Navy SEAL: “Not Killing People Is Hard” - DJ Shipley - #1112

32:26Started in Afghanistan, it spilled over to Iraq. So you'd see these guys, they'd shoot out of the windows, you'd run in, you'd do a whole raid. You can't find a single gun in the house. I'm like, how is this? When I was outside the house, I saw you with a gun. Now I'm inside the house. I don't know where the fuck they are. I don't know where it is. And you find a false wall with RPGs, explosives, everything in there. Like, oh, well, yeah, he's got a drop cloth. Pulls it down, throws it on there, slams it back up. There's a big poster, a painting behind it, and you just don't check. And now we get really, really good at searching houses.

32:53Now we really get to see him. But somebody else comes in there. You plug a guy in the corner. You take your photos. There's no gun next to him. You're going to jail for that. There was a gun in here. No, his wife grabbed it and shoved it in there. That's how it happened. Why do you need to take photos? To justify the kill? Yeah. Because ultimately, you're going to pay them money at the end of the day. Every person you shoot in Iraq or Afghanistan gets a cash payout. Well, they don't. The family does. Right. Yeah. It's crazy. Whether they're a combatant or not? Whether they're a combatant or not.

33:25How much is the money? I don't remember off the top of my head. I mean, for a while, I think we were paying like$5 ,000 for a door. If you blew their door, you had to pay them money. It's an expensive door, in Afghanistan. I've seen some of the doors on video in Afghanistan. They don't look like$5 ,000 doors. No, they don't. But I mean, to them, it's monopoly money. They just throw it out there, winning hearts and minds, winning hearts and minds. Why? Why are we winning hearts and minds? I'm not here to win hearts and minds. I'm not here for that at all. I'm not. Not a bit. I don't care about hearts and minds.

33:51And I know that makes me sound cruel. I'm not cruel. I'm one of the nicest people I know. But you can't play the game like that. You can't. Unless you've got both hands tied behind your back, it's crazy. Because now they've been in the system so long, they know exactly how to manipulate it. They know exactly what to say. They're going to get thrown in jail for two weeks. They're going to get fed three times a day, more than they ever have in their whole life. Hot shower, clean bed, air conditioning, TV. They'll get released and now they know the exact process. When do they get thrown in jail? Whenever you arrest them.

34:20Right. Okay, so you're basically glorified police. Yes. Unless you, unless it's Osama bin Laden and like somebody else, like an actual terrorist network. If you're just out there door-to-door, gangbuster-style Baghdad 2005, just hitting every house, you're just wrapping up as many military-age males as you can. You find the AKs, you have all the atmospherics, you know what they're up to. And if they don't have a gun, you're wrapping them up. What's atmospherics? Oh, I mean, all their deep. So everything they're saying on cell phones, emails, radios, you have all that, so you build out your profile.

34:52So I know exactly who you are. I know exactly who your neighbor is. I know you're banging his wife. I know everything. So when I get there, you don't have a gun. I wrap you in, take you in for questioning. you don't give us anything but now you know exactly what our tactics are you know where i have to put you you know exactly what to say to get released in 48 72 two weeks whatever it is they go back out there they spread the gospel to all their friends and now they know and they get really good it's like the somali daycares of the middle east don't get me started on somalia

35:23that's a place you never want to visit why why you ever seen black hawk down most realistic world movie ever seen that's exactly how it is how's that it's lawless do whatever you want to it's like lord of the flies they can do whatever they want to like if i dropped you in mogadishu right now bakara market right now they cut your arms and legs off why because you're white nobody's gonna stop them why wouldn't they Mm. Cut your head off, put on Al Jazeera, burn American flag, they'll go off and chew a bunch of cotton, go to sleep, wake up tomorrow and do it again. They don't care. It's lawless.

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37:14That's timeline.com slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom at checkout. The like mutual level of danger that you need to be able to match on both sides.

37:32But if you are made to adhere to a particular set of rules that basically makes you less effective at your job and more likely to be injured or killed, all in the name of optics. It's a weird one, man. It's a weird one because I understand that you're supposed to be better, right? You're supposed to go in adhering to the law. It's the same reason that seeing a police officer who's texting while he drives feels particularly egregious. like hey dude you enforce the law okay I feel like you're supposed to adhere to it come on baby you're better than that put the phone down however

38:19I wonder whether or not the modern world is incompatible with some of the ugly things that need to happen in war anybody who's been to Afghanistan, anybody who's been to Iraq or any of the wars they know If we really wanted to win that war, we could win it fast. They don't want us to win it fast. I don't know who doesn't. Tell me more about this. What do you mean? If you grabbed all the five eyes, boom, US, UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand. If you just grabbed us and dropped us into Iraq and said, you have six months to close out the entire thing, could we? 100%. They don't want us to. And I think that's for a bunch of different reasons, but one of them is you don't want to see what that actually looks like.

39:07Like you don't want to watch special operations and all of this, the whole military might push through Fallujah and clear it all out. They don't want to see what clearing Fallujah actually means. Like when you hear the Marines cleared Fallujah, they don't know what that means. What does it mean? They went door to door and killed every single male that was still there. Everybody who's willing to fight, they killed them all. That's how you clear the village. so they gave him told him the time get out by this day if not we're pushing through and anybody who's left the fight we're gonna kill and that's what he did until you do it people don't want to see that people don't want to live that they don't want to realize that's a reality so all your grandfathers were fighting world war ii i promise you they weren't handing out hershey kisses and handshakes it's not what they did they had flamethrowers for god's sake you think they're getting us a flamethrower now no we can't even use play more minds just a whole bunch of stuff we used to use back in the day, and because now it's too cruel and unusual, Geneva Convention threw it out.

40:06A bunch of munitions you can't use, rounds you can't shoot people with, a bunch of different weird stuff. Is that being adhered to by the other side? No. No, they're blowing you up. They're doing whatever they want to. Suicide vest on children, like, they do whatever they want to. That makes it very, very hard to fight. So for you, you run in, you're a dad, you're a husband, you're a friend, you're an uncle, little kids all around, You have no idea if they have a suicide vest on now. Are they holding grenades for their father? You have no idea. It really makes you lose trust in people. Because now you don't know.

40:40As soon as you drop your guard, one thing happens. You're like, I'll never let that happen again. Technology advances. You get new pieces of tech. And now you can see through clothing. You can buy down the risk a little bit. But they get very, very smart. See the smart bombs? They try to sneak through TSA all the time. They understand exactly what we're trying to do. And you're trying to counter it every single day. How frustrating is that as someone whose life's on the line and also is trying to dedicate their career to doing this well? It's a big cat and mouse game. I move my piece here, you move your piece here.

41:12So you've kind of accepted this as the cost of doing business that you're going to have to adhere by a set of rules that the other side doesn't have to. You're not allowed to pick the ball up, you have to kick it. Yes. But they're allowed to pick it up and run with it. That's exactly what it is. It's like, do you really want us to win or do you really want us to engage in this 20-year war because of all the technological advancements that have come out of that war, advancements in armament, ISR platforms, body armor, life-saving medical devices. But really, war creates a lot of money. A lot of people became billionaires really, really fast because of the war.

41:44Which is it. All these companies sprung up, and Raytheon, Boeing, everybody is involved. Everybody is making just piles and piles of money. And he's saying that protracting out, extending an enmeshment between two different sides. That's the sort of thing that would continue to grease the wheels of that and blasting through quickly would end the money printer. Yeah, I mean, it's like what Trump's doing in Iran right now. He doesn't want to be in there for 20 years. I want to go in, I want to smash you, show you I'm not going to take this shit anymore and then I want to leave. Is it going to work?

42:21I have no idea. We've never tried it before. We always put in these long, drawn-out conflicts that we know you don't need to. What would you do if you wanted to end the war on Iran quickly? Oh, you don't know what I'd do. You're allowed to. This is hypothetical only. We're playing Sid Meier's civilizations and you need to end it quickly. Nobody's going to like my answer. It's just not. It's not. If I say one thing, then I'm on the Israel side. If I say this and I'm against it. Okay, let's forget that. Let's forget that. Let's say imaginary country in somewhere that's in the Middle East that doesn't exist.

43:04Are they building nuclear weapons? Sure. Threatening to use them? Sure. And we know they have them. Sure. Press the button? Mm-hmm.

43:15Yeah. Yeah. There's no other way. Just isn't. You get drawn into a 20-year campaign, doing the entire thing, Or all the countries all come to the line and be like, we can't let this happen. We can't. We can't. Everybody in agreeance? Okay. Can't do it anymore. And what if that's not a threat? How would it not be a threat? They don't have it. They don't have the materials. They're not able to make it. The nuclear armaments on the other side is not a concern. It seems to me like if you're unable to use that, unless you can drop the fat man, equivalent uh then it becomes a much more difficult operation because then it does look a lot more like presumably door-to-door stuff or you could just fly in black ops with some really cool dudes in multicam snatch a president out of their house in the middle of the night and call it a day that's happened recently pretty cool job do you know much about did you were you excited sort of tracking that oh i was no but nobody jumped up faster out of the chair and cheered than i did I was so stoked for him.

44:25That's a cool lot to do. Why? Snatch the president out of his house in the middle of the night. No one else is pulling that off. Nobody. Do you think anybody's going to fly a Blackhawk and land in the White House lawn and run in and grab Donald Trump and bring him out? No. I think lots of people have probably thought about doing that. Nobody's going to pull that off. Nobody's pulling that off. That is a unicorn Are you surprised by what was done, what you know about how it was done? No. Pretty standard procedure? Just done at a very, very elite, precise level? That's what they do. That's what they do.

45:05Everybody who was involved in that was like me and everybody else who ever did that job. You are praying that that is going to happen. That's your Super Bowl. Oh my God. But if you had an opportunity, and I promise you they'd all say the same, no, and you'd say the same thing. Right now you want to be on the helo. Yep. Cut off a finger. Done. I'd cut it off right now and jump on a helo and I'd do it. 100%. Yeah. I mean, that's the only reason you're on the planet. You want to do things like that because no one else can pull them off. It is. But it shows the, really the strength in military. He will do it.

45:38He will. My last, my last rotation was Trump's first one. and I don't know what he says on those phone calls. I don't know how he avoids conflict. And I think everybody thinks he just wants to go to war, wants to go to war. We got spun up on a really big op that I ain't gonna talk about so don't ask me. He canceled us on the ramp. We were getting ready to jump in and send it and they canceled us on the ramp because he worked it out with a phone call. I don't know what he says. I don't know what he does, but he does something. Probably says something like, don't make me do it. I'll do it. Don't make me.

46:15Somehow they come to their senses and somehow they solve it. That's one of the catch-22s of having a leader who seems to be at least somewhat predictable and a bit bombastic.

46:32He actually might press the button. People are severely concerned that he might run for a third time. right that would be kind of the domestic equivalent of doing this but even the fact that you think that he might be the sort of guy that would go for a third term that's internally and what do you think he would do to someone that's the enemy and i i don't know whether anybody on the planet has the iq to play like seven-dimensional chess of i'm going to construct this incredibly unpredictable, very gregarious, outgoing guy who seems to say things that almost might be like a WWE character if they were the president.

47:19And then what that means by playing that game is that people will believe that I'm going to be like that so that then I don't actually need to use the threat because they believe the threat more, not because they think that I'm aggressive, but because they think that I'm kind of crazy. I mean, that's what I don't realize. is he crazy or is he just crazy enough to make you believe he'll really do it? Crazy or genius is the question. It's hard to know, but I mean, you know, we said - Effective is what matters most, right? Effective. He's avoided more conflicts than anybody I ever served under. He just has.

47:56If people knew the amount of conflicts he's avoided, they'd give him more praise than they do. But he's not able to talk about them. He just doesn't. I don't know why. You think that it would be something that he could flex, that he would be able to talk about this was how close we got to this thing. We have come to a deal. I think he's done that so many times. It's just lost in the ether. Like he didn't even think about it. It's just a Thursday. Yeah. He's like, like the whole Maduro raid thing. He's like, yeah, send him. Do I think he lost sleep over that? No. I mean, like he has full trust and confidence in the force.

48:27Yeah. You know what? I'm sick of it. Send him. Knocks him out. Great job. Get some all cheeseburgers and yep. See you guys on Tuesday. I think it's, Yeah. I don't, based on what I know about Trump, he's not the picture of health from a physical training standpoint. No. Psychologically, do you think that he would make a good special forces operator? No. Why?

48:54Because ego gets him in trouble quite a bit. I don't know if, if he wasn't a leader, I don't know how good he'd be as a follower. if you don't have overall say how well can you get in line and that's why the ego gets in the way yeah if it's not your plan will you still adopt it as your plan that's that's thing a lot of guys have an issue with that's where you see the ego come in and i had a mentor actually really good friend his name's brad gary retired out of teams not too long ago an amazing guy but he says a quote, culture eats strategy for breakfast every day. It does. You can have the greatest - Does he run the mind gym?

49:35Does he run the Navy SEALs mind gym? He was definitely there when it came on. What's his name? Brad Gary. He was on Sean Ryan not too long ago. I want to say, is it Brad Jacobs that did some mental training stuff? We had a - No. Who's the guy that works with SciComm? Rob Moore helped to publish his book. Fuck. Brad Simone. Anyway, yeah, Culture Eats strategy for breakfast is so true. It's just aligning the incentives, but it's aligning the incentives at a group level. Hey, this is how we do things. Not we need to just enforce these things. This isn't happening top down. It's happening bottom up.

50:13But we also have the routines that are built in top down. Exactly. I don't know how well he'd do if he wasn't one coming up with the plan. If he disagreed at all, how loud would he vocalize it? I don't know. as an only child, I can fully empathize with Donald Trump in that regard. If it's my way or the toys are going out of the pram, I've had to learn to desensitize, deprogram that. What do you think is the biggest misconception that civilians have about what special operations looks like day to day?

50:48I think a lot of them watch the Expendables and think that's what you do all day. Picking your teeth with a bowie knife, throwing stuff in there or it looks like zero dark 30 walking around playing horseshoes with pop collars and camis just more routine than you think it was more structured than you think it was but a lot more lawless than you think it would be like more like a um more like a professional sports team than a military organization that's what it feels like oh yeah i mean you're rarely in uniform unless it's promotion or unless you're at a funeral You don't put them on. Most guys are relaxed grooming standards, long hair, big beards.

51:29You don't take your photo. You're not on social media. You're not writing books. You're not, you just live that life. And to them, it's no different than playing on a professional baseball team, football team. They show up every single day trying to earn their seat at the table every single day. And they put the group before themselves and everything to do. If you do that, you'll be a successful player. And I've never met anybody that was worth his weight that was not obsessed. Nobody that I would ever clone that didn't wake up every day go, I can't believe I get paid to do this. You don't get paid a lot.

52:01But if I'm honest now, and I think everybody would say it too, 90 % of the time, if you had the financial means, you'd pay to do that job. If there was a club you could join and do that, I'd swipe plastic so fast. It's an amazing experience but i think a lot of people think that um you're kind of like a caveman there's no empathy you know people aren't well educated they're not well read they're just grunts too many tattoos say too many cuss words you did too much copenhagen spit on your floor they're kind of just brutes all the guys i worked with all the guys i looked up to they are they're more philosophers than anything else.

