Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Aging Warriors, Unsettling Neighbors, and Standing Up Right

Episode Date: September 8, 2023

In this special listener-submitted Q&A episode we dive into some personal and complex issues that confront us in our daily lives. From the battle against chronic pain and aging to managing unsettling discoveries about a neighbor, to addressing inappropriate comments made towards your loved ones. For the Aging Athlete: A 67-year-old listener is experiencing chronic pain that's taking a toll on his workouts and mental toughness. Can alternative treatments like stem cell therapy offer relief, and how do we know when it's time to adjust our expectations about physical capabilities? Navigating Neighbors: Discovering your neighbor has a criminal past is a situation no one wants to face. What are the ethical and practical considerations for dealing with a neighbor who's a registered sex offender, especially when you have children around.  Boundaries and Backlash: When you hear inappropriate comments being made about a loved one, the urge to react can be overpowering. What's the best course of action when confrontations risk your personal and professional future? The Speed of War Comic Series: https://www.thespeedofwar.com/ Sign up for the new G14 newsletter here: https://www.clearedhotpodcast.com/exclusive Check out the newest Cleared Hot Gear here: https://shop.clearedhotpodcast.com/  

It's going on, everybody. It's Friday, and you're probably here for some fallout of Friday action, which is exactly what we're going to do. And I don't even remember what number we're on. I'm not even going to try to hazard a guess. So, fall out of Friday, number who knows what. Away we go. I'm looking at danger close now. All right. We're back. Regularly scheduled program. We have three questions for today. Before I get into them, though, I would be remiss to not address. the hundreds of messages that I have gotten about a social media post that I put out, this comes out Friday, last weekend. And it was about the new comic series, The Speed of War. Now, the project itself, like I just said, is a comic, but it's awesome. And so therefore, you know, without a shadow of a doubt, that it wasn't my idea. And I didn't do the lion's share of the work because the execution is amazing.

It was pitched to me by a woman named Brandy Barry, who is a tight, in her own right in the industry, not comic book industry, even though she does have another comic, Red Creek is the name of it, vampire cowboys, no big deal. But I digress. It was her idea to use the medium of comics, super accessible. I had no idea the collectability of these things, by the way, to capture the stories of post-9-11, global war on terrorism, soldiers, operations, things that we would want to hopefully never forget. We had to start somewhere, and we started with episode, episodes, not an episode. It's issue number one, which is Objective Barakuda.

Objective Veracuda is the rescue of Jessica Lynch, and it was the second operation we did in the initial evasion of Iraq in 2003. And let me say this before people lose their minds. By the time we had the chance to sit down and probably think about or talk about what had happened, the narrative around that operation was completely and utterly blown out of control. in proportion, I would say. And that was not due to the people that were on target. The information, the operation itself, I'm going to describe it as being politicized or weaponized, depending on how polite you would want to be.

But it was used outside of our control. There were no rounds fired on target. We weren't, you know, invading this fully defensively perimetered, guarded location. We didn't know that at the time. The intelligence that we planned on was substantial. When we got there, fortunately, there was no resistance, and we were actually able to find her in the hospital. And actually in the whole situation, in the way that it unfolded,

the person I feel the worst for is actually Jessica. Stories were told about her that she had no hand in whatsoever. Actions were claimed that she had taken, that she had no part in actually telling or describing herself. It was unfair to her to say the least. And I'm really glad that years ago I was able to sit down and actually have her on the podcast and talk to her about the operation that had occurred because she had never sat down and talked with somebody about it from my side of the house, the side of the house, the people

that were on the helicopters or the vehicles that converged in that hospital. So what's a good medium to capture that in? Here you go. Speed award. Issue number one. Some people ask me because I posted the picture if there were two episodes in the front cover I'm going to call is hers, a picture of her and the back cover would be a picture of or a drawing of myself. These comics are not meant to be historically accurate to a 100% degree. They are accurate in the storytelling, but it's a comic and it's okay if not every gun looks the way it exactly did that night or every helicopter looks the,

looks the way that it did that night. That's not the point. The point is finding an accessible medium where stories like this can continue on and never be forgotten. And right now, a week after this launching, I have an idea for about six more of them. Not my stories. And I do want to do pre-Global War on Terrorism. Mogadishu would be a great one. John Stryker-Myer, The Sog Chronicles, and the people that he served with would be another fantastic comic book series as well. So hopefully we'll get to those. If you're interested, they're $10. They're, I'm going to say collector's item. I think they're a collector's item. I don't know what the hell makes a collector's item, a collector's item. But you can go to

