Jocko Podcast - 351: SEALS, Spec Ops, and Psychedelics w/ Marcus & Amber Capone

Episode Date: September 14, 2022

The story and life lessons from US Navy SEAL, Marcus Capone. Fighting TBI, PTSD, and Demons with Psychedelic medicine. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 351 with me, Jocco Willink. Master Sergeant Andrew Christian Marcosano was born in Phoenix, Arizona on October 22nd, 1986. He graduated from San Luis Obispo High School in 2004, joined the Army in 2005 as an infantryman. Master Sergeant Marcosano's first assignment was in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where he served in the second of the 508th, 802nd Airborne Division, rose through the ranks from riflemen to squad leader while at Fort Bragg.

He deployed to Afghanistan in 2007 and 2009. In 2011, he was assigned to Hunter Army Airfield in Georgia. In 2013, Master Sergeant Marcusana was deployed again to Afghanistan. In 2013, he attended Special. forces assessment and selection at fort brag north carolina and he was selected to attend the q course there he graduated in 2015 as a special forces weapon sergeant assigned to second battalion seventh special forces group master sergeant marcosano deployed again to afghanistan as a senior

weapon sergeant on oda seven two two three and in two thousand sixteen to columbia Master Sergeant Marcosano's schools included basic airborne course. Modern Army combatives level one and two Ranger indoctrination program. Small unit Ranger Tactics course, Warrior Leaders course, basic non-commissioned officer course, advanced leaders course, Ranger course, Sear, Free Fall Parachuters course, and the Special Forces Weapons Sergeant Qualifications course. Master Sergeant Marcosano's. Awards include the Silver Star, the Army Commendation Medal, the Army Achievement Medal,

valorous Unit Award, Army Good Conduct Medal, National Defense Service Medal, Afghan Campaign Medal, Combat Infantrymen's Badge, Ranger Tab, Special Forces Tab, Parachute Badge, Military Free Fall, Parachute His Badge. Master Sergeant Marcosano had a wife and three children, Riley, Andrew, and Madeline. And his friends that served with him alongside him called him the real Captain America. And in early July 2020, he sent some of those friends a message. He said, text me. I told you before my doors open. My phone is at hand.

We did things that people make movies about. And in some cases, writers and producers wouldn't even try to write our story. But the rucksack is heavy. and when it gets heavy we help each other but you have to reach out don't let the valley win so that's andrew marcosano the kind of guy that we all look up to kind of guy that's looking out for us kind of guy that we see as strong and unflappable kind of guy that's helping others and of course possibly need any help himself. But a few days after sending that message to his friends and comrades on July 6th, 2020,

Andy Marcosano killed himself, which is a nightmare. It's only one of thousands of these cases. And we've talked about some of them on this podcast. We talked to Sarah Wilkinson about her husband, Chad, who committed suicide after multiple combat deployments with the SEAL teams. We talked with Mike Hayes about a friend of ours named Joe Price, another SEAL, this one who killed himself in the middle of a deployment. And the list goes on and on in every branch, and it's not a new problem.

On this podcast, we discussed Charles White Whittlesley, Medal of Honor recipient, World War I, who killed himself after returning home. We discussed the awful suicide of Lewis Puller Jr. Son of Chesty Puller who was wounded in Vietnam and fought off the darkness for 25 years before finally losing his battle with the demons. But there are people find a way to push through and push on and begin to truly live again. And there are many ways to get there. And tonight, it's an honor to have Amber and Marcus Capone with us, two people who have found a path out of the darkness, a path toward the light, and they're doing their best to share it with as many people as they can. Marcus was a seal for 13 years, completed multiple deployments overseas, and his wife, Amber, also here who

stuck with him through all that and much more. And from everything I can tell, she eventually saved him from himself. Amber, Marcus, thanks for coming on. I know it's a heavy topic, and I know you are in the trenches every day dealing with this and trying to help people out. So thanks for coming on here to share your story

and hopefully guide some other people. in the right direction. I guess we just start at the beginning. Like, I guess start with Marcus, your childhood, where'd you grow up? What was that all about? Yeah. Well, first, thanks for that introduction. That was, wow.