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53:55That's jim.sh slash modernwisdom at modernwisdom10 at checkout. Have you seen this chart before?

54:06I have seen that chart. I'll explain it to you. So it's the prevalence of violence perpetrated by IQ standard deviation. So 70 to 79, 80 to 89, all the way up. And basically it's asking the following question. Have you been in a physical fight or deliberately hit anyone in the past five years? That's the question. and the prevalence as a percentage is linear going down. And when you get to the middle of the distribution, it's somewhere between 11.4 % and 7.9%. So what's that? Let's call it 10%, something like that. 10 % of people with 100 IQ have hit somebody or been in a physical fight within the last five years, and it goes down and down.

54:53But if you're talking about wanting somebody who has got quite elite mental capacities as well, 5.2 % between 110 and 119, 2.9 % between 120 and 129. And I saw this tweet that said the percentage of guys with 130 plus IQ who both enjoy books and bar fights is incredibly small. And that is why you can't mass produce elite special operators for the military.

55:22Yeah, it tracks. I don't have 130 IQ for sure, but I do like reading books and punch people in the face for sure nothing wrong with that nothing wrong with that they're way more constrained than you would imagine and then sometimes they um a lot of times you don't want them to be like to me my special operations guys don't have flat top haircuts they don't blouse their boots they don't say sir they don't salute they have all the ability to do those things but the job's filthy like why would what i I don't want a Kindle doing that job. Is it seen as sort of unnecessary pomp and circumstance and

56:07ritual that doesn't contribute to the outcome? To jump through those hoops to do the... Oh, you mean play the song and dance? Yeah, of course. Yeah, yeah, yes sir, no sir. The clean shaven, the no tattoos and stuff like that. They only do that as a punishment. Anytime anybody does anything wrong, and cut your hair, shave your face. That's why we hate it. That's why most guys, when they get out, they grow a beard, grow their hair out. They're like, I am sick of this. I'm never doing that again. They run that for a year and then they shave it all and whatever. They go back to normal. But no, I mean.

56:37It's the you can't tell me what to wear mum equivalent of being in the special forces. Have you ever seen the meme? It's got a bunch of green bracelets sitting around, hands in pockets. Hands in pockets. The only reason I went through selection. I want to be able to put my hands in my pockets and spit Copenhagen on your floor and grow a beard. No, I want to be a one percenter. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And you're allowed to do special things. You said, uh, it's more lawless than people might realize. What do you mean by that?

57:03Everything's black and white. Special operations find a way to live in that gray area, but gray area navigation tours running every 30 minutes, we will find a way to navigate through the gray area to get to the end state. As long as we know what the why is, what we have to get accomplished, we'll find a way to get there. And sometimes it's not pretty, but I mean, I'm pretty honest. I'll break every rule in the book right now if it puts a team in a better position. Even if it puts myself at a disadvantage or threatens my career, maybe even my life, if it's good for the group, I'll do it anyway.

57:35But not lawless in a sense. People aren't murdering people. There's no rape, not a lot of drugs anymore. But there's not a whole lot of guys who transition to be police officers. Too constraining? too constraining. I don't want to be constrained. I don't like it. Because everybody asked me when I got out, I don't want to be a cop. You can go to FBI. Absolutely not. I love those guys. They're amazing. Nothing but respect. I can't do that job. I'm in the gray area too much. You understand? But I'm open and honest about it. I don't hide that a bit. I think this is what I was trying to get at before when I said the modern world being incompatible with some of the ugly parts of war.

58:16That if you're focused on outcome, If you're focused on the ends, the means can sometimes become up for debate. And the ends are often not scrutinized, but the means are by people. Does that make sense?

58:37I'm trying to find a way to word this.

58:43I've never seen anything in my military career that I would even put morally questionable on any level. not for a cop, not for a fireman, not for a school teacher. Everything has always been above board, but there are times where you just want to hoist a black flag and start slitting throats. You just do. I can't believe we're going to put this dude in the back of his helicopter and let him lose. I can't believe we're going to let him do it. Because you know that he's a bad guy. Yeah. Or some of the things you see, some of the things you know that you're doing, you have, because it's not an assault on you, but some of the stuff they do with children, it's so disgusting that if I didn't have that flag in my arm and I was just a tourist I'd kill you if I get away with it right now I'd just kill you but because I have this flag on my shoulder now I can't and now I resent the flag because I can't do to you what I know needs to happen to you how does that feel that

59:36systemic constraint when you've got righteous anger it's hard man it is it's hard especially when you've lost friends or you know extortion one seven happened in august of extortion 17 had a whole troop get killed kilo got shot down killed everybody on board 31 guys having to back those guys up on deployment in that exact same place living in their beds if i'm being told i just wanted to kill everybody and to not be able to do it it's hard because you have the opportunity It's like, at least not doing anything bad now. Okay, I guess I've got to put you in handcuffs. They're on a helo, drop you off here.

1:00:20They'll put you in a detention center for 10 days. They'll release you. Like, okay. They wouldn't do that to me. If they wrapped me up and put me in handcuffs, they would saw my head off in 15 minutes. Now we all know it. It's not fair. Have you been tracking this fallout after Rob was on Andy's show talking about the Osama raid? Yeah. What do you make of that?

1:00:48I hate the fact we're even talking about it, if I'm being honest. Like, they did such a good job about not talking about it. I mean, Rob was my first team leader. So, I know Rob. I owe a lot to Rob because Rob drafted me and brought me in.

1:01:07I wish nobody would have ever said a word. When they left to go on the raid, I didn't know where they were going. Were you on compound or whatever it's called? I was in his team. Yeah. So you didn't get chosen? No. Motherfuckers. Two junior. Yeah. How? You know, we'll say we rack all the teams. We'll say there's seven guys. One to seven. They took twos and above and took them all from every team. Those are the guys we were. Oh, interesting. It's the first time they ever did it. So it's closer to being, how many people in total are? Can't talk about it. Okay, fine. We'll talk about it off screen, way less than you think.

1:01:42Cool. So it's closer to me, what it sounds like, I'm loving the sports analogy. It's more like having a league of teams, and then you've got the Steph Curry or the Kevin Durant from each team. Yep. And then you're able to take the top filtering. does that not create that surely that must create a um a lot of animosity a lot of resentment uh some of that but complete yeah yeah because you know hang on who the fuck what's i'm number fucking six am i um more so complexity that the verticals of the teams have got culture baked in and as you start to take people i'm i mean perfect example when players come together to play for their national team when they've played for rivalrous local teams.

1:02:37That doesn't always work well. And sometimes a team which has the maximum player stats for each individual player, but not the cohesion, doesn't necessarily perform as well as a vertical team that does have the cohesion with somebody that's got less experience or whatever. look at me sat in the stands talking about how the special forces should be around i mean that's how it's always been ran take a team take a troop take a squadron whatever it is and you go out and do the thing they cherry pick from inside of the same squadron and none of us knew i don't know if we knew they were spinning up on something and they would tell us like it's some bullshit training mission like it was my first cycle i had just gotten through selection and all of them like enjoy your first rotation he's like you ain't missing shit trust me this is going to be a dog and pony.

1:03:28We're going to waste our time and nothing's going to happen. Promise you. About five days before they went to go do the thing, we all came in, had a big blowout. You know, dudes are buying new watches, buying thousand dollar sunglasses because they didn't think they were going to come home. We all thought they were going to go get Gaddafi. So when Obama walked out and did Newton's announcement, I was in my living room with my wife, with my shooting buddy on speakerphone. And as soon as they said it, screaming, like So proud. Because you knew that that was - Oh, yeah. So happy. Never been more proud of my fucking life.

1:03:59Oh my God. And then we came back and everything started to roll out. News cameras everywhere. They're coming to people's houses. They're out in town. You go get a beer. They bump into you. They're constantly trying to dig in to see who you are. They're trying to film you. I mean, it became a zoo. And it stayed like that for a long time. Has it ever been more highly scrutinized than around then? No. It was unlike anything else I've ever seen. That kind of launched the SEALs to some degree, I think, in the public consciousness. I mean, they had a couple of big ones before then. They had June 28th with Marcus Luttrell, Lone Survivor.

1:04:35That got into fanfare. I mean, that was an operation gone wrong. In 2009, they had Captain Phillips. They rescued Maersk, Alabama. That was another huge one. Same squadron. So yeah, been knocking these things out for a bit. So when that thing happened, the thing that pissed us off the most is right after, you I think May 2011, that happened. August 2011, another squadron gets shot with an RPG, whole troop goes down. The amount of people and the people today that say that was an inside job, I wish I could launch you in Afghanistan to a raid and kill you. It is the most disrespectful thing I've ever seen.

1:05:12Why do they think it was an inside job? Because apparently that squadron knew too much about the UBL raid and we got to kill them off. The fact that people say that 95 % of those guys are all married. So now all their kids, they all read that shit. They read those comments. They watch those YouTube videos, these disgruntled fat army guys talking all this nonsense. And now they don't know. It's like, mom, did the government kill dad? No, no, no. He's like, this guy's a green brain. He says he did. Like, oh my God, here we go. It's the - Spence is hateful narrative. It's the Sandy Hook parents equivalent in reverse for war.

1:05:49It is. cause a lot of doubt though cause a lot of doubt in people you're like that's absolutely not possible it's not possible no one would ever do it nobody yeah it seems to me i mean again sat in the rosette of the stands talking about what the fuck goes on in the american military country that i've only just moved to uh the fact that things are heavily scrutinized that war stories have got a kind of allure and romance and sort of sexiness to them means that the dose response of information being put out is so unusually magnified. And yeah, with the Osama bin Laden raid, you have every single second of potential information is going to be just, it's game tape.

1:06:40It is like game tape in some World Cup final. And there's a critical mass that you can reach of information. And when you get even close to that, you basically have a kind of nuclear self-sustaining reaction where it just generates more and more and more. And yeah, I watched Rob talk on Andy's show and I'm like, if nothing else, this is going to create an awful lot more nuclear reactions. Really wish you wouldn't have said it. You think about all those guys that are still in, they're the ones that are going to have to deal with that. I had to deal with it. And Rob does Rob things. You know, guys got out and they wrote books.

1:07:23If you weren't in that command when those books dropped, you have no idea the hell we all went through. Why? Oh, anybody who had association with them, we had guys comb in the ceilings for bugs. You know, they leave listening devices. I mean, it was, it was so, because nobody knew who was feeding them information. So once they separated out and they started writing the book, they're like okay well somebody's communicating with them they know too much active information that is happening now and you could tell with some of the emails going back and forth they were following guys home oh there was there was i didn't realize this uh some of the people who had been in and then got out and were then allowed to talk about what had happened included information that they couldn't have known had it not have been passed on from people who were still inside.

1:08:12Wow. To know you got everybody just pointing fingers at you like, you're talking to him, you're talking to him, you're talking. Can we just go back to work, man? Let's just go back to work. I wish nobody would have ever said a thing. Just kill him, put it up on news, he's dead. Don't say how, don't say it was a compound raid, don't do any of that. Don't say how, don't say who. But then on the same side, we got to be honest. Everybody who's in special operations right now, today serving, the only reason you're in there is because you read a book, you watched a movie. or something from somebody in Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Black Hawk Down.

1:08:44That's the only reason. Isn't that strange? It is. You're telling him not to, but the only reason we're all in this building is because somebody like him wrote a book. How many people have wanted to become Navy SEALs? How many people have become Navy SEALs? Not many, but a lot of people have tried. Yeah. I mean, somebody asked me the other day about David Goggins. And they're like, what do you think about David Goggins? And I'm like, when I was in the teams, he was different because he was a, he was a poster child he was an athlete for the navy i'll say between david goggins and jocko those two people have probably put more people in the services over the last 10 years than anybody else in the last 50 they just have millions and millions of people have read their books seen all of that they've become cops firemen navy seals they've joined yeah they all do like they did it right they did a good job they put them up on a pedestal they weren't talking about war stories they weren't doing all this stuff but you take that and then you take the actual operational side of it and like well you're okay with they do that but you can't do that why i don't know if people are okay with anyone there's a there's a degree of and i only i'm on the real periphery of this shit but my youtube every so often feeds me veterans talking about veteran drama shit and it seems like there is a kind of noble silence that's expected of anybody especially as you get up toward the higher tiers too um and it would be an interesting question to ask those people would you rather people adhere to the noble side would you rather veterans adhere to the noble silence or would you rather have however many more million able-bodied men trying to serve their country or their community and the police or the fbi or the special forces

1:10:42it's hard to figure out because you look like the uk very very small only very small not very very small very very small small i'm not going to disagree with you But England is small. And how they conquered all of that, pretty incredible. Yep, the accent helps. The accent helps. They don't give their military enough credit. There's not enough people growing up in England that want to grow up to be in the services. Dude, there isn't this. I need to. It is unbelievable to me. I remember the first time that I started coming to America and the first time that I got on an internal domestic flight from somewhere in America to somewhere else in America.

1:11:22and you hear them come over the tannoy and they say uh we would like to invite uh active military and first responders uh to to yeah or whatever it is to get on the plane first i'm thinking i have never ever heard that the idea of a veteran community i once wore a black rifle coffee shirt uh getting onto a plane this a few years ago and um it's uh khaki green with gold print like classic sort of military kind of thing and it's got the american flag on one arm and as i walked past there was a older gentleman really nicely dressed one of the early rows and as i walked past a bigger guy short hair said thank you for your service i'm like and you know there's all of these people behind me and i'm like my t-shirt has just given me stolen valor and i have no idea how to fucking wipe this i wanted to i must remind i'm actually british like there was no way for me But I remember thinking there is such a reflexive response, especially maybe among older generations, to just revere people who served in the military.

1:12:31And it is whatever the opposite of that is, like actively ignored or kind of looked down on as if you did something a bit stupid. Like you weren't smart enough to go into whatever else. That's why you joined the military. that's precisely that is exactly how the british military veterans are seen exactly how they're seen big population in america same thing but now they appreciate it because we got attacked here and 9-11 a lot of people have forgotten about that but i mean i try to remind the guys often the only reason we're not speaking german is because of a military like we are the only reason we're all actually free is just because the military nobody really wants to uncork that So the reason we're free right now is because nobody really wants to fly over here and find out.

1:13:18That's it. They just don't. If we did not have the military that we do, we would have been taken over a long time ago. This episode is brought to you by Whoop. According to my Whoop, I've tracked nearly 2 ,000 days of my life. And the thing that still gets me is that I could have predicted almost every bad day before it happens. That's because Whoop gives you a complete picture of your health every single day. your sleep, your workouts, your recovery, your breathing, your heart rate, even your steps. And over time, you get to see what's working and what isn't. And the Whoop 5.0 is the best version yet.

