#332 Alex West - SEAL Team 6 Operator on Crashing a Black Hawk Into Bin Laden's Backyard

28:13But once the insurance rounds of maybe 10 sessions ran out, then that was kind of it. And honestly, at like that age, I was just holding it all in, and I was just mad. I was just pissed at the world. And I think that would be part of what I needed later on in life to get through different selections and buds and all of that, was just to ride that anger and that pain. Would he remember the conversations when he was sober? I don't think so. Or he was ashamed and would just keep drinking. I mean, there was times, too, where he would pick me up from sports and be so drunk that as we're driving home, we'd be weaving in and out.

28:57I remember at 13 yelling, just screaming for him to pull over. And finally he did, and I ended up driving us home. And I remember being so nervous that, because I'd never really driven before. I remember at one point my dad took me in a parking lot once, just like, oh, you might get your driver's permit wide open, you know, like empty Walmart parking lot. Like, let's just kind of do the basics. And that only happened like once, maybe. And that was my only experience driving. and then I'm on a, not a highway, but just a busy road and just like shaking on the steering wheel, trying to drive us home safely.

29:35But that was the impact of war. Like I've been somehow affected by war since the beginning. Geez, I saw it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, what?

29:53Why did you decide going to the military? That's a good question. Even though all that was going on with my dad, he was my hero. And we did connect when he wasn't drinking. And he would speak of his time in the military, not just in Vietnam. And I always looked up to the service aspect of it. And within our family, too, I've had a family member in every major American war, which isn't that uncommon, but whether it was Vietnam, Korea, World War II, World War I, all the way back to the Revolutionary War. My sister is a daughter of the Revolution. None of it was like the general or the ad, none of it.

30:34It was all just a bunch of grunts, blue-collar guys. You know what I mean? Like, what? Okay, I'll serve. But I think there was some of that. my um i was and i was i like the idea of the military and i started hearing about special operations and the you know the hardest training in the world whether that's true or not but at least i remember hearing that of like the seal teams and being like wow i want to be able to prove something to someone because i felt like i wasn't anyone especially from some of that trauma and feeling when i moved from africa to the states i always felt a little different a little off i I mean, I was American, but I didn't know any of the pop culture stuff because we'd been in Africa, and that was before the internet.

31:18So I was a little weird, to be honest, right? I didn't know the basics of American pop culture. I would end up being fine and assimilating. It took a little bit of time, but I always wanted to just go, leave, get away, leave to get away from kind of my dad in a sense, which is ironic, but and prove that I was worth it. I was able to accomplish something. And so when I heard about the SEAL teams, the first was the movie Navy SEALs with Charlie Sheen. Like a lot of guys from our generation, right? And it's the first I saw, I was like, that's kind of interesting. And then I read Dick Marcinko's Rogue Warrior and just thought like, wow, that's really cool.

32:00And then when I was a junior in high school, my cousin Pete Scobell, who's actually a guest of yours, I went to his BUDS graduation. And we, because we're first cousins, but we have a small family, and Pete and I are different people, but alike in a lot of ways, and almost like brothers. And I went out to his Bud's graduation and watched them graduate, and just saw the camaraderie and hearing the stories. And what's ironic is that a lot of those guys that I met when I was in high school, I'd become friends with or teammates later on in the teams. But I was very... That was a profound effect on me when I saw all that, and then when I was getting ready to make a decision to whether I was gonna go to try to play junior college baseball or get a job or go to a local Kansas school, none of that really moved the needle for me.

32:52I just was like, I'm gonna just go for it, and ended up joining at 17 with my parents' permission. Shit. How old were you when your parents got divorced? I was 13. How did that affect you? It affected me a lot because then my dad moved out. My mom's mom, my grandmother moved in. And it was just, you know, there's three women with my sister. And then it was me. My dad had this kind of like shitty apartment. And he ended up getting fired from his job because of his alcoholism and PTSD. And so, yeah, it affected me big time. I was mad. I was able to assimilate in school. I was kind of a jock, I guess.

33:41I'd play sports, but I really wasn't in that jock crew or whatever. I just liked sports, and it was good for me, because especially like football, I could take out a lot of my anger and hitting people. And I was also a swimmer. I think that just got a lot of energy out of me. and then I played baseball, which was my real love. But it affected me in that I believe my self-confidence was low, and I started probably some struggles with mental health back then. But I did have friends. I'm fortunate that I had friends and did fit in. But it was a tough, when I reflect back on it, at the time I didn't know I was struggling, But now when I look back on it, I knew I was really struggling.

34:29Man.

34:33I'm sure you reflect a lot back on your dad. I mean, do you feel like... Why do you think he was so drawn to Africa? I think he was drawn to the excitement of Africa. I think it moved the needle he could feel. like a lot of people struggling with trauma, especially veterans, where finding something where you can feel some excitement, whether it's with a hobby or lifestyle, I believe he found the rawness of Africa made him feel, especially in the places we lived, where it was kind of out there. That's what I was gonna say. I mean, plus you hear a lot about that generation, you know, never really felt like they fit in when they got home, and then the adrenaline and all that.

35:27I mean, it's... Yeah. Yeah, I feel still to this day for him, and I remember he would always, when I'd come back from the plants later on, he was in PTSD groups for the VA, and he would always be like, hey, will you come meet in the parking lot, meet all my buddies? We're all a bunch of Vietnam vets. And so I would go hang out with them in the parking lot. And he would just show me off, and he was so proud because at the time, I was a SEAL or a dev group and deployments, and I remember one of his friends in particular, just to showcase the guys he was with, introduced himself as Magnidas. And I was like, excuse me, Magnidas?

36:08And I'm like, no, seriously, what's your name? He's like, it's Magnidas. And I was like, okay. And I was like, well, why do they call you Magnidas? And he was a door gunner and a Huey and just had he had the reputation that he'd always get shot down and so that was his nickname was magnet ass and so so so it was like so i'm like you know commonly at the time my dad was living in the tampa area going to the va parking lot and whenever i'd go visit and i would hang out with some of his buddies after they got out of group and and hang out with guys like my dad and magnet ass and amongst others and and it was even then i remember thinking man i wish there was more for these guys, especially the Vietnam generation, because a PTSD diagnosis wasn't given or even existed until 1980.

36:52So a lot of these guys, especially from that generation, which I know this is known, or if people don't, they were frowned upon, that generation of veterans, of what they did and what that unpopular war. And then when they came back, there was not much for them, as far as treatment, to include that PTSD diagnosis. And so the majority of them just all just drank. and which a lot of our generation did too, perhaps not as much, but that's all those guys had. And then so what I was seeing in that parking lot was a lot of guys that were coming in recovery, that were going, all they had was that group and each other, which I remember even noticing it then when I was, you know, in my early 30s, late 20s.

37:35Yeah. Where were you in your early, were you over at Dev Group? Yeah, I would have been over at Dev Group. So what's going through your head, I mean, when you're witnessing this? I'm thinking, is that going to be me? Is that going to be my friends? Because I started to, especially at that stage, the wars were turning into something that they weren't. It was no longer Afghan invasion. And sometimes when I'd visit, it was post the bin Laden raid, right? So it's like, why are we still in Afghanistan? In Iraq, too, it was, you know, you start getting all the information that there was lies about why we went to war.

38:13So in my mind, I was like, oh, this is like, that's my generation's version of that is like their versions of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. And so I just, I started noticing some of that and then worrying, however, I would just compartmentalize it. So I was probably falling into the same loop as a lot of those guys were just compartmentalizing, like, I'll get to it. But I remember noticing, like, is this gonna be myself and my friends or generation of veterans? I remember noticing it then in that parking lot. So just, um...

38:50I'll bet there's a lot of kids that are going through what you went through as a kid right now from the GWAT. What advice would you have for a kid that's got an old man that's dealing with that? I love that you asked that question. The advice I would have to those kids if they're listening, one, you're not alone. Two, there's help. It's okay to reach out for help. And especially young boys from our generation before, it was always like if you fall down and skin your knee, like suck it up, don't cry, don't show any emotion. And I would tell those kids and any man that's listening that like, that doesn't work.

39:28You know, it's okay to show emotion. It's okay to ask for help. because if you just push it down, all it's going to do is harden and calcify, and then you're just going to be a hard person, and you're not going to be, your ability to experience love and hope and laughter and joy is going to start going down. And also the people around you, your future kids, wife, friends, all of that too. So asking for help, getting into exercise, getting in a community, whatever that might be, and avoiding, if you can, leaning into things like drinking. As best you can, I get it. There's a lot of, you know, probably pressure from like teenage kids and all of that.

40:13I understand that. However, that leads to nowhere, and that you can find a lot of that in nature and sports and community and friendships, and that it's in the behaviors and habits that start then could compound later on. And also that your dads or mom, who are veterans from those wars, the GWAT, that they love you. It's just that right now they're struggling, just like my dad loved me. I knew he did. I still feel his spirit and how proud he is of me. It's just complex. But just to know that even though their parents might be, you know, drunk or yelling at them abusive, at the core, that's basically them just reflecting their pain.

40:58and it's on them to be able to do what they can do with themselves and just all the after mentioned things of reaching out to get help and friends and try to avoid substances if you can. Yeah, I'd like to add, this might sound kind of cheesy, but I would add maybe watch this episode or something like this with your old man or with your mom, because sometimes it takes something like this for them to come to the realization of what's really going on, you know, and how it's impacting their kids. And this is a way to do it where you don't actually have to tell them anything. Absolutely. I'm glad you said that, because I do think that would be a great thing to do for what you just mentioned, where it will be hard for that parent to share all of that, just like it was for my dad, however, to be able to sit down and watch it and then maybe be ready for a question or two.

42:00Or, A, I can relate to that. I think that you're spot on with that. Thank you. Yeah. Do you think that you... Did you join the military for you or did you join the military for your dad? Hmm. I think I, a little bit of both, I think I joined it for me to prove that I was worth something. However, a lot of that stemmed from the experience with my dad. I also did want to make him proud. I know he, I remember when I was at 17, he had asked him for his permission, like, hey, the recruiter needs you to sign this. And him saying, like, are you sure? Like, he was like, I don't know if that's a good idea.

42:44You know, maybe can you at least wait, you know, go to college for a year, get a job for a year, travel, whatever, just do something. So when you join, you're like 19, 20, as opposed to 17, 18. I kept pressing him though, and he did sign. And so I think part of me was wanting him to be proud of me, but there was also a part of me wanting to prove to myself that I could do something worthwhile. And I would imagine a lot of guys from our community, especially when I was in the teams. A lot of guys had similar type situations where they just wanted to prove something because they were coming from some challenges at home.

43:23So long answer, I think it was a little bit of both. Mm-hmm. Yeah. How'd your mom feel about it? My mom was scared. She didn't like the idea and didn't want to also, and she was saying the same thing, like, why don't you just go to college or get a job or whatever it is? And, but I was determined. And since my cousin had already was in the SEAL teams, I would imagine she just thought, and she knew we were close. She just thought like, well, I'm gonna do the best I can to tell him I don't want him to go just yet. But I think she finally kind of succumbed to just like, okay, I'll sign it. And I didn't go to boot camp at 17.

44:01I ended up going at 18, but I got the paperwork signed at 17. Damn, man. So I don't think she was supportive, but in the whole time, even when I would deploy, I knew it was, I would stress her out on all my deployments. But I was just on my own personal mission. And I did put her through a lot with all the deployments. And my sister, as I reflect back on it. Do you feel like your dad was proud of you right off the bat? Yeah. Just for signing the papers? He was. Yeah. And he knew what you were going to do? Yes, he knew that. Yeah, he knew I wanted to be a SEAL. What year was it? This would have been in 97.

44:36I joined the Navy in 98. I went to boot camp in 98. But either late 97 or maybe it was early 98 is when I was still 17, is when I signed up. Damn. Yeah. I would tell my younger self probably to listen to my parents. If I were to go back, I'd be like, bro, just, yeah, all those things, like college, travel, get a job, whatever, just live a little bit of life. The SEAL team is not going anywhere. And of course, of what would later transpire with 9-11, there's going to be enough to go around. But yeah, I was just focused. I had to get out of there. Not that there was like, I had to get out of there.

45:16It was a little dramatic. But it was like I was focused on wanting to prove that I was worth something. Yeah. So where do we go from here? So before I joined or shipped off to boot camp from Egypt, I stayed in touch with a really close friend of mine, who his parents were friends with my parents, and his dad worked at the same company in Kansas City. So in the summers, he would come back and live, essentially, at his grandparents' home in Kansas City, but we were like best friends. And so we'd spend all summers together. And then I'd have jobs. I worked at a pizza shop in the mall or a remote lot, standard kids' stuff.

45:59I worked at a gym. And I would save up all my money, and I visited him once in my sophomore year. So I flew back to Cairo my sophomore year and hung out for like a month. And then my senior year, I flew back out too, to their graduation right before I went to Egypt. I'm sorry, right before I went to the Navy. And we ended up actually climbing a pyramid while we had done that. No kidding. Yeah, we did. Yeah, we... I remember, and it's illegal to do... You're not supposed to do that because people die falling off those pyramids trying to climb them all. but we were just punk kids, and we, I remember, bribed our way.

46:39There was guards around there with AK-47s, and nothing a little bit of cash can't solve. So we bribed the guards that kind of looked the other way, and I remember there was a group of us, and if it wasn't a full moon, it was pretty close to a full moon. And the way you climb the pyramids, at least how we did, you go up the apex or like the edge of it, and each stone is about four feet-ish tall, and it's limestone, so it kind of is crumbly. But you almost do like a muscle-up, right? So you like push yourself up. And the pyramid we climbed was Cheops, and it's about 440 feet. I might get checked here, but roughly around 440 feet.

47:19And so there's a lot of those like muscle-ups going up all the way up the edge. And I remember seeing at night almost climbing into the moon. And on one side, you have Cairo, one of the largest cities in the world with the Nile going right by it, and the other is the Sahara Desert that's just been illuminated, the sand illuminated by the moonlight. So it was this surreal experience. Yeah, and climbing up. But I remember how dangerous it was, because chunks of this limestone, you're climbing up, and they'll just be like, boom, boom, boom, like right past you. And just thinking, like, we didn't have any, like, climbing gear, helmets.

47:52I had, like, running shoes on, and, like, a T-shirt. And, like, pants or whatever. But, like, yeah, but we had the guts of, like, and maybe the nativity of a teenager to just go for it. And I remember being at the top of the pyramid, which is about half the size of the studio or so, and just standing and watching everything and just being like, this is unreal. But we did that, and then we ended up climbing that pyramid with a family friend of one of the guys who owned a home in Den Haag in Holland. And so after Egypt, we went to Holland for about a month, and then I flew back to the States. and a month later started boot camp.

48:32Right on. Yeah. So you got all the way to the top of that damn thing. Yeah. I would not recommend it. And it's illegal, so you could get in trouble. But I would not recommend it. Most importantly, from a safety standpoint, like if you asked me today, like, let's do it, I'd be like, bro, I will be happy drinking a cup of coffee, just enjoying the scenery right from the ground level. Maybe I'll hop on a camel. I don't know. Get a photo op. Who knows? You ever think about how those things were built? I do. And especially when you're sti - I don't know, have you ever been to the pyramids? I've been to Cairo.

49:05I've never been to the pyramids. Yeah, I mean, I'd recommend it. I mean, of course, it's a touristy thing, but just from a life experience. Yeah, I have thought about it. Especially when you're standing at the base and looking up at it, you're just like, how the fuck do they do this? And of course, you know, there's a lot of theories of how. But I could not help to think that I don't know if man can pull this off, even then. Like, this is epic to, you know, I can't think of another word for it. It's like, this is unreal, especially being thousands of years old. Like, I just, what about you? What do you think on the pyramids?

49:38Man, I don't know. I mean, there's two things that kind of resonate with me. Maybe. I'm no physicist either. Sure. You know Chris Beck. Yeah. Chris Beck says, I'm going to butcher this, But he was saying, I think they're built on, they're like right on top of a fault line. I didn't know that. I think they're right on top of a fault line or something. And there's like a bed of crystals or something. So he says that the ground may always be vibrating. And the way I kind of understood it, and he's, whatever, Chris is out there, but he's also really smart. Yeah. And, you know, it's kind of like if you put a subwoofer under a table and get it vibrating, you can kind of, you know, things will just start moving without even having to touch it.

50:31Right. Because the vibration. Right. And so I think he was kind of saying that that may have been happening where where the ground is vibrating or whatever. And you can kind of steer these huge blocks without a tremendous amount of force. sure and then the other thing and i haven't interviewed this guy yet i probably i'm sure somebody will go get him now but yeah there's another guy who is out there saying that maybe they were molded on top of each other so they would take these forms you know kind of like and like like they would cast interesting blocks on top of each other yeah that's yeah that's the I don't think they got them up there with sticks.

51:19Yeah, exactly. And that many of them. I just, you know, it's like one thing if it was just something kind of basic, but something that epic, and how precise they were with each other. I mean, it's off by... They're not off. They're like precisely planted. It's crazy. But then there's all the tunnels and passageways. I've actually been in them on tourist version of it. And you want to talk about claustrophobia. I mean, I'm not a very claustrophobic person, but I felt it in there. I was like, OK, this is good. Can't imagine being some guy a couple thousand years ago with a torch crawling around in there.

51:53It's just like, OK, I'm good on that. I'll do that once. Are you an alien? You believe in aliens? I do believe in aliens. I just can't imagine there not being something else out there. It's just so vast. But I wouldn't say I'm full-blown conspiracy. Like, I'm up late at night. But I do feel that there's probably something out there. What about you? I don't think there is. Yeah? OK, yeah. I mean, I'm really... I did a lot of... I've done a lot of episodes on it, but I just... I don't think there is. Sure. I think it's just us. That could be possible too. But... I mean, I don't have an experience where I'm like, absolutely, that's that.

52:39It's my thought is just more of... It's so vast, perhaps. So let's get back to, say, you joined the Navy. What did you do? Did you go straight to Bud's? No, I went to, so I joined the Navy in 98 and then went to Radio Men A School. And so for the listeners, it's essentially you needed a job that to go in those days in the SEAL teams to be able to go to the SEAL team. So a job basically I got trained in ship communications, so satellite communications, high frequency communications in the beginnings of some like computer IT type stuff. And that particular job would end up being in IT called IT in the Navy.

53:23But I went through radium in a school and then checked into Buds in January, February of 99 when I was 18. And then that started the Buds seal journey. How was that? It was hard. You know, some guys are all like have bravado. Like it wasn't as hard as I thought. But for me, I was like, it was pretty hard. Really? OK. Wow, what's going on with me? But I, you know, and also it was hard, I believe, for being that young. You know, I was 18, 19 in Buds. And were you also young in Buds? Yeah. I think it was. Same age-ish? Yeah. I joined it, signed the papers at 17. And then I was in Buds at 18. Yeah.

54:06Yeah. So same thing. I remember being really intimidated by, you know, actually seeing a SEAL instructor and just being like, oh, that's a SEAL. Whoa. And that's one of the instructors. And then being around probably a lot of the same story a lot of guys tell us, you know, guys that are like division one athletes or just these guys that could be on the cover of a fitness magazine. And then just looking at them and just being like, I don't look like that. I can't run like that or something. What am I doing? I do not. And I'm still like the equivalent of a freshman in college type guy. And I came in with kind of low self-esteem anyway.

54:44And so seeing that, just thinking like, wow, all these guys are like Adonises. I don't know if I belong here. And then really intimidated by everything, but I just kept showing up. I think I was a very average BUDS student. and but I just I think just kept showing up and I just did the advice that one of the instructors said which isn't just I said often it's just make it to the next meal right so for the listeners it's just if something's overwhelming and I use this today in my everyday life and I use with my clients as a therapist that if things feel so overwhelmed and you can't do it just make it to the next meal like really truncate it down to something you can do and if you can't make it the next meal just make it to the top of the hour if you can't make it the top of the hour just make five more minutes." And that's just what I did.

55:30I just did what they told me. I remember one instructor saying that and just being like, okay. And then I just started using that. And then next thing you know, I just kind of kept progressing through BUDS. Where was your cousin at when you got there? He was at SEAL Team 8. And then he had applied and got into the Naval Academy. So actually, when I was in BUDS, he was at SEAL Team 8. And at the time, you know, that was like Kosovo and all that was going on. So that was like the place to be. So I remember being jealous, like, oh my gosh, she's actually doing the thing. Were you guys keeping in touch?

56:00Yeah. Yeah, we were. And in those days, it was letters. I didn't have a cell. There's no cell phone. So I'd have quarters and pay phones, calling cards. Like, old school. But yeah, we did keep in touch. And he was a source of support for me, of just writing me encouraging letters and things like that. And I think he even visited Bud's once. For some reason, he was out there. And then I got some heat from the instructors when they kind of found out I was related to a SEAL. I was trying to keep that under wraps. They didn't know. They didn't really know because we had different last names. But I remember a couple of them put it together.

56:40And this one guy, Instructor Reno and Alberto, was a great guy, great instructor, very tough, but very fair. And I remember him giving me a little extra love, in a good way though, as far as a little extra attention. But it wasn't bad. He looked out for me too. I make a thousand decisions a day running the Sean Ryan show. Calls, interviews, production, everything is a decision. So when I train, I don't want to walk around and build a workout from scratch. I want to know exactly what I'm doing, get to work, and move on. That's what I like about Ladder. Ladder gives you a real strength training plan from expert coaches.

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57:54That's the value for me. Ladder removes the guesswork. I'm not deciding what to do next. I'm not guessing on reps or progression. I just follow the plan and focus on putting in the work. Remove the guesswork with Ladder and get a real coach in your ear telling you exactly what to do for every workout. No thinking. Everything planned for you. If you have an iPhone, head to ladder.fit.srs and take a quick quiz to find your perfect ladder plan. Use my link and get a free 7-day trial with no credit card. And$10 off your first month if you join. What's the best piece of advice Pete gave you while you were in there?

58:36I remember him saying kind of what I was already saying, like, you'll see guys that are, you know, elite athletes and don't worry about any of that. Just worry about you. Worry about contributing to your boat crew and not falling behind, you know, just you're a team player. Just the stuff that we're all taught, you know, show up early, leave late, do the right thing when nobody's looking. I remember him telling me those things before I even got the buds. And so when I was hearing them again, And it was like, oh, I have heard this before. And so I just, and now that I think about it, a lot of those things have stayed with me as I would continue in the SEAL teams.