Just, wow. Yeah. Powerful. You know, one of my most, you know, every single Marine knows who Chesty Pillar is, probably the most iconic Marine of all time. if not he's definitely in the top two or three and yet no one knows about his son or i shouldn't say no one very few people know about his son and it's one i think it's one of the most tragic stories in history about what happened to his son and lewis puller junior coming out of vietnam so severely

wounded but i mean he like kind of got it together eventually and wrote a pulitzer prize winning book which is an incredible book, and it just kind of fell apart at the end. And we should, that should be, you know, people should know at least as much about him as they do about his dad. Because if that's not a warning, then I don't know what is.

Yeah, Jacko, I think that's a good point. And that story in particular is that, you know, I'm good right now and guys are good, but it took him, you know, 25 years. You know, he wrote, Pulitzer Prize book. Seemed like he was okay, but I feel we've all come to this point, and even, you know, you go do this treatment that we're going to talk about.

It doesn't mean you're healed forever. You don't go to the gym or go downstairs to work out and think you're going to be a black belt for a day or you're trying every day, right? And so I think in this healing process, it's, you know, I don't want to call us damaged, but we came to a point where we needed some help to climb out of some darkness. and so I have to work on it every day, literally every day, probably forever. And so you know, you mentioning that story, I think is important for people to hear, like, this is not a one and done, there's not a panacea, you know, this is forever, right?

And this is forever. And so we've got to work on ourselves every day, forever. Otherwise, you know, we don't want to end up, you know, underground too early. Yeah. So let's talk about how you got here, how you got here sitting here today. Where'd you grow up? Yeah. So I was, I was born in Queens, New York.

I moved to the island when I was Long Island, when I was three. And, you know, I thought I was just like a typical Long Island kid. I played everything. You know, my dad and my grandfather both played college sports, basketball, baseball, football. So I literally, I think I had a ball in my hand at, you know, two or three years old. I was on skis at three. I was in the water at four. We had one of the top wrestling programs in New York.

And so I was like on a mat at like seven, you know, in most of those places you didn't get to wrestle like junior high or maybe even high school. And so, you know, I was lucky. And I grew up in a beach town in Long Beach, New York. And so, you know, I was always in the water, always on the beach. I was a lifeguard at 16. Yeah, I mean, I thought life was good. And, you know, I know. That sounds like a pretty freaking good life.

No, I mean, it was good. Yeah, it was, at least I thought it was good. Both your, both your dad and your granddad were athletes. When you said like, yeah, they were athletes. My grandfather was an all-state basketball player. White dude, too, from New York, which is, you know, to play basketball. And, I mean, I'll brag. I think New York's got some of the best basketball in the world.

So, you know, we played in tough leagues. And then my dad was more football and baseball. So he started as a freshman in high school, which was huge in the Catholic High School League. So I went to All Boys Catholic High School where he went Holy Cross and Flushing. There's a shout out. And, yeah. I don't know if I'm caught out for that All Boys scenario.

Yeah. Well, maybe it's why I'm here today. Who knows? Hey, what about grades and stuff? Were you doing good in school? I was good in school. I was really good up until high school, and I slipped a little bit. So I was like a straight-

Are you still in an all-boys school in high school? Yeah, high school was all boys. So I went to public grammar and middle school in Long Island, and then I went to All-Boy's Catholic High School back in New York. So I took the train for an hour every day. The football coach at the time would pick me up in Valley Stream. Wait, what year is this? So this is 90.

Like what year did you graduate? 94. Okay. Yeah. And so, yeah, I would take the train at like 5.50 in the morning. He'd pick me up at 6.30, the coach, and then he'd drive me in the rest of the way. So that was just normal back then. You know, some people don't understand it now, but the Catholic high school league in everything was good.

And I didn't, I grew up in a town that didn't have a great. public high school. And again, I was, you know, I was all about sports. So wherever they had the best sports, I was, I was going, I was going. What'd your dad do for a living? You know, he, he kind of, just a bit of a hustler, really, never, never finished college. Like men's so smart, though. Super smart, you know, it was really into the market and, but just never applied himself. he wind up, I think, the last 20 years, he was a bridge operator, so he literally opened and close a draw bridge in the county. And, you know, he worked for the county and had benefits.

The funny thing is whenever my, I think my uncle Shane asked me, what does Marcus's dad do? And I asked you or asked him or something. He goes, tell him my work for the union. Just leave it at that. Yeah, for the union. Well, he used to tell people he was a bridge engineer. It sounded better than telling him that he was opening and closing a drawbridge.