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1:14:22Right now, you can get the brand new Whoop 5.0 and that 30-day free trial by going to the link in the description below or heading to join.whoop.com slash modernwisdom. That's join.whoop.com slash modernwisdom. can you try and find it's going to be a little tough to find it's a short a youtube short and it's a guy talking about do you know who has the number one navy in the world and you know who has the number two navy in the world do you know who has the number three air force in the world and the number one and the number two it's a guy kind of ranking all of the different uh things he's on a podcast and it is so fucking cool i think the u.s coast guard is the fourth biggest navy in the world and then the navy is the first biggest navy in the world and then that something else is the second biggest it's like this country has got and he basically makes the point the reason america as a country is so overpowered militarily uh and every time that i think about that i also think about that video i can't remember who the admiral is uh but the someone else will raise your mothers and daughters for you you know that video yeah it is there's a metro booming like hip-hop edit of that which is kind of a bit gratuitous but it's holy shit i mean if you want to talk about what the sort of best elements of american culture uh yeah let's go let's go on that one actually with the black rifle edit i'm sure this will be good we have You have been honed into a machine of lethal moving parts that you would be wise to avoid if you know what's good for you.

1:16:04We will not be intimidated. We will not back down. We've seen war. We don't want war. But if you want war with the United States of America, there's one thing I can promise you, so help me God. Someone else will raise your sons and daughters. Bro, bro, I got goosebumps. Oh, burn them to the ground, dude. I love that. Yeah, that's it. Bro. Fix bayonets. That's one of the sickest lines. I mean, freedom isn't free. Freedom ain't free. You have to be a formidable adversary. If not, they're going to take everything you have. You're just fine. You got to be ready. Stay ready. What are some of the adaptations that normal people might not realize special forces operators go through when you become hyper-optimized for combat?

1:16:59Depends on how far they take it. Some guys adjust their entire lifestyle, everything. People they associate with, the time they wake up, the time they go to bed. The majority of the guys are suffering through something. It could be alcohol, it could be prescription pills, it could be injuries, everything. And what are they typically coping with? what's the thing that is causing them to use? Injuries obviously make sense, but psychologically. I'd say for me, I'm probably the quintessential dude. I kind of represent everybody. I'm not a unicorn by any means. I'm a product of the culture. Hard time sleeping.

1:17:42So you start taking Ambien every night and that doesn't work. Your memory starts getting shot. Too many TBIs. You get put on Adderall and now you're taking uppers and downers and then all the pain elements and start avoiding surgery. And then you have a hard time trying to balance being a full-time husband, a full-time father, being a full-time Navy SEAL or pilot or whatever else you're trying to do. So you start to compartmentalize everything. I can't be a husband. I can't be a father right now. I can't be a best friend. I can't be an uncle. I can't be a son. I can only do this one thing. So I'm going to compartmentalize everything else.

1:18:17I'm going to shift it away. and then when I get done, I'll reintegrate. As soon as you try to reintegrate, you can't. The wife's off her routine, you're late for the bus stop. She's got her whole schedule set and now you drop back in and you just screwed it all up. Now you don't feel like you're at home. So what do you do? You just run back into work. Start pouring all your time back in there and you feel this big dissociation between the thing you're actually fighting for because now I can't even be around it because I don't feel at home there. I feel like I'm staying in an Airbnb. I feel like I'm staying in my aunt's house.

1:18:47Like I'm trying to keep creep through the kitchen. Like I opened up the refrigerator, didn't have anything that I want in here. Cause I haven't been grocery shopping in eight months. Well, now I'm too ashamed to ask her to buy this or buy that. And you're on another trip. I think people would be shocked with how much the guys are on the road. Minimum 270 days, 325, 350 a year. I mean, they are gone, gone, gone. And even when you're there, like that typical morning, we'll call it Dana Life, random Tuesday in Virginia Beach, up at 5, clear in the gym, 5.30, work out, 5.30 to 6.30, eat breakfast, go do a recovery session, that could be a float tank, a cryo chamber, e-stem, cold plunge, whatever, go back up, 10 a.m.

1:19:32briefing, train for three, four hours, eat lunch, train three, four hours, eat dinner, drink a couple beers in the team room, go back home, 9 p.m., kids are already in bed, your wife started taking a shower, she's watching Netflix. You go in, you're asleep in 20, 30 minutes or at least half asleep. You wake up four or five, six times a night. Can't really fall asleep. Wake up five o 'clock, do it again over and over. So your kids don't see you for pretty much the entire week. If you're lucky, you'll come in six 30 at night during bed by eight. You're two hand texting frantic. You're trying to pack yourself, trying to do laundry about to leave in a day.

1:20:04Like you're just never really truly present. And that's when everything else starts to happen. The injuries stack up, sleep deprivation stacks up. You're on a shitty diet. Now you're drinking too much. You're popping these pills and it doesn't feel like you're doing the excess. The doctors have given you this stuff. You just keep eating them. Like, oh, I feel better. Three or four days, you feel worse. Eat another Adderall, wake up and do it again, do it again, do it again. And a lot of it is, it is egocentric because everybody around you is better than you are. And you feel like I have to see them see me work.

1:20:37Like I want you to notice that I am in here before you, I'm staying here after you. And I want you to know that I know I'm not great, but God damn, I'm trying. It won't be for a lack of effort. It won't be for a lack of commitment or discipline. I'm going to show up every day trying to be better than I was yesterday. And that's what everybody has. You just get really used to just being inside of that thing and you sacrifice. Guys become the best at hiding injuries, catastrophic injuries. What are the most common injuries? Shoulders, hips, knees, TBI, neck, low back. And what's this from? From shooting?

1:21:11Everything. Skydiving, climbing, the boats, everything. It's rough, man. It's rough on the body. And now you don't sleep. And when I say don't sleep, I mean realistically, like actual sleep, two hours a night. Like you don't sleep. and a lot of that is you think when you get overseas we're on vampire hours so you don't see the sun for three to six months however long you'll be overseas but you wake up at five in the afternoon and you drink coffee all night you get back home at 5 a.m you eat breakfast and you try to go to sleep now the sun's up your body gets that dose of vitamin d and now you're just chasing it are you using uh light therapy uh sad lamps or any sort of equivalent when you're over there.

1:21:55We didn't have wifi for my first three or four deployments. No. It should be better now, but back in the day, they couldn't even, they couldn't even prescribe you vitamin D because it was a hormone replacement. That's what they classified in the military. Now it's different, but I mean, fingernails falling out, hair falling out. Why? Not seeing the sun for six months, like literally not saying it. You turn into a bat. Yeah. And you feel like death. Face all sucked in, food's terrible like you got a food allergy or like dude i can't i couldn't eat a boiled egg right now if you gave me a million dollars i've eaten thousands and thousands of hard boiled i'm not exactly thousands of them you get a receipt you're like i can't eat this food dude i can't what are you eating hard boiled eggs and white rice three times a day i'm just gonna keep going it's exhausting man but it's surprising to me that everything would be so optimized in the buildup and then seemingly so like under-optimized once you get out there.

1:22:54And also, why is no one, probably the single biggest performance enhancer for anybody is sleep. Because you don't always get to dictate when you're going to go. But when you're at home and you're training, how come that's not more prioritized? You got to think about, so see you on a training schedule. We'll say you get up at five, if you run through the entire day and we'll say you're doing a night profile at night, you're not even gonna get geared up for that night profile until 8.30 at night. That's gonna go until two or three in the morning. So when you wake up, you're still gonna clock in and do a full normal day.

1:23:28So you can either come in at six, you can come in at seven, or you can come in at five and just live the exact same routine. So a lot of guys have hammocks in their cage area, go to sleep in the cage. They'll come in to the cage. Probably a quarter size of this room. Everybody has their own. so all your gear's in it, guns, bullets, bombs, all the stuff is in there, but they'll string up a hammock and they'll just sleep in it. Guys, Tempur-Pedic mattress on the floor and they'll just sleep in it. Because it's easier than having to commute to go back home to then come back because you're losing half an hour each way or maybe more.

1:23:57Exactly. I go in, I wake up my wife, my alarm clock goes off. She's like, why are you getting up? You got to have this awkward conversation, jump back in the car, just drive back in, rinse and repeat again. So a lot of times guys just stay there. You get used to it. But when it's happening in the moment, you don't realize what it's doing. like you'll watch your weight fluctuate like you know everybody gets overseas everybody tries to get big and jacked on employment you come back home and it's like i can't maintain this i'm not sleeping i'm not eating right all the stuff starts to happen to you it's like the road a little bit of yourself you go on these stints where you get really really jacked in great shape like oh i can maintain this but your sleep is garbage like because you're pushing too hard yeah and it's one of the like if i talk to anybody else like you're doing too much you need to break it down you need to take two weeks off, don't do anything physical.

1:24:44My mental health will just spiral out of control so fast. I have to stay on the routine because if not, then my confidence drops. So I know I need to sleep. I know I shouldn't do anything in the gym today. I know I shouldn't, but if I don't, my confidence drops. Then what? Then what do you want me to do? Just constantly chasing your own - Feedback loop. Vicious. Is your mood and health better when, because it seems like being overseas in some ways might be a little bit easier because there aren't the distractions, you're sort of locked in, but you're also vampire mode with shitty food and all of the other issues.

1:25:20Best time you've ever had in your life. Being overseas. Most guys will tell you they sleep better. Now, because I'm out, I've got a bunch of different modalities that help me sleep better now, but I sleep way better overseas than I do when I'm in town. Even now? Yeah. Way better. Always. you just do. I can't remember what movie it is. Maybe it's Rambo or maybe it's The Expendables or something. I know it's a cliche, but it sounds like it might be true that there's a guy who comes back home after he's been on deployment or he's been on some sort of operation and he's struggling to sleep in the bed.

1:25:56So he decides to sleep on the floor and just put his arm under his head. And it kind of feels a little bit like that. You become conditioned to have one particular type of environment and one that's objectively better is subjectively like alien. Yeah. Man, I miss it. You make me time travel right now. It is the most fun you'll ever have in your entire life. It is like even all the bullshit, the sleepless nights, AMB and whatever else, I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world. Give me$10 million right now to erase those memories. I wouldn't touch it. Not a chance to, but in the moment, it all seems like it's it.

1:26:34I just wish I was able to find a better balance point because for me, I wasn't able to. I had too many things that were weighing on me, too many things in a family, and it became so much easier to be overseas and to isolate, not throw up family photos, limit the times you're going to FaceTime, limit the times you're going to call home. Because in the moment, the last thing I want is for that window to light up. I've got to run over there and deal with it. And I don't want to think about orphaning my kids, making my wife a two-time widow. I don't want to do that. I can't have that inside of me.

1:27:05So it sounds selfish, but I've had a lot of amazing mentors that have said the same thing. If you think that I'm thinking about my wife on that helo flight in, I'm not. If you think I'm wondering what my kids are doing, I'm not. I'm only thinking about that dude because I've been staring his face the last 72 hours. That's the only thing I'm thinking about. The helo flight in, the walk in, the patrol, atmospheric, everything. That's the only thing I'm thinking about. It's like compartmentalization again. Mm-hmm. There's an interesting study that I learned about that was looking at attachment styles, and they brought people into a lab in classic psychological study fashion.

1:27:41The study began before people realized the study began. Mm-hmm. They're in this waiting room together, and over the far side is a computer, and the computer begins to just drift a little bit of smoke out, just a small amount, like it might be about to catch fire, something like that. Before they'd gone in, they'd done an attachment style assessment on all of the people that were in there. And there were some that were anxious, some that were avoidant, and there were some that were securely attached. What was interesting was the anxious people were the first ones that noticed that the smoke was coming out of the computer, but the avoidant people were the first ones out the door.

1:28:13And that explains why you need, in a Dunbar number 150 person tribe, why you need a variety of attachment styles. You need someone the type of vigilant who's always watching that ridge where sometimes the animals or the enemies come over, but you need other people that are decisive. And one of the skills that the avoidant side seem to have is an ability to compartmentalize. So the anxious people would be more likely to think, I mean, it's okay, should we, can we leave? Are we allowed to? Whereas the evoing people are like, it's just a wily coyote, it's just a puff of dust, and they're gone. And what I thought was interesting about that was, I imagined that I was putting together a police force or something, and you want the SWAT guys and the ERs, you want them on average to be avoidant.

1:29:06You want them to be able to compartmentalize what it is that they've got going on. Like, nope, I don't need you right now. This person needs me to look after them. But you want the detective to be anxious. You want him to pay a level of attention to things where they can't switch you out they're thinking and ruminating and ruminating it was behind the kitchen door you know like that's and it's it's just interesting to me that the things which you are praised for in public you pay for in private and your inability to switch that sort of stuff off you know like those adaptations that you've gone through and the same traits and focus that make elite operators effective can probably make normal life and relationships extremely difficult it does because at a certain point you start to think that everything is just a time suck or a bandwidth suck like right now this conversation we're having it doesn't make me better at work it doesn't in fact it just makes me want to go to work to avoid this right now it really makes me just want to stay on deployment not come home so i don't have to deal with this shit.

1:30:11And then you started to spit and venom. Talk about trauma. Like it sacks up inside of you, gets the right, you guys got yards of beer in the UK? That's just trauma. It starts to come out of your mouth. It's hate, it's hostility, it's all this stuff. Before you know it, you can't control it every time you go home, just launching it. Well, the only place I never launch it is at work because everybody else is the same as me. We talk about the same things. We only speak in movie quotes. We're on the same workout routine. We fight together, shoot together, sleep together, do everything together and I never feel like I'm outside of the group.

1:30:41I never feel like I'm a bothersome, ever. Every time I come home, I feel like this is not my place. It's not my place because I'm never here. You don't realize that way you're inside it. Like I don't realize that I've been gone for 300 days this year. I wonder why I don't feel like this is my house. Like every time I come home, you change the, you change, why do I have all these pillows? Every time I come home, there's another pillow. Change the bedspread and all this stuff. Like you just, you never really feel like you're there. to just recompartmentalize right back to work. Also, you're asking an awful lot of a partner, right?

1:31:13You're saying, hey, this connection that is going to be almost entirely severed, except for a few brief moments here and there across an entire year. When I come back, I want you to immediately drop into this. I've got my problems to go through, but I don't want to have to deal with the problems that you've got because that's additional capacity that I've already blown. Well said. That's exactly what it is. So now when I talk to the guys, I tell them like, unless you lasso a unicorn, which I did. I mean, she was into it. She was in the Navy. She was married to a seal that got killed. Her dad was a seal.

1:31:45She knew the culture. She knew what she was getting into. I wanted - It was like she was bred to be the wife of a seal. For sure. Yeah. It's like, I wanted that picture perfect life. I wanted my dream job. I wanted the house, the 2.5 kids, the Labrador, the white picket fence. I want everything taken care of. And every time I come home, I just resent it. Like, I know this is what I want, but you need so much attention from me that I cannot give you. And she just kept going. She'd show up. If tree fell in the house, she'd fix it. Navy seal of wipes. I don't know how to do anything. I don't know who cuts my grass.