59:15And even as I went back to grad school, even to be like, am I supposed to be doing this in my 40s? All the other students are like 23 years old, but they're really smart. What am I doing with my life? But it allowed me to like anything hard in my life, it allowed me to just kind of stick to those basics right on. How was Hell Week for you? Hell Week sucked. I remember the night prior, we had, and maybe it was this way for you guys, I don't know, but we had ordered a bunch of Domino's pizzas because for some reason we always got Domino's pizza. I don't know why. But I remember it was stale. And we were watching some movies.

59:52Maybe it was Braveheart or something like that. Just some on VHS. And I remember not even knowing I had my own pizza, like a medium pepperoni pizza, and thinking like, I need the calories of this because Hell Week's about to kick off tonight. And I was so nervous I could barely eat it. Like I felt sick. And then just being struggling, be like, you need the fucking calories. And so I only got maybe a few pieces down and I couldn't hold it down. And then Hell Week started and it was tough. Hypothermia, like most guys, a bunch of chafing. Felt like it would never end. But I just kept using those analogies of just make it to the next meal, make it to pick a palm tree with the boat on your head and you're running around, just make it to that.

1:00:38And then, okay, you got to that. Okay, now make it to, you see a beach car in a parking lot on the beach, just make it to that red car. And I think just really truncating it down got me through it. But it was definitely the cold water, which I believe is unique. Not that other selections don't have cold water, of course they do, but specifically, Buds, it's a big thing. And thinking that was the main mental game, especially in surf tortures and all of that, where all you're doing is sitting there. For the listeners that don't know, you just interlock your arms with your buddies and you lay in the water until your body temperature just goes down.

1:01:12And then they'll, at some point, bring you out, try to warm you up or check you to see if you have hypothermia. But there's a lot of time in your own head just being frozen. And that's where a lot of guys quit, as you know. And I remember that was the big mental game for me, especially as a teenager. That was tough, especially seeing the big athletes, the guys, the Adonis type guys I was talking about, like then they start rolling off and quitting. And then it's like, man, that guy, if he quit, what am I doing? I was at prom this time last year. This guy was like, you know, division one champion.

1:01:46And last year, you know, like what is going on? And then just thinking like, well, dude, just keep going. Just make it to the next meal. Just at some point, this evolution will end. And you're doing it. And I remember like looking to my like left and right and seeing guys that were my friends is thinking like, okay, like Tom's doing it, I can do it. Like, okay, I know, you know, and if Robin can do it, I can do it. And it just, I know it sounds so basic, but that's what got me through, but it sucked. I'm definitely one of those guys that isn't saying like it wasn't that bad. I'm one of the guys that is like, yeah, it was horrible.

1:02:18It is crazy, man. Like, I don't know, I don't like injecting my own experiences into the episodes, but like, I was like a buck 45, maybe. Yeah, totally. I wrestled 140 in senior year in high school, and I remember showing up and I'm like, holy shit, like these are fucking men. Yeah, that's - Well put. I just got hair under my armpits like two weeks ago. Exactly. What the fuck am I doing here? Dude, you nailed it, the men thing. I agree. It was like, I remember thinking that too, like these are men. I'm like a boy. I'd like to think I'm a man, but I'm, yeah, I'm just getting hair under my armpits.

1:02:54And then you see him quit and you're like, how the fuck am i still here yeah and it is it's like which seems like a whole nother life ago but it's it's it's just it's it's uh it's really interesting you know to see who makes it after the after it's all over and who's gone and it's it's pretty wild it really is isn't it and you know i don't know if you get it anymore but every now and then i'll get somebody will ask me like you were a seal oh yeah even now i'm like yeah they're like for how long i'll be like 20 years and they're like really like they imagine i'm supposed to look like the rock or something you know what i mean i'm like i'm sorry to let you down i guess i've been letting down everybody this whole time just some average joe you know I'll get people be like, yeah, it's like I could just like be next to you in the grocery store and have no idea.

1:03:51And I'm like, uh, thanks. Yeah, I do go to the grocery store. Maybe we will cross paths. Well, you don't look like the CPA I thought either. Oh, man.

1:04:09But any, did you have any hangups? I did. But when I got rolled, I was rolled in second phase. And for the listeners, it's like the dive phase. And it's kind of one of the hell week in first phase is the big crucible, obviously. And second phase, it's called the pool week. Essentially, a lot of drills and tests underwater with scuba tanks. And I remember I failed ditch and don. And so for the listeners, all that is, is you jump in and there's a sequence. You're in the pool and you take your tanks off, your weight belt, all these things in a certain, it has to be in the way they teach it. And I was so intimidated.

1:04:49And as I reflect back on it, probably because I was a teenager and was so intimidated by everything. And it wasn't that hard when I think back on it. It was just some basic steps. No reason I should have, but I just kept messing it up. And I failed it. And I was, did, I remember thinking like, I might be booted out of here. I've already been through Hell Week and everything. But I was rolled and I just did a lot. I just kept practicing that sequence. They had these, when I was rolled back, these balsa wood tanks, scuba tanks. And I remember after the day, I would just rep out, I don't know, like 50, 100, as long until I got tired, forever, just repped out the sequences every single day.

1:05:28And then when I went back through, I just passed everything first time. So there was a setback though. So I was not sure if I was. Thankfully, they rolled me and didn't boot me home. But yeah, a lot of guys, I mean, I wish I, it's definitely more of a glorious thing in that world if you're getting booted for pool comp, which is like the big test. But I didn't even make it to that. I was so nervous, I didn't even make it to that. Oh, man. What class were you? I started with 225 and finished with 226. Right on. What class were you? 240 and finished with 241. Nice. Cool. Pretty close. And so where did you go?

1:06:10Where did you want to go? Yeah. So I wanted to go to Little Creek because my cousin was there. And also, well, he had just was, I can't remember if he was still there or was in the process of going to the academy. But it was in that, essentially it was right around, he was still there. And at the time, Kosovo, Bosnia, all of that was like going on. and that was like where the action was. And so in the SEAL teams, that was like, that's where you wanted to go. And I remember putting in my dream sheet for the listeners, like they give you the opportunity to list what SEAL teams you go to, whether it's Little Creek or San Diego or perhaps Hawaii.

1:06:47And I picked all Little Creek 824, I think is what I put. And then they gave me SEAL Team 3, which is in San Diego, which I wasn't mad about. I was just like, oh man, that means I can't. Going to Bosnia is out of the question. And being a team with my cousin is out of the question. It wasn't that I was mad. I was just like, oh, bummer. But it was certainly needs of the Navy, where the Navy's like, yeah, cool story. You want to go there? You're young and single. We're going to throw you wherever we need you. And I went to SEAL Team 3, which was a blessing in disguise at the time. Because when I checked into SEAL Team 3, there was a platoon, Delta platoon, that was looking for new guys.

1:07:27And the platoon chief would end up being one of my biggest mentors, a guy by the name of Todd Scharbert. I don't know if you've ever known Todd or not, but he had been a dev group guy from Red Squadron and had just left and was now a platoon chief. And I remember they were looking for new guys, and myself and a close friend of mine, Mark Carter, were asked, like, we were just young guys. We're like, that's all we need, the young guys, whatever, just get a fresh body in here. and we screened, not screened, we interviewed for this platoon. And I remember going - You had to interview for the platoon?

1:08:00Yeah, yeah. But this was before in those days, like - What do you mean they're looking for new guys? Yeah, so a great question. So at the time, SQT wasn't a thing. So we were waiting for STT, SEAL Tactical Training. And so we were just like in this pool of guys and this platoon, somebody had gotten in trouble, I think. And they were like, we need a new body to fill that spot. And so they picked Mark and I to interview us before STT started. So the only training we had was BUDS at the time, which was a very unique kind of era in the SEAL team. It doesn't happen, as you know now, but for the listeners, it doesn't happen like that now.

1:08:32It's a lot more organized. But I remember going into the platoon hut, and they were just asking basic questions just to get a feel for, will this guy be a good fit for the platoon? And I remember - What are the questions? They were like, where are you from? What interests you about the SEAL teams? What would you like to do in the SEAL teams? This and that. Very basic, because we were just, there's not much. I remember them saying, you're not bringing anything to the platoon except your youth. I remember that specifically. So you're going to be probably a 60 gunner carrying heavy stuff, and do you have a problem with that?

1:09:05I remember thinking, no. I'll make sure I hit the squat rack. Yeah, no, I'll do whatever. But how I ended up getting picked up over Mark was they asked us what our hobbies were. And my hobby was I played guitar ever since I was 12 and took lessons. and played in the garage bands, whatever. It wasn't that great. I was a hobbyist, though. And Todd, the platoon chief, was like, oh, I just picked up guitar. Could you give lessons and tune my guitar? And I said, yeah, easy. And he was like, okay. And I guess when Mark came in, they asked him, like, hey, what is your, I'm not making this up, what is your hobby?

1:09:43And he said, oh, rollerblading.

1:09:48So I remember him telling me that. I'm like, you rollerblade? He's like, I don't know. I kind of freaked out. I just didn't know what to say. And so I said rollerblading. And so anyway, they were like, oh, cool. At least Alex can give the platoon chief a guitar lesson and tune his guitar. So that's how I got picked up in that platoon. Holy shit. I know. Yeah. So thankfully, Mark. Anybody but a rollerblade. Yeah. They're like, oh, my god. You blade, bro? We're good. And I don't even remember him doing it. He just kind of freaked out and said something. And so yeah, that's how I got in to my first platoon.

1:10:19Yeah, totally. Just starting at a race

1:10:27Just like neon you're out totally like that's embarrassing you might need to go over like seal team five

1:10:45Like I love you mark your roommates and close friends, but I was like thank God He was a sharp guy. I have no doubt he killed that interview up until that part. Wow. Totally. So yeah, I started in that platoon a little bit and then went to STT, which was the precursor SQT for the listeners. And all that is just more advanced training where land warfare, CQB, diving, things like that. So the platoon was starting to work up while I was still in STT and then rolled back in with the platoon. and we were in ARG platoons, what that meant was we were assigned to the MU or the Marine Corps on a ship that was going to have this really cool pre-911 deployment where we were going to, like, basically join the Navy Sea of the Worlds.

1:11:33We were going to Hawaii and then Guam and Okinawa, Thailand, Australia, all these things. And then the last portion of it, we were going to Bahrain for the last three months and doing VBSS or Visit Board Search and Seizure. which essentially for the listeners, it's just ship takedowns. And what was going on was there was an oil embargo on Saddam Hussein in Iraq post the Gulf War, and they were smuggling oil. And so all that SEAL Team 3 was doing, I think some of the other maybe eight and five did a little bit, but mostly it was the SEAL Team 3 mission because that was our area of operation. We were taking down those ships.

1:12:13None of it was like some crazy gunfights, but that was the thing at that time. Like, my buddies would be like, dude, you're at SEAL Team 3 going to Bahrain to do ship takedowns. Like, they were envious. And I was proud and stoked to actually do a real-world mission. That was, I just wanted to do one. And I equate it to, like, if you're a professional baseball player, playing baseball your whole life and never playing a game, and just wanting to prove yourself on one game, even if that mission as a SEAL was kind of not that big of a deal. But I wanted to at least do one mission. This was pre-9-11.

1:12:46So that was like the platoon. Before we left, that was like the adventure. That was exactly what I signed up for. Right on. To be able to do that, you know, just an adventure. Let's rewind real quick. Of course. Did your dad go to your Buds graduation? He did. How was that? He was really proud. I remember him even being like in like, almost like tears, like holding back tears. And I remember him saying, like, over and over again how proud he was of me, almost to the point where I was on repeat. Like, I get it, Dad. Like, thank you. I get it. I get it. But now when I think back on it, I bet he was proud and he knew kind of what had happened in my upbringing too.

1:13:34He just didn't have the vocabulary or the ability to be able to share that. But I think it came out when I saw how proud he was at Bud's graduation. I'll bet that felt good, huh? Yeah, it did. It did. And the whole time, it was never like with my dad that I hated him or anything like that. It was more of like I knew he was struggling. And together, we had been through a lot together because of Vietnam. Man, that's cool to hear. Yeah. So back to Team 3. Yeah. So back to Team 3. So pre-911, so we... I remember we left and we went to Hawaii, which was incredible. We did that whole thing, and we found ourselves in Darwin, Australia, which is a northern town of Australia.

1:14:24And we had done some training up there. I think the Marines had also broken off and done some training. And our next thing was we were going to go to East Timor, which is an island chain just north of Australia. And they had this big civil war that had gone through. And we were going to go through there with a humanitarian mission of just dropping off medical supplies and food. And I think some of the construction, CD-type guys might fix up some buildings. Basically just do something to help this country. That was on the schedule. But then we were out, we had just done training, we were in Darwin, and we were at this, I'll never forget, at this restaurant bar called Rourke's Drift.

1:15:04And as we're sitting there, we started getting words that we needed to hurry up and get back to the ship. Something had happened. And, you know, we were all mad. Here we were on shore leave, sailors on shore leave. Finally getting to like, you know, we'd been training this whole time, finally getting to like let loose a little bit. And then even guys were like, are you sure? Do we need to send everybody? Just send like Alex and the new guys back there. He can figure it out. We'll tell him where we're at. He can come back and tell us if we need to go back. And certainly I'm like, yeah, sure. I'll do whatever you need me to do.

1:15:31But I remember the word was coming out like, no, everyone needs to go back. Like all the Marines, everybody. So to get three ships back filled with Marines and sailors, I have no idea. And the thousands of people who are just scattered across this town, like, we need to get you all back. It's an emergency. And which I didn't, the day was September 11th. And, but we had no idea. And I remember just thinking, just like, wow, we finally trained hard. I just want to like have a fun night in Australia. And so we go back to the ship. And I remember walking into the galley of the ship I was assigned to, the LPD-8, the USS Dubuque.

1:16:08At the time, it was one of the oldest ships in the Navy. and it's since been decommissioned. But I remember walking into the galley, which is the cafeteria for the listeners, and seeing on these TVs the Twin Towers, and we're on fire and watching another plane hit. And then just thinking, like, just so dumbfounded, like most people. Like, what has happened? That must be an accident. Like, air traffic control, who knows? Or maybe a pilot was dying by suicide. I don't know. And then, sure enough, more and more Marines were coming in. The towers start falling. I remember even watching a guy punch the wall on ships or metal, and, you know, likely breaking his hand.

1:16:48I have no idea. But, you know, and just seeing all of this emotion, especially from all these Marines and sailors, a lot of them coming in from partying. So they were half in the bag and then just like watching it. And just all of us just crowded in this galley on this ship, watching this almost like, what is happening? And then the next day we got word, hey, you're not allowed to get off the ship. Like, something's, this has been an attack, especially with the Pentagon and all of that. And so they kept the East Timor mission going because we were still kind of in the, what are we going to do as a country?

1:17:20What's happening? And so we did end up going to East Timor, did that humanitarian thing, which was interesting. Nothing to move the needle. We just helped people. That was only a couple days. And then we were steaming for the Pakistan, out the coast of Pakistan, to support the invasion of Afghanistan. Shit. Yeah, and I remember calling, Right before my platoon, right before we went into Pakistan, actually, my platoon was part of a small base at Jakobabad, Pakistan, and we had the AFSOC-53s, which were a CSAR mission. They were stationed there, and sometimes there was an AFSOC-130, and we were security for these birds that were flying around, dropping off medevac-ing or dropping off supplies to the ODAs that were doing the invasion with the Northern Alliance.

1:18:09But I remember before we went in, I finally, they turned off, I forgot what the term was on a ship where you don't have any communication, but we weren't allowed to have any communication with anybody at that point. And so finally, they're like, okay, for all the guys getting ready, the SEAL platoon that's getting ready to go in, we'll allow you a phone call or a couple of phone calls. And I remember calling my mom, and I wasn't able to say anything other than, you know, I love you and all of that, and then calling my dad. and trying to play it cool. Like, I just can't talk to you. He's like, I know where you're going.

1:18:42And I was like, yeah. And he's like, and he kept saying, I wish I was with you and your team so I could help you call on airstrikes. Like, this old man, like, and he meant it. Like, I have no doubt in my mind, if he was able to get teleported there, he would have thrown on Kid and gone in and helped us. But I always remember that there was like this warrior spirit was still alive in him. And, but telling him, you know, I love you. and I don't know when I'll be able to contact you. But we flew into Jakokabad, and then we were doing some of that CSAR-type stuff. Nothing crazy. The war was with the ODAs pushing the Northern Alliance, the Taliban, out.

1:19:22And then we went with the Marines into an area called Camp Rhino, which was an old hunting camp outside of Kandahar. And we staged out of that and started doing mechanized reconnaissance with Humvees below the city of Kandahar as it was falling. I would love to say that we got into some really cool missions and airstrikes and this and that, but the reality was that that didn't happen. But I was so proud to be a part of, you know, a small spoke of the wheel of progress of that invasion. I was somewhat part of it. And I just, especially as a young guy, I was 21, first deployment. You're only 21.

1:19:54I was only 21 on the Afghan invasion. And there wasn't many guys who were part of the Afghan invasion. You know, like I said, mostly ODAs, special operations, paramilitary guys, and the Marines, a little bit of the Marines from the MU that I was on. But that was very limited. And so I felt honored to be on that. And at that time, we thought maybe the war would be over, and that's it. Like, you know, that was 2002, maybe it would be over. we had no idea that it would draw out to what it was. Man. An old hunting camp. Yeah, I guess some old hunting camp. How was it hunting? I don't know, something with falcons.

1:20:37I don't know. I remember, a lot of it might have been rumors, so I don't know, but it was this old camp from Amulah Omar, the leader of the Taliban, actually. Is this Gecko? This is outside of Gecko. It was not Gecko. I know exactly what you're talking about. It was another one. It's the Camp Orion. It was further out. and it was just this camp in the middle of nowhere. And what was interesting, even with the mechanized reconnaissance and the SEAL teams at the time, we didn't have any ground mobility training at all. There was like no Humvees or there's nothing. And I remember we had these Humvees that were turned over by SEAL Team 8, actually.

1:21:13They had done a couple of small things and that they had somehow acquired them from some CBs or somehow. And so I remember not even my platoon chief asking me like, you're going to be one of the drivers. Have you ever driven on Nod's? And I was like, no, I've never driven on Nod's. I'm like, you can do that? People do that? And he was like, oh my gosh, yes. So he made myself and all the other drivers, because we didn't have a workup on it, just do laps around the airfield at night, just laps and laps, changing tires on night vision. And we had done a lot of foot patrolling and stuff like that prior on night vision, but it was not the modern units that would happen with technology.

1:21:52This was pre-911. You know, this is just at 9-11. So, you know, things like lasers and all that were still kind of starting out. Suppressors, all of the things, right? We were, some of the tactics were, you know, from Vietnam even, which is kind of crazy to think about. The only real action in the SEAL teams, I'm sure you know this, but, you know, it was like Grenada, Panama, and those were very short-lived, you know, experiences. And I don't mean to minimize the guys that were in those, but it wasn't like a prolonged campaigns where tactics and technologies could evolve with input from the operator.

1:22:29It was just, boom, short and quick. So, yeah, the guys who invaded in 01, their gear, their depth of knowledge was way different than 10 years later, by far, like light years. Yeah. It was a whole different military. Yeah. Wow. Interesting. Yeah. Where do we go from here? So that ended, I remember, And then at the time, the SEAL teams were doing this like Force 21 where they were creating a new SEAL team on each coast. So on the West Coast, it was SEAL Team 7, and on the East Coast, SEAL Team 10. And because of that restructuring, SEAL Team 3 had a short workup. So I came back to just a six-month workup before I deployed again.

1:23:11But my platoon chief, Todd, I remember him telling me like, hey, man, and him coming from dev group, there's something interesting about him where he was just, a better shot than everybody, better tactically than everybody. He was fit. He just, he had confidence. Not that other guys in the SEAL teams didn't have all those attributes, but he was my mentor. So I saw that and was like, I want to be like that. I didn't know much about the development group other than Rogue Warrior. And especially being on the West Coast teams, there wasn't that many, you know, guys coming from dev groups out there.

1:23:41You know, so it was most of those guys stayed on the East Coast. And so I didn't know much about the development group, but he was telling me, he's like, I think you should screen. And I thought, like, oh, okay, yeah, maybe in like five more years or I'll do a couple more platoons. And yeah, sure. And he's like, no, I think you should screen now. And I was young and I was like, okay. And then, you know, we get back from that deployment and then he tells me, hey, I talked to the training chief from Green Team or from Selection and they're actually looking to try something new where in the past to go to Dev Group, historically, You know, you were maybe mid to late 20s.

1:24:19You had done at least five years in the SEAL teams. And then that way, that was like older guys, older, quote unquote, you know. And that's what I thought. So I was like, oh, Todd, I'm not like that yet. I'd like to be. He's like, well, they're trying to get it to where they are getting a young guy in there. They want to try a test where there's a younger guy that comes in. So then that way, when he makes it through selection at let's say 23, those extra years are spent learning their tactics and their techniques, and you're getting mentored by them and not the SEAL teams. And so they're kind of after it.

1:24:53And one of them asked me any potential guys that might be good for that. And I mentioned your name. Would you be into it? And then I had this imposter syndrome kind of come up and just thought, well, I can't say no to my mentor. And if he sees something in me that I don't, I do trust him. So I just thought, OK, yeah, I'll give it a shot. And then I, so I screened at 22. and I remember the cadre saying that, like, hey, we're trying this out on you. It's probably not going to work, you know, but we want to just see what happens, because it might change the way that we do selection, where if you come in, you'll be the youngest guy we've ever put through selection, but if you do make it, that might open the door for more younger guys, so that they can spend, you know, do limited time on the SEAL teams, and then if they're younger, and then come over so that they can just kind of hang out being a newer guy for a long time, so that then one day, they become an assault team leader, they've maximized their potential.

1:25:49They've got a bunch of reps in. And I remember just thinking like, that was way above my head at the time. I was like, okay, I'll give it my best shot. And thankfully I got picked up. I finished my work up on my second platoon at SEAL Team 3. We were a jungle platoon, so we went to Guam. And we were training there, and everything was going great. We also had a bunch of other cool trips lined up, like Thailand, Australia again, all these like cool places to go just if we weren't going to be in afghanistan at least there's these cool exercises and but then at the time the iraq war was starting to gain a little bit of traction and we got reconsolidated in kuwait um with seal team three so the all seal team three minus one platoon all reconsolidated for the invasion so we left guam to get ready for that It was our first mission was to take down the oil fields in the southern peninsula of Basra, which is the southern part of Iraq, on something called the Al-Fa Peninsula.

1:26:53And what it was, was these big oil fields and then also these oil rigs that were off the coast, pumping stations essentially, where ships could come up and dump a bunch of oil and move on. And so it took all of SEAL Team 3 was going to take this down with the British 40th Commando. And so we were doing these big workups. And as far as I know, it was the first time a SEAL team together had done a mission. Since then, perhaps it's happened, but I know at least in 2003, that was the first time that like the full SEAL team had done something together. And my platoon, we were on the oil field, and we were essentially going to land on an Air Force 53.