And then on the side, he moonlighted. He drove for people. So he would drive for elected officials. Yeah, but who I'm drawing a blank from New York. Some like governor. Yeah, yeah, you know, just a few like kind of. So he had like. He had like a Lincoln Town car and he was getting out.

Literally had a square Lincoln Town car. That was handed down to me. Yeah. VA sucked gas. It was awesome. I love that thing. And what about your mom? Was she around?

You hit it right on the head. Yeah. Yeah, mom worked for a dentist for over 30 years. So she was at the front answering the phone, you know, paying the bills, greeting everyone. So I had free, free dental growing up, which is nice, right? And what about brothers and sisters? None.

You're only child? I was only child. I had a, I have a half-sister. I've never met. And, well, at least that I, well, I can't remember. Well, I mean, I never, I can't, I don't remember that. Yeah. So it was like less than one when I think they separated us.

But, you know, other than that, was just me. So spoiled, spoiled only child. And the focus was just all in sports. It was all in sports. And, you know, and academics. My dad was, he was an academic. And, you know, I would literally get, like, backhanded if I came home with, like, you know, a bee. That's the part of his childhood.

Yeah, it's a part that, you know, that may not have been. A very, very hard, dad. Yeah, dad was hard, right? So. What do you think was driving that in your dad? Because it sounds like he's kind of laid back in a way. Or is he just pouring all of his dreams into you? I think that.

I think you hit it. I think you hit that. Yeah, my parents went to Woodstock. I mean, they were like hippies, sort of hippies. You know, mom used to protest the war. but yeah he had like a real mean side and his dad my grandfather was even meaner I think he told me what before noon he'd already he would already drink like two quarts of beer you know courts back in the time and then he owned they owned uh like his family

owned a bunch of the um I guess a medallion like a cabs in New York oh yeah you know Capone's from New York right um and so I don't know how he was treated as a kid well I'll tell you how he He was sent away to boarding school, all boys, Catholic boarding school. This is my dad. In the Bronx at four years old. So, I mean, if you and I think back at four, kind of love we had from our parents, his sent him away to Catholic boarding school in the Bronx. And I could just imagine what went on there from, you know,

some of the individuals that, you know, we're hearing about now, all these stories these days. So maybe he had some shit that he was getting out on me, possibly, right? But it sounds like he just wanted you to be successful in a big way. It was all about me. Yeah, he, like they hung up their life to, he was at every practice, literally, you know, right there, cheering, watching. Did he yell at the reference? Yeah, no, that was my mom. Okay.

So, no, he would, he would backhand me if something just didn't see. seem right and she would get thrown out of the Little League World Series because she was screaming at the freaking umpire about a call and they actually did get thrown out like she had to leave the stadium. Hell yeah. In the Little League. I say hell yeah. I, like people, I don't know why people get the impression that I would like be yelling

and screaming, but I'd never like, for my kids played sports, I would just, I wouldn't say anything. I wouldn't even coach them. I wouldn't even, maybe occasionally, but most of the time I would just sit there and watch because it's hard to coach your own kids, man. They don't really want to listen to you. No, no matter how much you know. Yeah. You're just telling me the story downstairs.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was telling him, my son was doing jiu-jitsu. I've been doing jiu-jitsu at this point. I've been doing jih Tjitsu for like 25 years. And my son, I'm watching him roll, and he's got an arm lock on somebody. And I say, hey, you know, you get your hips a little further underneath that elbow.

And he looks at me and he just goes, no, you don't. I'm like, okay, fair enough. Oh, bastard. I'm not going to listen to anything. But so you, your grades are good. You sound like a freaking good model kid. I was a good kid, but I think that was the problem, too. I was like, I was too nice.

I'm still a little too nice. But yeah, so I got, you know, I was skinny too. So I was skinny, nice kid that also got put ahead, not held back like we do in Texas. We hold back our kids. Yeah, in Texas, the kid's like 17 years old. Gronous freshman year. Absolutely. Seriously.

I mean, you have to. Our son graduated with someone who was turning 20. Yeah. I mean, you have to pass for 3,000 yards. You know, they call it a Texas gray shirt. No, instead, I got put ahead early for whatever reason. And so I was with older kids, skinny, nice kid. And yeah, I definitely got abused.