1:32:23I don't know who to call if a tree does fall in the house. She does. She handles it all. So I got to focus on my craft the whole time. What sucked is trying to reintegrate. Because now it's like, hey, job's done. I've got a couple weeks off. Let's all be a happy family. and I don't know how to do it because I can't shut off. You're too hypervigilant. I'm on a 10 all day long. I'm too hand texting. Just checking my phone, checking my phone, checking my phone. Hey, I was going on a vacation. I can't go on a vacation. But no, you just came back from a diploma. I was going on a vacation. I'm not going on a vacation.

1:32:51I'm going on a jump trip. I got to get better at skydiving, not sitting in the Bahamas. I don't know what that does. Doesn't make me better at CQB. No, not doing that. So we avoided that for the majority of our marriage. We just said that can justify it. That doesn't make me better at work. It doesn't. I wish I would have done it, but I tell the guys, if I would have spent my first four years really focused on the craft, I probably wouldn't have thought that I needed to burn all that time and all those reps later on in my career. I don't know, man. I, I, I, I understand what you're saying. I get the feeling that that might be a comforting myth to tell yourself that if If only I'd done it another way, I could have made it work in this manner later on.

1:33:38I get the sense that it is less like the pursuit of mastery and more like an addiction to work, that I just need to keep it going. Obviously, again, I'm now in road trip at the fucking back of the stadium. I know enough people. I know people in bands, and bands are the same. You're on the road for 180, 200, 250 days of the year. Jimmy Carr is, I think he's doing 425 shows this year. What? Because he matinees the shows. So he'll do a 6 p.m. show and then an 8 p.m. show. He did, how many fucking dates did he do? He did like 100 and something dates just in Australia. It's absurd, it's absurd. It has to be obsessed, it has to be.

1:34:24You do. And the same thing goes for, the interesting thing about the comedian thing is typically they're traveling on their own or traveling with one warm-up, warm-up and tour manager. And I think there's a minimum sort of group size that you need in order to be able to make a microculture. And I think that's what really embeds people into it. It might make it easier in some ways, but probably makes it harder to integrate. It makes it easier on the road, but harder to integrate when you get back. And that's where if you look at people that are in bands, people that are in sports teams, professional sports teams, that is what's particularly difficult, I think, because you have created this new life.

1:35:01It's you and your five bandmates. It's you and the squad of 15. That's us, and this is what we do. And that reintegration is incredibly difficult, I think, to bring that back across. I think that's where the struggle comes in. But yeah, man, the prospect of trying to come back and doing this thing that you know that you care about and that you know is noble and that you're doing for the right reasons and that you're trying to make the world and your country a safer place and to then come back and to have struggled to, I mean, again, as you said, you've got, it sounds like, as close to a gold standard partner fucking bred for this.

1:35:41Maybe bred more to be a seal's wife than you were to be a seal by the sounds of things. It really does surprise me. I'm not suggesting this, but it does surprise me that if the military cares that much about the integration and the performance, because presumably if everybody had had a partner like yours, which still had a shit ton of difficulties, there have to be many, many levels of hell below the one that you did when it comes to what's happening relationally. That can't improve their performance when they're away. So if that's the case, why aren't the army trying to have some sort of X-factor pop idol thing for, hey, we are going to help you find a partner and we're actually going to help you and your partner to make sure that for the person that gets into a relationship with a special operator, they have the psychological accoutrements that are appropriate for them to actually be able to deal with this and they're going to be able to support you, which would make you into a better person.

1:36:46It seems to me in very few areas, it's such an overbearing incursion into somebody's life, right? Like, you mean that you're going to try and screen partners? So that, I get that, but when you're talking about, oh, the most important military operations on the planet, I mean, if you're covering everything from, you said, eyes are dotted, T's are crossed, every single bullet and bomb and tactic. And I've worked thousands and thousands and thousands of jumps and I've drilled this thing over and over again. A huge impact on your performance is going to be your relationship to your kids, what reintegration looks like when you get off duty, who it is that you choose as a partner, all of those things.

1:37:36So I don't know, maybe this is two softly, softly skills and you can always just like spit and sawdust and grit your teeth and ambient and adderall your way through it. And it kind of doesn't really matter that much because like, okay, whatever, there's going to be some collateral damage that occurs relationally, but fuck it, the guys will just show up anyway. That's why we select people who can compartmentalize and put that stuff to one side. But it seems to me that even the capacity for compartmentalization could be used more effectively if it wasn't being drained relationally. Does that all make sense?

1:38:05Yeah. You know what the divorce rate in the SEAL teams are? No. Over 100%. because people get remarried and then run it back and then get out again brilliant the first guy first troop chief i had on his fifth that's impressive my business partner now is on his third totally normal most guys have been divorced at least once at least once well it's just it's cost doing business and a lot of that is because guys come in so young like we did a thing where we didn't take any guys that were in the navy prior you had to come in basically off the street or straight out of college. We didn't want guys had any fleet time.

1:38:39So you think the majority of the kids that show up between 18 and 21, 22 years old, what are the majority of those guys do? They marry their high school sweetheart, some chick they met in college, some chick they met in San Diego, who's there on college, whatever. And then you move her to a place she's never been, no support system. And then you leave her there for an entire year by herself. You come back home, you're distant, you're not connected with her and you just keep putting her through it over and over. She has one deployment, maybe two. And she's like, I need for you to get out. He ain't getting out for you.

1:39:06No, he didn't even know your middle name for being honest, beat it, get a divorce. It's like, you're not worth it right now. I'm on this speeding bullet train on my fingertips right now. I'm not jumping because of you. I'm not. Sacrifice must be made. And usually you sacrifice the ones you love the most. That's what I did. Those are the times I regret it. I wish I would have had a better balance point, but in that time I couldn't justify it. I couldn't, I didn't have it in me. and I think that's kind of the excuse I come up with. If I would have lived, if I would have had the mentors I had later in my career when I first got in and I would have followed their path, I would have found the role models, I'm going to sit there, I'm going to ride your coattails and I'm going to live your routine, I think I would have found a balance point.

1:39:49What would have been the biggest differences?

1:39:53Really just being a pro. I'm going to live a routine from the day I show up to the day I leave. Not going to drink to excess and that's really the difference is there was so much 80s and 90s special operations spillover when I came in the early 2000s. Drinking, fighting, fucking. That's what you did. You traveled around like you were in the Rolling Stones. Every bar you went into, beating up college kids, stealing their girlfriends, doing that over and over and over. Because you're single, it's fun, it's normal. But you're not training at full capacity. We're training hard, and then we're going to burn this thing to the ground.

1:40:26Later on in my career, the guys that were just, they set the standard for the most lethal people you have never met in your life. Two drinks in a single sitting. That's it. You never saw them drunk. They never wore flip-flops. They beat the brakes off you 24-7, 365. They could always perform on demand and they truly just lived it. Were they the best husbands and fathers? No. I hope they are now, but it certainly appeared that a lot of them had a balance point, but they had been living this professional life, like a LeBron James or Kobe Bryant the whole time from 19 years old. As opposed to a rock star life.

1:40:58Exactly. They were a monk. Like you never saw them at a bar, they were never shit-faced, they never got a DUI, and they could send it. You don't need to say who it is that might be active or out now. Who is the person that, what is the archetype of the person that's been most impressive to you, the single operator that you've seen? What are they like?

1:41:21Probably the most clonal, oh man, I can't even say that. like the best guy.

1:41:30I don't know how, um, I don't know how they are at home. You think you know how they are at home because of how they interact. Cause you got to think, man, the majority of those people you spend a decade together with new guys will come in and out, but most of the guys, when you're spending seven to eight years unbroken just together, hopefully it's a 10 year mark and then you'll have to rotate out. And the best guy I've ever seen the most well-rounded, an amazing shape, an amazing high school wrestler, transitioned over to MMA, an amazing skydiver, amazing shooter. Culturally, if you could mass produce and make a thousand of him, I would press that button right now and I'd drop him on every corner of the earth.

1:42:09Just the best. But he lived that routine. His routine, and here's where you know the difference, everybody, you talk to anybody who's ever worked with a SEAL, if we get overseas, we come to a new base. Very first thing we asked for, where's the chow hall? Where's the gym? Chow hall and gym. I'll figure out everything else after that. Chow hall, gym. Where is it? Everybody shows up and everybody does a lift. Everybody. I don't care if you're a marathon runner, whatever. They all do fitness first thing in the morning. And then we focus on hard skills the rest of the day. That dude and a bunch of other guys would show up.

1:42:40They would get that lift in. They'd go straight over to fight club. They do Muay Thai or BJJ for an hour. They jump in a cryo chamber. They jump in a float tank. They get E-stem work done, soft tissue work. They'd go eat breakfast, then go upstairs to the 10 a.m. meeting, then do CQB for a four-hour block, eat lunch, another CQB for a four-hour block, eat dinner, and go home and be a husband or father. They did that unbroken the entire time I've known them, long before it was cool, long before you could look at guys like Michael Phelps or Steph Curry for inspiration. They live that routine unbroken because you go on these pockets, like you go on these trips, shooting trips, jump trips, whatever, and we'll say you go to Arizona on a three-week trip, the guys who hate jumping might do 50 to 75 jumps in three weeks.

1:43:25The guys who are really into it will do 250. They jump all weekend, 10, 12 jumps a day, every single day unbroken. And they're just stacking their resume over and over and over. So when you call them, you're like, Hey, I need for you to pull this off. There's no warmup. There's no mulligan. I can't go back and re-jock. I can just send it all day long. that's how they lived. And when you look at them like if I could just press the clone button and make a thousand of you I could do anything. Yeah. Do you want to end the Iran war? Topple the regime. Done. Right there. That's a good question. A thousand of him it's over.

1:43:57That's a good question. For most for most conflicts what is the number of special operators tier one special operators that you need to be able to topple pretty much any regime in the world? How big's the regime?

1:44:14uh let's say the size of it can't be russia or china because it's gonna be insane like the size of any normal mid-sized country with a like semi-competent military like middle easty type stuff it's not even really operated it's supporting assets it's a helo pilots it's drone pilots it's the air coverage overhead it's everybody in between that makes the whole mechanism roll but when we get off camera i'll tell you how many guys there are it's so very small like if People knew how small it was. They wouldn't even think it's cool. They're like, it can't be like that. Yeah. It's somewhere in between astronauts and F1.

1:44:47There ain't many, dude. I mean, there's not. If you look at the whole scope of the military, zero, zero, zero, zero, 1%. Like we're not talking hundreds of people. It's very small. Wow. So when you get them in there, it's like, you don't need a whole lot. I mean, on your typical, you know, I'm dating myself with Afghanistan and Iraq, but I mean, your typical assault on however many people in a four story compound, 12 people. 12 people, you can do anything. You don't need a lot. You just need 12 really badass dudes. They can get it done. Just let them loose. Who were you the day after you retired?

1:45:24Huh? Who were you the day after you retired? Lost and alone. I was coming off a pretty bad injury. I had a really cool transition. Got out on a Friday, and on Monday morning, I was starting a contract with the Air Force. Three weeks before that, I'd been electrocuted. So I went through a bunch of surgeries and got really - You've been electrocuted? God, have you not heard that fucking story? No, tell me the story. God. Okay.

1:45:56I get in a bad jump accident, dislocate my shoulder, it spins through, shreds the entire thing, and now I'm on a medical retirement board. So I've got to get all these surgeries. In the process of that, they found out I was taking all these medications. medications, a bunch of them you couldn't take together. So this new doc comes in. He's like, Hey, we had a serious problem, dude. I was like, what is it? He goes, you can't take these four medications together. It'll give you a stroke and you'll die. Well, I've been taking those for nine years now. I ain't had a stroke yet. And he went, okay, here's the deal.

1:46:28I'm going to send you to Walter Reed. It's this nice program. You'll love it. It's a, it's a medical detox facility. So you're going to go there. We're going to wash you out all the meds. We'll put you on a couple ones you maintain long-term, we got to get you off these meds. What it really is is a psych ward. So I show up there, bright eyed, bushy tailed, really just a shell of myself, but not realizing what I'm going to do. And they start taking my shoestrings, take all my stuff. And I'm looking around like, what is going on here? And then, you know, had these nice nurses, but they were fighter pilots in there.

1:47:01There were green berets in there. There were all these people in there. And you could see him. One of the guys had really bad Parkinson's. He had an injection ride out of a fighter jet. I mean, jammed up, I couldn't speak nonverbal. And I'm looking around like, why am I in this room? Like, I'm good. Like I didn't realize how far I had fallen, like what I look like at the time. Face all sunk in 185 pounds, just like not who I used to be. So he put me in this hospital bed, essentially strapped me down for 31 consecutive days. and I do a full med washout. By day three or four, I'm in full detox mode.

1:47:35I don't realize it. I think I have food poisoning. I'm thrown up into bed. I piss all over myself. They're changing my sheets, blotting me with the wet napkins. I mean, doing the whole thing. I just keep apologizing. I'm so sorry. I don't know what I ate. I don't know what I ate. Day four, five, six, got this pretty black nurse and she's like, oh honey, you don't know what this is. No. And she's like, it's going to be okay. I was washing out of all those medications I was on. Can you say what the meds were? Everything from Adabal, Cymbalta, Zoloft, Prazosin, um, I would have the big pain meds, Traminol, Toradol, Percocet, Vicodin, everything, everything and anything you could be put on, I would say.

1:48:18That sounds like something that might give you a stroke, yeah. Yeah, well, I wasn't taking them in excess, I wasn't chewing them up, I wasn't snorting them, but I'd wake up and I'd take them all day long, but I had such bad TBI after this injury, really photophobic. I wore sunglasses basically all day, every day. If I looked at those things, I get a crazy headache. I get sick. I throw up. So we're going through all these different protocols. They washed me out of these meds and I wanted to die. When I finally felt what true sobriety was, and because I was under this illusion, because I'm not drinking excess like I did when I was in my teens and twenties, I'm good.

1:48:50I didn't realize popping all these pills is the equivalent of drinking a 12 pack every three hours. And that's what it is. I was stoned under the influence of a narcotic or under a prescription medication 24-7, 365 from 10 until 22. So this is 2018, 2019 now, something like that. We get washed out of these meds. And while I'm in there, it's probably day 15 or 20, the Red Cross comes in. They're bringing in dogs, I mean, dog therapy, all this stuff. And she goes, can I get you anything? And I was like, I don't know. She's like, we're doing art therapy next door. What about a skateboard? Can you give me a skateboard?

1:49:28She's like, yeah. She brings me a change of clothes. He sneaked me out of the hospital and there's a skateboard shop right outside of Bethesda, Maryland. I can't remember the name, but I think it's Siren or something. We walk in there. He sees my arm bandage. He's like, what's going on? I was like, you got a skateboard in here? He gave me two off the wall. I sanded them down and went back, painted them, paper mache, all this stuff. And that's what started into what tribe skates was. It was my transition out of the military. I'm going to make my mental health version was instead of painting masks or anything else, I'm going to paint skateboards.