1:27:34We had a DPV or Desert Patrol vehicle, which was essentially a dune buggy. that had a bunch of machine guns on it. That was very, the engine was very underpowered, kind of a legacy type thing, but it fit really well into a helicopter. And so that was going to be a blocking, the vehicle was going to be a blocking position. My team was going to be a blocking position as the 40th Commando took down the oil fields. On the workup though, in the Kuwaiti desert, I remember part of my job was the point man of the platoon. As soon as the helicopter landed, I was going to release a cargo strap for the DPV to roll off.

1:28:10And I have my hands on the cargo strap. And then as this is just training, as the helicopter's there, it starts to brown out. And then it starts to like kind of tilt, and then the rotors start hitting the ground, and we just crash and the tail snaps off. And I remember I had my hand on the cargo strap, and as I got flung back to the guy behind me, I released the cargo strap. And then I had my feet on the frame of the DPV as it's almost like launching at me, like a dog on a taut leash, just like wanting to kill me. That's what it felt like. And my feet were on the frame. And then it finally just settled, and you could smell all this fuel and everything in the air, and the dust was settling.

1:28:49And then we thankfully got out of the helicopter. Nobody was killed. These guys were banged up a little bit, but that was before that war started. And then, you know, during that time, we were living in the desert, quitting Al-Salim Air Base. And then finally, the zero hour or the moment of an invasion approached. And I remember we were flying in on the 53s and then just feeling the almost excitement, like another invasion, right? Like, wow, we are invading. This is crazy. I never thought we, I didn't think we would actually do it. I thought it was going to be a standard military hurry up and wait, train, train, train.

1:29:31and then all of a sudden, like, okay, calm it down. Politically, we've figured this thing out. But there we were, and they were pre-assault fires were going on in this oil fields from Tomahawk cruise missiles to AC-130s. And I remember when we finally landed, and being the point man, I was, you know, I released that cargo strap, the DPV rolled off, and I took my first step on Iraqi soil. And right as I took my step, I saw a vehicle, a technical, an Iraqi technical, and an A-10 shoot a Maverick right into it. So like first step, boom. That was like, welcome to Iraq. Holy shit. Yeah. That night we went Winchester on an AC-130.

1:30:11Just what all that means for the listeners is AC-130 is a big cargo plane with a bunch of like a cannon and all sorts of munitions on it and very good for close air support. And it shot all of its ammunition and just at different Iraqi targets. But we flew back from that mission. And let me back up. As that was going on, SEAL Team 3 was also taking down these oil platforms, these oil out in the ocean, and this pump station also that was right on the beach. So there was a lot of coordination that was going on. But all of it was successful. I remember we had gotten back, and my Master Chief of SEAL Team 3 brought in all the guys that had screened for Dev Group, who had orders.

1:30:53Because this was in March, and Green Team was starting, I believe, in April. of like, so it's really close, like just a few weeks out. And he pulled this all in and, and I appreciated him doing this. He said, all right, he was from dev group. So I think that's why he wanted, he put a little extra effort in this. And he said, all right, guys, here's the thing. You have a choice. You can fly back now because you have orders back to the States and you can start green team. I already talked to the green team cadre. They understand if you want to go with SEAL Team 3 with us, as we drive with the Marines to Baghdad, your orders can be postponed a year.

1:31:26Like they get it. Like they understand that, of course, you'd want to be on the invasion. Like they'll hold the spot for you. But it's going to be up to you guys. And I just need to know an answer right now. Because if we start driving to Baghdad and you change your mind, good fucking luck. Like I'm not pulling any strings to get you out of there. I need you. And I remember him asking the four of us, and I was the only guy that was single. And I was like, let's go to fucking Baghdad. That's where I was at. But the other guys were married and all that. And I remember them being like, well, I don't know.

1:31:55And then I remember that Master Chief saying, Also, here's the thing. I don't believe these wars, Iraq and Afghanistan, are going anywhere, which was different than what most guys were thinking at the time. And he said, if you want to hang around and keep fighting in these wars, you're going to want to be at a JSOC squadron. And so my recommendation is that even though I need all of you guys to be with us on the drive to Baghdad, professionally, I would recommend that you just go to the command. But do whatever you want and let me know by the end of the day. And then at that point, all the other guys were like, they wanted to go back.

1:32:29And I was like, okay, I'm going to take his advice. I'm going to just roll the dice and hopefully I make it. It's a tough decision. Yeah, it was. It was. And so we boarded on, I remember, they were calling them like freedom flights, where you just basically chartered civilian plane flying back to the States. And I flew back. I didn't own much. I had a small storage unit with a little U-Haul trailer. I loaded up my truck and drove across country and started Green Team within, I don't know, a couple weeks, a week maybe. And that's when that chapter ended and the dev group chapter started. Right on.

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1:35:48All right, Alex, we're back from the break. Getting ready to get into Green Team. Yeah. It was interesting going from the West Coast to the East Coast, and I didn't really know anyone out there, but I moved in with an old friend of mine in his house while I went through green team or selection for the development group. And being, at the time at least, the youngest guy to at least attempt it, I also found myself, just like I was in Buds, feeling almost intimidated, imposter syndrome around these instructors. A lot of the instructors were guys that were at the top of their game, super talented, and even thinking to myself, like, wow, I don't know if I belong here, looking at some of the other guys that were students who had more time in the SEAL teams, had these big reputations and just thinking, like, how did I end up here?

1:36:46But then just going back to that same mentality of just, just make it to the next meal or make it to the next evolution or the next house run. And when I went through, I would say I was maybe an average at best student, but I just kind of kept kicking the can down the roads and passing different evolutions. And it was about, the one I went through was, in those days, it was about seven months. But I was also, there's a couple of years where they had seals were part of the mobility also. So you went through all the assault section part of it, and then you went through mobility, meaning you would learn more ground mobility stuff and then also the boats and drive the boats.

1:37:27But it was only for like two years where guys had both. It was in 2002 and 2003, when I went through in 2003. So the green team was about 10 months long because of that, because I almost had both green teams. It was brutal. And yeah. However, I'm so glad I had that foundation of mobility, whether it was like waterborne or ground mobility, because that was needed in when I would become an assault team leader. I had a better understanding of all of mobility assets, assets, but also ground mobility in specifically Afghanistan up in the mountains. Just getting more knowledge in that realm really gave me a real depth of knowledge as an operator.

1:38:09So we went through 10 months of that. And then you were 23 when you went to Greentown. Yeah. And you were basically a case study. I was a case study, yes, at the time. So were you the only, how much younger were you than the other? I would say the next youngest guy was probably 26 or 7. And I was 23. And I had just turned 23 also. With one deployment. Oh, yeah. Technically two, because that second deployment was shortened. It was just six months. So yeah, basically one and a half is what I would say. But yeah, not much. So I had limited experience and was young and struggled with imposter syndrome.

1:38:55I had all those things kind of like buzzing around where I was like, oh man. And then thinking, you know, you go to a selection like that and it's like, okay, if you don't make it, where a lot of guys don't, but then I would, you know, in those days I would go to Little Creek, which was fine with me. But I didn't move from San Diego to go to Little Creek. But I would have just, I knew, I'm like, okay, if I don't make it, I'm just going to go to a SEAL team, whatever it was, and just do some more time there and enough time to hopefully get a chance to come back. That was my backup plan. Not that I was relying on a backup plan, but I was just committed.

1:39:32I was like, this is what I want to do. I want to be the best assaulter that I can possibly be. And that's the place I want to go. So what is day one of training like? It was definitely going back in the way back machine, a while back, but I recall it was a PT. It was push-ups, sit-ups, pull-ups, swim, run. And they will say they're giving you the answers to the test. That's the only time you'll get it in green team of, this is what you're going to need. You need to do X amount of pull-ups. Perfect. Those are the answers to the test. And for me, I was in Iraq or Kuwait trying my best to stay in shape, but there wasn't a pool there.

1:40:17You couldn't really run. A lot of the running was on a treadmill. And then I had to move. So it was hard to stay in peak shape. But I was young, so I did have youth on my side and was able to pass all that. So the first day is more of that PRT or that workout, that test. and then it was, if I recall, just more administrative type stuff. So like day one was kind of the workout or the PT test and then some administrative stuff. But then where the real crux or crucible of that selection was in CQB or close quarters battle or for the listeners, shooting inside of live fire inside of rooms, like you might see like a SWAT team do on TV or something like that.

1:41:02But that's what we were doing because it was a national mission hostage rescue unit between a development group and CAG or the Army's tier one unit, Delta Force. Those are the two national mission hostage rescue units. So you have to be a true subject matter expert or perform at the level of that within the rooms of shooting close to each other live fire. And so essentially you would really need to be given a technique that you had to do perfectly the way they want it done, not the way they did it at SEAL Team 3 or SEAL Team 2 or whatever team you came from. You had to do it the way they wanted it.

1:41:36And if you didn't, then likely you would get rolled out or dismissed from the course. And shooting, so it was very CQB shooting. It was very hard where BUDS was, you know, trying not to get hypothermic. It's horrible physically and mentally, but this was more of a performance. Like, hey, we get it, you're not going to quit because you've made it through BUDS, but we're going to make it hard. but you have to be have the aptitude to be able to meet these standards within the kill house and on the range i mean was that uh how apparent was that right off the bat right off the bat because that we went to um a rain a training facility out in uh mississippi and we went out there and that was like the bit you're out there for over a month, and it was just right off the bat, and it was so precise.

1:42:26Like, if your barrel is, you're moving your barrel and you come close within like 12 inches or below like 10 inches, you get a safety violation. And all these instructors were so keen and zeroed in on every little movement that if you didn't do every little technique perfectly, you would get a safety violation or some sort of infraction. And if you compiled this training record of all of these, they would likely let you go. And it wasn't that you weren't a good guy. It was that you just didn't meet the performance. What if you're not pushing the limits? If you're not pushing... And if you're trying to play it too safe, I mean.

1:43:01Oh, yeah, they would get you too. And they would call you out on it. They would notice it, and then they would force you to the front. And then you would get a lot of the attention of the instructors. So they actually preferred a guy that was just whatever. I'm going to go for it every time. I'm just going to be aggressive. And if I mess up, I mess up." They preferred that over a guy trying to play it really safe and kind of hide in the back because they just saw that as kind of, for lack of a better term, of avoidance. I don't want to use the word cowardice, but like, like, hey, we want you up there.

1:43:31If you're going to fail, fail big is kind of what it was. And so I just did what they told me. I was like, okay, I'll just do what you're telling me, just like I did with that Bud's instructor was saying, just make it to the next meal. I was just like, OK, I'll just do what you tell me. And so I just would always try to be the number one man. So for the listeners, that's like the first guy that goes into a room. I was always trying to just do what they told me to do, just be aggressive and leave it all out on the field. And thankfully, I mean, sure, I made mistakes. And there was times I didn't think, I think everybody who's gone through the selection is like, I'm not sure if I'm going to make it today.

1:44:05I know at least for me, there was days I did not know if I was going to make it. I even had one of the instructors tell me that once. Like, bro, you're right on the edge. and just thinking like, I know. I know. But, you know, it's just, I equate it to a quarterback at a big game who throws an interception where it's like you throw the interception, you have two choices. You can either get all in your head and be like, I can't believe I did that. I made that mistake. Or you can just say, well, fuck it. I'm going to learn from that. And I got to get back in there. I'm still the quarterback of my own life.

1:44:38This game is still ongoing. And so I just kind of applied that kind of mentality to it, where if I did mess up, it's like, all right, I threw an interception. They'll let me know if I'm dismissed. And if not, I'm just gonna keep going and, you know, using the analogy, keep throwing footballs. And that's what I did. And thankfully, I didn't make enough mistakes to get dismissed. Did you get to the point where you just... I don't want to say didn't give a fuck, but, I mean...

1:45:10I don't know how it was. Are they yelling at you? Yeah, there's a lot of yelling. You have to get to a point where, I would think, you would have to get to a point where you're just not even listening anymore. That's true. Yes, and it was. It's almost like you have to, in my opinion, kind of quiet the noise a little bit. Don't get me wrong, I'm listening to instruction and all of that, but there was a lot of yelling, because they would try to create a lot of chaos to really make you stressed out. And the why is, you know, it's not just the movements, but the shots have to be perfectly placed. There's no, like, if you run in and you're really fast at shooting, they don't give a fuck if, how fast do you shoot?

1:45:48As long as the rounds are perfect. They'd rather it be like, boom, boom, and like keyhole between the eyes than just some guy coming in and just blasting a bunch of rounds. And so there is so much chaos that they would try to create because it's a national mission hostage rescue unit. So it's mimicking maybe the chaos of combat or the stress of a high-level mission, where maybe it's just not hostage rescue, maybe it's like JSOC going after the army, going after Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden, whatever it is, it's like the big missions. They need guys that can handle that, and they're testing you for it there.

1:46:24And it was very hard. That's another one where some guys might say, it wasn't that bad. To me, I was like, that was really hard. I did not know if I was going to make it. But I was young too. And I did get a little extra attention because I was young. And most of it was, I really wish I wouldn't have gotten, but I couldn't avoid it. But I do think, and I don't know this for sure, but at the same time from the cadre, because I would one day become an instructor, that as long as he's making the standard, yeah, we're giving him a lot of shit and just really ratcheting it up, but he is young and he is showing up and meeting the standard.

1:47:00So I think it got to a certain point where they're like, all right, we can back off him a little bit. Like, he might be here for, like, make it." So they backed off a little bit. Do you think that the... I mean, did you get the impression that a lot of people didn't want you there because you were so young? Do you think maybe they thought you didn't deserve to be there because you were so young? There was, I got the vibe from a couple instructors where they didn't think that, you know, I was going against tradition. You know, you needed to hack, you know, your time in the SEAL teams. You needed to do at least five years, and then you tack on buds and all that, so you likely have been in the Navy seven, eight, nine years to be the most junior guy in the class.

1:47:40And here I was with a lot less than that, maybe five years, four years, four and a half years. And so there was some old guard that didn't like it. Like, that's not how it was for me. And my friends, that's what makes the best assaulters. So why are we messing with this guy over here? Why are we even entertaining this? Yeah, sure, he's not a bad guy. this one I'm imagining, but, you know, like make him go back to SEAL team, whatever, for a few more years and come back and then we'll pay attention. But there was a couple instructors that I could tell they did care. They were like, whatever, like if he's showing up and he's here right now, we see the vision of what we're at least attempting to do here.

1:48:16Because if he graduates or makes it through selection at 23, then he has, you know, so many more years, like as I was mentioning before, where he can get mentored by the guys and more reps and all of that and just hang out. So that that one day he can really maximize his true potential. So there was some more forward-thinking guys, but just like in any organization, there were some old-school guys that made sure that I knew that in some ways it wasn't that welcome that I was there. But they did treat me like a man. It was just like, they were more thinking like, just not yet, Alex. It's not that we don't want you here, it's just that you're here a little too early.

1:48:54But then I just kept going and just passing stuff. And I wouldn't say with flying colors at all, but meeting the standard. And then before I knew it, slowly the end was getting closer. How many guys did you start with? That's a great question. Those classes were smaller in those days. I would say we started with maybe like 35 and probably, or 30, and finished with like, I don't know, 22 or something like that. The attrition rates would get worse the years after me when the classes got bigger. But, and to be honest, like, I don't know, because I got split and they took half of the enlisted SEALs and put them in the mobility pipeline.

1:49:33So you're in assault mobility. So out of, I think we had 21 enlisted SEALs and 10 of us were in like a lottery. Basically they're like, all right, here's the class. Like, okay, this guy is going just assault. This guy's going ground mobility and then back and forth. So I happened to be in that ground mobility group. And so there was 10 of us, if I recall. So maybe, I don't know. The classes after would be like 50 % attrition. I don't think ours was as high, but we also didn't have as large of a class. Where I think some of the other classes were 60-something guys. So you went... I'm gonna bounce around here a little bit.

1:50:13So did you go straight to red? I went to gray-red, but because I had been through the assault selection, I was also considered an assaulter. So I had like a red squadron patch. I was considered... You were... you weren't support. You were... No, no, no. I was considered... you know, I yarded in, which basically for the listeners, when you get there, in those days, you'd drink a yard of beer to... in front of everybody to basically say, like, welcome. You know, you get almost, like, hazed in. I wouldn't say hazed. Initiated in. Maybe there's a better way. And yeah, so I... but I was... I would do a lot of the house runs with Red Squadron, but then sometimes I would break away to do training of driving boats or ground mobility.

1:50:53but I was still doing all the deployments as either an assaulter as an assaulter for the next year. Because the other path is a little bit different, right? Yeah. Most gray. Yes. Gray, red, gray, whatever. It's different. It's different green team. It is, yeah. Before those two years of 2002 and 2003, before that, it was SEALs would drive boats at dev group and do the mobility, but they wouldn't go through the assault version. They would just do the mobility version. So then they wouldn't be considered an assaulter. But those two years that I was in qualified me to do both. But then they stopped doing that after my class.

1:51:32And then the SWCC took over driving boats at Dev Group. Got you. I know it's like a little like nuanced, but yeah, that's just kind of how it went in those days. What about your classmates? I mean, what do they think about you being five, six years younger? They loved it. I remember a lot of those guys, because I was just, you know, I fit in really well with the guys. I still have really close friends with a lot of them. And I think that they were supportive of it. It's just, but they're also worried about their own self of passing. So I never got any negativity from any of the classmates. It was more of, I mean, I certainly was the young guy.

1:52:12And I'm sure, you know, my prefrontal cortex wasn't even developed of my brain when I think back on it. So I think that I was accepted, and I just felt like one of the guys. Like, the class made me just feel like I could have been instead of 2333. But it was, I think, the old guard of the instructors that kind of had an extra eye out. Like, let's keep an eye on this guy because it was a test. But even them, the most hardcore guys, were fair to me. It wasn't like they made up a safety violation to get me out or anything. It was just maybe a little extra attention, like an extra tire drag or maybe, you know, I don't know, just a little extra yelling, getting yelled at or something.

1:52:52A little extra love. I mean, so...

1:53:00So you were basically the guy that opened the gates for everybody. Yeah. Because in my generation, when I didn't screen, I didn't go over there. but in my generation is when i think they started running two green teams a year and everybody with two platoons was like yeah fuck it i'm going over there i'm going to try to i'm going to screen i'm going to go over there yeah so you were the one that yes yeah because of that that allowed just to what you were saying that allowed for younger guys other guys after me were 23. Other guys after me, they tried like one platoon or two platoons, you know, where it's like a shorter time at the SEAL, as long as their master chiefs or their SEAL teams were okay with it.

1:53:45But yeah, that was the beginning. When that showed, okay, that can happen, then that opened up the door for more guys to come, more junior. Yeah. What do you think looking back? Do you think if you were in a leadership position, I mean, Would you, what do you think? Was that a good idea? I think it was the right call. Yeah, I think it was the right call. I'm glad they did it for the right guy. I think, and I wouldn't say I was like super mature. I wasn't immature. I was just like right where I needed to be. I think for the right guy, it is worth a gamble because of what I was mentioning before, where instead of doing another, let's say, four years at a SEAL team, I had four years of just being a junior guy as an assaulter and getting qualifications and just getting more house runs, more time on the range of the way they wanted it done.

1:54:32And missions, most importantly, especially in that era. So when I got into a leadership position later on, I had a lot more tours at the command at least than a lot of previous assault team leaders. So I was truly peaking at my potential. So I would say with the right guy, that was the right call. I would say if I was the guy that was picking these guys that were 23 or young, that it's okay to say no to some guys, even though they could be the right fit, and let them grow up a little bit more in the SEAL teams. It just depends. It's almost like you have to just pick the right guy. But I do believe that that is a good thing.

1:55:11And some people might disagree with me on that, which is fine. But coming from my experience, I felt like it set me up professionally to contribute to the squadrons better by getting there earlier. What did you notice different about the culture? At Red Squadron? Yeah. I, they were hardcore. I remember it was, everything was about the house runs. Everything was about shooting. We were just training our asses off all the time. Everything ended in the kill house, whether we were doing a jump, you do a jump into something, patrolling, kill house. Swimming over the beach, you know, kill house. Ground mobility, kill house.

1:55:52Everything was just ended in just CQB. So, and that was something that I personally loved. I loved assaulting. I loved shooting inside of buildings. I loved the hostage rescue. It just spoke my language. And I was mentored by so many incredible operators that it truly allowed me to come into my own. But the mentality at Red Squadron was very intense. And they kind of had that, at least in those days, to the other squadrons had their own little personalities. But Reds was always intense. It's just, we are proud to be the most extreme. Whether that is true or not is to be determined, but at least that was the mentality.

1:56:29So SEAL Team 3 was great. Great place to kind of grow up and great people, great mentality. But Red Squadron was just like this whole, the energy of it was just like train hard, get there early, leave late, train, train, train. Like we're going to train harder than everybody. And at least in those days, that's, I believe we did. I wouldn't say we were better. I just say that was the mentality. It's just hardcore. Do you notice an immediate difference, though, from Team 3 to that? Yes, absolutely. And what I noticed, too, was now you have an assault team leader who's perhaps a subject matter expert and has been there for a while, and then the second guy in charge in that team, and then it goes down the line, and you're getting mentored by these guys that are that.

1:57:15And so now I have a ton of mentors that are telling me what to do and different ways to do it, and then now you're at a JSOC unit, So there's a ton of funding to get the top gear in the world. You can bring in world-class, like, let's say, shooting instructors or skydive instructors. So the budget was great for that. And then also because it's the machine of JSOC, we were getting a lot more missions. So you're actually able to employ those skills overseas. And so that's and then that built a confidence, like a true confidence, I believe, like gun, like a gunfighter confidence to where it wasn't just like, I think I can do that.

1:57:50It's like, no, I'm fucking ready. Like, let's go. But yeah, so that mentality, not that SEAL Team 3 wasn't a bunch of warriors and great guys, they are. But it was just, it really was almost like a step up, at least in my experience, to where it's like taking down a stadium, right? Like taking down a football stadium. It's like, who does that? But those units, it's like, yeah, no problem. You know? And then I remember being a junior guy and being like, what do you mean no problem? But then seeing these guys being able to do it and then just be like, I want to be like that one day. I might not be there right now, but I've at least seen it done well.