the speed of war.com and pick one up if you want one. And if you don't, don't worry about it. And in the future, I will actually be going to some comic cons with Brandy and signing them if people want me to. It's still very bizarre to me that people want my signature, which for full disclosure has no value whatsoever, but that is what we are planning on doing. So let's see into the questions and get right back on to the full out of Friday train that we do on Fridays. Yeah, good choice of words there. Okay. I'm a 67 year old male, still working full time in a profession I love with no intentions of retiring. I've always been an athlete and I still am. I've been balancing strength and endurance workouts in sports throughout my

life and have had my share of injuries that I've always been able to work through. But I'm starting to hit a wall of chronic pain that is really slowing me down. My body is still strong and can do what I ask it to, but after three years of working out with lower back sciatic nerve pain and neuropathy of my lower limbs, I'm finding that my workouts are starting to become limiting and my mental toughness and desire to push through the pain is waning. I'm getting tired. The chronic pain is wearing me down. I have a complete and total understanding of what you're talking about. It is impossible to rest when you are in pain. There was a really good Joe Rogan episode with Peter Berg about his docu series, Painkiller, that I just worked my way through. Discomfort is one thing. And I think that

there is a lot to be said by human beings and individuals seeking things that make them uncomfortable or provide discomfort for them. Chronic pain, what you're talking about is a completely different thing. I experienced that to a degree with my workplace injury that I sustained, and it's very easy to think, you know what the answer to this is? Pharmaceuticals. I'm going to get something that a doctor provides for me from a prescription perspective. And what I found, my own personal experience, thankfully, or not, depending on how you view this, I have a genetic blood abnormality that largely, it doesn't, it doesn't render opiates useless for me, but they're relatively ineffective. So I've never had any interest in actually taking them because when I

have been in pain, they don't provide me the relief that I want unless I take a dosage that has only been described to me by medical professionals as bordering on unsafe. So that's unique to myself. I can understand, especially with the addictive nature, and this ties back into that podcast with Rogan and Peter Berg, pain is one thing. And unless you can figure out a way to deal with this pain or reduce the pain, it's going to continue to wear you down. My best piece of advice would be seek every available option before you go down the pharmaceutical pathway. And having said that, I think that's what this email is leading into. I know from listening to your podcast that you have worked yourself through some terrible injuries

and that you still have no feeling in one of your legs below the knee. But you still carry on a very active life. And I'm assuming you don't accept your injuries or your age as an off ramp from living the active life you want to. kind of so I have nerve damage in my left leg and what I can't feel is the outside of my shin and the outside of my foot and even that description is a little bit inaccurate I can feel like if you took a fork a dinner fork and scraped it down the outside of my left shin it's not that I can't feel it I would actually feel something it's delayed and I don't have the vocabulary to describe what it feels like. It's such a bizarre feeling. But I have reduced muscle

mass in my left shin because of it. And I have a substantially reduced ability to control a roll in my ankle, specifically if my foot rotates to the outside. I have done everything that I know possible to try to deal with the nerve damage. It doesn't hurt me anymore. That went away after about a year and a half. I'm going to took me a while to get off the medications that I willingly put myself on on the recommendation of the doctors. I think they were doing the best that they could. I recognized for me that they were not serving me, my recovery, or my needs, the way that the doctors were hopefully prescribing them for. So I took myself off of them. But it leaves me with limitations. So, yes, I don't use the injuries as an off-ramp to living the active life that I want to.

I am aware, though, incognizant of the limitations that I have. I love doing jiu-jitsu. There are some things that I cannot do, and it's not a good idea for me to balance on one foot, specifically my left foot doing anything dynamic. Lateral moves for me are a no-go. I can go to the right. I need to be very cautious if I'm doing anything going to the left. So I avoid those things.