1:50:01So I'm going to get a skateboard team, going to start mass producing these things, all this stuff. But for me, it was the creativity of doing that. In that process, I found fracture burning. You ever seen that? You take a microwave transformer, you pop it out and you splice jumper cables into it. Then you hooked it to an octopus outlet and you flicked a switch. So if I sanded down all the lacquer off this table and I drove a 10 penny nail in there and there, I clipped these two things on and I poured Coca-Cola across this table, it would burn the wood grain and they would all connect. You ever seen that?

1:50:32You make a cool pattern. Oh, a sick pattern. I burnt everything. So I'm burning these skateboards and I'm knocking out some of the coolest piece I've ever seen, ever. Getting really good at it. I don't realize how dangerous it is though. I'm not an electrician. I don't know. I'm not an electrician either, but it sounds dangerous. It looks more dangerous than it sounds. If you see the machine I was running with, it is so sketchy. But, you know, I'm not on Google. I'm not on YouTube. I'm not looking how dangerous it is. There's no chat GBT. Where are you doing this? Anywhere and everywhere. In my garage, in my backyard, everywhere.

1:51:06I'm just burning hundreds of skateboards at this point. And I've got my retirement date. It's supposed to be like August 31st, 2019. We're on Father's Day. So what is that? July, June, July, whatever that is. June. It's Father's Day morning. I've been burning since four, five 30 in the morning, something like that. Got up early, knocking them all out. I mean, I got stacks of these things and around, I'll call it eight o 'clock in the morning. My mind isn't a sharpest anymore. I get a call from an EOD guy. It's a bomb tech in the Navy, explosive warden's disposal. They have a retirement ceremony that's going on and he's got these huge paddles, like these eight foot ores, and they wrap them all up with this decorative string and do all this stuff.

1:51:49And he's like, hey, can you burn them for me? I was like, yeah, dude, come over. He comes over. One of the critical elements on fracture burning is you can't have lacquer. No stain. It's got to be bare wood. If not, it'll melt the lacquer. It screws up the entire piece. He comes over with this eight foot ore. I'm like, oh brother, you got to, you got to sand that off. So I unplug my machine. He plugs in a sander and starts sanding it down, getting it all off. I'm cleaning up my boards. And part of that process, I've got them on easels and I'm spraying them with the hose. I got a big wire brush and I'm knocking off the ash out of them to clean them all out.

1:52:22Hose them off, hose them off, hose them off. So you can imagine my backyard. I've just got skateboards everywhere, drying in the sun. I've already washed off. There's standing water all over it. I'm essentially sitting on a concrete pad, burning these things. And we get done. My wife bangs on a window and she's like, Hey, it's father's day. gotta go eat breakfast last burn both my kids are in a bay window for me to that tv away watching me i turn around he had finished sanding he'd unplugged his machine and plugged mine back in and it flicked the breaker so they're laying on the ground live i don't know it because i never let anybody be around me when i burn something you can put these things in your mouth it's not hooked to any electricity.

1:53:03So I grab them. I go to readjust them and lights me up. I got them in both hands. I contracted so hard. It shattered my collarbone. It shattered my scapula. It blew out of my finger, blew out of my palm, top of my head, came out of my thighs, one next to my ass. And right when I held it, right when it popped, it took a step back and I landed in that giant pool of water ankle deep, blew me up in the air and shot me across the yard, still holding on to these things. Him, because he's an EOD guy and he's smarter than me, had the wherewithal to unplug the machine. So when I wake up, I'm on the flat of my back.

1:53:40He's right in my face. He's like, do you know where you are? On the ground. And I remember exhaling and seeing smoke come out of my mouth. My hair was real long at the time. It's all standing up, hair smoking, hands are all smoked out. I'm like, Jesus Christ. He's like, how do you feel? And I was like, shoulders dislocated something. I mean, shoulders like hanging down the hair, the whole thing shattered pieces. I stand up. I try to walk. I try to walk around for a bit. I tell the old lady, go get my keys. I'm going to drive myself to the hospital. Typical team guy fashion. She's like, you're an idiot.

1:54:11She's yelling at me. I'm telling her to shut up. Kids are running around. Everybody's screaming. He's trying to break down the machine so my kids don't run out. We get around to the corner and I've probably got to walk maybe 30, 40 feet to my car. Not far. Date myself a movie quote. You seen Kill Bill? Do you know the five finger death touch he does? He takes five steps and he follows him and dies. That's what happened to me. I stood up. I walked on the side of my house. I took one big step. She's inside. I can hear her run around with the kids trying to tell them all like, Hey, dad got hurt. You got to take him to the hospital.

1:54:44Your mom or grandma's going to come over. He's trying to break down the machine. I take a step and everything goes jet black on the periphery. I'm like, fuck, fuck, fuck. I take another one close in again. I'm like, I don't want to die in Virginia Beach. If you ask anybody who's ever met me, that is my number one fear. I do not want to die in Virginia Beach, no matter what. Don't let me die there. I take my third step. I'm in a toilet paper too. This is going to be it. I take one more, total blindness. I can't see anything. And my eyes are as open, as big as I can get them. I can't see anything, dude.

1:55:20Ears start roaring. I'm on the side of this house, panic at the disco. I'm not screaming. I'm just freaking out. Like I'm looking up. I can't see an ounce of daylight. Oh my fucking God. This is it. I'm blind. Oh my God. I start hyperventilating over and over and over as loud and as deep as I can. Probably 30, 40 seconds in my mind. It's got to drift off. And I see a little pinhole of light. Yep. I just stare at it. I keep power breathing. and it opens up, opens up, opens up, and then boom. Like I have superhuman vision. I can see everything. I can see the texture from the brick from 40 feet away.

1:55:56I mean, I can see anything and everything and I can feel everything. Like I can feel my wife walking through the house, living in a big brick house. I can feel her walking through it. Like it's, ask anybody who's ever been electrocuted, you start to feel weird stuff. He gets me up in that car, not let me drive to the hospital. We drive. It's probably three miles from me to our local hospital, like the big one. It hit every single pothole in Virginia Beach. It was like he doubled back to try to get it. If you ever had a collarbone broken or shattered, that's the move, man. You can feel it. You're even moving around.

1:56:31The whole thing's just hinging. I mean, your arm's basically just swinging around. It's terrible. We get in, get into the burn unit, and that was a time during COVID. So everybody in there has a mask on. Virginia Beach has probably the most gorgeous nurses on the planet, but you can only see their eyes. Beautiful mascara, crystal blue eyes. And now I can see it all now. So I'm processing it. Fingers are inside of you. I mean, they're doing all this stuff. They're moving my shoulders around. I'm screaming at them, telling them to stop. And I'll never forget. I tell them this, they all laugh at me.

1:57:02This nurse swings her beautiful eyes in front of me and she goes, Mr. Shipley, I am so surprised you still have a penis. Jesus Christ. And she's like, Oh honey, when guys get electrocuted, everything comes off. Fingers go off your nose, your ears. Like if you hit it with one side, your whole opposite arm will get blown off. Like it opens up your rib cage. And she goes, and what we can tell right now, outside of what's blown up on you, like you're good. So I make it through that, make it three or four more hours. They've got to lift me to a different burn unit, very specific. And when I get inside that one, this ER doc comes in.

1:57:39He's like, hey, dude, I'm probably 230 pounds at a time. I just rebuilt from this gnarly shoulder surgery. I've been in the best shape I've been in very long time. So I feel like Superman, except now I'm at a hospital bed. He comes in, he goes, hey, do you know what rhabdo is? I said, yeah. And he goes, when you get electrocuted, your body goes through, it produces an enzyme very similar to rhabdo. All your muscles liquefy, they go septic i gotta cut him out or you'll die all right okay and he goes so i gotta come back every hour and when your blood marker that enzyme hits a certain level i gotta start cutting you up And I'm sitting there, I'd been through so much, so many injuries, so many surgeries and all this stuff.

1:58:17I'm like, when you say cut me up, what does that mean? He goes, pecs, lats, quads, hamstrings, delts, biceps, triceps, shoulders, everything has to go. The bigger, I got to get it out quick because once it liquefies, it's going to go fast. I'm like, how sure? And he goes, as sure as I know the sun's about to set in three hours. Like happens to everybody. Like, oh my God. he leaves the room. I start hysterically crying. My wife is bawling and I just wanted a gun next to me so I could shoot myself. I, the lowest I'd ever been. I was already struggling with depression, everything. I'd leave that hospital bed, comes back in an hour later, checks my blood.

1:58:57So far, so good. Back in an hour, back in an hour, back in an hour, back in an hour, doing the whole thing. And he came back in probably five, six hours later. And he's like, Hey dude, for whatever reason not only is your enzyme marker not getting bitter um there's not a trace of in your whole body he's like we scheduled you for surgery next tuesday gonna put in a plate and like 15 screws in your collarbone you can go i mean i was in a hospital four or five days but yeah survived that survived the electrocution did all that stuff and that was really kind of the premise for tribe skates. That's how the whole thing started was all art therapy.

1:59:35And yeah, that, um, that was the worst, man. I had to rebuild my thumb. My tendon got attached to the nerve bundle. So my thumb got fused like this for about a year. We had to do a Z lengthening, open the whole thing up. So I could actually move my thumb again, caught my shorts on fire. Like it was, um, it was dicey, dude. That was, um, that was my transition. So when I transitioned out of the military, that's what I had to do. So by the time I actually got my DD214, you are retired on a Friday. Here's your retirement paperwork. I started a job the very next Monday. I couldn't even put on body armor because I just had surgery.

2:00:12So I had foam plates in, trying to teach these guys CQB, arms in two slings, just trying to pretend like it wasn't there. So I'd show up with double slings. I'd take them both off and I'd just stand there holding my kit like this because I couldn't move my arms. That's how I had to teach. That was my transition. Just hiding injuries. About as gold standard as you could get for making it worse than it already was. The worst thing that's ever happened to me. I had the best transition. Working with the Air Force was an amazing experience. That transition, that fall from grace was nothing I've ever seen.

2:00:44No one ever told you about it. I thought it was going to be the best thing that ever happened to me. Grow your long hair. I'm going to smoke weed. I'm going to do whatever I want to. Military doesn't own me. Yes, yes, yes. I've never craved anything more than I wanted to be back in. I knew exactly what everybody did I do not want to be a civilian I need to get back into work as soon as humanly possible And it wasn't an option Now what do I do? What do I do now? I don't know how to do anything else And that's when you really realize I've been developing a skill set that is useless to everyone else Nobody needs this I think Elon Musk is going to call me like Hey, I'm thinking about building a tier one assault team Want to be on it?

2:01:23That phone call is not coming, dude Nobody needs you and now if you get out and you get on social media and you ever talk about what you did, then you get bastardized by the community. You write a book, now everybody hates you. Open up a podcast, everybody hates you. What am I supposed to do? I don't know how to do anything. I didn't go to college, didn't get a real estate license. I don't have a relationship with my wife, don't have a relationship with my kids. I've sacrificed everything to try to be as good at this one thing as humanly possible and I was trying to do it for 30 years and now at 17, I don't have it.

2:01:51I don't have any transferable skillset. What do I do? Spiral, spiral, spiral. Yeah. You didn't have any sanity check. I had no group, no reason to get out of bed at 5 AM. I didn't have anything else. So when I'm laying there and rehab, I'm at my house, all gimp up. I get a knock at the door. I answer the door and it's my strength coach, Vernon Griffith, best strength coach in the fucking world. Oh, I love this guy. He was my guy that brought me back after the shoulder injury from skydiving, brought me all back, and he shows up, and he's like, oh, God, are you still milking it? Shut up. We're like gimpin' my kitchen.

2:02:29I sit down, and I am really feeling sorry for myself. I do not want to play the game. If my hands weren't as bad as they were, I probably would have killed myself. I couldn't do anything. I couldn't even pull a trigger. I don't even know how I do it. and he's like well if you're done making excuses what can you do nothing dude i can do nothing he's like well can you walk i was like i can barely walk yeah i mean i can walk he's like can you move your hands hands are all bandaged up and i was like yeah he's like can you curl your wrist i said yeah but i'm in double slings like i can't do a bicep curl i can't do anything he's like cool pulls out this blue two pound dumbbell about that big and puts it in my hand He goes, extend it, curl it up.

2:03:12Print your wrist, same thing. Looks like we can do wrist curls in 20 minute walks. We did that every single day, multiple times a day until I could pressurize my upper body. And then we got back in the gym, belt squatting, doing nothing with belt squats and lunges for eight weeks. Surgery all healed. Now we can do upper body. And then we just stayed on that exact same routine. So as low as I was, the only reason I was as low as I was is I didn't have a group. I don't have a group now. What do I have? I've got my family now. I don't have my routine. Get back on the routine. Back in the gym, living the exact same routine I've lived my entire life, surrounded myself with people better than me, naturally started to pull me out of depression.

2:03:51Anytime I've ever hit that bottom again, it's because I've been outside of my routine where I put my individual needs, what needs my group, and the guilt started to really affect me. So I don't try to overcomplicate anymore. So my transition out was terrible. my rebuild looked exactly like it's been every day since i was 15 or 16 back on the routine don't break it no matter what yeah that's me uh that's me getting electrocuted terrible and what about the psychological changes you know i understand that physiology and psychology are very closely linked for you but i think uh 50 % of pro athletes get divorced within one year of retiring from their sport.

2:04:37I would imagine that the same thing is true for bankruptcy. I would imagine that the same thing is true for drug use, for reckless driving incidents or deaths.

2:04:51What were the biggest challenges that you were facing psychologically. I wanted to kill myself from probably 2013 up until 2020, 2021, every day, every day, all day. And I didn't have a reason for it. I didn't know why. I was always a guy. I always looked down on people who committed suicide. Just always. I'm like, what a selfish thing to do. Like cry me a river. Cause you see these guys and you're like, you've got your dream job, your wife's a 10, 10 fingers, 10 toes on both your kids. Like they're star athletes. Like there's nothing for you to be upset with. Like, how could you do that? Why would you do that?

2:05:29And they never leave a nose. He never know until it happens to you. It's just so hard to wrap your head around. I just woke up every day. I just didn't want to play the game. I want to hit the big reset button on Nintendo and start over in a different life. And that was both in service and out of service and during transition. The medication helped for a little bit. So it was like, It was that quiet noise in the back of your head just kind of subsided. It was always there. I'd wake up in the morning like, nope, nope, just override, go to the gym, override and go to the gym, go to the range, do this, stay active like a shark.

2:06:01Just keep swimming. Every time I stopped, things got bad. Don't stop. Just keep going. Yeah. But once everything happened, we came off all those meds. I still had to be on quite a few of them. I wasn't, it wasn't a full med washout. We came off the hard like painkillers so I could feel all the pain. I was still on Sebalta, still on Adderall, still on a bunch of these things, blood pressure medications to stop nightmares, all this stuff. It's hard to quantify with how bad it was.

2:06:32Just everything you loved before you didn't have anymore. Didn't have the group. There's no group chat. No one ever can tell you to put it on again. There's no purpose. And now I don't have a job. Like what am I supposed to do now? I never planned on getting out. I never planned on not doing anything less than 30 years. I was going to do it forever because there's nothing else for me to do. I don't like anything else. I don't have another hobby. I'm not a scratch golfer. I don't want to be an entrepreneur. I don't want to do a podcast. Don't want to write a book. I don't want to do any of that.