1:58:23And then, yeah, so I felt like it was where I wanted to be. And the timing for me, however you might look, one looks at it, I believe I was very fortunate because I got there after both invasions in 03, and then was in Red Squadron from 03 until 2014. And so I deployed every year to Iraq, Afghanistan, or some other locations to combat every year at least once from 01 to 13. So it was just this grind and learning on the go and the evolution of tactics and techniques and also technologies. You were like right at the forefront of it, of those wars. So they long answered your simple question was it was just the, to me, it was the place to be for tactics, for mentorship and for missions.

1:59:13Were you treated like, just like everybody else when you got in? Well, no. So the first year I got there, yeah, no, definitely not. First year I got there, I remember I had this mentor, Lou Langlis, who was killed in extortion, unfortunately. But he was a big mentor of mine. And I remember him saying, he was my first team leader, like, hey, you're not allowed to talk in a debrief. so basically at the end of a house run. Like even if you have something good to say, tell it to me because you're so junior and young, you probably know what the fuck you're talking about. So tell me, I'll be the filter and then I'll bring it up.

1:59:49So don't say anything. I was like, yeah, roger that, Lou. And then he's like, and oh, by the way, take the trash out. And don't say anything for the first year. And I was like, no problem. And so it was like, but I appreciated that humility of it because it wasn't like, wow, I made it through the selection. It was like, cool story, so was everyone else. just shut up and listen and absorb stuff. And so, yeah, and also I was a junior too. I was probably the young guy at Red Squadron for probably four years, right? So I was always like a new batch of new guys would come in and I was still the youngest.

2:00:22And then another batch next year, still the youngest. And so, but as that was going on, my confidence and was going up in my reps and experience was going up. so I could see what their vision was, to give it a shot on a young guy like myself. Because now I'm like, let's say, 26 and 27, and finally somebody who's more junior than me gets to Red Squadron, and I already have a lot of experience. And I'm like, now I'm kind of the guy that's mentoring that guy in a way. Or I'm mentoring guys that are older than me, only because I'd been there longer. Holy shit, you were the youngest guy there for four, three to four generations.

2:01:03Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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2:02:06What is that like? Like, seeing people that have been around longer than you show up for... Yeah. Especially after you've been there three or four years. Yeah, I know. I remember I ended up being a LPO, a troop LPO, a leading petty officer for the listeners. It's just kind of like a small leadership role. Basically, they're in charge of, like, making sure guys take out the trash and that vehicles are topped off with gasoline. It's not something that crazy, but it was a small leadership position. And I remember there was guys getting to the squadron who were older and who were chiefs. And I just had made it E6, and I was in charge of them because I had tenure at the squadron.

2:02:48And I remember some of those guys having issues with somebody like me, because they had higher rank and all of that, but I had the tenure. and then me at that point having the confidence to be like, let's not let this be an issue with you because it's not an issue with me. Like, you're working for me. So now I'm like in this, I'm starting to fall into my own a little bit. But it was interesting. And some guys, they didn't care. But there's always ego. You know that in this field. There's always ego in some high-performance teams. How does that even get expressed? I mean, it's... Yeah. Who do they take issue with?

2:03:22Like, this guy's in charge of me? Yeah, he's been here for four fucking years. He just showed up. Yeah, and the thing was, you know, you get to, in those roles too in leadership, especially at that unit, it's like you're also proving it by your performance. So you're on the, you're still shooting, even though you're in a leadership role, you're still shooting, you're supposed to be at the standard. And so some guys had an issue with it, some didn't. At the same time, that was on them, not on me. But it wasn't too many. There's a couple in particular that I think they had some issues with it because they had so much tenure in the white side SEAL teams that it slowly went away.

2:03:56Because at a certain point, it's like, you have to get over it. Yeah. Yeah. In that era, one of the big experiences for me when I was really young was in 2005. And what had been going on in JSOC, historically, you have the two big units of Delta Force or the army and dev group, Seal Team Six. And there was this really bad inter-service rivalry going on. And there's always inter-service stuff, right? Guys just talking a little shit back and forth, which is fine. But it was stuff that I believe, I don't know, but went back maybe the 90s, some like weird head-butting rivalry going on. It wasn't very healthy.

2:04:33And General McChrystal at the time was in charge of JSOC, and he basically told us like, hey, you guys are more alike than you're different. This is getting ridiculous. We're going to start doing exchanges. And so we were sending teams from each unit, each squadrons over to each other, and they'd work up for a little bit and then deploy, which I thought was really helpful because we are so alike. It was just one guy happens to be in the Navy, one guy's in the Army, you see a guy on nods at night, and they look exactly the same. And they're both world-class gunfighters, you know, American warriors, right?

2:05:05There's nothing but praise for the Army counterparts and for our own guys. A lot of sacrifice for everyone. But I found myself in 05, there was a Delta squadron that was in a very kinetic deployment, and they requested more forces from Dev Group, because we already had a team with them of about 70 guys. And they're like, hey, do you have any extra guys you can just shoot over? Because we, from Afghanistan, we just need young, just assaulters. We don't need anybody that's in charge, but we're taking a lot of casualties. And so fortunately myself, Matt Bissonette, who was on one of your previous podcasts and another guy, were sent over because all we were were just shooters.

2:05:46And I remember flying over. This was maybe the first three weeks of deployment. So we flew from Afghanistan over to Iraq and I was assigned to a troop, a Delta troop that was in Ramadi. And I was really nervous because I was only on my second deployment with Red. So I was still junior, and I hadn't done the workup with them, where our team that was deployed with them had already gone down to Fort Bragg and worked up. I knew that basically what their tactics and techniques were, very similar but a little bit nuanced, different. And I just knew, like, likely I'd be hitting the ground right into an operation, which is what happened.

2:06:19But I had never worked up with them. So I'm young, nervous, still dealing with imposter syndrome. And I remember landing on the airfield in Ramadi, a historic HLZ on Shark Base, and a beat-up pickup truck picked me up at, it was, I don't know what time, but the sun was down. And this big guy with a beard comes up, and he was like, are you Alex? And I was like, yeah. And he was like, I'm Bob Horrigan. I'm going to be your shooting buddy, and we're going to be friends. And I was like, okay. So this guy, and I didn't know at the time, but Bob was kind of a larger-than-life figure at Delta. And he had already been a team leader, and he was coming to do his last tour before he retired.

2:07:03He had 19 years in, I believe, and it was like one last pump before he went home. So he was just kind of an assaulter, not in a leadership position, but he was a breacher. And I remember him saying, like, do you breach? Explosive breach. And I said, yeah, I do. And he's like, okay, we're the team breachers of our assault team. I'm gonna just show you the little, he's like, I know it's the same, but a little different. Let me just show you how we do it. And between Bob and I, we became really close friends. And I, to this day, I'm so appreciative of Bob because I felt like he noticed me just flying in like that and him being like, you're with me, we're going to be friends.

2:07:39And I'll show you everything you need to know. And we became close friends. And every night, he would be the, in those days, we were just explosive breaching the shit out of everything in those days. And from tactics standpoint, we were doing hostage rescue. There was not any of this other styles of clearance that would come later that were safer. It was just, boom, like really aggressive, running into buildings. So did Dev Group at the time. We all did that. And so we would explosive breach. And every night we would do at least three, four plus explosive breaches a night. And Bob and I would swap off as the team breacher.

2:08:15So one night maybe I would place the explosive charge on the door. Bob would be my security guard. That charge would go. The next time, Bob would place the charge, and I would cover for him. And so we would do that, you know, sometimes one op a night, sometimes three operations a night. And we were in Ramadi, and then also out west in Al-Assad and Al-Qaim, specifically in that era. That's the really hot area of the Iraq War in that time. And we were just grinding it out. And during that time, Bob and I became closer and closer friends. And then one night, we were out, and we landed out in Al Qaim, and you could feel there was something different in the air.

2:08:52And what we were doing was we were going to hit Al Qaim before the Marines pushed through, almost to try to destabilize the city with taking out high-value targets. So when the Marines moved through, we kind of disoriented the enemy. And so we were foot patrolling in, and you could feel this energy. There's something going on. Something going on. It was about to happen. And I remember we were on the street. It was that night, and it was one team was going to hit a house across the street, and they were putting a charge on a metal gate. So they were going to blow the gate, run in, blow the front door, run in.

2:09:28And we were going to do the same thing on the street over. And so it was Bob's turn to breach randomly on this night. And he had his charge out. I was like, okay, cool, I'm right next to you. We're going to blow the gate, and then we're going to run up. I'll be the first guy up holding security, and you'll have the charge, and then you'll put the charge on and blow it. And so that's what we were going to do. Like I said, we did this tons of times before. And I remember I'm standing right next to him, like ready to go, just like we did a million times before, not a million, but a ton. And Bob looked at me and he just says, get back.

2:10:02And I was like, get back? OK. He was my mentor. I was like, sure. So I stepped back a few steps. Maybe I was like crowding him, whatever. And then he like looks at me. He's like, get back. And I was like, OK. And so I took a few more steps back. And then I remember he drops his gun, it's just slung, and he just starts maneuvering his hand like this, like, get the fuck back. And it's almost, I can still see his nods juggling a little bit as he's saying that. And I'm like, okay, like, what did I do wrong? I'm sure I'll hear about it later, you know, after the op. But I, this is like, okay. And so I started moving back.

2:10:37And then now I see I'm right next to this charge from the other team that was going to blow this gate. So I'm standing right in front of it, and I'm thinking, okay, I have to, I can't eat this charge. I'm going to get hurt. So I kept going back even further to get out of the way of that charge. So now there's maybe 20 yards, maybe 15 yards between Bob and me. I did know when that gate blew that one of the other team members was going to fill my spot. It's just like pick up basketball. But I didn't want that because he's my shooting buddy. So I just knew I'm like, okay, as soon as these go, I'm going to sprint up as fast as I can to be Bob's security guy.

2:11:12So the charges go, So Bob starts to run into the courtyard. I'm sprinting as fast as I can to be a security guard, or a security guy. But Mike McNulty, another assaulter, slipped right in to where, because he was closer to Bob as his security guard. And as all of us are sprinting to the front door of this compound, there was something going on where the outdoors, they had lights going on, but inside was all dark, and we were on night vision. And I remember running up and kind of flicking my helmet up to see under my nods, and there was Bob and Mike in front of me and another assaulter as the four of us are running up.

2:11:51And as Bob and Mike enter the door, or right before they enter the door, Bob says it's open, he just yells, open. Basically saying, like, I'm not going to throw the charge. He throws his charge to the side to be, to just like run in. And there was two belt-fed machine guns waiting for them. And just unloaded on our train as we were running in and you could feel the bullets going right past your, like the velocity of the bullets going past. I even had glass in my face from a piece of window that I caught in the face. And both Bob and Mike fell into the room, or into the threshold of the door, and the rest of us just kind of like pied off to the side to get out of the way of this volley of intense machine gun fire coming out of, because it was so close.

2:12:40and then so then we're starting to pie in the doors and there's like a little bit of gunfire going in through the windows we're taking some fire from a rooftop and then mike gets out they pull mike out and then one of the bravest things that i've seen is one of the assaulters sees bob and the threat this door that just took two belt-fed machine guns that were just unloaded and you could he could see bob's leg and he just pied it pied it exposed himself into the truly the heart of darkness, grabbed his foot and yanked him out just to get his body out. And so I remember as they pulled Bob out, and I saw what had happened to him, that I had a moment of just losing my mind.

2:13:24And I went like berserker, essentially, and just saw red that they had killed not just Mike, who I cared for a lot, but Bob, my mentor, and somebody who I really cared about. And then I remember we were all like, we want payback to the, you know, like we want to get back in there. And which tactically, it would make sense. Okay, we got everybody out. Let's just pull back, call in an airstrike and kill the guys in there. But we decided we wanted payback. And this was in a different era. Some people might be like, you guys should have done X, Y, and Z. However, this is before combat clearance and methodical, all these things.

2:14:02So we were all, I believe, seeing red. I don't want to speak for the other guys, but I know for me. And so we took down that hot house and we started off with something called the thermobaric hand grenade that we threw into the house, which for the listeners, that particular grenade, it doesn't throw pieces of fragmentation or hot metal everywhere. It uses overpressure technology, basically like overpressurize the building to collapse it or to just overpressurize anybody in the building. So one of those was thrown in, and I was sitting at a wall right next to it, and it went off, and I was gonna be the one man into the building.

2:14:38I remember standing up after it went off, and I'd been concussed by being so close to this grenade, and did a pirouette almost, stumbling as I was running through the front door. And as I went with the guys behind me, it wasn't just me. It was this whole team. It was very brave that night. And I remember going through the front door, and it was a marble floor and just slipping over all of the blood that had been in that threshold of the door and feeling so vulnerable where I'm concussed, I'm slipping all over this marble floor. Bob's blood? Yeah, Bob and Mike's. And that was something I would have years later, even flashbacks of I'd see white marble floors in hotels and just see almost like the shining blood going right down it.

2:15:22But back to that night, I remember going in, And as we were clearing room by room, there was sandbag bunkers within each room. And we were just clearing it with hand grenades. And as that was happening, the bad guys came out the back and the Rangers, our blocking position, ended up finishing them. But when that night ended, we were still going. That was just, we had to continue to route out all of these networks that night. And I remember using all my breaching charges and it was a big night of fighting. and not knowing what happened to Bob and Mike. I figured, certainly Bob, but I wasn't sure about Mike.

2:16:01But when we got back, you know, we were a lot of us covered in blood, and we were told of what happened with Bob, that they both passed. And then I remember, you know, those guys were larger than life. And even though I was an exchange guy, especially Bob, I was just shattered by it, and so was everybody else. but it was, this campaign's ongoing. Here's an Ambien. Take an Ambien, because you have to get back up and we're going back out tomorrow night. And that's exactly what happened. Yeah. But it's... In my... I might be jumping ahead, but in my own healing journeys, whether it's plant medicine, meditation, Bob still comes up for me.

2:16:47The spirit of him, I don't know how or why, but he's always there. I can even feel him here today. I feel that he and I recently, in one of those experiences, he showed up to me and I asked him, like, why would you not let me die with you?

2:17:06And he said, that's because you have work to do. You need to help show people a healing path. There's so much pain and suffering. You have to show people how to heal. And because I had struggled with survivor's guilt for so much because of that, because Mike took my spot, because I didn't die with Bob, that I finally got some healing from that, realizing like, okay, I'll do the best I can. I don't know what that means, but I'll just keep... Basically, it wasn't my time, is what Bob was saying. I had more work to do. But I feel his spirit. When I'm down, I can feel it in my heart that he's pushing me, like, just keep going.

2:17:52i think you're doing it man yeah thanks man i yeah it's when i'm worried there's times i'm like worried that i'm letting him down but uh then i can feel him coming back and and just like giving me like calm down get over yourself just get the back in there and keep doing it like get out of your head you have a mission to do why do you feel like you're letting him down at times.

2:18:22I think, you know, that imposter syndrome stuff where now that I've gotten out and now I work in a lot of different areas of mental health, I just hope that I can, it's almost like Bob, I feel like Bob saved me so that I can do this. And I want to make sure that I'm upholding his honor in fulfilling that mission because of how important he was to me. And I think that's why every now and then I just get in my own head of, you know, that maybe I'm not doing enough. But then I realized it's almost Bob saying like, dude, it's a marathon, not a sprint. You can't just like boil the ocean, just keep going, just keep trying to do good in the world.

2:19:07Yeah. Do you think you knew it was on the other side of the door? yeah i do because i don't know why there's no reason why he would turn around and tell me to keep moving back there was no there wasn't a tactical reason for it um i don't recall doing anything that he would have been mad like i just really don't um there was something off you could feel it when we landed in the helicopters that something dark was about to happen and you could feel it when we were placing charges on the gates. I could feel it, you know, I could almost sense like something was about to go down. But when he kept telling me, there was no reason, repeatedly, not just like, hey, bro, give me some space.

2:19:54It was like, and especially when he was like, stopped, dropped his rifle, had a reaching charge in his hand, and was like motioning for me to back, like, get the fuck back. And so I feel like he knew something was happening. I don't know for sure, but in my gut, I don't know why he would have acted like that. I can't come up with another reason why he would do that. It was just so unlike him to do that.

2:20:23How many times did you guys break doors together before that? Oof. 50, probably. Yeah, I would say, I don't know, maybe give or take 10 on that. So at least around 50, easy. In those days, we were just breaching so much and going out every night, like I was mentioning, like one to three times. So it was, and there's always explosive breaching. And every time we went out, there might be multiple breaches on that operation because maybe it's, we hit one, it's like, oh, we hit the neighbor, he's next door. Or the guy's saying like, yeah, this is the wrong house, but there's a whole cell, IED cell down the road I can lead you there and it's like, okay, let's go check it out.

2:21:06Breach and charge, boom. So yeah, we had done probably, I'm just running at number 50, I'd say. Wow. Yeah.

2:21:16What would you say to him today? That I love him, that I appreciate his mentorship, all the way from picking me up from the HLZ, right off the bat, not allowing me to feel like I didn't belong. of just him saying, you're my shooting buddy, we're gonna be friends, right? The moment I got into that unit. And then he would drag me around, introduce me to everybody, and was like a big brother, really. And he was larger than life, to be honest. It wasn't just a guy. It was a guy with a really great reputation, really great sense of humor. Yeah. Yeah, if he was here, I'd miss him. and I appreciate everything he did for me, and I believe continues to do for me.

2:22:04Like, the spirit of him, I can sense it. Do you feel like you're at peace with it? I feel like I'm getting there, especially after the recent experiences of sensing him and all of that. I'm getting to a better place of it. I mean, that was over 20 years ago, 21 years ago. You know, I have it on the calendar, and I send myself reminders like a week out, and then like six days out, just to remind myself that the day's coming. So that gets easier every time to where it happens, and I'm able just to kind of like sit with it. It's not a surprise. But yeah, it's just, as the years go on, it's just now starting to lose some of its momentum because I'm becoming more at peace with it because of the messages I was getting from Bob that I have a job to do.

2:22:57How did those messages come? In plant medicine. He's sat down in front of me and just told me that. And... Yeah, mostly in plant medicine. And just letting me know, like, hey, man, there's more work to do. There's a lot of suffering going on in this world. But yeah, mostly plant medicine, but in meditation, too. I've had it. And there'll be times even when something tough comes up, whether it's him or the guys from extortion, I will ask for their support. Like, I'm really struggling right now. Can you guys help me? And like recently went through a divorce, that type of a thing. And I can feel them just be like, we've got you, dude.

2:23:40You know, essentially like emotionally, we'll pick you up from the airport and you're our shooting buddy.

2:23:50Yeah, man, I'm sorry. Thank you. I feel also with the healing, just glad that I knew guys like Bob and Mike and a bunch of other friends that passed in those wars. I feel better off knowing them, but because of what an impact they had on me, it has been tough, but... I can't imagine my life without knowing those guys. Yeah. Yeah.

2:24:23Is that the first run that you lost in combat? It was. And a couple years later, the guy was mentioning Mark Carter on the rollerblades. He and I were old roommates and stayed friends, and he was killed in Iraq. And then it just started, you know, more and more roommates or friends. It just started compiling after that. And as that was going on, my combat tours were increasing and I was either getting hurt or friends were getting hurt or wounded. As that was going on, my drinking started. It's almost like you could follow it. As the intensity and trauma started going up, the drinking started going up with it.

2:25:08And then within the culture, as I'm sure you know, in the military, specifically the SEAL teams, or pardon me, special operations, That's just part of it is, you know, you have that. There's no other way to really off-gas anything. It's not like, I mean, I guess you could. There's other ways, but that's just the culture of it. That's what you do. And I found myself starting to pick up a bad habit of drinking too much and numbing my pain with alcohol. Probably, I would say it started to become a thing around 2008 or so, but it was building up to that. And then it would just end up getting worse as the years went on.

2:25:44What is the day he died? Yeah, June 17th was the night that Bob and Mike were killed. 2005. Do you do anything specific on June 17th? I do. I started a tradition with any friends where I take a Chinese lantern, which you can just buy on Amazon, and I'll take a Sharpie, and I'll just write a message to the guys, whether if it's Bob and Mike on June 17th or extortion, I'll just write messages. And then I'll go and I'll have like a moment. I'll either have a friend with me or I'll do it solo. Sometimes I like doing it solo. And I'll just sit with it for a moment and then launch the lantern. And then just from a therapy sense, it's called experiential technique, but just like watching it launch off.

2:26:34And when I started that, not to jump around, but a really, like, my best friend, Rob Reeves, we were in, actually, like, Thailand on a vacation, and we were at this crazy full moon party, and this is a fun time. And then he said, I want to do something for Nate Hardy and Mike Cook, a couple of other seals that had been killed, friends of ours. And in this, like, crazy madness, he went and bought a couple of Chinese lanterns. And we actually launched them, almost to, of a form of... like, memorizing them, pardon me. And because of that, and then Rob would end up being killed in extortion a year and a half later.

2:27:18And because of that, I do that for all of those guys, all those dates. I do it as a tip of the hat to Rob also, but it also feels good that I'm almost like writing them a message in Sharpie and launching it. I don't know, it just feels nice. And I would encourage anyone who's struggling with grief of how to handle it, I would encourage maybe exploring something like that, Chinese Lantern, or even writing something down and just burning it in a fire pit or your sink even. But it's helped me at least. Maybe not for everyone, but for me, it's helped a lot to just deal with the grief. How long have you been doing that?

2:27:58I've been doing that for probably the last eight years. Yeah. And it's interesting, because, yeah, you can buy them in like 10 packs on Amazon. Not that anybody's looking for a deal, but it's just easy, just a couple clicks at your door. And I think I'll continue to do that. And I just can't imagine not doing that. It only takes a few minutes, but it's worth it. Do you have a family? I have my mom and my sister, my cousin Pete, and that's pretty much it. So I just have a small family. No, did he have a... Oh, pardon me. Did Bob? Yeah, he did. He had a wife. Mike had kids. Yeah, they had wives.

2:28:44A lot of those, yeah. Everybody, Bob and Mike, actually, were both identical twins. What? Yeah. They were identical? No, they had identical twins, pardon me. Oh. Yeah, Bob had his own identical twin, and Mike. So the randomness of that. And I went down to Fort Bragg, to the Delta compound, to help pay my respects to their memorial service there. And I remember seeing both of their brothers there, and they had exactly liked them. And I remember just thinking, like, wow, what the chances of that happening... Yeah, stranger than fiction almost. But there's... Yeah, it is tough to think of the ripple effect of, you know, it's one thing, you know, they went out like warriors, truly in a hail of gunfire, both of them, running to the gunfire, a warrior's death.

2:29:41But at the same time, it is the ripple effect of the families and all of that is... I can't imagine what that must be like for them.

