsletter that provides summaries of podcast episodes, as well as protocols in the form of one - to three-page PDFs, protocols on things like deliberate cold exposure or optimizing dopamine, improving your sleep, neuroplasticity and learning.

3:14:22We have a foundational fitness protocol that details cardiovascular and resistance training workouts, and all of that is available to you completely zero cost. You simply go to HubermanLab.com, go to the menu tab, scroll down to newsletter, and provide your email. We do not share your email with anybody. Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Coleman Ruiz. And last but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.