2:06:58I just want to do this. And now I can't. What do I do now? I don't know. Circling my drain over and over. But I mean, now they're out smoking a bunch of weed, doing a bunch of stupid shit, started cheating on my wife, started doing all the things that I shouldn't have done, all the things I didn't do in the past, I started doing during that transition and it just, it ruined everything. Everything I tried to avoid my whole time in, I did as soon as I got out. Right? Like everything, like everything that everybody does to get them divorced, they've usually been doing their whole career. I'm the opposite.

2:07:36I didn't do any of it until I got out and I was like, yeah, I have no purpose. My divorce burned to the ground. I wanted to be divorced because I didn't know how to reintegrate with my family. I loved her, loved the kids, didn't want to lose what I had, but I didn't know how to integrate because I didn't have any practice. And I never looked at it like obtaining a skillset. Let me talk about being a good husband, being a good father, being a good friend. It's a skillset. You need repetition in order to be good at that. Like how are you going to, how do you raise kids? You got to be there. You got to show up.

2:08:08Are you going to be a good husband? You have to be there. like the pen pal thing doesn't work in reality you have to live together and i didn't have any experience doing it so when i transitioned like what's a job i can get right now that is going to get me out of virginia beach and away from this not because i don't want to be there but because i don't know how and in my in that version of myself in that moment the easiest thing to do was to separate and we get a job that's got me back in arizona skydiving as much as i can working these contracts like let me just stay busy yeah it's safe let me get out of here worse thing could happen started a spiral she got to the point where she was going to shit can me like she was over it all inside of a year just like everybody else and that's when I found out about Mexico Ibogaine 5-MeO DMT and all the things that was really like her last call for prayer if you love me you'll go to Mexico and do psychedelics she found it or you?

2:09:04she found it no way she sent it over to me it was a friend of mine And Marcus and Amber Capone, amazing. We were in teams together. And he went out to the West Coast and started preaching the gospel about Ibogaine and 5-MeO. And everybody on the East Coast said the same thing. We're all wearing Carhartts and flannels dipping Copenhagen. We're like, typical West Coast. Yep, he left the East Coast. He left the motherland. He went out West, and now he's crazy. Now, I'm so glad I went. So glad I went. We sat there and we watched this little infomercial. We knew their whole story. We knew the ugly truth and everything they had been through.

2:09:39And he was so open, so honest, so transparent. You're like, okay, well, he seems okay. He seems like he's got a really good balance point and you call him on the phone and he sounds amazing. He was one of those dudes back in the days when I knew him, his eyes were as black as your shirt. If you wanted to topple a regime with just a single individual, like no rules, no mercy, you just slouch him. He was vicious. like one of those things like you ever walk through the SPCA and you see these pit bulls faces all scarred up you're not going to stick your hand in that cage and try to pet it that's what he was he ain't like that anymore he can still be that guy but he has full control over it and I think that's what everybody wanted like I don't want to lose my edge I don't want to be a pacifist I don't want to regret everything I've done but I can't control this version of me that I've now created I just don't want to be at the mercy of it he found control maybe if I go down there and lick this poison dart frog or whatever they're doing maybe it'll work for me so that's why we went what was that experience like um my life was unraveling in the moment like everything that could be going wrong in my life was going wrong right then like everything I was leading multiple affairs one of the girls was pregnant everything that could be going wrong in my life was happening right then at that moment.

2:11:04I went down to Mexico with no intention of coming back. I didn't want to. I have a picture of my phone post-Mexico of me standing on a cliff's edge, looking down about 80 feet, jagged rocks underneath it. I came this close to jumping. That's after Mexico. Because I knew what I was going home to. I was like, this isn't going to work. I'm just going to jump. There's no reason. If I slip in a fall right now, she'll get all my medical, she'll get my life insurance. It'll just be an accident because I I'm not going home to face this music. But we went down there. I went down with a bunch of heavy hitters, probably eight, 10 guys.

2:11:37This little compound in Tijuana, they had a bunch of team guys, we call it holding space. They're cooking the meals, they're sitting with you, kind of walking you all through it, but it's a five-day process.

2:11:49You get down the first day, they give you a drug test, which is kind of ironic. Go make sure you're not on Adderall stimulus. You have to come off of all the meds. that was the thing that I didn't realize was going to be just like being back in that detox hospital. Coming off Cymbalta, if you've ever been on - What is that? It's an SSRI, but it's really for pain management, for everything else. But I was on that heavy doses of gabapentin. So when you're on that combination of gabapentin and Cymbalta, they call it the jolts. When you come off of it, your nervous system starts firing again. So you'll sit there and you'll just do this.

2:12:23You're just driving around, you're just jolting. Like hypnic jerks in a way. Yeah. But it's super frightening because you can't control it and you don't know they're coming on. So you'll like go to get a cup of coffee and you'll just jolt. She's like, what the f*** is going on with you? And I was like, I don't know. I don't know. It's happening. But now there's no Adderall. There's no stimulants. There's no pain meds. There's no Ambien. There's nothing. So now I'm a show of who I thought I was. And now I know I am really, truly dependent on these meds. I was probably on, at the time I went down there, probably 40 to 50.

2:12:54the overall I was taking 60 pills a day. We weaned off a couple of those things. The prazosin for nightmares, a couple of those things, but the core remained a lot of pills. This is after you'd been washed out of them previously. Yeah, because a lot of them, you have to stay on them. Like for them, like you're never getting off Adderall. You're never getting off Symbolita. You're never getting off this, never getting off that. So we're still on them all. But now I have washed off of everything completely. And when you're truly sober for the first time, you get to realize the life you've lived and the injuries you've taken because now there's nothing masking it.

2:13:27Feeling myself get up in the morning was humbling. Gimping around, limping, just everything hurt. Fibromyalgia could barely hold a pencil, like hands just shaking all day. Like it was embarrassing. From who I was a year and a half ago to who I am now, a shell. Like I don't want to do this, dude. I don't. I didn't want to go to Mexico. I kind of went just to shut her up. Yeah, I had no intention of going back. we get around there they give you the piss test you get one night of sleep the very next day is you're going to do ivogaine so it comes from the aboga plant west africa grind this little shrub you take these two pills you write down some nonsense on a piece of paper you want to burn like things you're trying to get rid of i can't write down any of my stuff because nobody in my group knows that i've been cheating on my wife nobody they don't know i've got a girl pregnant They don't know any of this stuff.

2:14:18It's just me now. I dropped that thing in a fire. Can you remember what you wrote? Self. Like, what am I trying to get rid of? Myself. Dropped in a fire and let it go. Boom. We go upstairs. They've got this sound booth going. It's like these disco lights are going crazy. They've got this yoga practitioner and this white linen thing. She's gorgeous, but she's playing these bowls. She reminds me of Ursula and the Little Mermaid. just doing the whole thing. Like it's a lot to take in. And for us, it's so out there. It's so foo-foo. Like you're looking around the room at all the people that are in there and everybody's from your old line of work.

2:14:59You're like, did you ever think we'd be doing this bullshit? Like, I'm so glad nobody knows we're down here. I lay back down. And if you ask the guys, I probably made it 15 minutes, started snoring, dead asleep, thought I was asleep. That's when the whole thing started to happen. And it's so weird because some guys don't see anything, but the medicine goes through your body regardless. It kills all your addictions in a single shot. I don't care if it's heroin, gambling, sex, porn, women, whatever it is, all your addictions are gone in a minute. So I dipped, just for reference, I dipped two cans of Copenhagen every single day from the time I was 18 up until that morning.

2:15:41Every single day I dipped two cans of Copenhagen. When I woke up from Ibogaine. I've never touched it again. I love Copenhagen. I would put in Copenhagen right now. I can't even get it to form in my mouth. It's like my body is auto rejected. I can't do it. I miss it. I didn't drink coffee for six months. I want to drink coffee. I'd get it right through my mouth one. No, I just wouldn't drink it. Weird. So I'm laying there, this whole experience starts to happen. You hear these bees buzzing, all this stuff. And I remember parts of the dream and it'll flash back every now and then. But it was like I was free falling through a vertical wind tunnel and these dresser drawers were opening up and they were just distant memories.

2:16:24But you could shift your body over and fly and fall into it. And now you're inside, like it's realistic as a studio-ish. I could feel the temperature, the humidity, the weight of the t-shirt, everything. It was so bizarre. And you could just sit there and relive it. Like whatever's happening right now, I could just sit here, be in third person, just watch it. I could drop into who I am and watch the interaction. I could drop into the other point of view and live it through their eyes. Even if they're yelling at me or whatever, I could be them and feel the rage, understand why they were that mad and agree with them.

2:16:55Like you fucked that up. You deserve that. I'd be doing the exact same thing. And it builds a lot of empathy. You're like, I totally get it now. I get why you were so mad. I get why I did this. I get why I did that. And it made you come to terms with a lot of your mistakes. that lasts for 16 hours. I mean, like you were in, you were in the medicine. I woke up the very next day and I have never wanted to teleport home so bad in my whole life. I've never been homesick. I've said I'm homesick. I don't get homesick. I don't. Now I get homesick because I've got a good relationship, but back then never.

2:17:32And that was the weirdest thing because I knew how much chaos was waiting for me back at home because all this stuff is going to uncork, right she's going to find out about all this stuff there's no other way around it and that was really the realization is i'm going to have to go home and if she doesn't know i'm going to have to tell her that's just not going to be met well they give you a full period it's called the gray day where you're kind of navigating the medicine you do group circles and all this stuff and we sit around this big group i woke up like 8 a.m the next morning like fired up ready to go i'm chatty kathy now like i didn't want to talk before now i want to talk i want to know what happened to you inside of that medicine because the shit that happened to me, I got to let out.

2:18:11We sit around that room and all the guys started talking and I'd known most of these guys for my entire career. Like my best friend was in there. My business partners were in there. I mean, like we really know each other and only a couple of dudes knew how bad it was. Like, I mean, I had episodes while I was still active where I was sitting in my guest room with a trash bag sitting next to me. I was going to put it in my head and shoot myself in the head to not make a mess so she could resell the house. Like I've told that in confidence to several people. They were all in that room and they were like, oh man, I'm so sorry.

2:18:43I'm so sorry. I can't believe that was happening to you. That next morning, me too, me too, me too. And I was pissed. I was like, you were going to let me shoot myself my guest room and you were never going to say me too. What's going on with you? And they start to open up and they start to talk about past trauma, childhood stuff, sexual abuse, everything. You've been carrying that for 40 years. He's like, my wife doesn't know. My kids don't know. My parents don't know. You start to see the correlation, the compartmentalization to the ultra extreme. Like a certain point you have to be able to share something and we got so used to just not doing it.

2:19:19You just held it inside. Then you do 5-MeO-DMT. You ever done 5-MeO-DMT? You should. You should. It's not like anything on this planet. It's super fast. It takes no time to build up, but they set you down and it's supposed to be a purge. And knowing everything I know now, and I've been down quite a few times now, and I've taken guys down and hosted a medicine forum. Everything that conjured up from Ibogaine, if I would not have done 5-MeO and I would have went home in that state, I probably wouldn't be here. I had not come to terms and accepted everything that I did, I wanted to go home and confess and do all this stuff.

2:20:02I was disgusted with myself. Every, every vile thing I had ever said to my wife or my kids or relationships I had sacrificed and compartmentalization, I felt so guilty for it. And it was like that yard of beer, just trauma. It was coming out of my mouth. And it's like, you know, those moments where you're sitting there brushing your teeth, looking at yourself in the mirror and you're like, DJ, I can't believe you've done this. I can't believe this is your reality. Like you've actually done this you have to live with this shit now how how did you get so far off track from where you were to this point now and you're sitting there literally staring in the mirror just like this in disbelief like i can't believe you fucking did this like this is you're really gonna have to live through this i can't i can't do it i don't want to go home i don't want to look at her i don't want to break her heart i don't want to lose the things i have right now i don't want to face reality and it kind of gets you worked up in a 5-MeO DMT.

2:21:00We laid back there and you smoke out of this crack pipe and it looks so intimidating. Like it's in a little glass vial. I mean, you're heating up like you're smoking a crack rock. And as soon as you lay your head back, when you exhale, it's like your whole body consolidates into a single spark and then it explodes. It feels and it looks like, you know, when Star Trek is taking off those trails, it's like that. And then you end up in stratosphere, just surrounded by whatever. It is the craziest thing. But the guy told me when he goes, he's like, hey, whatever happens, let it happen. If you think you're going to die, die.

2:21:35If you think you're going to explode, explode. If you think you're going to drown, just drown. Just one big exhale and let it take you. In the moment, you don't do that. In the moment, you're like, you're trying to hold onto it, hold onto it. So I would throw my arms out. I would scream and then I'd ball up and I'd cry 10, 15 minutes of like the ugliest crying you've ever seen. Uncontrollable, like throwing out, crying. I'm like, cry so hard you throw up. I woke up and I sat up and he looked at me and he went, that wasn't it. What do you mean that wasn't it? Like that was everything I had. He's like, hit him again.

2:22:11You want me to do that again? He's like, hit him again. I did six rounds of that, dude. Back to back to back, over and over. And on the sixth one, this nurse came over, little Mexican nurse, super cool. And there was a teen guy sitting off to my left or right. And he's like, you want to die, right? I said, yeah. And he goes, then kill yourself. Do it right now with medicine. Stop messing around. Stop with all the theatrics. Stop crying. Just do it. Kill yourself right now. It is true. I don't want to go home. I don't want to confess this. I am. I'll do it right now. I'm going to smoke this with the intention to kill myself and I'm going to hold my breath until it kills me because I'm not going home.

2:22:51Give me that thing again. And now I went through with the intention I'm going to close this whole chapter out. So I envisioned the smoke was purple. And as I'm smoking this thing, I can feel it going through my whole body. I'm trying to push it down to my tippy toes. I'm trying to coat my whole self. I held back and I held that thing as long as I could, I could feel my eyes starting to flutter. Like it's really coming on. It feels like there's a, it feels like there's a cell phone this big behind your sternum and the whole thing starts to vibrate. And you're like, you can't take it anymore. As soon as you exhale, the whole blast off happens.

2:23:19And when that one happened, it killed me, killed my ego. It reset the whole baseline. And when I opened up from that one, she looked at me and goes, that was it. How you feel now? And I was like, I've got to get home. I got to get home right now. I got to see my old lady. gotta see my old lady gotta see my girls right now gotta get home gotta get home right now and then everything else kind of fell apart from there and we brought it all back together and it was rough man it was so rough it was so worth it though if i wouldn't have gone down there i wouldn't be here 100 there's not a chance not a chance you gotta go you're really not selling it to me bro okay let's say somebody's somebody's listening and they go i'm not on 60 meds a day who needs me i'm not ex-war veteran with a ton of ptsd from being shot out and shooting at people and stuff like i don't have ptsd from that at all not an ounce of my experience not a single piece of it had anything in the military it went from my childhood zero to 16 gapped it and then it picked me up when i transitioned up.