2:29:54Did you notice any differences between Delta and Dev Group? Yeah, there was some nuanced things here and there, like tactics and stuff like that, but the mentality was very similar. And I feel like those exchange programs, that era did a great job, because later on, we'd cross paths in Iraq, when I was in my Red Squadron troop, and the Delta troop would be there, and I'd know everybody there, right? Because I was friends with them. So this whole kind of asshole-sniffing type thing going on, like comparing, kind of went away. And it was more of like, because we were more alike than we were different.

2:30:34That way, if maybe one of the breachers in our team would be like, hey, do you know the breacher over there? So we can kind of, I just want to know how they do things. Or a sniper wants to talk to a sniper. It'd be easy to just connect them. But to answer your question, And both those units have all the money you could need, so they have the best technology, the best instruction. The mentality, both hardcore warriors, I believe some of America's top. The only difference I can see is on the Navy side, we're obviously the maritime unit. So we're doing a lot of maritime type stuff where the Army's mostly focused.

2:31:14Not that they don't have some aspects of that, but that's the big thing that's different outside of that though like i mean i know a lot of people want to hear some kind of like crazy comparison but having done not just that exchange but more operations with them later on i personally have nothing but respect for all of those guys and um and i don't know if there's too much of a difference to be honest uh and it's not just that but you know the other units that i was working with where there's a ranger regiment Just to give a shout out to them. I've been in drag out fights with all three battalions, all great guys, all the Air Force PJs, controllers, TF-160, the air crew, you know, certainly, of course, the SEAL teams and SF, you know, it was just like this.

2:31:57At the end of the day, there is differences with everyone, but we're all more alike than we are different, I believe. Yeah. Did you ever do a maritime op over there? No, I didn't. When the Captain Phillips thing was going down, I was actually a Green Team Cadre instructor. And I remember when it was starting to happen, I ran up to my master chief because I was a tandem master. And I knew they always needed tandem masters to jump in, whatever, intel people or whatever. And so I ran up there with all my stuff and I asked him, I was like, don't worry, pretty much like I'm here. like I got my tandem rig I'm ready to go and I remember he just looked at me Jim looked right at me he goes Alex don't worry we are going to be just fine without you like I need you down in training go back down to training I was like but but he's like trust me we don't need you and I was like I know you don't need me I'm just trying to get on as many offs as like whatever fine oh man

2:33:08We didn't talk about your first deployment at all. First deployment at Red? Yeah. Yeah, we were, I was a part of an Omega team, which Omega, for the listeners, it was essentially JSOC, special operations guys, that were attached to CIA paramilitary. And the reason why we were attached to them was because within the agency, they don't have the ability to call in airstrikes or medevac or medical helicopters if somebody gets wounded or killed. And so we would be assigned to them. And I was in this outpost called Shkin, Afghanistan, which was in Paktika province, right on the border of Pakistan, a really bad area, you know, getting rocketed pretty much every day.

2:33:52And it was right on, I mean, we were right at the bottom of, base of a mountain, which was in Pakistan, and the Taliban would just launch rockets at us all day. But that was my first deployment, was in Afghanistan in 04 with Red Squadron. And we actually had a couple of Army guys with us on that exchange. That's what you guys? When I was contracting for GRS, I would see the Omegas. I'd hang out with you guys. I was wondering what the fuck you guys were doing. So did we. Those random dudes. Yeah, yeah. And we would, I did one there and I did one in Jalalabad. I was usually somehow affiliated with the majority of them, whether, you know, sometimes you'd be in those, or you'd be in a Strikeforce, which just meant that you're in a team of SEALs that were, it's just you guys hitting targets.

2:34:45Or you'd rotate in as an Omega, where you're more of an advisor. So, yeah, I enjoyed those, that was, you know, 04, man, and technology was still making its, you know, improving, but it was still not what it was. Very old school when I think back on it. And, but I love that. It was like wide open. It was like cowboy country. And as a young SEAL and operator, it was like, it was just very cool. And I, and the experience to do that was great. And for my first deployment, it was very cool too. But yeah, then that second one was with the Army. And then, and then just many more after that. Do you remember the first time you killed somebody?

2:35:29Yes. I was, um, that I know for sure. I was, um, there was, we call this squirter, which just meant a guy ran off of a target that we were targeting, and he went into some bushes, and this is in Iraq. And, um, I mean, I'd shot my gun a ton of times at people, and probably my rounds hit a guy while somebody else was shooting, This is the first time I know. And the ISR, so for the listeners, an airplane was shooting an infrared laser at this bush, saying, like, this is where this guy ran to. And so we were like, okay, let's go get him. And it was at night in a field, and we had a military working dog named Spike, who was also killed later on, awesome dog.

2:36:18And so we were kind of online, my team of about five guys or so towards this bush. And I just, but there's this wind that was going back and forth. So the dog needs the scent. But when it's windy like that, it's really hard for it to kind of really get down to where this guy might be. And we're getting closer and closer to this bush. And we ask the ISR, basically the airplane, hey, like, kill that, that sensor, because it's kind of disorienting the closer you get to the bush. So he killed it. And we're kind of like looking in it. It doesn't look like there's anybody in there. And I remember getting right up on the bush and leaning into the bush a little bit to see if I could see it, because we didn't have thermals in those days.

2:37:00And unbeknownst to me, there was in the bush, there was a guy with a pistol pointing it right at me. And we're maybe just three or four feet away from each other. I can't see anything under my night vision. And then finally Spike catches the scent, and then like a missile just jumps right in. and I could feel his body even hitting me as he hits this guy. And he drops the gun, he scrambled the gun, and that's when I engaged him and killed him. That was the first of dozens. How did that feel? That was... I remember when it happened, getting a jolt of adrenaline. And then also, I'm happy with that.

2:37:49when I'm not happy, like, I don't want to sound like a psychopath, but like, I'm happy that basically Spike saved my life and that I was able to engage that guy. Because without Spike, it could have been a very different situation. So it's almost like a kill or be killed, so that adrenaline just really dumped. And then it was, yeah, afterwards, like kind of thinking like, wow, I can't believe like that I actually killed someone. Like I know before, like I mentioned, I know I shot a bunch of people, but never just like that. Yeah, but as time went on and as more operations went on and more killing went on, this funny thing about the human psyche, it would just become less and less.

2:38:33And then even as I would notice as more operations were happening, my heart rate, everything would just be more like just chill. Even if bullets were flying, don't get me wrong, there's times where I would be amped up. I'm not saying I wasn't scared at times, but with the more reps, it got to the point where it was more machine-like. It was more tactics. It was more to the point where I thought, like, almost felt bad for the enemy. Like, you're not gonna be able to kill me. Which sounds arrogant, but that's how I felt at the time. As long as my feet were on the ground with my kid on and my buddies, I just didn't feel, I mean, I knew there was a puncher's chance that I could easily get killed, like many guys did.

2:39:14But I just, over time, started feeling more and more confident with it. Which is, as I reflect back on it, kind of a weird place to be, right? That you're becoming more confident at killing. And, um, but that was just the world that we lived in. You know, you talk about some of your friends coming back to visit you in plant medicine. Yeah. Does the other happen? Does it ever happen? Does the other happen? Does the people that you've killed, have they ever visited you? They do. Yes, I've had one of my symptoms of PTSD. I was really struggling, and I still do. I have one where I once had to shoot a man really close, and it must have hit something in between his eyes where it just came out like a hose.

2:40:11And I would have, I remember walking, even in like shopping malls, and just seeing that somebody approached me and look at me and almost shoot me with blood out of their, in between their eyes. So things like that, nightmares, night terrors, regret. You know, sometimes, you know, we were dealing with a lot of suicide bombers, and so lots of times, you know, people would run up to us and clack themselves off with a suicide vest or some type, but what that would result in is the next time you see someone that is like reaching around their waist or whatever, you might be quicker on the trigger. So there was, and then that would lead to maybe a shot you wish you wouldn't have taken.

2:40:51So there was just a lot of, as those wars grinded on and on and on, the enemy got smarter, it just got darker in those wars. And it got to the point where I was like, what the fuck are we doing over here? And just because it just kept dragging on. But to answer your question, yeah, I struggled. And sometimes I still do with people that I've killed, especially as an assaulter. A lot of that was very up close inside of rooms, like gunfights within rooms. And so it was, you know, when that's happening, you're getting chunks of people's brain on your gear or your skull or whatever. It's just up close and personal.

2:41:31It's brutal. and something I wish us as humans wouldn't do to each other now that I look back on it. But it's just because of the toll that it takes on the human spirit, you know, just on myself, my mental health, I don't want that for a younger version of me who might be in the military, unless it's like our country is getting attacked or something like that, but not in something like what would be perhaps the quagmire of Iraq, of like, we did all of that. for what?" And so, and I think that really is a negative for my own mental health. It'd be different if it was, it was worth it. But now it's more of like scratching your head of like, what were we doing?

2:42:12And, you know, we gave this generation of guys, not only whether it was their lives or their physical, you know, like their bodies and all that, but it's also their mental health. Because it is like, what are we doing? Almost like my father's generation of Vietnam saying the same thing. When did you arrive there? at that mentality? In probably 2011. So you were still in? Oh, I was definitely in. I was still in assault team. There was after the bin Laden raid is when I started feeling that way, because it was like, okay, we got the guy. Al-Qaeda is out of Afghanistan. Yeah, sure, there's like some trickling in from time to time.

2:42:52And I knew, I saw what was happening in Iraq, and I just, I remember being a team leader and just, you know, we would get given these operations that were very dangerous and really tough areas, like let's say in Eastern Afghanistan and Konar and things like that in the Korangal. And thinking like as a leader, like some of my guys might get killed or wounded. Yeah, we trained hard, but it is war. So is it worth it though? You know, I remember even as a team leader leaving on deployment and we'd have barbecues and my guys on my team, their wives would tell me like, will you promise me that you'll bring back so-and-so, like my husband?

2:43:28And then just looking at them and lying and just saying, of course. But in my mind, being like the pressure, you know, of like the leader, like I can't promise that. And then thinking like, then fast forward to the after mentioned type of missions I was talking about, where it's like, what are we doing? Like, yeah, that's gonna, yeah, we are the unit we are, but I'm not trying to be gun shy, but what are we doing? And that's when it started for me. And that's also when my mental health started spiraling. It was after the bin Laden raid. like suicidal ideation and all sorts of things, which was not good, you know, especially when you're a leader.

2:44:11You know, I mean, looks like we're gearing up for one right now. Yeah. You know, what kind of advice do you have for the guys?

2:44:23Because they're very aware of what's going on. There's no confusion anymore. No. They know this isn't for us. No, it's not.

2:44:34I would just tell them, I know what you have to do. I know if you get asked to do something, you have to do it. However, just know the consequences of what you're going to do. If the war gets to a point where things start getting dark and they do in combat, where guys start getting feeding into the darkness, it's not worth it. Just back off. If you don't need to take the shot, don't take the shot. If you start feeling the bloodlust, which is a thing, and the guys who are listening, some people might not understand, but some people will who are listening, probably the guys you're talking about, about the bloodlust, don't feed into the bloodlust, not for a war like that.

2:45:14If our country was being attacked, maybe that's one thing, but you will pay the fucking price if you feed into the bloodlust for a war that is just unjust. That's my main advice for them. And to be in my main mission, especially for men, especially for veterans, is to be okay to reach out for mental health. Like, it is worth it. You deserve it. And the sooner you can start getting into that, the better, and the less yourself, your family, are gonna feel the impacts of it. Thanks for sharing that. Yeah. You wanna take a break? Sure. Yeah. Look, I am really picky when it comes to gear. If I'm going to use something every single day, it has to actually perform and do what it says it's going to do.

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2:47:52All right, Alex. Back from the break. Had a good lunch. Sure did. Let's get into Neptune's spear. All right. Let's do it. When did that come across your guys' radar? Yeah. In 2011, we had just gotten back from, at least my troop had just gotten back from Afghanistan. And we'd just gotten off of leave, and we went into the team room, and all of a sudden they asked for all, at the time I was a team leader, all of the team leaders, and they ran off a list, team leaders and two ICs, so the second in charge of each team. So pretty much the most senior guys, or the more senior guys, we wanted to see all in this office.

2:48:34And we're in this office, and we knew something might be going on, but we had just gotten back from deployment, so probably, who knows, it would be the... Some other squadrons were more likely going to do something if we had to go out and do it. But they mentioned that we had been chosen to do a mission, and they didn't mention what it was, but that we would be briefed on it later on. And we all thought at the time, the Arab Spring was going on in Libya, and we were bombing Libya, and we thought, well, it probably has something to do with Libya. And not sure what that meant, But so we went in, they told us that, and they keep it to ourselves like this was a very secret thing.

2:49:17And so we ended up driving down to another undisclosed base. And I remember as we walked into this base, seeing a bunch of very high-ranking people in the military and intelligence communities and knowing who they were. And I'm talking like the high-ranking people and thinking, oh, this is something big. This is not maybe something in Libya. Like directorate? Yeah, yeah, very high, yeah. And like Admiral McRaven was there, and people from the agency, like high ranking. And at that point, I thought, okay, if there's something going on, and we sat down, and the analyst started briefing us that essentially, we think we know where someone is living.

2:50:02And when she said that, I remember feeling, because we had chased him for so long or chased his network for so long, and obviously came up with nothing. And I felt like almost puking, just to have a human moment. Yeah, a human moment of like, I mean, I'd like to say that it was like, you know, fuck yeah, let's go get him. And it was, but it was also like, whoa, like we think we have him. And they went on and said, he's in Abbottabad, Pakistan, which is closer to India than it was Afghanistan. So very deep into Pakistan. and they mentioned that Pakistan will not know about this operation and that we have to keep it very close-lipped.

2:50:45And they went on and they talked about the dangers of it as far as surface-to-air missiles, anti-aircraft guns, F-16s that the Pakistanis had, and that we would be flying, once again, deep into Afghanistan, right on the border of India, where they are having historical border skirmishes. So they're on a heightened alert there. And so it was going to be very dangerous to be able to fly in there. The likelihood of being shot down was, I wouldn't say high, but it was a possibility for sure. And so they were briefing us up on that, and we didn't know for sure if he was there. Now, the analyst had said, oh, he's there 100%.

2:51:27And I remember thinking just from my experience that you just never say 100%. It's like you jinx it. And I thought to myself, like, they don't know what they're talking about. You know, there's no way anything is 100%. Maybe it's a high chance, but I don't believe that it's 100%. Regardless, we started doing some training on some mock-ups, meaning they built essentially the compound, the wall around the compound instead of a 20-foot high concrete cinder block wall was chain-link fence, which will come back to bite us later. and then also a big plywood building that essentially showcased what the compound was.

2:52:03We didn't know what it was like on the inside, but at that unit or any of those types of units, it's not that big of a deal of what's inside. We just knew, we'll figure it out on the inside, but it was the big movements of how we're going to take down the target contingencies and things like that that we need to work out. Real quick. Yeah. How many of you guys were there on the brief? There was 23 of us, Plus, those are 23 operators were going to be on it. We had a couple, if I recall, two to four alternates that would get briefed in. So if one of the 23 guys got hurt in training or had a family emergency, couldn't make it, there was a pool of alternates that would go in there.

2:52:43So I would say, and we had some support from intelligence to communications, things like that. I mean, I'd say maybe 35 people total. Who's picking these guys? That's a good question. So it was picked from the top from our squadron, picked us. And at the time, one of the operators brought up a great question, which I don't disagree with, was why did we not just pick one of our three troops? Because within each troop, it's already designed to be self-contained, where now you're kind of cherry picking the more experienced guys. So when it came to basic things, like who's the breacher? It's like, oh, let's figure out who the breacher is.

2:53:24or it's the most simple things of, who's gonna grab the vans to take us to the range? And, you know, within a troop or a platoon or whatever, people just know, like, oh, that's so-and-so's responsibility. But we didn't have any of that. And also, there wasn't, like, it was weird to work out the hierarchy. So we were working through our own stuff, but it was not, it was told to us who was gonna be on it. Why didn't they just use it? I don't know. I think their thought was, this is the highest risk and profile mission, at least in the global war on terror, perhaps maybe in modern military. I don't know.

2:53:58Let's just say global war on terror. And so we don't want to mess it up. So we want to pick the most senior guys. I'm not saying I entirely agree with that if they just kept it with the unit. But at the same time, I wasn't about to complain about it. I wasn't going to stick up my hand and be like, because they might be like, all right, cool. Alex, like, yeah, if you want to do it that way, you're going to be on the backup team or whatever. What would you have done? A troop. You would have done a troop? I would have picked one of the troops. I would have probably known if I was the squadron master chief, and this isn't a knock on that squadron master chief at all, because I don't know what he was dealing with or whatever, but I would have picked probably the most proficient, the strongest of my three troops, and I probably would have picked it.

2:54:37But yeah, that's what I would have likely done. It worked out regardless, but just because of all of the who's who, it was a bunch of team leaders, so it was kind of like who's in charge of the team leaders? like is there a senior one or and then there's just a lot of excess bandwidth that went into figuring things out that was already figured out within a troop that had been established so they we started our training i bet that raised a lot of questions to them why you crazy people are getting pulled out of the teams yeah and then it was hard because they told us this information and it and everybody not just from the squad or other squads like well what are the red squadron guys up to you and with internally it's like and so you're getting hit from every angle from and you just have to be like no i can't talk about it like i know for me i was not going to be the guy that that gave it up i remember even at the time i was single uh and going out in virginia beach and having buddies hit me up like hey let's go out to whatever you know like chick's oyster bar or whatever and uh and saying no i can't go out i'm not going out because i know like it's gonna like i don't want to be out one of my buddies is gonna be like here's a shot of tequila and like, let's do it.

2:55:47And then like, hey, so what's been going on with X, Y, and Z? So I remember thinking to myself, like, I will not go out because I don't even want to put myself in that situation to where I might say something. So I just stayed in my house, just like watching movies, like young single guy on a Friday night, like I'm just going to watch a movie. And how old are you? 31 at the time. Yeah, I had just got in my team as an assault team leader. and I was at the top of my game operationally at that time. And so, yeah, so we started planning for it. The role that I had was, so in the compound, the primary entrance was actually the back door of this primary building.

2:56:32And that's where they felt that Ben Laden and his couriers and his son were living. And there's a couple other small buildings, But our role, my job was to essentially with my team, we would have loved to have not been this aggressive, but we did not have the time or the fuel to do it. So we had to fly our helicopter right in front of that back door, kick out a fast rope, which to the listeners, a fast rope is essentially a fireman's pole, but it's a rope. So you kick it out and then you slide down it like a fireman's pole, just a way to insert. And so we were going to fly right there with one sniper overlooking the compound just in case a guy came out with an AK.

2:57:14And then threw the fast rope down, and then my team was to essentially go right up the middle of the compound. And so that was our role. Another team was supposed to fast rope on top of the roof, and we were going to meet in the middle. And then there was another element that went off to the side too. There's another courier, another small building to take that out. And so that was all supposed to happen simultaneously. Once again, we would have loved to have been able to land way out in some field and sneak up. That would have been great, but we just didn't have the fuel. One of the main things was we had to accomplish this mission within 38 minutes because we didn't have the fuel to do it.

2:57:54So if we did not get out in 38 minutes, we were told you're going to have to just Alamo up and just fight off until that's it, or you become a political prisoner. What sucked about that also was in the military, there's, for people who don't know, there's things called speed balls or essentially bags full of ammunition, extra ammunition, breaching charges, medical equipment. And that's usually what you take on a mission, especially if you knew there's a chance that you might have to Alamo up. And so you would kick out these bags so that you could have a ton of ammunition. But the problem is we couldn't take those because of of the weight restrictions because we're so deep into Pakistan to burn fuel.

2:58:37So, and they were even asking guys like, hey, is there even weapons and stuff that you guys can ditch? And I was crazy looking back on it. By the time I was like, I can ditch my pistol because I might not need that. Of course I needed it, but I was like, I can ditch that. And I remember thinking all I had was four magazines. Did you ditch it? I did. And all I had was four. I remember my loadout. It was four magazines. so like three across my chest, one in my 416, my rifle. I had a frag grenade, a thermobaric hand grenade, an internal charge, and that was it. It was just as streamlined as it got, because we just did not have the weight.

2:59:15And I remember even thinking like, well, maybe I'll sneak in a magazine or two, and nobody will know the difference. I literally thought, and I'll probably say it here in a minute, but I just, we didn't have the weight. And so the Alamo up thing was a death sentence, essentially, that it's like we just will not have, no matter how good of shots we are, we just will run out of ammunition if we don't make it past 38 minutes, or if we stay longer than 38 minutes. So we started, so that was a big factor. Also, each helicopter had the ability to do the whole mission by itself, meaning there was a high chance that one of them was going to get shot down on the insertion into Abbottabad by the Pakistani Air Force.

2:59:56And so instead of a normal mission would be, okay, if a helicopter gets shot down or has engine problems, whatever, the other one will divert. And now the new mission is to recover those guys and figure that out. But on this particular mission, it was, that goes down, we are going, we are already committed. That, we'll figure that out later, but that other helicopter is going straight for it. And that other helicopter had the ability to take, to do everything, obviously with half the guys, but we were already committed. So some of the things that they were looking to do is be able to gather the intelligence from the building, but also to take biometrics from the body of bin Laden, meaning taking tissue samples and things like that.

3:00:35And we also had to plan for a safe room, meaning for the listeners, sometimes when you get in high ranking people, there might be almost like a safe, like a closet that is fortified that somebody might lock themselves in. So if we ran into that, that was going to be a time restraint. So how do we get through that? So there was some breaching charges and things like that that we had, but each helicopter had their own in case they had to run into that. Another factor that we had to worry about was how do we actually take it down and the speed that we need to. Of course, we want to take it down fast.

3:01:09However, when you take things down fast, you're increasing the chance of a guy getting wounded because you're not going slow, you're going fast. So if a guy does get wounded, and it wasn't that we were worried about myself or one of the guys worried about I might get wounded, it was kind of, it's a very strong possibility, but it was the speed that it would take to if a guy does get wounded, One of the guys, now we have to render him aid. Now we have to get him on a stretcher. Now it's just time, time, time starts ticking. So it's like, okay, how do we kind of do a hybrid of where we're going fast, but kind of cheating a few extra slow moments here and there to buy down risk to getting wounded?

3:01:50Not that we're worried about being wounded, but because of the timeline. Other factors was how do we retrieve all of the intelligence as fast as we can? Because likely the target will go down. and now we're thinking it's likely going to be a gold mine, but how do we get as much as we can out in a short amount of time? So there's all these little things, these little planning things that we're trying to work out. And then we just keep repping it out and we're going through different contingencies. What if one helicopter crashes, which is an important thing because that's what would happen. But it's like, what if one crashes, what do we do?