Just picked on. Picked on constantly. What kind of music? I think some people call that right of passage. I think there's a little bit of both. But it wasn't fun. What kind of music did you like? Growing up in New York, like in Queens, everything, rap, like Beastie Boys, right, from Brooklyn?

Guns and Roses. So just your kind of normal music for late 80s, early 90s, get some. But then I got into like some other stuff in high school, like trying to think. think like kind of Lalaplusa-esque music, Pearl Jam, you know, everything that was coming out of Seattle. That's right. So all that stuff was good. Because that stuff made it mainstream in the early 90s.

So you could pick up on it. Yeah. Even in a big bag of boys school. Boys Catholic high school and Queens. And was all this geared towards you going to college to play sports? Yes. It actually was. It's all we talked about.

I mean, that's all I knew. Were you going to camps? I was going to camps every summer from the, I can't even remember, Jacko, that's how far back. I was either in a basketball camp or a football camp at Fordham or a baseball camp, junior lifeguards, like just all that shit. And what did you, what sport did you like the best? I liked football. Is that the one you were best at as well?

That's the one I was best. I played in college for her dad. We'll get into that later. But yeah, I got full scholarship to play. Definitely beat your body up, of course. But I just, I don't know, it was one of those things I liked. I was a quarterback from, I think, like, seven years old. And, you know, I think it was up to me.

I'd probably be surfing. And I tried because we did live in a beach town. And my dad was, like, not having it at all. So I would try to surf and then immediately, like, we'd go right into, you know, some kind of camp or, you know, baseball, double headers in Brooklyn, you know, at 90 degrees in the middle of summer type shit. Check.

All right. Amber, your turn. Well, I enter the picture at the football juncture where my dad recruited him. But prior to that. Yeah. You must have been doing something prior to that. What were you doing? Yeah.

Prior to that, I grew up in a really small town in southern Illinois. So everyone, when I say I'm from Illinois, I think Chicago. But I've actually only been to Chicago one time in my life. I grew up on a retired dairy farm in a very rural part of Illinois. Retired dairy farm meaning there's no more cows there? Yeah, it's not there. All the barns were still there. The milk house was there.

The farmhouse was there. All the land was there. Was it your families that retired it? Yes. My great-grandfather, great-great and great-grandfathers were the milkmen of my county. And then they shut it down at some point. Yeah, so they had, I don't even know how many, you know, hundreds of cows. My grandfather worked the farm whenever he was in high school.

And then at some point, shortly thereafter, he was like their farm hand. And he ended up going to college and getting married to my grandmother. And I think at some point they retired it after that. And did your dad have to work on the dairy farm at all or was it already done? That was my mom's dad. My dad's dad owned an excavating business. And yes, my dad and his brothers worked the tractor. So I come from a very hardworking family.

Yeah, dairy farmers, that's a hard life, man. Yeah, it's a hard life. But like a really good, wholesome life. And I just grew up in a really wholesome family and a really wholesome town. And my dad being a football coach just really always drove me, loved me, but drove me. And, like, he, the one thing he taught me was, don't you ever quit anything. Don't ever quit. And so, you know, it didn't matter how

uncomfortable things got in my mind. I'm like, I'm not quitting. I don't have a quit in me. Did you play sports? I was a cheerleader. I probably would have been more athletic. Had my dad been in my life, my parents, he was in my life, but not in like a dad way. You know, he was, my parents were divorced. So I saw him spring break, a couple months during the summer over Christmas, but, you know, day to day, I was raised by my mom. And cheer, did you do cheer, how long did you cheerleading for? From the time I was in seventh grade to senior in high school. Damn, so you were out there.

Yeah. I remember I was working and my middle daughter, she did gymnastics and then she, that's like a little, there's a little, there's a little off ramp or a little on ramp to cheerleading, right? And so she was doing gymnastics. Then she got on that little ramp. And, you know, I was kind of like, dang it. You know, like, it just doesn't seem like it's the thing that you want your daughter to do, at least for me, right? And then two things happened.

One of them was this woman CEO that I work with who's an awesome woman. I told her, I was like, yeah, you know, my daughter's doing cheerleading. She's going to do cheerleading. And this woman's like, I did cheerleading. And I was like, really? She goes, yeah, you're out there. You're standing in front of people. You're projecting your voice.