I just got back from a few days, bow hunting. The season just kicked off here in Montana. Mountainous terrain, the bane of my existence in the mountains is from my viewing perspective. If I am on a slope that where my right shoulder is high and my left shoulder, it's low. Because every time I plant my foot, I feel like it's going to roll. I am not going to stop hunting. so I have to choose the route that I would want to take and the terrain that I would want to travel over

with my limitations in mind. I can still do what I want to do, but I have to be really cautious because I don't want to aggravate the injury further, even though I do roll my ankle all the time. I've kind of learned over the years to just go with the fall so it doesn't actually create any additional damage. And I step a different way in the mountains

to try to change the angle of my foot so that role doesn't occur. And it just is the way that it is. I'm not here playing my miniature violin, oh, hum, you know, feel bad for Andy because of his limitations due to his injury. I live the fullest life I possibly can. I work around what I need to work around because I refuse to be unable to do the things that I want to do.

Having said that, I'm not in chronic pain like you are. That has to be addressed. I've already tried the conventional treatments for managing my pain with only limited success. I'm now considering stem cell therapy in Mexico. Have you had any experience or know of anybody that has had experience with stem cell therapy? Do you have any recommendations or advice for those of us that are on the inevitable downward path of losing health and vitality? I know that I will eventually have to slow down and give up things that I love, but the trick of knowing when it's just a problem that can be worked through or one that I have to just accept as a new normal is a a real emotional struggle. I really want to go down swinging with a smile on my face.

Fuck, I love that attitude, and I hope that when I am your age and older, I will have that exact same attitude. I know exactly what you're talking about. What can I work through? When do I actually have to make a decision that I'm not going to be able to do the things that I want to do? Hunting is a great example of that. There will be a point in time where for me, backcountry bow hunting isn't possible anymore from a physical perspective. But that doesn't mean that hunting in general is impossible. So I think it's a matter of degrees. Can I still do the activity that I want to do?

Maybe I just change my approach to it. Maybe instead of bow hunting, you rifle hunt and you rifle hunt in a place that allows the usage of off-road vehicles for recovery of game. Or it would allow you the usage of an off-road vehicle to get into a place where you'd want to hunt. What I would say is when you are having that conversation with yourself, should I slow down or actually take that back? Is it an issue that you can work through or an issue that you need to change? When you get to that place, just make sure you exhaust all of your options. That'll keep you in the activities that you want to be in. Now, you're asking about stem cell therapy in Mexico.

Personally, I have no experience with stem cell therapy. I know, I have two very good friends who I leave their names out of this that have been to stem cell therapy, a stem cell therapy, Chipsa, or I believe it called CPI and Tijuana. And I can only provide anecdotal information based off what they have said to me. And I am not an expert on the exact treatment that they did. But what I can say is this. At that particular location, it's more than, just stem cells. From my understanding, there is hyperbaric oxygen training. There are IV therapy that

you are taking daily, whether it's vitamins. And of course, right now, I can't remember the name of the one that kind of accelerates your heart rate a little bit. I've done it a couple of times. Not sure how much I love it. I'm not, I don't have enough experience for or against it. And my point in saying all this is there is a stem cell aspect of what happens there. And then there is a much more robust treatment protocol that is involved with that. Anecdotally, from both of them, their experiences were positive. They have both been back multiple times. It's not cheap.

So when you're looking from a cost-benefit perspective, if the two people that I know, and again, just take this into account, a data point of two is not a lot. I do know that a lot of, I don't want to say retired, but I guess they're older athletes who are maybe on the other side of the bell curve into the direction of their physical capability are pursuing treatments like this, not an expert, not qualified in any way to talk about its efficacy, but I think there is probably a reason that they are choosing to do so and why people who are going to these clinics or particularly Chipsa, CPI, are talking positively about their experiences. So again, I can relay to you through me what those two have said.

Explore all of your options. I would much rather have somebody explore a stem cell option if there is evidence that you could reduce your sciatic nerve pain as opposed to going the opiate route. Again, that podcast with Rogan and Berg talking about the addictive nature, the lives that were destroyed, the Sackler family. Holy shit. If you haven't listened to the episode, I can't recommend it enough. It'll change your mind or your perspective, I should say, on pharmacology and just the amount of money and things that people are willing to do to make money on the shoulders of other people, destroying lives so incredibly addictive.