3:02:22What if they hop in a vehicle and it drives down the street as we're inserting? Does one helicopter go after it and the other take down the building? There's all these things. that we had to work through. And so we keep training, keep training for, if I recall, it was about two and a half weeks or so. We went to some different sites, but one major factor was, on that first mock-up, was the chain-link fence. For the helicopter would come in, the chain-link fence that was mimicking the 20-foot-high cinder block wall. So I'll come back to why that is important here in a minute. But so we kept repping it out, and then finally, we deploy.

3:03:01And I'm still not thinking that it's going to happen. It's just like, no, this is too ballsy of a call for the president to make because we're essentially invading a sovereign country without them knowing to potentially go after a guy who's potentially there. And if something happens, that team is going to be, like I mentioned, either dead or political prisoners. So that's going to be a whole quagmire to worry about politically. So I personally was like, I still don't know if this is going to happen. Of course, I'm taking it serious. Like, yes, this is going to happen. But in the back of my mind, I'm thinking, I doubt it.

3:03:37So we still end up, everything's going, and we deploy to Afghanistan. And once we got there, and we're still just kind of getting ready, and we're still playing this whole not telling everybody what we're doing. And we kind of had this cover story of, well, we got Surge back over because there's a big campaign coming up. That was kind of our story. So if we saw somebody in the chow hall that, because we had just, my troop had just been in Afghanistan in that same base, maybe six weeks prior, maybe five weeks prior. So we had to work through a cover story of like somebody, like the guy who works in the chow hall or one of the ranger platoons that are there that, you know, you might know these guys and they're like, what are you guys doing back?

3:04:17And our story was like, well, we're here because there's, I don't know, there's some big campaign. I'd rather be back on leave or whatever. So we kind of had to play that game. Until the final, one thing, a caveat I want to bring back to. While we were briefing, the President Obama at the time asked our planners, well, what happens? You guys keep talking about these F-16s. What if the guys are flying back after the mission and the Pakistanis scramble their F-16s to shoot down the helicopters? What are you guys going to do about that? And the military, I think, and I'm just assuming, they didn't want to come up with too drastic of plans because they wanted the mission to go, or they did not believe that it would get approved.

3:05:00So our bosses were kind of like, well, we're gonna just, we'll have to figure it out. However, President Obama, to his credit, did say, I want a couple of flights of F-15s, or whatever it is, whatever fighter jets we have, that will shoot down the Pakistani F-16s if they're coming after our guys. I will take the hit on it. And I remember hearing that and just being like, that is ballsy. like hats off to him that through all of that, he could have easily just said, well, okay, the military guys are saying they're going to just pedal to the metal on the helicopters and fly out of there. Hopefully they get away from the F-16s.

3:05:35But he had the gumption to just be like, I'm not going to let our guys, if we're sending our guys in to do that and they're flying back, they're not going to get shot down by F-16s. So we're going to have our F-15s or whatever you guys decide in the military, whatever's the best platform to shoot down their airplanes. So, fast forwarding back to the night of the raid, and we were getting... How much time had you been before the raid happened that we found out? I would say... From the brief to the... That's a great question. Maybe... I might be off, but it feels like under a month, maybe 30 days.

3:06:12Under a month? Yeah, because we trained for maybe two and a half, three weeks, and then we blew out to Afghanistan, and we were there, if I recall. maybe like seven, eight days before we finally launched. I mean, I might be off a day or two, but that's what it feels like. That's what I recall, that it was under a month that we got the information where we thought we were going to do something in Libya. And then all of a sudden here we are flying to Afghanistan, going after the most wanted man in the world. From Geico Subconscious News, I'm Tammy Racing Thoughts, broadcasting from your brain. You think you live in a pretty safe place, but you just heard about a break in four miles away, which isn't close, but it isn't far either.

3:06:49you know, Art Palpitations is on the scene. I sure am, Tammy, and I don't even know why I drove out here because as you know, you got customized renter's insurance through GEICO, so your stuff is covered. Oh, well, that's great. Any sign of crime there, Art? Just some light littering, Tammy, but like they say, a little litter can lead to a lot. Wise words. It feels good to worry less. It feels good to GEICO. Are you seated? Do you know what's coming next? You probably really don't. It's Andy Luani here from Culture Shock, the podcast where celebrities, all sorts of culture makers people and everybody in between we just get on and we're trading rehearsed answers for some unexpected shocking questions maybe sometimes dumb that you may ask yourself sometimes and you want to see someone else ask them with all things plenty of laughs surprises and just enough chaos to keep everyone on their toes you might enjoy this podcast be sure to check out culture shock wherever you stream your podcasts online and obviously you're gonna like this i'm sure of it And as we were sitting there, I remember thinking to myself, you know, my role was, as I mentioned, to take the team, my team right up the middle of the compound.

3:07:56And then also I was in charge of all the intelligence gathering. That was like my secondary role. And going into it, I knew, we knew, as the higher up you got in Al-Qaeda, it wasn't always the case. But the higher up you got, the more fanatical things got. So you would run into more suicide vests or S-vests, more house-born IEDs, and just people willing to die for the cause. And this was the baddest dude, so we're likely going to be running into that. And so knowing that, that our role of going right up the middle, that was going to be, at least in my mind, that was going to be a time that was going to be a real deciding factor if somebody's going to run out with a suicide vest or a house-born IED and just blow us up right there.

3:08:38and as um and for me as the assault team leader which usually you wouldn't do this but i thought i will be the first one in the door because i would like and that's just not me alex west but a lot of those guys would have done the same thing that if anybody is going to run into a s fest it's going to be the guy leading it and because i know the guys behind me would or just as qualified they could have easily picked up where i left off but i just thought if i'm gonna i'm not gonna tell to do that unless I'm going to do it. So as we, I remember we finally get the go. Like, it's going to be a go.

3:09:17You guys are, start kidding up. And I remember... What were you guys doing when you got that? We were, if I recall, we had just had some food. Maybe it was the equivalent of, I would say, maybe 8 p.m. local time. So we had just had dinner. We were kind of hanging out. We knew that it was in this window of time because of the Illume cycle or the moon cycle, that it was likely going to be in this window of time. And if we missed it and didn't launch, that we were either going to have to wait for the next Illume cycle. And so we'd have to stay in Afghanistan for another 30 days or likely around that.

3:09:52Or you were just going to get sent home and this whole thing would fizzle out. So it was kind of like on the edge of, it could have been any one of those three things that could have happened equally, I believed at least. but the intelligence people kept saying, no, he is there 100%. And then I had that same old thing of like, yeah, I don't know if anything's 100%, but I mean, I appreciate your intensity and your confidence. I just don't believe it. But finally they came and they said, it's a go, get your kit on. And so we started kitting up and I remember we got on the helicopters and I remember still thinking, there's no way, Like, this is just another spin.

3:10:35And then they started cranking the engines. And I just thought, OK, like, that's interesting. But I'm still not convinced. And then all of a sudden, we started taxing. And I started hearing some radio calls. And then all of a sudden, we started to take off. And I just remember thinking, well, I'll be dead. Like, we are doing this thing. And then it was an hour and a half flight. And I remember it, which was a lot of time to sit in your head and think about what's about to happen. because what was going to happen within an hour and a half, a few things was going to happen. You were either going to get the man and get out of there.

3:11:12You were going to get stuck there in Alamo up and die, you and all of your friends. You're going to get stuck there and become a political prisoner. And those were like the three outcomes that could have happened from that. And so as we're flying in, I just remember thinking like, okay, and then feeling the pressure of it just to be human. about it. You know, I have a human nervous system. We had human nervous. So it's like, even though, yeah, we were the team, we had the resume, all of the confidence to do it. I still was having these human emotions of just like the weight of it. Because if one, let's say it was like the Superbowl, I can imagine if, if I'm a NFL player, it's like, wow, the Superbowl is coming.

3:11:51Like a lot of people are watching. This is the pinnacle of my career. It it's at the end of the day, you throw a bunch of interceptions and lose the game. You're okay. It's not that big of a deal On this one, it was, if we mess up, not only are we dead, but we're also making our unit, our military, our country, New Yorkers, all of these people, we're gonna let them down. So it's the gravity of fucking payback that was on our shoulders that we were fortunate enough to get picked for, to be able to deliver that for the American people and New Yorkers. And so that weight on us, it was just overwhelming as we were flying in.

3:12:28And I remember just thinking about that. And as I close my eyes, I'm visualizing New Yorkers jumping out of the Twin Towers and just thinking, like, we have to have payback. And then also thinking, like, oh my gosh, the weight of this is crazy. And then the closer we started, you know, then another 20 minutes would pass. Another 20 minutes. And I remember just feeling overwhelmed and getting into, like, just taking deep breaths almost of just, like, I need to calm down. There was a lot going on here. And then just, I remember looking out the window of the helicopter and seeing a bunch of the topography reminded me of like East County, San Diego, and just thinking, okay, that looks familiar.

3:13:02And then just starting to do some mental reps in my head of like, okay, the reality is this is not that hard of a target. I mean, you've done way harder. Your unit has done way harder. All the guys around you are the best that you've ever served with. So you guys will, as long as you get your feet on the ground, you will at least pull this off, at least on the ground, not getting out, but you'll pull it off. And I just kept doing more deep breaths and visualizing and finally started to calm myself down because that was an hour and a half of just thinking about what if, what if. And then as the closer we get, I remember we were three minutes out.

3:13:36We opened up the helo doors and we unlocked our undone D-rings. So for the listeners, lots of guys would carry a runner on their belt that could clip into a D-ring of the helicopter so that if the helicopter pulled off to the side, you would not get flung out of the helicopter. But we had all unclipped those because we were getting close, because we were about to fast rope. You don't want to fast rope with that in, because you won't go anywhere. So we all unclipped. I'm holding onto the back kit of one of my operator friends, who's going to be the guy who throws the fast rope. And I'm holding onto him.

3:14:14I'm looking around at all the guys, hearing some communications calls. And then I'm hearing one minute out. and I start to see the town and I can feel just, it was like cool, like spring breeze type thing. I had a long sleeve cami top on and that's it. I could feel a little cold, nothing crazy. And I'm holding onto them and I'm just completely dialed in, like as dialed in as I've ever been. And then I just remember we fly finally 30 seconds out and then all of a sudden we fly right in front and I can see the compound, what we have done, rehearsed so many times. So I'm holding one of the operators, another sniper's, got his gun pointed towards the main building.

3:14:56And as we start to hold station right there, what had happened was when we were doing the chain link fence, the rotor wash from the helicopters would go through the chain link fence. And also this night, the temperature was a little bit hotter than expected, which would be one little micro factor here. But when we got in there and they had these 20-foot-high walls, that rotor wash would hit the walls and come back up almost like in a vacuum towards the helicopter. So it had nowhere to go. All that hot rotor wash would come up, and it destabilized the helicopter and spun us in a very violent 45-degree dive while we were right there.

3:15:36So in one moment, I see the building. I'm holding on to my buddy's kit. And the next minute, the whole world goes 45 degrees and spins. Yeah. Yeah, right in the most like second one of the operation, right, where like just 10 seconds earlier, it was like, okay, don't fuck this up, do this and that. Okay, got it, got it. Okay, I'm feeling confident too. Okay, the whole world is spinning and we're diving into the earth. Thankfully, the pilot being world-class was able to bury the nose of the helicopter into the ground, while the rest of the helicopter, the tail was on the 25-foot wall. So it was almost like a 45-degree angle of the helicopter with its nose buried in the ground.

3:16:19We impacted, unbeknownst to me at the time, it herniated discs in my back, along with a bunch of the other guys on the helicopter. A very common injury we all had was guys had herniated discs, but you weren't feeling it because your adrenaline was through the roof. I remember, though, holding on to my buddy's kit, though. So we impact, and we're starting to to teeter back and forth. And I remember from being in a previous helicopter crash, but also training, like, hey, let the rotors settle before you jump out. So I'm thinking to myself, just let the rotors settle. And I'm holding on to them. I look over to look at the rest of the helicopter, imagining that a lot of our guys got flung out of the helicopter.

3:16:58But I wanted to get some situational awareness of where everybody was at. And the moment I turned my head, the guy that I was holding on to, I let up just ever so slightly. and he just bolted out the door. And he was a big guy. And I remember looking at him and thinking, he's dead. Because I feel us, you could see the rotors kind of doing this thing. Like his head's going to get lopped off. And he just kept running right through it. And I was just like, well, I'll be damned. I can't leave him. So then I jump right after him and some of the other guys. And so I follow him just trying to keep my head as low as possible, and then we just get out of the rotor wash.

3:17:34And as we're running for this next gate, One thing I reflected on later was I never stopped to turn around to look at the helicopter ever again, because my mentality was, if there's guys killed or wounded, that does not matter right now, which is something I would have never done on a previous operation. It was, America needs us. If it's just the two of us to start this operation and to kick this thing off, then the two of us are gonna be what America needs right now. Like, I cannot even spend one second looking at what's going on back there. And so we just kept running. That guy came up, blew one of the gates, and then we ran up.

3:18:13I came up and I cleared. There's like this little almost chicken shed type thing. Cleared that real quick. And as I ran up to the front, basically it was the back door, the main entrance. I ran up to it and the rest of my team was behind me. And as I mentioned before, I knew I wanted to be the first guy in. And I saw one of the couriers poke his head down the wall and I shot him through the left eye. And when I saw him though fall into his room, and I just thought like he's going to clack himself off. So I went against a lot of our SOPs because there's a bunch of open doors, and I just thought he's going to blow himself up.

3:18:53I'm going to chase after him. And I just ran sprinted down the hallway to go run after him across these open doors, which is kind of dangerous in a way because you don't want to split yourself and the other guys if there's a bad guy in those. But I thought the risk was this guy blowing himself up, which not only would it, let's say, kill or wound my team, but it would completely throw the mission off. We would never get out in 38 minutes. So I took the chance to sprint down the hallway after him. As I went into his room, he was crouched over around his waist, and I'm worried about this suicide vest.

3:19:29And I go to take a shot, and his wife jumps on him like a human shield. And I remember I take one shot, hit him, and I go to take a second, and her arm goes right in front of my barrel, and I shoot through her forearm into her husband's body. But unbeknownst to me, at the time, somehow the round must have ricocheted in there. And while she was being a human shield on him, she took a round, and both were killed. And she was pregnant and had the baby right there. Holy shit. She had the baby and gave birth? Yes. Right there. It all happened right there. Like, he was, in one moment, I, unfortunately, you know, I killed him.

3:20:10While doing that, she was killed as a human shield. And then she must have been in her third trimester. She was very pregnant. And then when she died, I believe, just like, released the baby. And that all happened right there. So I had that helicopter crash, ran up, and those, like, next, like, 20 seconds were just extreme. And then I remember when that happened, and I look over, and there's a small little eight-year-old girl just standing there staring at me, holding a stuffed animal with pigtails. And I remember just seeing that. And I know we had just crashed a helicopter that I'm walking dead.

3:20:49Because unbeknownst to me, I did not know that our QRF, or for the listeners, Quick Reactionary Force, our backup guys from our squadron, our command, We're in a F-47, a helicopter, that was screaming for us as fast as it could go. But that wasn't, we didn't know that at the time. We thought, I thought, okay, we're walking dead. We just crashed. We're not going to get out of here. I did not know backup was coming like that because of the F-16s and all of that. But back to that little girl, I knew I was walking dead, but in all the chaos, and I'm even hearing another team that's getting in a gunfight in the background.

3:21:26I know that they're in contact also with one of the other couriers. I hear that, and I had the wherewithal in the moment to just take a knee and just put my hand on her shoulder and just tell her how sorry I was. And then just snap back into it. And I just thought, OK, I've got a job to do. And then went back out and helped clear the rest of the bottom floor. But while doing that, I remember seeing this steel door that was leading up the stairs. And at that moment, I knew he was there. I knew, I'm like, there's no way somebody puts a door like that going up to the, you know, up their stairs. And so, at that point, the same breacher, you know, he's starting to put a charge on there, and we're putting on, and I remember saying, like, put on the big, a type of charge, which I won't disclose, but our biggest charge.

3:22:17I was like, put on the biggest one. We need to blow the fuck out of this place because we are walking dead, and we're not, we're going to finish this and get this guy no matter what it takes because the American people and New Yorkers depend on us. So we threw on this massive charge on the door, and as that's happening, the other helicopter was supposed to, as I mentioned prior, land on the top of the roof. But because of contingencies, because we crashed, they did the right thing to buy down risk and landed in a field, basically a lot, a housing lot right next door. They landed, it's a plot of land.

3:22:51They landed, and those guys started getting out, started running towards where we were at. So they're finally starting to get there, but as the team leader, I'm coordinating with them, hey, don't come in yet. We're about to blow this big charge. You're going to run right into it. So I'm coordinating them to make sure that they don't come running into it. I'm making sure all the other team guys, our assaulters are out of the way. And there was one moment where I tucked back into the room where I'd killed that family and that little girl was, to where I was about to give the call of like, okay, send it on the charge.

3:23:24and I had a beat of a moment where I was like, we're dead. There's no way we're getting the fuck out of here. Send it. Boom. And then at that point, the rest of the guys came in. They filled in behind this point man, started going up, they encountered Khalid, which was the son with an AK-47, which is a horrible situation to be in, where you're going upstairs while a guy has an AK-47. But he was engaged and killed. and then we started making our way up, and then one of the guys saw the man engaged bin Laden, and then the rest of that, those guys went up to that room to finish him off. I was on the second floor, cleared the rest of that, and then immediately I was, as I mentioned, in charge of all the intelligence gathering.

3:24:14So I went right into the mode of seeing what we had and just thinking, this is a goal mind. Like, we have to get as much out of this as possible. I hear more shots upstairs killing Bin Laden. I wouldn't know at the time, but they, whatever, those guys finished him off. And then at that point, it's just grabbing as much stuff as we can. I'm also thinking to myself, like, we're still like, okay, well, is this, okay, we're going to grab this stuff and try to get out of here. What's going on? I get an update that our QRF is coming to pick us up, so there's a chance we might get out of here. I hear the Geronimo call, which was essentially the call sign saying that we had gotten Bin Laden.

3:25:00And I thought to myself, like, wow, we actually pulled it off. Thank God we did. I still am not sure we're going to get out of here, but at least we did this. And then at that point, they start, my Master Chief comes over and says, like, all right, the group I was in, which is the CHOC, or for the listeners, that's just a term for the helicopter. basically the group of guys that I was in like, hey, you guys are going to be out on this next helicopter. And then they started prepping the other helicopter, they were going to blow it. Very, I mean, we didn't have much time. We were doing the best we could do to blow that helicopter so that the Pakistanis wouldn't get it.

3:25:37It was all over the news, of course, or whatever. But we did the best we could on the time constraints we had. And then at that point, the helicopter comes in, We grabbed the body, Bin Laden's body. And I remember it was one of the guys grabbing him. I mean, we were running so fast to try to get out of there that I remember my heart rate must have been like 180 beats a minute. Like just dragging his body. I'm covered in like laptops and a bunch of intelligence and all of my gear, and we're just running out to this, essentially this lot that our helicopter came in. We threw the body in. We jumped on top of, I jumped on top of him amongst the other guys.

3:26:17We flew off. They blew the helicopter, and then the QRF helicopter came in and pulled out the rest of the guys. As we start flying back, I just remember, I just kept getting bin Laden's elbow in my ribs the whole time. And I remember thinking, like, this is the scariest man on Earth. He's just an old man, brittle, no muscle on him, and his elbow's in my side, and it won't stop. Like, I couldn't get comfortable. And we keep flying. However, I know we're way behind 38 minutes. I'm not sure what we're going to do. It was kind of beyond what I was more worried of, the inside of the building. Our leadership was working on, you know, the big picture stuff of logistics of getting us out.

3:27:02And as we're flying out, we had something called a Forward Area Refuel Point or FARP. All that means for the listeners is that we had gone into Pakistan in a field and put a fuel bladder in there and made a makeshift gas station, because we did not have enough fuel to get out of Pakistan. But as we're flying to that FARP, we're flying in, and I remember there's lights started flashing in the cockpit. And then the crew came back and said, hey, make sure you're clipped in those D-rings again, because we might go back in. We might crash this. And I remember thinking, whoa, third, things come in threes.

3:27:39You know, this would be my third helicopter crash, second in that day. And so I just remember thinking like, wow, okay. And we finally made it though on fumes. Landed, got out. I was told to go on the 47 just for weight reasons, myself and another guy. We got back into the helicopters and then started flying for Pakistan. Unbeknownst to us, the Pakistanis had started to scramble their F-16s and we had our F-15s that were just standing by right on the border to shoot them down. And so as we're flying back, I remember when we finally crossed over into Afghanistan, the pilot came on the radio and said, I thought you guys would never think you'd hear this, but we're back in Afghanistan.

3:28:24You never thought I'd be that happy to hear this. And we were just like, fuck yeah, we're back in Afghanistan. And we were all kind of fist pumping and hitting each other up on the bird, on the 47 I was on. As we finally flew in, we actually pulled it off. We still had to get there, but it was like, wow, we're finally back in Afghanistan. We land and get all of our stuff out at Jalalabad, Afghanistan, and pull it all out. And then unbeknownst to me, one of our guys got out and he had been shot in his bullet cutters and had fragged his traps. Million-dollar wound, thank God. But everybody else, a little banged up from the helicopter crash, but we were all in one piece.

3:29:04And from there, we flew to Bagram, which was the main Air Force base there. And I remember as we walked in, there was just like the whole world's intelligence communities that are waiting for us. And I remember just being, because I was in charge of it, and asking them to basically back the fuck off. Because we still had like, you know, guys still had their gear on, everybody wanted a piece of it, which they were fine with. But I just remember thinking like, we aren't even organized right now. We're all in like somebody's like soccer, you know, bag. You know, we've got a bunch of hard drives in there that we pulled off target or a pillowcase.

3:29:38We just weren't organized. We didn't have time. So finally, we laid everything out, and we started the turnover of all of the intelligence. At the time, they laid the body out, and this has been said before, but one of the guys was the same height as Bin Laden, so they made him lay down just to make sure, okay, he's the right height, because we didn't have a tape measure. One of the... Yeah, so that was going on. They were taking samples from him. He had been shot in the face, so it was hard to really get a match, but they did take a bunch of his DNA, and it came back as a positive on him. We went in and we did our debrief, and then we, I remember after the debrief was over and everything was turned over, I was in my camis, my camouflage uniform, still sweaty, and I remember somebody saying the president is gonna make an announcement.