2:24:31Gapped the entire experience. I've been down, I've done, I began four or five times and five of you with DMT. I've never had a military experience ever. Nothing. Trauma's trauma. Last time I went down, I went down with co-ed, males, females, civilians, women, everybody. Everybody's on the exact same path. You got trauma. That's how you get through it. That is 15, 20 years of therapy in five days. It's unreal. We've recently seen Trump sign that bill to fast track research and he's got literally got x seals stood around him do you not watch our film okay so marx and amber they're all part of that thing they're really when it kicked off that whole initiative we did a documentary it's on netflix called in ways and war and that's really where the whole thing started from everybody got hooked up on there and got a bunch of green berets and a bunch of regular military fighter pilots are all in there and we just keep success after success after success.

2:25:26And you see it and you're like, why are we not doing this? They've been doing it for thousands of years. Like, why are we not letting us go? And it's often a bunch of spillover stuff in the 50s, 60s, and 70s about psychedelics are bad and they'll rot your brain. And I don't know, man. But I know it works. And I know that I'm not on a single medication. Nothing. Not a pain pill, not an SSRI, not an Ambien, nothing. Nothing. What do you think happened? it killed everything I had inside me that was bad. All my addictions, everything. So I'm not addicted to anything. Anything I do now, it's because I want to, which isn't necessarily always a good thing because I like to do some bad shit too, but it resets the whole baseline.

2:26:11Like everything that I was struggling with, it swiped it all the way. That becomes an issue if you try to reintegrate. And that's what I tell the guys now. The version of me that came back from Mexico was so far out from the person my wife had come accustomed to for the last 10 years, she didn't believe it. If you watch the film, you'll get to see it in real time. When I was going through the Ibogaine, my wife hacked my phone and found out about all the affairs. Simultaneous. So I don't have my cell phone for five days. So the whole time I'm going through, she's getting lawyers and divorcing me.

2:26:46Boxed all my stuff, took it to the shop, dropped it off, drew up divorce papers. It's a hell of a reintegration. Cousin. Got an ultrasound photo. She's got it all. She saw everything I had done. Now action. So when I come out of the medicine, they give you your cell phone right before you cross the border. They give you a little script to say like, Hey, I'm, I'm so happy to be on the other side of the medicine. I can't wait to come home and see you and explain everything. It's just too much to put into a text or into a phone call. So I'd rather just not talk until I see you live. that's what you're supposed to say.

2:27:18So everybody goes out, they all call their wives, hey, hey, hey, straight to voicemail. Well, typical. My wife never answers her phone anyway. Text her, doesn't go through. Call her, nothing, nothing, nothing. Like three, four hours, nothing. I'm getting ready to fly home. We're going from San Diego to Atlanta, Atlanta to Norfolk. We leave, we land in Atlanta. As soon as I power my phone in Atlanta, I get a notification. The password to your Instagram has been changed. And I flick it over and it's my ghost account. I'm like, oh. Now the password to email has been changed. I was like, oh no. Shit.

2:28:00I'm not even going to have a chance to tell her now. Like now there's no integration. Now I've lost everything. I went out to Mexico. I've got this new version of myself, but I'll never be able to show it to her. She's not taking me back after this. and then everything kind of went from there dicey dude dicey you want to hear about it we land in norfolk we drive into the shop i get out my other two business partners time all their families are out there all the employees are out there hugs and kisses and i can feel the tension the other wives know a couple of the employees they know because they've seen my wife bringing in boxes for the last three days, stacking my office.

2:28:41Still haven't got a hold of her, but I'm still not totally sure. Like there's a chance that by some freak mystery. And then I get into the building and I walk upstairs and I open up my office and I mean, floor to ceiling, there must've been 25, 30 boxes. Everyone was perfectly folded. Socks, underwear, black t-shirts, normal t-shirts, jeans, this, this military, everything I owned was in those boxes. I'm like, I looked over and the other two wives are staying out there with my two business partners. I'm like, what's going on? They have no idea. And I just looked at them. I was like, gave him a hug, kissed him on the cheek.

2:29:20I was like, see you on Monday. Fist bump, knowing I was never going to see him on Monday. Went straight downstairs. We've got a big armory. Grabbed my pistol, shoved him on my waistband, jumped in my truck and drove. Got in my car and I was driving out to, um, it was a private beach on the backside of this military base. We used to have a house. we lived out there. It's a one-shot road, and it's probably about a 20-minute drive. And I was probably 10 minutes into this drive, and it terminates. It's a dead end. And she was tracking my cell phone. We had to share my iPhone, so she knew where I was going.

2:29:50And I got about 10 minutes down, and she called my phone. And my heart rate is at 190. It's like, I can't pick it up. And I almost didn't. It's like, oh. I pick it up, and I was like, hello? love she goes where are you and what are you doing and i said patsy i i honey i don't have the strength in me i don't have the strength to see you right now and she's like where are you going i said i don't want to talk about it um i'm just so fucking sorry and i hung up the phone made it down there and backed into a parking spot and i put on a song and i told myself at the end of the song as soon as it was done i was going to get out i was going to walk down the beach to the water's edge waist deep water i was going to shoot myself in the head close the whole thing i'll just be done.

2:30:34No, no goodbye. No sad story. No, nothing. Just let me close this thing out and be done. And as soon as I backed in, she had already told two or three of the wives that lived on that road that I was driving down there. They had jumped out with their husbands and had flanked me and were staged all around the vehicle because they didn't know what I was going to do. I guess they were going to try to apprehend me or something. What was the song you chose? Experience by Ludovico. you ever heard it yeah you have guaranteed we'll pull it in a little bit um that song had probably god man 30 seconds left maybe maybe 30 seconds left and she called again and i looked up and she was right there driving down the road it's like oh fuck sitting on the back of my truck got a pistol right next to me just waiting for the song then here we go she pulls right up, walks over.

2:31:29I've never seen anybody as strong as her, ever. And she walked right up, opened my legs up and walked up, essentially crotch to crotch and leaned over and pulled my sunglasses off and then exploded in hysteria. My eyes were crystal clear. They were green for the first time in a decade. She saw it. She knew that something had happened and we just laid there or stood there, held each other and just bawled. And she backed up and she goes, how the fuck could you do this to me? I don't know. I don't know. I don't have any excuse. Went through the whole thing and I told her, I was like, I know there's no way we're going to work this out.

2:32:07I know there's no way you're ever going to let me see my kids again. I know this, I know this, I know this. I just want an opportunity to say goodbye to them. And she said, DJ, we've come so far right now. Like we've been through so much together. We've been together since I was 22. We've been through so much right now. We don't have to stay married. You can't close this out right now. We'll solve it tomorrow. Let's go. Get in the car. Let's go home. Let's see the girls. Let's pretend like this hasn't happened and we'll deal with it tomorrow. Let's not ruin this for them. They're excited to see you.

2:32:44Let's just, we'll shelf it. She put all that shit on the back burner. Right after that, she goes, but before we do, I want to hear it. I want to hear everything. Everything what? Every detail, every ounce of it. Every single person, every single date, tell me everything right now. That way I never have to ask you again. And I did. We sat down and we went through everything I had done, all the affairs, everything. And we got through it right then. We went back home that night, reintegrated with the kids, and we sat down on the edge of my bed, and I scrolled through my phone, and every person who was of conflict or potential conflict, I block and deleted their contact.

2:33:26Everybody. Family members. Anybody. Anybody who had been toxic in my life that I'd been trying to foster that relationship or anything else. No different than SEAL teams. I need to control the controllables, and right now, all of this is a bandwidth suck, and I'm not doing it ever again. That one guy that every time he calls, my heart kind of drops a little bit like, God, what does this guy want? block and delete, block and delete, probably 150 people gone. And then I told her, I was like, we don't have to stay married. We can get divorced. We can do whatever we want to. I'm just asking you for one singular day to show you that I've changed.

2:33:59And then the day I don't, I want you to shit can't me. As soon as it happens, we went and signed paperwork, signed a post-nup, all this stuff. I'm like, as soon as I do anything, she's got the house, she's got this, all my assets, giving her take it all i don't want a single thing i just want one day and i take it set i take it one day at a time every single day it's been the greatest thing to ever happen to us we our relationship is so badass now if if you sit in a room with me and her together we'll be your two favorite people she is a fucking unicorn man she is she is truly my best friend now and i feel so guilty because i put her on the back burner for so long because I knew that I could.

2:34:39She never left, never strayed away. She is the ultimate team wife. And I just, I refuse to see it for the longest time. That is the thing that haunts me now. I don't have any PTSD. People are like, oh, thank you for your service. Like, don't thank me for my service. Like, I would have paid to do that job. I'm like, oh, you must be so torn up on the things you had to do. Like, no, no, not a bit. I loved every ounce of it. Even the bad stuff, I loved it. I loved the people I sacrificed to be able to do the selfish things I wanted to do. Her, most of all. hard man but i'll tell you what that medicine that is that's the only reason you don't get to navigate through that with marriage counseling and talk therapy and date nights every tuesday that ain't gonna get you through that it's not and that was our big conflict is i had changed so much over those five days that she thought it was bullshit she's like there's no way you went from that guy to this guy in five days like i don't know how else to show you except you got to go do a journey.

2:35:37I got her to go down and do psilocybin and 5-MeO DMT. Why not the ibogaine? She thought ibogaine would be too strong for her. I'm going to get her to go do ibogaine with me. We're going to do a couple's journey together at some point, but I got her to do essentially the same people, psilocybin, 5-MeO, and then we did it one together with psilocybin, MDMA, and 5-MeO. By the time we finished those, she knew exactly what it was. She's like, he's changed for sure. She's like, you can't like I just did psilocybin and she is so different from the person she was that everything made sense now. Why are you continuing to go back to do more Ibogaine if you think that you've already made the realizations that you needed?

2:36:22The second time I went down there is because I was taking somebody else. One of my buddies really on a struggle bus about the end at all. And I was like, Hey man, I'll go with you. I had no intention of doing the medicine with him. And when I got down, he's like, what do you mean you're not going to do it? I'll do it. Give it to me. I threw it right down. No prep, no warmup, and just sent it. I was like, hey man, I told you there's nothing to be afraid of. You cold barred Ibogaine. Oh, send it. I've gone down there two or three times to host. You'll cook meals, you'll do dishes. Keep on getting roped into it.

2:36:53And then this last time we did it for the film, I had a buddy of mine who got shot up really bad on my second deployment. He was like an idol to me. And he was just struggling really, really hard, man. And I convinced him to go down there. And I told him, I was like, I'll stop whatever I am doing. It's in the film. And I was like, anything. I don't care what I'm doing. If I'm on this fucking Rogan and you call me, I'll get up in the middle of the interview. I'll fly to San Diego and we'll go together. And he did. I couldn't believe he did. He called me. He goes, whenever you're ready, I'm ready to go.

2:37:21How's Saturday? And he's like, if you'll fly out here, I'll go. I was on a plane 24 hours. I flew out there, took him down to Mexico. did the whole thing. It's funny that you're on a hair trigger alert to go and kill people around the world for quite a while and you're on a hair trigger alert to go and save people. And I began now. Amen. Like I get so much more benefit out of saving people through mental health than I ever did killing people. And I love killing people. Best job you'll ever have. But now, you know, he got through that whole experience and then we made it probably another year and a half and he was ready to go again.

2:37:52And it's the same thing. He's like, I don't know if I could do it again. I'll send it it's alright we went down again I flew out to San Diego and I cold called him and I was like hey man do you remember when you said you needed me to go to Mexico with you he's like yeah I'm in San Diego the bus leaves from Mexico in 30 minutes don't let me down he did his girlfriend dropped him off gave him to me none but a backpack we went down to Mexico and he's never been better I don't know man but I do know that it's magic When you take that medicine, you cannot believe it grows in the earth. You can't believe it.

2:38:30I can't believe that people have used it for thousands of years and it has not been more mainstream. You can't quantify it. There's nothing on this planet. I've taken every drug there is. Everything. I've taken a bunch of weird stuff too during the transition. There's nothing like that. Every ounce of your addiction is gone instantly. It's crazy. What about for people who don't have addictions? Everybody has addictions. Sometimes it's your own ego. whatever you have going on, depression, suicide ideation, substance abuse, women, whatever it is, whatever your thing is, you just don't feel right anymore.

2:39:04I'd go do that. What's the case for not doing it? If you're not healthy enough to do it, you got some preexisting heart condition, you weigh 500 pounds, can't go do it because it drops your heart rate really, really low. I got a low heart rate at any rate, like in the low forties and mine drops in the high thirties. I mean, it drops a lot. but man i'm telling you how many people come out and have had an experience that's so difficult that they're not themselves anymore in a bad way because i've heard about this psychic fracturing why people take lsd or psilocybin thc can do this for some people

2:39:43i've never seen that happen unless people reintegrate back into the same toxic situation so that's what i really try to encourage guys now like if you think you can go down and take these four pills of Ibogaine and smoke around a DMT and go back to that same toxic marriage and go back to drinking a 12 pack a day and it's going to iron out, it won't. So that's what a lot of guys don't realize is you get a lot of guys come back from there and they get divorced. They realize like I've been married to this toxic chick who hasn't been my partner for 20 years. They get back there and they're like, it has been you.

2:40:13I've been miserable this whole time, not because of me, but because of you. And they get divorced and they flourish or they come back and they realize that their addictions got there, alcohol got there. Most of the guys quit drinking completely. Like Rob quit drinking completely. Like I was a professional alcoholic for a long time and it doesn't serve you. It's not a superfood. It's not going to make you better. I'm about social drinking. Like I enjoy consuming alcohol. I just don't do it right now for a variety of different reasons. But if you do the work, especially the work going up to it, talking with the therapist, really getting your mind right, really, really thinking about your intention of what you're trying to get accomplished and really lean in heavy, like no different going into a yoga retreat, like really, really live it.

2:40:53Like be a method actor. Like if Daniel Day Lewis was going to take Ibogaine, live it like that. The benefit for it weighs the risk. It just does. I could not imagine not having it. I couldn't imagine. You got to go. I'll go with you. Fuck you, dude. You, me, Huberman? Come on, baby. I told him the same thing. I was like, you want to go down there? I'll snap my fingers. I'll get you down there. I've been talking to him. I mean, he knows he's been - Conor McGregor just went. that is a really interesting one. So I knew first hand, second hand, third hand, that Connor had gone. And then I had it in the back of my mind.

2:41:34It was like, hmm, I heard that the way that he was convinced to get across there wasn't that he was going to go and do Ibogaine. I also heard that he didn't have a particularly good washout period in advance of it. Now, Now, what was interesting was that video, a bunch of videos that were on Twitter went pretty viral of Connor coming back. I have been saved. The Lord has spoken to me and a da da da da. And I was like, that's my began talking. Everybody's like that when they get back. Everybody wants to become a psychic healer. Like they want to do all this weird. They just do. I'll be honest, 50 % of the people that leave Ibogaine, they get their coaching license to integrate people either pre-integration or post-integration.