I'm not saying they don't have a place, but my recommendation is somebody who is not a doctor and not qualified to make a recommendation in any way, shape, or form is I would use them as a measure of last resort. Having said that, I'm not sure, you know, the long-term efficacy or safety of stem cells either. So I'd say, do your research, the two people that I know, there's a reason that they went back more than once, and their feedback has been positive. Neither of them went for sciatic nerve pain issues. So I can't speak specifically to that, but I can speak generally to their overall experience. So hopefully that large, incredible ramble helped you in some way, shape, or form. All right. Question number two. I just found out two days ago that my neighbor that moved in next door about four months ago

was recently released within the past year from prison. He spent 24 years of a 28-year-old sentence for first-degree rape of a 13-year-old girl, and multiple counts of indecent exposure in front of a nine and 11-year-old boy and girl. Since he moved in, we've been nothing but kind to him, and he seemed like a normal, if slightly strange, older gentleman. But he mentioned to my wife last week that he did some time when she asked what for he said she's better off not knowing. My wife, being the curious and thorough person she is, looked him up on the internet. She found his court case and a bunch of public records with his mugshots in details of his sexual predatory behavior. Needless to say, we were shocked and disgusted.

I am a 36-year-old truck driver who tends to be gone multiple days a week leaving my wife alone at home. My question is, how do we approach this situation? We both agree that we don't want him around us or our families, that often visit and always bring over children of all ages. Any input you could give would be greatly appreciated, and I feel like I'm not alone in this. After checking the sex offender registry, it seems like the map is covered with chicken pox. I could not believe how many sex offenders there are in any given area. Thank you so much for the time for taking the time to read this, and I hope you and yours are well. For anybody who's never done this, please stop this episode right now and go on to the public sex offender

registry website and put your address in. You are going to be shocked. Everywhere that I have lived, to include where I live now, the number of colored dots on that map is shocking and startling. I would love to believe that we live in a world and a society of people that are good or pure that are not evil. And I challenge you to look at that map where you live, maybe put in where your kids go to school,

maybe put in where you work, maybe put in where your kids' best friends actually live. I would challenge you to look at that map and maintain that thought that people are inherently good. I think most people are. But there are some people that come into this world broken out of the box. And some of them are going to show up on that registry. You can bury your head in the sand on this issue if you want to, but I'm telling you, my advice is stop this podcast right now

and go check where you live. Put in a few addresses and maybe put a pillow on the table that your laptop is on so your jaw doesn't hit it and break. I hate predators. I hate bullies. I hate people who pray on those that are weaker than them, and I love nothing more than crushing people who are like that. It was one of the things that gave me a very immense sense of purpose in my old job, and it's tough to replace once you get out. It's actually even tougher to come from an occupation where you could actually do something about that to one where you really can't do anything. there's things that I would want to do in this situation. Like, here's what I would want to do. And I would actually recommend that you not do this.

But I'm going to be honest about what I would want to do if my literal next door neighbor was this person. Now, the Internet's an amazing thing. It's undefeated. You can find a lot of information on the Internet. And who's to say what people are going to do with that information? Who's to say who would download a lot of information about somebody in the neighborhood and put it into Manila envelopes and just put it at people's front doors who live in that neighborhood to educate and advise them on somebody who now lives in the area.

I'm not recommending that you do that, and I'm actually telling you that you shouldn't. But that is one of my initial thoughts of things that I would want to do. I also want to believe that people can change. I want to believe that if people go to prison, they are paying their debt to success. and they can come out of prison a better version of themselves than when they went in. They can reform themselves. Notice I said, I want to believe. I'm not saying I necessarily believe that.

The stats on recidivism of people coming out of prison, specifically when it comes to sexual offenders, is not good. It's so far from good. It's really bad. That's the best way to put it. could this person be somebody who has changed? Yes, they could. The stats and odds are not in their favor, but that doesn't mean that we should cast judgment upon everybody.

He has been, had a judgment cast upon him. He was found guilty, lived out his sentence, and unfortunately is now your neighbor. So what do you do about that? I think the safest thing that you can do that's going to keep you inside of legal boundaries is to educate your family. That starts right there. Your wife, alone at home, family coming over.

I think you said you have kids here. The first thing that I think that you need to do is sit down with your. immediate family, those that you live with, and have a very clear, honest conversation about who's living next door. And again, this is where it's this balancing point of, I know people can change, but the likelihood of them actually changing is so fucking low. And you want to give people the benefit of the doubt. And almost every time I've done that in my life, it hasn't gone in my favor.