3:30:29And we were just standing there in this hangar on this TV and just watching President Obama come down and just tell the American people that, you know, we had taken out bin Laden. And it was at that moment, it really hit me. Because before that, I was just in operator mode. But then I finally seen the president say that, and those words coming out of his mouth. And as someone who was on the invasion of Afghanistan to then be on that mission, and just like my whole life, like a lot of us veterans, you know, had fought this thing from that generation. And so it was like, I cannot believe we pulled that off.

3:31:04And I remember going back and finally taking a shower, and I'm walking back from a shower trailer, and then just thinking to myself, like, still, like, I cannot believe we pulled this off. I don't know. I can't believe I was fortunate enough to be on that mission, and we were alive. And then we hopped on a plane, and we flew straight to Virginia Beach in a C-17 with in-air refueling. It was about 17 hours straight. And then as we landed and opened the door, and our command was there just cheering us on. But that's pretty much the mission. Yeah. I feel so fortunate to have been a part of it, to be a small part of that.

3:31:47And one thing I want to say is it wasn't just, you know, the 23 guys and interpreter. It was the years of the intelligence community working their ass off for years. It was the helicopter crews. It was the mechanics. It was all of the people that contributed to everything. It was not just those 23 guys and an interpreter. It was the nation. And it... I am so proud that we were able to have payback for the American people and New Yorkers. Man.

3:32:22But that was a hell of a feeling. Yeah. I... even now, when I sometimes forget about it, every now and then, and then it'll cross my mind. And I just, it's so nice to be able to be like, wow, I was just a small part of this incredible experience, you know, and it wasn't just, it was the ability to, you know, as I said, as we're flying in, imagining New Yorkers jumping out of the Twin Towers, you know, and then, and being fortunate enough to do something about it. Yeah, it was an incredible experience and feeling.

3:33:02Did you meet the president? I did. We did. Let's see here. I can't remember the amount of time, but shortly after, we flew to Fort Campbell, where the president and Vice President Biden at the time were addressing the 101st Airborne, and they had us in a separate kind of private room that he came in and, you know, we were able to meet him and the vice president, and that was a super cool experience too. What did they say? One thing I remember about Obama, it's such a... I've heard this from other people, but maybe it took me meeting him. Such an intelligent, well-spoken guy, a lot of charisma and swagger, and he just thanked us and told us he was proud of us and that America was proud of us.

3:33:52And it felt very genuine, by the way. It wasn't like a, in my opinion, it wasn't some sort of political stunt or whatever. You could tell he was really proud. And to be honest, I'm surprised and that he actually had the guts to do it. Because that was such a gutsy call, because we did not really know it was 100%. And then to line up the F-15s and all of that, like that would have all ridden on him. If we wouldn't have gotten out of there and Alamo'd up and we all killed their political prisoners, That would have politically been horrible. So to just go for it, I give him respect for that. Damn.

3:34:35Yeah. What did you say to the little girl? I told her in that moment that I was so sorry, and I have struggled with that, with her ever since. The fact that that happened. And I've seen her in my own healing and plant medicine, and she's visited me. And I've even told her in those experiences, I don't know if she's still alive or not, but her spirit, I can feel it. And it's more of a, you know, your father was a soldier, and I was a soldier, and we met essentially on the battlefield, and I'm sorry that your family got caught in between it. And there's no way that her and I would have ever met at any other circumstances.

3:35:23We're from two different worlds. But in a way, it was almost like she was a victim, a child who was a victim of war, almost as I was from my father in Vietnam. And I think that should be a cautionary tale for future wars. Not that Bin Laden didn't deserve it, but it's just for, there's that story that I have, there's stories like that from a lot of veterans that have to experience that and carry that. And what's tough about that is I'm so proud of that mission, but it came at a human cost and a human toll that here I am years later still struggling with having that happen in front of that little girl who didn't deserve that.

3:36:05However, yeah, I don't know how to heal. I mean, I'm trying to heal from it, but it's just one of those things where just because it was a massive payback, that I still feel it. I still feel the weight of that room in particular. Yeah, man. Yeah.

3:36:39What was the day after like? We... I remember one of my buddies picked me up from the... the airport, the military airport, and took me out to get some dinner, like a steak dinner, I think, and a drink. And I remember that was enough for me. Like, I wasn't about to, like, go party or anything. I was just so tired. And basically, I slept a lot. And my back was really hurting me from the crash. and going into medical. And I think the next few days were more of like getting evaluated for injuries and a lot of after action. So there's a lot of, you know, I was getting flown up to DC quite a bit to do after action stuff.

3:37:24But it was a lot of that. And then when that dust settled after a couple of weeks, at a unit like that, it's like, OK, get over it. We're getting back in there. You've got house runs. You've got trips. You've got to start planning for X, Y, and Z. the war's not over. What was it like showing back up at the squadron? It was great. I mean, we were so proud. The squadron was proud. Other squadrons were professionally kind of like, man, if we would have done it, we would have never crashed the helicopter. Some shit talking here and there, which, you know, touche. That's pretty funny. But I just think, yeah, guys were so proud.

3:38:06and so was I. It was nice to be able to have that, but it was, in that world, short-lived because as we got back into the swing of things, I'm going to jump around a little bit here, but Gold Squadron deployed a little bit later that summer and 2 Troop, which was Gold Squadron 2 Troop, which I was in that previous deployment because I was a selection instructor, and my best friend, Rob Reeves, we would always talk about, man, we can never get on a mission together. We've been serving together for so long. We were roommates for a long time. And, you know, we just like, there's a way we can get on a mission together.

3:38:49And so when in between selection schedules, there's a gap of time, I went over with Gold Squadron 2 troop so that I could just, you know, stay current as an instructor, but also to be able to do missions with Rob. and I ended up getting hurt up in the mountains on that deployment, coming back early and was an instructor. But then after the bin Laden raid, when they deployed again, they were providing a quick reactionary force or backup for an element that needed help. And as they flew in, their call sign was extortion 17, and their whole troop of guys was flying in and were shot down and killed.

3:39:30And so for which devastated the NSW community, of course, as you know, and also a dev group community because you're talking in one moment, you know, you're friends with all these guys. In the next moment, a whole troop of guys is killed. So you have 12 to 20 phone numbers in your phone that every single one of them is dead. And so you go from the highs of the bin Laden raid, May 2nd to August, where extortion was shot down. So just a few months later, and just the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. And when that happened, I remember the command just went into full-on mode of just like, let's get these casualty officers out.

3:40:19Like, it was mayhem. They did a great job. Hats off to the command. But that amount of death toll was the highest amount of loss of the global war on terror, and in the highest amount of casualties in the SEAL history. So when that happened, we started going to a bunch of funerals. And I went to Rob's, and then I was getting ready to go to one of my really other close friends, Heath Robinson. He had me in his will as a pallbearer. And I was getting ready to do that, and it was to my team, like, Alex, you need to take your team and go back overseas to help backfill the guys. And so I couldn't even do that.

3:40:58And it wasn't just me, a lot of guys were in that same boat, and so we blew out to go back overseas to backfill two troops. Yeah, as we couldn't even bury them, or be pallbearers or give eulogies, because we needed to be back out there to keep the fight going. And that experience on that era in command just devastated everybody. And that spun me out with my own mental health, which was already on edge for how many combat deployments I had done in my own childhood stuff. So now you have a ton of your best friends were just killed in an instant, and you can't even mourn them because you have to go back overseas.

3:41:41And then that's when I started really spiraling at that point. Man, I'm sorry, dude. I appreciate it, man. Yeah,

3:41:56it's just, and you can't replace two-troop. Those guys were so experienced and talented, and obviously just as people, incredible. You can replace them in the military, right? You can fill those spots, but you just can't replace that, especially at that type of a unit. You just can't replace them, any guys like that. Yeah. But life went on, unfortunately. I mean, it didn't really go on with the morning, but it was like, okay, back overseas and kept deploying. And then on my last deployment, I was deployed as we were on assault strike force team. Basically, I was an assault team leader and we were just hitting targets in Eastern Afghanistan.

3:42:41And the wheels were really coming off for me. It was almost like I just couldn't take it anymore. And also the fact that that happened where they were all killed. And I didn't know what we were doing in the Afghan war at that point. Like, what were we doing? We had already killed bin Laden. We'd driven the majority of Al-Qaeda out of Afghanistan, and now we're fighting the Taliban. And so it's like, what are we doing? And they're asking, you know, us or me to lead my assault team in these, on these raids, which I was happy to do. I wasn't backing down. But I was also having all of their wives tell me they'd bring back my husband.

3:43:16And it was for something that I did not believe in. However, being in that leadership position, you had to keep going. And it was during that time that my, as I mentioned, my mental health was starting to spiral. I was like being really outspoken when I normally wouldn't have. I would have kept my mouth shut, you know, to leaders, guys I was friends with, and where they're like, dude, are you all right? Like, calm down. It was just coming out that way. And then when I started getting suicidal ideation going on And then I remember where it culminated. I was sitting in my room in Jalalabad, Afghanistan.

3:43:52And I remember just sitting there with my 416, my assault rifle on my lap. And I'm looking at it. And I'm just thinking, I just want to end it. And I'm taking it, and I'm pulling the gun, putting it like, do I go to the forehead? Do I go to the mouth? Like, how do I finish it? I just have to finish it. I'm in so much pain. And then I'm thinking of the irony of this particular rifle that I had killed dozens of combatants with, that this was also gonna be the rifle that was gonna take my own life. And I'm in this dark, dark place, and I'm just talking myself up. Do it. No, don't do it. Do it. Don't do it.

3:44:29Repping it. Repping it. Do it. Don't do it. Rep it. Do it. Maybe I shouldn't use my rifle. Maybe my pistol. What if I don't want my buddies to have to clean up all my stuff? Maybe I should shoot myself in the chest. All of these things were going on in my head. Rep. Rep. And then as that's happening, it's getting closer. I could feel it like I'm almost there, I'm gonna do it. And then all of a sudden, boom, boom, and the sirens start going, and the Taliban is attacking our base. And in that moment, I snapped out of it. It was like, I have to man a position on the wall as a team leader and grab my kit and ran to the wall where I had to meet our JTAC to basically start, if we needed to call an airstrikes, to fight off the Taliban.

3:45:08So then I manned the wall, and I remember thinking to myself, the irony of, in that moment, of all moments, that I could have been doing that, that we got attacked by the Taliban. Essentially, the Taliban saved my life by attacking the base. Holy shit. Yeah. Yeah. I would continue to be struggling, and thankfully, that was my last tour. I came back from that, and I was earmarked to continue on to work up the pipeline to get into higher forms of leadership within the command. And I went to a traumatic brain injury clinic called the National Intrepid Center of Excellence, or NICO, which is in Bethesda.

3:45:53And that's when I got in there, and they started doing a bunch of brain scans and saw scar tissue in my brain from traumatic brain injury and was diagnosed with major depressive disorder, PTSD, suicidal ideation, all of these things. And then I just started thinking, like, I am, I don't know if I'm going to make it. I literally did not know if I would make it. And then I kept going back to what I did in BUDS or Green Team or Selection was like, just make it to the next meal. Just that old saying, like, I don't know if I can do that. And it's like, OK, I can't do that. I can't make it to lunch.

3:46:28I don't know if I can do this. Life, do this as life. I don't know if I can do it. It's like, OK, make it five more minutes. Just five more minutes. And they'd be like, OK, cool. 10 more minutes. That's how bad I was struggling. And I made the decision at that point, like, I can't continue to serve. I can't keep deploying. I'd done 15 combat deployments in a row. And I was like, I have to get out of here. And so I took orders. I requested and went out to the West Coast, to San Diego for my last few years, to just work in schoolhouses or training commands. I remember I was offered the ability to medically retire.

3:47:08and I thought about it. But I was at, when that happened, I was maybe at 17, 18 years. And there's nothing wrong with it. But to me, I was like, you know what, I'm just, I'm doing a little bit better, not a lot better, but now I'm in therapy. And at the time I was on medication and I was like surfing more, all these things. I'm like, okay, can I just make it another six months? Like I kind of want to finish what I started to hit the 20-year mark. I'm right there. Am I going to regret that? And during that time is when my psychiatrist had said, hey, I know you're a surfer. There's this surf clinic at the Naval Hospital.

3:47:49And what they do is they take all of these injured or wounded veterans active duty, and they take them out surfing in Del Mar and San Diego. I think it'd be important for you, Alex, to just go and volunteer, help get these guys in, maybe give them a surf, whatever it is. And I'm glad he did. He was like, dude, you need to do something. And so I started volunteering at the surf clinic. And it was just that, like helping veterans get in and out of the water, basic surf lessons. And they were just using surfing as a form of therapy. And as I was there is when I started to recognize that there was nothing modified in these boards for amputees.

3:48:27In my mind, I was always a very, I had this knack for innovation and creativity. When I was at the development group, I was always into like helping develop gear and things like that or tactics. I was just always into innovating just naturally. Not any more or less than anybody, but just like I was driven by it. And so I remember looking at some of these boards and thinking like, I wonder if you could put a handle on there for a guy missing an arm. Or maybe you could reinforce this part of the surfboard so that when a prosthetic goes into it, it doesn't break the board. And then I started noticing it.

3:49:01I thought, like, maybe I should do something about, is there an organization that does that? Maybe I'll volunteer for them. And there wasn't. And then I remember seeing a lot of these veterans would have missing legs. They would take their wetsuit and do an overhand knot in the leg and then cut it. And I remember thinking, that doesn't look, like, that's fucked up. Like, that guy lost his leg. Like, we can do better than an overhand knot. And then I remember thinking, I want to start a nonprofit that can modify these surfboards for these guys and gals. and not just that, but wetsuits, all of this stuff.

3:49:33And then finally, that's when I had that moment I had shared earlier, where I was with that young Marine who was happy to be surfing on a beautiful day. And how he had mentioned, when I'm surfing, there's no more pain and nobody's staring at me as the guy missing a leg. And it was that moment where I was like, I'm going to start a nonprofit. I don't know how, I don't know anybody. The only people I know are in the military. So I drove home and I stopped at the time there was a Borders bookshop. and I walked in and I looked at this nonprofit section and I'm staring at it, I'm all excited, like I'm going to start a nonprofit.

3:50:05And I'm looking at these books and I start pulling them out and it's like the who's who and the most incredible nonprofits in the world. You know, I'm looking at them, I'm like, okay, that's, I'm just looking at something small, like that feels a little overwhelming. I don't know anything like, you know, people who have like MBAs or whatever, they've dedicated their whole life. I'm just like, okay. And then I'm starting to get discouraged. And then I catch a book at the corner of my eye the bottom of the shelf is this little yellow book. And I pull it out, and it's how to start a nonprofit for dummies.

3:50:37And I just thought, well, damn, I'm not going to go home empty-handed. I'm at least going to take this nonprofit for dummies book. So then I took it home, and that night, with a cup of coffee, started One More Wave, which is a nonprofit that I found in 2015 that makes custom-shaped surfboards for wounded or injured veterans. and we also have community. And so what started, what I thought would just be a board or two for the Naval Hospital, slowly started to get more traction, because I was still active duty, and had my own stuff going on. But by doing that, it was actually therapy for me also, because I was now helping.

3:51:13I was introducing this therapeutic modality to other active duty or veterans who were struggling. And it was the same modality that helped me. And so we did our first board, and then our second. and then it started to gain some traction. And then Starbucks did a documentary on us, and it really took off. And then now we've done more adaptive surfboards than any organization in the world. And we have four members on Team USA, two world champions that ride one more waveboards. Yeah. And we have eight chapters around the country, from Hawaii to California, Florida, North Carolina, New York. We have all these chapters that every third Saturday surf together.

3:51:58Well, the time zones are a little bit different, right, from Hawaii to, let's say, the East Coast. But every third Saturday, every month, you'll get 300 to 400 people surfing on that third Saturday at One More Wave. And we also have apps that help facilitate four to six surfs per day. And we've given out 800 grants at$2 ,500 apiece. So what started with Nonprofit for Dummies is now, you know, something that is like morphed into something that I would have never thought would happen. Lots of times people think like, you're the founder, did you envision this, this like crazy vision? And I'm the first person to be like, no, no way.

3:52:34I did not envision this. I thought it would be a couple boards that's like sustainable, like maybe one event here and there. Okay. And then a couple boards that feels good. But it was almost like that organization was like, bro, like that's not what's going to happen. happen like either catch up or get out because this thing is launching and so um so yeah so i that's i'm uh there is a guy that runs it right now his name is rob garnett he's a retired seal close friend of mine and one of um he's perfect for this right now now i'm the chairman of the board so i'm not as in on that daily activities but rob is grinding it day in day out and it would not be the same organization without him along with the rest of the team so while yeah maybe I'm the one that founded it.

3:53:19It took a village and guys like Rob are the ones that are making it happen on a daily basis. Wow, dude. Damn. Yeah, and what we do too, what's a little bit different that I'm proud of, a lot in the beginning, lots of times, people were like, make it for just SEALs. That'll be easier. Mentors. And I just thought, I don't know about that. It doesn't feel right. I mean, not that there's anything wrong with just SEAL stuff, But I felt like SEALs get a lot when we do. And then, you know, people are like, well, then just do SOF. That's easy. It's easy to raise money for SOF. And then I thought back to the parking lot in Tampa with my dad and Magnet S.

3:53:59And those guys were not SOF. They were just veterans. And I just, at that moment, I thought, no, this is for veterans. I don't care if you were SEAL Team 6, Delta Force. I don't care. I don't care if you turned a wrench and you never left, you know, Air Force Base in North Dakota. I don't care. If you signed up to serve our country, you're eligible for a one more wave grant as long as you meet some certain criteria. And we even started getting into it. I didn't realize it, that there was a lot of veterans from the GWAT who were getting traumatic brain injuries from IEDs. And what was happening is while they were active duty, before we started wrapping our, you know, understanding TBIs, a lot of these veterans in the early stages of the GWAT were now having angry outbursts because of their TBI.

3:54:49And so maybe they were getting in fights or they were, you know, self-numbing with alcohol and getting a DUI, and now they're getting kicked out. But now they're getting kicked out of administration, you know, separated. And now they're not getting VA benefits. So guys who were TBIs were now not getting to the VA. And a lot of nonprofits were like, we're not going to touch guys with a 10-foot pole unless you have an honorable discharge. And I started hearing some of these stories and talking to some of these guys, and they were like head down shaking like, I don't deserve this or that. And it was that moment I was just like, I don't give, I don't fucking care.

3:55:23What is it? Tell me more about your story. And then they would talk about it and be like, nobody's helping you. And it's like, no. And it's like, and you got blown up in an IED in Ramadi and nobody's helping you? And they're like, well, no. And they kind of got to this thing of like, well, I don't know if I deserve it. I got an other than honorable. I'm like, yeah, but the symptoms of TBI are like angry outbursts and self-numbing and all of this. And it was that moment our board said, we are going to accept other than honorable and even dishonorable as long as we go through what happened. And as long as you're honest with us, and it doesn't have to be, basically, likely you will get a grant from us.

3:56:00We will not leave you hanging. And I'm very proud about that, that we started doing that in the early days. I know other nonprofits are getting on board with some of that. But I just am very proud in those days where it was like, no, not the flashy, just the soft guys. It was everybody and it was like, tell me more about your TBI and why you got booted out of the military. Okay, you're on our tribe now. Solid work, man. Thanks, man. Wow, holy shit. There's this one veteran who I'd like to talk about just for a moment. His name is Jose Martinez. And Jose stepped on an IED in Afghanistan and is a triple amputee.

3:56:41And he is my absolute hero because Jose is a member of Team USA, and he is a world champion adaptive surfer. And he charges bigger waves than I've ever charged. And he has the biggest smile you've ever seen, and he has the most stoke for life of anybody I've ever met. And it was guys like that, where if we as an organization would have just stuck with the soft, I would have never been exposed to people like that. And another SEAL, Dan Knosson, who's a Paralympian SEAL, stepped on a landmine, lost both legs above the knee, and he's surfing double overhead waves in Indonesia. Wow. So it's like, actually, I could go on and on.

3:57:24and just start going down the list. But once I start, I won't stop. So it's just, it's amazing what, and I think a lot of it, what surfing does and what I would encourage any listener to, to find therapy, it doesn't have to be surfing. It's anything that helps you get into something called the flow state, meaning essentially the way I see it as a clinician, that anxiety hangs out in the future, right? When we start thinking about, I need to do this or that, or this is coming up, that's where anxiety hangs out. Depression hangs out in the past. What I should have done, I have shame about that. I can't believe I said that to my wife or my husband or whatever.

3:57:59It's like, and there's like depression, it pulls at you. And our nervous system is kind of tapped into that and getting pulled back and forth with all of that. What happens in flow state or catching a wave with surfing, albeit, let's say it's five seconds to catch a wave, it actually puts us in a state of flow where nothing else is going on except being in the present and being in the moment of riding that wave to where it gives that nervous system a break. And I get it, it's just for five seconds, but what if you catch 10 waves, that's 50 seconds? And what if you do that three or four times a week?

3:58:29And then now you start going out and out, and you get into a practice of it. Now you're building community also that are cheering you on on all those waves. Now, if it's not surfing, I would encourage somebody to find something. It could be strumming a guitar, reading a book. You know, you get into any kind of mountain biking, whatever it is, fly fishing, which we were talking about earlier, right? It's all of that stuff to where you're in an act of doing something where you have to be fully present with it, because that is giving that nervous system a break and allowing us not to hang out in the past or the future.

3:59:00Interesting. Alex, let's take a quick break. Yeah. We'll come back. We'll get into what you're doing now.

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4:02:12We're getting ready to get into what you're doing now, but first I got a hot question for you. You ready? Yep. Out of 15 deployments, take about-about off the table and the other ones that you talked about, what's the one mission you've never been asked about that you still think about today? Hmm. Okay, that's a great question. there was an operation called Operation Nedmach in Afghanistan. And essentially what it was, we were following, this was circa 2010, and we were following this group of Taliban, about 30 of them, into this compound, all with weapons, and we were going to bomb it. But at the time, the rules of engagement wouldn't allow us to do that because they saw women and children in that compound.

4:03:03just a handful of them let's say four to six however there's 30 dudes with our our you know pks and rpgs and all of that so we they sent us in after them and we went in with our side by sides which were in the back of 47 helicopters and drove in forever then foot patrolled in and essentially put an l ambush on this compound and then because we knew if we went toe to toe with them some of were definitely going to get killed or wounded. So we set up this ambush on them up in the mountains in eastern Afghanistan, and we knew what the Taliban often did. When they'd hear helicopters in those valleys, they would just run, because they knew if they all went in different directions, they were essentially, we could only go after so many of them.