2:42:24Well, you've done it. And I mean, you're front end of the funnel for it now, right? Yeah. I mean, I didn't go to any, I don't want to go down the rabbit hole with the whole thing. I don't do the whole coaching thing, but I mean, I've coached dozens of people to go down there now. Yep. Because I know it works. I mean, I've tried everything. I've done still eight ganglion blocks, I mean, 14 inch needles. I've done two SGBs. I've done everything. I've done everything that you could possibly do. SGB's fucking gnarly. Yeah, right. It's funny. That's better. That one actually worked. Still, the gangly block didn't do anything for me except give me a droopy eye for eight hours.

2:42:56It is kind of funny. The droopy eye is funny. Yeah. Do you get both sides? Do you do one after the other or do you just get one? You would have done it on separate days. You wouldn't have done them together. I did three total. You must have got both sides. There's no way that they would have done three on the same side. No, no, they didn't just three on the same side. Yeah. Dude, I didn't feel much benefit, but I was also heavy doped up then too. That might have managed to counteract it a little bit. Yeah. There's an interesting one for me with the, the cellar. One thing that I wish that I hadn't done, I was using laughing gas, I was using Nox while it was happening.

2:43:30And I wish that I hadn't, because I wish I was able to like feel the onset more. That transition, I think would have been interesting. But I mean, you're not able to think about much when you're like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, sucking on a hookah that's filled with fucking NOS. Yeah. Do you remember the needle going in? Yeah. The pop? Yeah. Dicey. That'll wake you up. Dicey. When he came in, he broke that needle out and showed it to me. I was like, you're going to shove that through my throat? And he's like, oh yeah, it's when I get it up on the TV screen.

2:44:01Yeah. Yeah, you can watch it. I was turned face to the ultrasound, watching Homeboy slot it in between two vertebrae. Yeah. Yeah, it's fun. One thing that I did get from that which was interesting, my HIV went up by about 40 % overnight and it held for months. Wow. That was pretty interesting. I may also explain just how tuned up some bits of my nervous system were. It's interesting. It's interesting, man. I'm in Austin, which is kind of the home of the psychedelic spiritual tourist. and uh it's given me an interesting

2:44:42relationship i think to using psychedelics for healing uh in some ways it has made it more normalized but in other ways it's made it feel a little bit more like a fashion accessory and to anyone else that's ever been in a communal sauna here in austin they know exactly what i'm talking about when talking about the fucking ancestral trauma that they felt through their animus. I'm like, ah, I saw you in here two months ago and you're the same asshole that you were from back then. And that's the integration side, but I don't think I've ever heard anybody talking about Ibogaine. So there may be a dose or a compound or a plant that you can take, which is inescapable from an integration perspective.

2:45:33But what made me think about the SGB was the integration window that you have for the SGB is real important. Within six weeks after that, that's sort of re-imprinting.

2:45:46yeah I it's interesting to me to think about this sort of stuff especially as someone who cares an awful lot about mental health who thinks about it a lot who is a proponent of people going and doing therapy of doing CBT or act of people doing talk therapy and getting in touch with their emotions I wonder whether part of it is almost certainly part of it is fear like fuck like that sounds scary that sounds really scary scary what if something bad happens which is exactly what you're going to try and work through which is the ambient fear of what if something bad happens which is exactly how you're existing through the rest of your life no balls no blue chips anything worth doing it's got to have a risk component to it it's not worth doing at all i mean what are you afraid of you know keep being the same depressed version of you has been for the last decade i mean get be willing to make a change.

2:46:41And that's what a lot of people won't do. They won't drop their ego. They go to the medicine, they come back and they're like, there's nothing wrong with me. Like I can drink, I can drink. I'm totally in control. You probably shouldn't know. He's like, I'm only going to have two or three every now and then two to three turns to six really, really fast. Ask me how I know. Don't do it. If you're not really, really going to lean in hard, don't waste your time. Don't take up somebody's slot. It already costs a lot of money. There's thousands of veterans and first responders that are on a list to try to go down there right now in you, because you have of an Amex card are going to jump the line and you're not going to take it serious and you're going to give Ibogaine a bad name.

2:47:16Don't. If you really want to do it, do it like a professional and go the whole way. Like really, really do it. I've never seen anybody who is really focused on all the, all the training going up into it and really focused on the post-treatment integration who hasn't had a phenomenal outcome. What's the percentage of success and what's the amount of change? Ooh, um, they have the numbers for sure. I would say depression is, God, you probably pulled up on chat, GBT. I'd say, um, I'd say as far as depression, PTSD symptoms, they're reduced by 80 or 90 % instantly. Like people that they can't even get out of bed.

2:48:00They couldn't even sit in this room because they're sitting behind him. I mean, just so hyper that you can't even be around them that to baseline normal you'd never even tell who they are never tell i mean guys who they break out in hysteria just crying all day they don't know why they won't tell you why baseline normal 12 hours how long does it feel it feels i mean how how long does the high last like when you're done the trip um depending on how you are your body wait 12 to 18 hours some guys go longer what's the felt sense of that many years or does it feel like you're there for 16 hours it you lose track of time pretty quick for me it feels like it's by quick but it also feels like you've been there for a lifetime but man like you can stand up like you know where you are but here's the interesting thing and everybody who's going down there will probably tell you the same thing you wear eye shades you can sit up lift up the eye shades look around the room, know that's you, know that's him.

2:49:00I can see the nurse, I can wave like, hey, I need to take a piss. They'll unplug your leads, you're hooked to an EKG machine, all that stuff. They'll hope you go to the bathroom. Then you can go back in, so to speak. So you can, there's a little bit of a pause. Well, some guys will have an experience during their trying to take a piss. And now they're like swirling around, they're screaming, like they're in the thing. But the weirdest thing is, guys will talk about it, you'll be sitting there and all of a sudden you'll hear your neighbor, he'll say something, you'll look over at him and you're like, What?

2:49:29You'll have a full conversation and then you realize you have the eye shades on. You look up, but you can see him. You lift him up and he is in the position. You can see with the eye shades and you'll watch everybody do this. They'll lift him back up and be like, I can see right through. I swear to God, you can have a full conversation. That guy will wake up and he's like, what are you saying? I don't know. Put the eye shades back on and you're like, God, were they on? Were they off? You can't tell. You can see right through them. What's the difference between a boga and ibogaine? A boga is the root plant it comes from.

2:50:00Essentially the same thing. I don't know if it's the chemical makeup or whatever, but it's the root of the boga plant. And it's two capsules. If you want to take a boost, you can take two or three. Right, but it's just literally... Two pills. You go in, you take them, it's 15 minutes, you burn your little paper. By the time you walk upstairs, you're like, man, I don't feel anything. And then you watch everybody do this. Okay. better sit down. They'll give you like a maraca. You start banging this thing. You're staring in a mirror and you can watch your whole face start to move around. Typically staring in a mirror is bad advice when you're on psychedelics.

2:50:36You think it would be, but that's how you reconnect with yourself. That's how you know the experience is happening. But you'll see everybody. They're sitting there beating this maraca and they'll come by and like, you feel anything yet? And you're like, I'm not sure. And you're like, you've been here for an hour and a half. You're definitely in. I better lay down. You better lay down. Put the eye shades on. You lay down. Funny. But for me, I don't move. Most guys purge quite a bit. I had a guy just went down. He threw up so hard he threw his back out. Like couldn't walk. They're not throwing anything up though.

2:51:04It's all their trauma. But anybody in that room, they'll give you, it's like a big bronze bowl and you'll throw up and you'll hear them.

2:51:15you'll hear it bounce you know there's nothing in there all the practitioners will tell you about he's like that's your trauma hitting the bowl it feels like you're throwing up buckets of vomit there's nothing in there you've been fasting the entire day there's nothing in your system you're not throwing up at all that's all your trauma well purging it over and over same thing with five and meal you get them just purging this bucket nothing's coming out but it feels like it is. You feel like I'm filling up this five-gallon bucket. You better dump it. What's the relationship between the Ibogaine and the 5-MeO?

2:51:4624 hours of separation. I don't know if they have any correlation. They've just paired these two together, but this one particular clinic, it's amazing. You mentioned, if I'd just done the first one, the second one, what is it that the 5-MeO does that you didn't get from the Ibogaine? Think about everything you've compressed, everything you've compacted down, your trauma. You just buried it way down deep, like stuff that happened to you in five or six that you don't even remember you've buried and I began it all comes to the surface it gives you a photographic memory from the past like you relive it all like it's on the forefront of things you never thought you'd remember you relive them right then right there and now it's flipped so all the present trauma is now at the bottom all the stuff in the past is up top and now you can't get away from it I would just go home with that I don't want to go home with that the five meal let you strip it all away so when you smoke that it empties your cup.

2:52:40It dumps it all in one shot. It's like, you feel 15 pounds lighter, you wake up next morning, you're like, I feel amazing. I'm not on any drugs. I'm stone cold, sober. I got no nicotine, no caffeine, no drugs, no alcohol. I've never felt better in my entire life, even though my life is in chaos. I feel like that meme, everything's just on fire. Yeah, I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm good. Yeah, man. It's great. It is so wild, dude. It is. i'm really happy for you man i'm really really happy that you found something that's a new mission as well not only something that seems to have improved your life but that you've been able to dedicate yourself to making other people's lives better as well that's great i just came back from moody air force base down in georgia talking to those guys the whole base talked about mental health and all those guys and it's cool because they expect you to be a certain thing when you get out there and you're like we're just going to talk about mental health like nobody wants to talk about it same thing when you're in teams like i asked them all how many guys in this room ever struggle with mental health it's over a thousand people in the audience nobody raised their hand yep i'm used to this i was the only navy seal with ptsd or trauma or depression or anything so this will go over well but we talk but i mean the amount of dms i've gotten even from the sean ryan thing and now all the other ones it's only mental health and it's some of the craziest stories.

2:54:01But I'm glad because when I was on my island alone, when I was in that guest room with that trash bag and that pistol about to do that thing, no one came for me. No one ever said me too. No one ever stood up, got in front of the microphone with the bright lights on and said, it's okay not to be okay. No one ever said it to me. And we talked about everything, not that. We talked and done everything together except talk about that shit. And I wish we would have, It would have made us so much better. Would have made us truly a dynasty. I just, I want everybody else to be better than me. I want you to understand that it is perfectly normal and that is part of the game you play.

2:54:40If you're in the military, you're a first responder. And those are the guys I really get to see the most now. I mean, GBRs, we probably train 1500 to 2000 cops a year, but I do speaking engagements, firemen, the stuff those guys deal with day to day. I feel guilty inside the military. I always love firemen. I always love cops. I love people of service. I love doctors. I love nurses. I love all those. I never knew what they dealt with. Not cops, especially not firemen. Thank you for your service. I appreciate you guys. If anything happens, I'll call 911. I never thought about the horrible things they would see, and then they're going to be home within 25 minutes.

2:55:23Firemen fishing kids out of a bathtub because the mom ran out of her pain meds and drowned all the kids in the bathtub. 45 minutes later, he's giving his own daughter a bath. Compartmentalizing that, not telling his wife, not talking about it with anybody. The boys at the station ain't talking about it. They just, same thing we did. That's when I go and I reintegrate with those guys. This is your super team. This is your dynasty. You could potentially be in the same department for 20 years. Why are you not having open dialogue conversations? Why am I not able to tell you every one of my deepest, darkest secrets?

2:55:54You're not leaving tomorrow. It's just us. It'll make you a super team. You can build a dynasty right here, but you got to do it through open communication. You have to be able to say the shit nobody else is going to say. And it only takes one of you. That's why I push those 20 minute walks. I push the routine. I push mental health, the importance of it. And say it. It's totally normal. This is part of the game. You can't run into burning buildings for 20 years and not be scarred by something. Can't do it. Can't walk around with a gun on your hip, arresting bad guys and seeing the terrible things that people do and it not affect you.

2:56:23It's supposed to. For you to think that you're just going to override that because you're such an alpha male, that's not going to work, dude. Ask me how I know. Like, I thought I could override anything. Patient zero. Patient zero. I've seen some terrible things, dude. It's interesting to me that when you're going through a journey on plant medicine, the classic sort of overachiever, I will be able to hold this down mentality. Andy was talking about this when he came through. He was saying he'd created an identity of never being the guy who quit. I don't quit. That's not what I do. And that caused him to stay in a marriage for like a decade that he shouldn't have done.

2:57:04But it's interesting that when you get to a situation like you're in Ibogaine, that pattern that you've spent an entire career and a life putting together, which is that clenching, that tightness.

2:57:22That didn't come in or it wasn't able to hold on. I tell the guys now, that's why I recommend Ibogaine for the alpha-mell types, the guys with a super strong ego, because I've tried them all. That's the only thing stronger than the ego. So you can usually try to wrangle it when using something else? yeah i mean i can power through anything else mdma weed whatever i ketamine i can power through all that not that you are not going to be able to power through that you can't like whatever it's going to show you it's going to show you can't steer you can't navigate you can't go okay cool i'm going to sit in this black box and i'm i'm going to think about nothing for 18 hours can't do it you can't think about the things you want to think of i try to put myself in a black helicopter with all my friends and tried to relive all this stuff and see dead friends.

2:58:12Zero. Zero. That's all I wanted to see because I thought that is where my trauma lies. I was like, well, clearly it was my love of the job. It was because I was so professional and I was such a patriot. And now the loss of that, that's why it's caused all this. Nope. Not a bit. Nothing was traumatic about my service. Nothing. I think the majority of the guys, it's not the service. It's the fact you left it. You lost your number one love. That's what it is. You're suffering from a heartbreak, not from PTSD. I didn't do anything that I'm ashamed of that ever really messed me up. I mean, I've seen a lot of terrible stuff, but it doesn't keep me up at night.

2:58:52Not a bit. That medicine, not saying it's a cure-all, but if you've tried everything else and you haven't tried plant-based medicine, probably give it a shot. Where should people go if they want to find out more? about plant-based medicine. If you're a veteran, I would go to Veteran Solutions or Ambio Life Sciences for straight Ibogaine and 5-A-Meal. Trevor and Jonathan, the best clinic I've ever been to. It's on a private compound right over the border. They've got shuttles running back and forth. It's super safe. Best food you're ever going to eat. I mean, Michelin quality food, amazing in-ground pools overlooking the ocean.

2:59:34It's an amazing facility, but it's probably a 25 person staff. They've got multiple houses that are running consecutive and they do it all week. It's a cure-all, man. They do the sweat lodge. They do everything. If I had to give anybody a gift to be the power of a 20 minute walk. And if you have tried everything, call Ambio Life Sciences. Changed my life, man. That and Mary Unicorn. It's a beautiful story, man. I'm really glad that you're still here. Yeah, me too. where should people go to keep up to date with everything you're doing as well you can check out gbrs group on all the social channels youtube instagram all that if you're trying to find me personally it's dj shipley i am only on instagram i don't do anything else okay man i really appreciate you i appreciate you thank you all right see you next time everyone dude