But that doesn't mean that I want to rob other people of that opportunity to do that. but let's play the odds on this one. The odds are not in his favor. So you need to stack everything in your favor and in the favor of those that you care about. I think the best thing you can do about that is education. I personally would take this another step further. And this is just me. This is a choice that you're going to have to make.

I would go knock on that person's door. I would take with me when I would take with me when I, I went and knocked on their door, everything that I could find and print out on the internet about that person. And I would present it to them at their front door. And I would, in no uncertain terms, lay out for them exactly what is going to happen if they ever even so much and looked in the direction of my family. If you have any friends in law enforcement, I would recommend a conversation with them about your concerns, just so you are perhaps prepping the battle space for any future issues that may occur.

But beyond those things, beyond educating the people that you care about and putting in hard and fast boundaries on any interaction that they could have with this person, you're pretty limited in what you can actually do. You know, another thing that you could do, depending on how disturbed you're. are by this is you could look at moving. And it pains me to say that because you obviously live there first. I have no doubt that you have roots where you live. You probably enjoy where you live. And the last thing that you want to do is move. But you can't control somebody who's been led out of prison who has the right to live where they want to live. I'm sure there's distances from schools that this person

can't live. But as far as picking a place, a neighborhood, a city to live in, I'm sure they have nothing but options and you can't control other people. But you can control yourself. And if it you that much, which it would bother me that much, I would look at moving. So those are kind of the options that I have for you. And the advice, you know, I tried to give you a few pieces. The advice that I would leave you with is don't take this lightly. I think this is a very serious issue. I think you should treat it very seriously. But remember, you're not, you can't be Judge Jury and Executioner and this. That's kind of already happened in the past. I would again love to believe that if people pay their debt to society, that that is it and they can move on and forward.

The math and stats just don't support that. And that is the lens that I view the world through. So be careful and be cautious. I think you have every reason to be and take everything, every step that you can to protect yourself. I'll leave it at that. Hopefully that helped. Number three, long time listener, first time caller. I was at dinner last night with my girlfriend, my parents, and two of my sisters.

The two of us, my girlfriend and I, had just walked out of the restaurant when she grabbed my arm and told me that she heard some men at the table behind us remark on her figure, something about a speed bump. Long story short, we simply left without any action being taken by me. I couldn't sleep that night because I was thinking about how I would have loved to kick the mother and the lover out of the three of them at once. I'm not sure what you're saying there. I think what you mean to say is you wanted to kick the shit out of all three of them

at once. Another situation happened a week ago where Mandro passed and commented on her figure at the grocery store. I'm getting very frustrated at not being able to help her in these situations as they happen. I'm headed to Marine Corps' Marine Corps OCS, Officer Candidate School in January. So trouble with the law that would have come from any violent action is disagreeable. I was wondering if you could offer an outsider perspective on what we both can do in case of future encounters like these. Thank you. And Semperfi. Man. Again, I'm not a legal expert by any stretch of imagination. I understand the desire to

want to kick the shit out of three people who made a comment about your girlfriend. But let's talk about the reality of that. All right. I think you're smart enough to realize that one versus three, probably not going to work out in your favor. And you mentioned it in your email. Any trouble with you. the law that would come from violent action is going to be disagreeable. It's not only going to be disagreeable. It's probably going to be disqualifying for you from your desire to join the Marine Corps, the officer candidate school program. As someone who's not an expert in the law, it is my understanding that when you, let's say that you did beat the shit out of all three of them or the person that drove

by, you drug him out of the car and you kicked the crap out of them too. It is my understanding of the law that you are not going to be able to articulate and justify physical violence based off something that somebody said. You know, we all have our First Amendment right, freedom of speech. That doesn't mean that the things that come out of people's mouths are going to be agreeable to you. So I think you did the right thing by not being violent in this situation. People are assholes. People are going to make shitty comments. And you can't control that. And I absolutely and completely understand how it feels when somebody says something in a public environment like that and you see red, right? You go fucking co-black and all you want to do is flip over a table and then hit them with the table.