4:03:49So you had, let's say, a one in 30 chance that we would pick you to go after. But knowing that, we knew, like, all right, well, they're going to run, but they're inside the buildings. So we set up this ambush, and as like a ruse or a fake-out, we brought in a helicopter, an empty helicopter, close to the valley to make a lot of noise. And then they started to get out and run out. And then we waited for all of them to get out in the open and ambushed all of them. Holy shit. Yeah, it was just a turkey shoot. And then it was like, it was almost like, And so there's only maybe 22 of us that shot all these guys.

4:04:29And so then we had to now work our way through, get to them. So we started bounding through, almost like a land warfare, like bounding through. We had airstrikes coming in, kind of danger close. And then we got in. And as that was happening, one of our guys who got shot in the side plate clearing one of the buildings. But he was fine, thank goodness. But my role was taking my element to clear out these trenches. and with hand grenades. And so we're throwing hand grenades into these trenches. And I remember at one point, I got a little cocky and there's this like bunker from this trench that went in there.

4:05:05Mind you, you know, there's already been like 30 EKIA. I've shot all of my pistol rounds because I was, and I've shot, I only have one magazine left in my rifle. And I'm down to one frag grenade. So I'm like pretty much use all of my munitions. but I saw this, I'm like, I don't want to crawl into that bunker, but I do want to throw a grenade in it. And so I'm getting too cocky, and I'm kind of standing over it, and I have my cover guide that's holding for me, and I'm like, all right, I'm going to throw this grenade, and let's roll out, get out of the way. And he's like, okay. And I pull the M67 frag grenade, and I try to get, I got cocky, because I try to get the perfect angle, and not just throw it in, but like, I'm going to get it perfect.

4:05:46And I drop it in perfectly, and I turn to run, and I slip and I start sliding down into the hole of the bunker with the hand grenade. So I'm like, I can feel it rolling on my shin, the hand grenade with the pin pulled. And I was like, holy shit, and started crawling my way out. And then finally got out of the bunker, which was like a hole that I crawled out of, and just got out just in time for it to be like, boom. Whoa. Almost completely blew myself up. And yeah, so that one, Operation Deadmack. That was a good one. Here's a follow-up. What was your favorite weapon and what did your kit consist of during your time at SEAL Team 6?

4:06:34That's a great question. My favorite weapon... You know, we got the H &K 416s and that was all the hot ticket for a long time, at least in that era. but I love, I had this Colt M4 that had a floated barrel and a trigger job on it, and it was just completely dialed in. And it was about a pound and a half lighter than the H &K. And I always was like, why are we going away from this rifle? It's awesome. But whatever we did. And so I would say, I know it's kind of a generic answer, but my old floated barrel M4, Colt M4. Right on. Yeah. Well, I got you something. Awesome. you want to see it of course yeah

4:07:28holy whoa so i got a buddy over at sig his name's jason you heard of him yeah i've heard of him yeah yeah he's a good dude yeah he's a big fan of yours awesome and uh so i know that hk 416 is pretty badass but this is pretty light what and uh yeah so this is a 556 mcx spear short barrel comes with the optic comes with the magnifier it's got a uh foldable buttstock which i need to break in for cash and then uh i got some buddies over at silencer shop too and so silencer shop threw in a suppressor and um awesome company they take they did they uh they donate to second amendment causes and and um yeah and six fucking awesome company too oh man and jason's an awesome dude yeah thank you jason thank you sig so uh yeah here dude this is amazing thank you john i know it's been a while wow heard it's been a while since you've shot it has been a while you want to get back into it so yeah this thing is beautiful oh it's lighter right yeah i wish i had this it's amazing well now you do yeah oh yeah this is amazing wow thank you you're welcome thank you you're welcome um yeah i have a small gift for you too i love crazy i love it's just nothing crazy just a little one more wave t-shirt and hat that maybe that's cool this is tricked out no this is awesome yeah it's just nothing crazy just a ball cap and and t-shirt thank you absolutely man and that that one um actually oh man i love the graphic yeah so it's that's awesome dude yeah yeah thank you absolutely thank you that's nothing like wear this proudly i'll shoot this probably man wow thank you amazing you're welcome that is one beautiful weapon sig's awesome dude yeah they uh again i'll just tell you i got a friend that works over in this uh in the sheriff's department at a neighboring county yeah hickman county sure familiar with it yeah definitely and uh they're they don't have a lot of funding for the sheriff's department and um a good friend of mine works over there and uh he used to work here you know and then he moved over there and uh he was telling me about the rifles they've got and oh it's just mixed match sounds like 20 25 year old rifles and uh he was telling me about it and he was like yeah i'm gonna try to he just took over the swat team or is in charge of all the weapons over there whatever whatever and um he was telling me this I just started getting angry yeah I was like how how could we be you know there's a lot of meth over there and yeah those guys are dealing with a lot and it's like the last thing you guys need to be worried about is the reliability of your primary weapon system when you're doing drug raids and shit so I just I went home and I was thinking about it i was like you know what man i'm gonna fucking buy all these guys like how many rifles are there yeah he's like there's about 30 guys yeah and i was like fuck it i'm just gonna buy them all that's a brand new kid up that way they don't have to worry about that shit and um so i called jason and i was like hey do you guys have any like old stock laying around that i can just pick up for at cost or anything and he was like let me uh give me a couple days i'll get back with you and uh he said yeah we have um i'm gonna butcher this but it was an old stock and he goes we're gonna get them he goes we'll give you the i think it's the mb400 pro or something uh short barrel rifle with the optic flashlight all that stuff we'll give it to you at cost and i was like perfect yeah awesome and then a couple weeks went by and i was like hey um

4:12:09if you're going to give it to me at cost can i get some suppressors it costs too for these guys and he was like yeah he's like no problem he's like we'll do that too and then a couple more weeks went by and uh he was just said hey don't even worry i was like where do i send the check so don't even worry about it we've got it really yeah and uh so they just outfitted that entire sheriff's department with brand new man good for sig and good for you for reaching out too that to be able to be willing to do it thanks man good for sig i mean it's just it's just fucking good company yeah you know and they make great shit they really do uh so i can't wait to i yeah that thing's beautiful thank you what you think of that thank you sig yeah but um i love it already maybe you can get into a flow state with that i have no doubt you know we're just talking about That's right.

4:13:01But so you're a therapist now. I am. Yes. Sure am. After, so I was training, talking about law enforcement. I was at a local company here in Nashville. I was, when I retired, I was running the SWAT team training program, tactical program of that company for teams, federal, state, and local teams around the country. And I loved working with cops and helping communities that way. But I got to the point where I thought, I think there's something else I want to do in life. And so I stepped away from that, and I became a therapist, essentially. I went to grad school. Let me back up. Before I resigned from that company, and I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life.

4:13:48After that, I knew it wasn't going to be in tactical training. Not that there's anything wrong with it again, but it was just, what else is there? Can I reinvent myself somehow? And who am I outside of slinging an assault rifle type thing? And, however, I was still struggling so bad with my mental health that I went to, not to jump ahead too much, but went and got some plant medicine treatment with Ibogaine out of the country and 5 -MeO DMT. And when I came out of the DMT experience, my therapist was sitting there, my psychedelic assisted therapist, and she was glowing almost as the universe would say, like, this is what you're going to do.

4:14:29You're going to be a therapist, a clinician that is able, you know, for veterans. And I saw that as I came out of it. She was glowing. I thought, OK, that's a little interesting. But that was during COVID. This was 2020, March, let's say 12th or 13th. So COVID was just kicking off, and we almost barely got out of the country to get back to the States. And when I got back, I had some other little short jobs lined up. They all went away, little contract tactical jobs just to make some money. They all went away because of COVID. And so I was just sitting there, jobless, not even able to get a job because it was like the first few months of COVID.

4:15:07Nobody knew what was going on. And I just kept thinking to myself, am I going to listen to that message to become a therapist. And so I did and started applying and got into grad school and finished. And now, yeah, I work as a therapist here in Nashville. And I'm a generalist, technically, meaning I help treat people with all different diagnoses, but I have a special interest with trauma from my background. But also, that's just, I'm drawn towards it. And, yeah, so I've just, I use a lot of different modalities, like EMDR, clinical hypnosis. I really like trauma, as I said. I thought I would completely be all veterans and first responders.

4:15:52However, as I was mentioning earlier on our break, on one of our breaks, that I thought I would only be for veterans and first responders. However, I'm so close to them. And when they're talking about their struggles, it's a lot for me to deal with, something called countertransference. So I have about 25 % of my clients are that, and then the rest are just general population or society, which I think is a really healthy balance for me, even though I wish I could do more for veterans. But with my other work, I'm able to scratch that itch for veterans and first responders. But in the therapy office, it's kind of as a generalist for most people to include veterans and first responders.

4:16:31I mean, when you went to school to do this, did you start to understand yourself more? Yes, absolutely did. I think, and that was part of the main thing too, was I wanted to really learn what my traumas and my mental health was about. And I went so deep into it, almost obsessive. Because I realized, I knew I was really struggling. The ideations, suicidal ideations, all of that. And I did not know, you know, if I was going to make it, essentially. And so going down that path of therapy, I really was able to be a student of not just others, but myself. And I believe that that is for anyone listening, if they're struggling, I'm not saying you have to be a therapist, but if you're struggling that bad, where you're having suicidal ideations, you have to take your mental health and put as much effort into it as you would have done anything that you're passionate about.

4:17:24For example, if you're in the military, if it was a, you know, to be a SEAL or a pilot or whatever it is, or if you're a, let's say, a musician or whatever the job is that you're passionate about, you have to take as much effort and put it into your mental health because it deserves that. You deserve that. And it can't just be a, I'll just kind of Band-Aid fix this. It's like, if you want this to extinguish this pain, you have to be all in. And that's what I was doing with grad school to become a therapist. So it was to help others, but a lot of it was to help me. Just like One More Wave was to help others, but a lot of it was to help me too, because being able to help others has always helped me.

4:18:05interesting

4:18:10you know I like I admit I think I meant I can't remember if I mentioned it on the break or in here but just I did three and a half years of therapy twice a week I should probably start again but for different reasons

4:18:30but that's kind of i just noticed by hearing myself talk to somebody i would work my own problems out yeah really without that much input yeah and uh i learned a lot from it so i gear my entire interview wow is i just listen yeah and it's interesting to see like

4:19:02Some of the men and women that come in here, you can see them work their own problems out in their head as they're sitting here. I can imagine. Going through their stories. Yeah. I bet you see that all the time. All the time. And for me as a therapist, you know, sometimes... Why? Sorry, go ahead. What they sometimes will say as therapists, it's like sometimes the best technique is just to be present and to be a human, right? There's all these really cool whiz-bang techniques and things that you can do, which is great. A lot of them evidence-based, but sometimes the most important thing you can do is just to be present with someone and just allow them to just share their stuff to what you were just mentioning.

4:19:47They're kind of working it out and making sense of it or, you know, giving a narrative. And it's just to be kind of present and allowing your... allowing them to be heard can sometimes be the most effective therapeutic tool. Why? Why does it work like that? I mean, we'll sit there and think about the same shit over and over on a fucking loop. Yeah. Thousands of times. And then you vocalize it one or two times, and things start clicking. I think... I'm sorry. What's going on? Why does that happen? I have a couple of thoughts on it. I think one, I think it's an energy exchange. I feel like what happens with pain and struggle is it's energy that needs to be released.

4:20:29And that's why, and if it doesn't get released by, let's say, talking, it could be talking, it could be through EMDR, another technique, it could be through exercise, whatever it is. Like, things need to get moved. And if they don't, as I was kind of mentioning before, it'll just get pushed down, especially men. You know, we'll just push it down, push it down, push it down, compartmentalize it. And it may come out where, let's say you had too much to drink, and now you've lashed out at your partner. And then the shame spiral follows that. Like, I can't believe I did that the next day. And then it just leads to more issues.

4:21:01But the thing is, if we keep pushing it down, another thing could be that it just, as I was saying earlier, hardens and calcifies. And then you just become a hard, bitter person and tough to be around. So now you're not any good to yourself, to your partner, to your kids, and all of that. So I think by talking, it just allows some of that to release, kind of bleeds it down a little bit by a little bit. That's kind of how I see it. It is interesting though, right? There's a form of therapy called narrative therapy, which essentially is just that. It's a form where you allow that person to tell that story.

4:21:31And as a therapist, you kind of jump in and just be like, hey, can you tell me more about that part? Where you kind of keep people within the lanes if they start to go off on a tangent. It's like, wait, let's talk a little bit more about this. Like, can we get back to that? You're almost like just helping them share their story, but keeping it on topic, which can be very effective. Which is like, man, you have to go to grad school for that? Yeah, sometimes I'm like, I know, right? Exactly. Did I have to? But the reality is that's like one of many techniques. And what's interesting is the therapist, what you're doing, what I do, the style I practice, it's kind of called eclectic, which just means I take from a lot of different therapies and tailor it to the client.

4:22:10So I'm not just like one approach. It's more of like, okay, Sean, he likes to do that narrative thing. Like, that's beneficial for him. So I'm going to avoid some other things, and I might introduce something else. But what's interesting as a therapist, what I love about it, is you're kind of like, it's very cognitive. Like you're thinking like, okay, like Sean really likes this. Let me just kind of pull this in. Oh, he doesn't like that. Okay, cool. Let me throw this in there. And so it's trying to help people with just, it's just you and the person. And that's what's unique about it. It's like, there's not anybody in there with a video camera to like double check and give you feedback.

4:22:41It's more of like feeling the energy of the other person. And it can be very therapeutic, but some people too, sometimes are just not ready for therapy also. And that's what I would encourage them to lean into community. Actually, I encourage everybody to lean into community. And that's like at One More Wave, for example. Our chapters are so effective because there's a community of people, especially for veterans, because when we were all, we're in our platoons, squads, teams, whatever you want to call it, and then you get out, and you're no longer in that. You're no longer in a community with shared experiences and language.

4:23:14So it's just, if someone isn't getting therapy, getting into your community, whatever that might be for them. You know, it could be volunteering at a church. It could be, you know, volunteering for your kids, you know, sports, whatever it is, getting involved with people. Because a big side effect of depression or trauma is isolation. That's one of the things that we often, I used to do it a lot too. Sometimes I still do it and I have to keep an eye out for it. How do you... You're one guy. How many, how do you pick and choose who you're going to work with? Yeah, right now, And people will find me, like, let's say online or whatever it might be, and then I'll do a screening call with them.

4:23:58Because I want to make sure I'm a good fit for them, too. Let's say it's somebody who I don't culturally relate to, whatever it might be. Yeah, of course, I will be happy to help them. But I might know someone who I'm a therapist friend with or associated with who deals with as a specialty with that culture, let's just say. And I might tell them like, this might not be a good fit for me, but however, I know someone who'd be perfect for you. So that's kind of part of my job too, is helping find fits. But I'll get on a call with somebody, kind of figure out, okay, is this a good fit? What are your goals?

4:24:31Okay, that sounds good. And then we'll come in and even on that first session, I'll tell the client, hey, this is kind of like we're feeling each other out here. If at any point at the end of this, if you don't feel like this is a good fit, just let me know. It's all good, right? But let me know what you do want. And I'm sure within my network, I can find someone for you. And I would encourage anybody listening to this, too, that if you find yourself with a therapist and you feel like it's getting nowhere, be your own advocate. You know, it's OK to tell that therapist, like, I'm not feeling it.

4:25:00Can you help me find someone else? It's all day long. It's your mental health. It's your resources. And that therapist, if they're a good therapist, should know that. And likely, they'll be like, OK, I was kind of feeling that, too. Let's get you someone else. How long have you been sober? or off booze? Six and a half years. Six and a half years? Six and a half years, best thing I ever did. That was the big catalyst for me with my own mental health. Once I was able to get off that, everything else started falling into place. How did you get off that? I got off of it in November 19th, 2019. I was at a fundraiser and I was drinking.

4:25:43and I just, one of my close friends pulled me aside and said, I'm worried about you. And I trust him. I mean, he's one of my best friends in the world. And so I believed him, but I continued to go big that night. And the next day, woke up with a horrible hangover and felt something was really off in my head. I don't know what it was. I felt like I was getting back into the suicidal ideation. It just felt off, felt dangerous. And it was that moment where I was like, I know I have to save my own life. If I keep going, I'm going to attempt a suicide. And so then that same friend kept coming back to me afterwards and was like, we need to get out of the country and do Ibogaine.

4:26:29And I was like, Ibogaine, I kind of heard, I've heard another friend went and did it. I'm like, what do you mean and why? And he's like, well, it's illegal in the States, but a lot of veterans are starting to do this because the current system is just not working with citropic medications. And at the time, I had a great same therapist. She's awesome. And she was helping me through. If it wasn't for her, I wouldn't have even probably gotten to that point. And he just kept saying, man, I'm worried about you. I really don't know. I feel like if I'm not saying this to you, that you're gonna do something to yourself, and I'm gonna regret it for the rest of my life.

4:27:02Who is this? Greg Andrews? I don't know. He's a SEAL. Yeah. Yeah, awesome friends. and we had a ton of deployments together. And so I said, yes, I guess. I don't know. I have no other choice. And so I stopped drinking, said yes to that, got into a program. Vets sponsored me through a program, Mission Within. At the time, it was down in Costa Rica. And we went down there, and I was just thinking, I remember flying in and thinking, what am I doing? I'm flying in a prop plane, landing on a dirt airstrip that looks like Pablo Escobar. You know, it's gonna be running drugs out of it. Like, literally, it's like, just, just, just, just, like, flying in, and I'm just like, what am I doing?

4:27:49And I just resigned from my job as a tactical instructor, and I was listless. And I'm like, I don't know what I'm doing. And then I went in, and it completely changed my life. To be able, I haven't, and that helped me, I believe. I'd already been off booze for a few months at that point, two, three months. But I was still having cravings and things like that from it. It was kind of a struggle. Because I had been trying to get off of booze several times before. Like I would do 30 days on, 30 days off. Or I would be able to get off it for a couple months and then whatever. It was just this endless cycle.

4:28:28And then finally, when I did Ibogaine, it was like a light switch had gone off. and I have not craved alcohol since. And I attribute it to Ibogaine. I mean, I'm still in therapy with the same therapy. She helps me with a lot of this stuff. I have been to some meetings from time to time, but I feel like it was the Ibogaine that really got me off of the alcohol. And another reason why the Ibogaine is so effective for opioid use disorder and things like that is from the addiction properties. But it was that that really helped me kick the alcohol. That's the second time. The second time I met you was at, what, Tennessee?

4:29:07What was that, the house? Yeah, yeah, for the HOPE Treatment Act at the Capitol for Tennesseans for Ibogaine, which I can't thank you enough for being there. Because we were, to let the audience know, I'm an ambassador for Tennesseans for Ibogaine and Americans for Ibogaine, essentially trying to get gets the clinical trials of Ibogaine studied to pass FDA approvals. So we hope, I believe, and our organization believes that Ibogaine has some incredible potential for addiction, specifically around opioid use disorder, but also alcohol, PTSD, traumatic brain injury, and potentially things like Parkinson's and dementia.

4:29:49However, we don't know. You know, it's anecdotal. There's some studies that have come out, but that is true. Yeah, when we met, it was fighting for that to get clinical trials approved here in the state of Tennessee, which is one of the 12 states that we're trying to make that happen. And without your help, I don't know if we could have gotten past that committee, as we were kind of talking about earlier. We can get into it or not, but just how tough it was, especially here in the South, to get clinical trials of a psychedelic past. But yeah, the team really worked hard to get that done. And I appreciate the assist that you brought in because I'm not sure if we could have pushed it across the line without you.

4:30:30We were stuck at that subcommittee. Well, I mean, you guys did all the work, man. How did you meet Ricky? I met Ricky. And for the listeners, Ricky Harris is an ambassador for Americans for Ibogaine. He kind of heads up the Tennesseans for Ibogaine. I met her through a mutual friend And she asked me, hey, would you like to help with this and share your story as a veteran and how it has impacted your life so that we can try to get some of this stuff passed at the state capitol? And I thought, I was like, absolutely. I'm very passionate about it. It fits in line with my why, essentially, is to impact human suffering.

4:31:11And so it fit right in. I was like, yes, I've been waiting for this. And so we started going to the capitol and advocating for the Hope Treatment Act. And I was... Yeah, and Ricky's awesome. Like, she is a force of nature and very sharp woman. And it wasn't for her also. I don't know if any of this would have gotten passed. Yeah, she's sharp. She's a sharp lady. There's no doubt about it. It did pass though, right? It did pass, yeah. And then right after that, the larger organization, Americans for Ibogaine with Brian Hubbard, who's the CEO and Governor Rick Perry, that they helped drive the executive order from the president to sign in to allow for an easier way to study psychedelics.

4:31:56So there's been a lot from that. There's been a ripple effect that has come from it. And we just have to, as an organization, keep pushing it because there's this, OK, we have all this momentum. Let's not let it get too stale. Let's keep pushing it for at least the clinical trials and let science show what we think is possible so that it can get FDA approved. So it's not just a bunch of veterans that are having to travel out of the country to get treatment. I mean, and to me, I'm like, well, what about the average Joe and Jane that don't have the connection to do that? Like, and what if they're struggling, let's say, with opioid use disorder?

4:32:32Like, can we... Because that is systemic, that is generational. There's so much suffering with that. And that's why it's important for the clinical trials, right? Let's science, not just my opinion of its own. Yeah, yeah.

4:32:48Man, we covered a lot of ground here. Do you miss the teams? I do. I do miss the teams. I mean, there's times, of course, I think of the highlight reel of like all the good times, and I forget the low light reel of just being freezing. But I do, I'm proud of my service, but I feel that that was a chapter in my life that will allow me to do what I'm doing now. Like, I couldn't be the therapist I am now without have been a SEAL first, or I couldn't have worked in advocacy or even sitting here in front of you without first have done some of that to help, you know, to impact suffering. So I just, yes, I miss the teams, but I'm...

4:33:30Yeah, yeah, I miss it. I'm kind of onward, though, from a lot of it. What about you? I don't miss it anymore. Yeah, yeah. I don't. I hear you. But I didn't have your career either, so... Well, yeah, I mean, there's times I definitely don't, too. Let's just be real. There's like, I like, you know, when it's like cold and rainy out, I'm glad sometimes I think I could be on a boat bobbing around in the Atlantic Ocean right now with a dry suit on, the seasick. Yeah. No, I've, it took me a long time. It took me a long time, but I have 100 % moved on. And I'm doing my best work now. Yeah. So. A lot of good work.

4:34:15Thank you. You're impacting a lot of suffering too. Thank you. Yeah. I'm doing my best. Yeah. But, well, man, it was an honor. Thank you for the opportunity. Thank you. I appreciate it. God bless.

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