And that's not the answer or the solution. If you were to do something like that, more than likely, you are going to find yourself in a very uphill battle, probably in criminal and civil court, depending on how it goes and how badly injured these individuals may be. And I don't advise that for anybody. It's just not worth it. The best thing you can do is have a little bit of a coat of Teflon on and recognize and realize that we are surrounding. Before I go any further, let me say this. And this is something that I'm working on myself as a person. I'm trying to have more empathy and work as hard as I can to try to view the world through the lens of other people's.

experiences or what they may be going through. Most people are really good at wearing just a mask. And I don't mean an actual mask. I mean a mask of just this normalcy, this face where you don't really know what's going on. And at the end of the day, we don't know what's going on. And we don't know what situations people have lived through. We don't know anything about their upbringing. We don't know what leads people to being assholes in situations like this.

Maybe they're having a shitty day. Maybe they had too much to drink. Maybe they had a horrendous role model of a father growing up that was such a piece of shit that didn't explain to them and model for them behavior that is acceptable. And there's no way to know that. I see people doing stupid shit all the time. And I don't think they have the intent to do stupid shit all the time. I think most people are intelligent and compassionate and empathetic. There are some people out there, certainly with room temperature IQs that do some dumb shit.

But most of the time, I think people lash out or act out because of their own stress in dealing whatever it is that they are going through. And like I said, that is a struggle and a journey that I am personally on to try to give a little bit more grace and space, especially when it comes to stupid shit like this that is being said. Physicality in this environment, I think, is off the table. What I might do is actually go embarrass those people in public, maybe walk up to the table and talk in a louder tone of voice that might, than may be necessary just to make sure that the other tables around there were to perhaps hear what I was saying. And you know, maybe just ask them why they think it's acceptable to say something like that about a young woman.

Be cautious if you do so. That is an escalation on your part for sure. And again, people who are dealing with their own shit or have an upbringing or an understanding of the world that you don't know of, they may react in a very nonlinear way. It may go from verbal to physical fast. So just be prepared for that. Know what it is that you're doing. The best course of action is to take a deep breath and just carry on with your life. your girlfriend's going to be okay too.

Words can be hurtful to your feelings. You have the opportunity to support your girlfriend, stand up for her if needed. And now for me, the line, when I say stand up for her when needed, the line for me is any type of physical act. I'm not going to tolerate that in my presence, but I'm also going to respond accordingly. Somebody reaches out and grabs your girlfriend's ass. probably not okay to take a wine bottle and smash it over the top of their head, sending them to the hospital potentially threatening their life. It's a spectrum, right? So do your best to respond in a proportional manner that you can articulate and justify to not only law enforcement, but a jury of your peers.

Very hard to do when you get emotionally involved in a situation. Your girlfriend's going to be okay. It's frustrating that she is having to deal with these things. Talk with her about it. Listen to her vent. Listen to her frustrations. Be as supportive as you can. And decide for yourself what boundaries you're willing to tolerate and which ones you are not willing to tolerate. And just understand that choices and actions have consequences.

So whatever line you draw in the sand, be prepared for what's going to happen potentially if you or somebody else crosses that. Other than that, let stupid people do stupid shit. I wish there was a better solution. And actually, let me take that step back. I'm talking about when people say things. There's a whole variety of things that I've been seeing on social media and the traditional news outlets about people doing stupid shit through physical actions, theft, I mean, full on robbery, mobs, that type of stuff. I'm not saying, in my opinion, I'm not saying let stupid people do that type of stupid shit. For idiots who are running their mouth because they may not even know any better in their life,

the best course of action is to continue on with your life and wear the pseudatathlon and let it bounce right off you. Would you feel better if you beat the shit out of them? Maybe in the moment. You wouldn't if you had to pay for their medical bills or sell your house or lose your opportunity to go to OCS. And I wish I could provide advice that is other than that. there are things in this world that are worth fighting for absolutely and there are things in this world where you're better off just letting them go and enjoying who you are and the people that you are with as opposed to focusing on who they are, the people they are with and the things that

they are doing. That's a line you have to draw for yourself. So again, hopefully it helped. That is all that I have for this Friday. Next Friday, Q and A with the one and only Michael himself. He's going to come out from behind the camera. Maybe. I haven't decided. And maybe he's going to be wearing a mask. Nobody really knows.

But until then, see you guys on Monday for the next episode. Traditional, I don't want to call it an interview, conversational episode. And then we'll be back on Friday with Michael. That's it. Have a good one.