And I was like, okay, fair enough. And my daughter only did it for a couple years. Then she got more committed to wrestling. Yes. Which was awesome. That, and another thing that happened was one of my buddies was also had a daughter who was also doing cheerleading. And he's like, he's kind of making fun of me. He goes, oh, you're letting your, because his daughter's doing cheerleading.

my daughter's doing. They're both doing cheerleading, but he's going to make fun of me, because I guess I don't seem like the cheerleading type of dad. And he goes, oh, you're letting your daughter do cheerleading. And I go, yeah, you know, I figure I either let her do cheerleading or she comes home with a tattoo on her face when she's like 18, right? Because that's what happens. You, like, pressure your kids or you, like, steer them or you prevent them from doing something. They're going to rebel hard against you and end up on the wrong path. So anyways, she did cheerleading for a little bit. All good. And did you do good in school?

Oh, yeah. I was pretty much. a straight-A student. Did you, what did you want to do when you grew up? Did you, did you want to go to college? Like, what was the deal? So, my parents were both raised in this really small town. They were in the same class together and had this sort of crush on each other since they were in third grade.

All the way through, you know, junior high school, high school, prom king and queen, captain of the football team, captain of the cheerleading team. Like, you know, they, everything was my two, two sides of the family and this one little town. But my dad had these big aspirations to be a football coach. And so he actually got a full ride to University of Illinois. And that's where he ended up going for his first coaching, you know, his first coaching gig. And from that point on, when he got out of that little town, he always said to me, you get out of here as soon as you can. Dang. Because he knew that, you know, there wasn't the opportunity for me there that I would need to have, you know, that he wanted me to have in life.

I don't think he thought Marcus would be my ticket out of there. But, you know, he helped facilitate that. All right. So let's get to that. So you end up getting recruited to go play football? I did at Southern Illinois. And Amber, your dad was the head coach there? Yeah.

So at that point, he'd been from U of I. He went to Miami of Ohio and then got the head foot. head football coaching job at Southern Illinois University. And that was about 10 minutes from this little town that I grew up in. So he was 34 years old and he was the head coach of, you know, our hometown team. Yeah, big school, though, 25,000 students. It was Division I. Yeah.

Now, it's the enrollment's really gone down significantly, like a lot of schools. But it was, you know, it was a large school back then. Yeah. And you roll in, you get recruited D1. Yeah, it was, so I got hurt. in high school, so I wound up not playing my senior. What was the injury? I tore a couple ligaments in my wrist, my throwing wrist.

Tried to play through it for a couple years, and they'd actually know whatever knew it was torn. I just kept having this, like, I'd land on it wrong and, you know, have this, like, screaming pain. Finally, got an MRI, and they're like, yeah, you have several torn ligaments. Like, that's why you're in pain. So I said we can do surgery now.

you'll miss football season, but you'll be back for baseball season, or you can play football season and then have surgery after, but you'd miss baseball season. And so just chatting with, you know, dad, I was excelling more in baseball, and we decided, you know what, let's hang up football, have the surgery, and we'll get you ready for baseball season. And you said what year was this? This was 94. But what school year was it?

Like this was your junior year? This was my, like summer. Yeah, summer going into senior year. Got it. And so we decided to go ahead with the surgery. And they went in and they did like an orthoscope and they found like the ligaments torn. And then they just went ahead and sewed them back. And I remember it was a long recovery.

It was like it was almost six months. And this is so my dad. So I get done, get the surgery, go through, you know, however, long I was in a cast. Get the cast off literally came home from getting the cast off after being in it for like four months. It was long. It was weird. And he literally grabbed two mits and pulled me onto the beach and he was like, throw the ball. I'm not making this shit up. But first off, like, can you imagine the size like difference? It was like my wrist was like this big. I'm done anything. I pick up the ball and this is no shit. I throw it.

Was it baseball or football? It was a baseball. I was trying to get ready to baseball. I literally threw it like a foot in front of me. I didn't even know and I didn't even know what to say. Like dad, I can't like I'm in a lot of pain. Did he get Matt? He like, yeah. Oh my gosh. It was so fucking weird. They got mad at me like it was my fault that I couldn't throw this baseball after I just got out of it. Anyway, so I played baseball. Didn't have a great season, just played. And my younger football coach, Tom Frawley,

I considered kind of like my second dad and quarterback coach. And he just said, hey, man, you're so talented. He's like, I think you should play football in junior college. Like you're, you know, I think you have something. You should do that. I said, eh, you know, I kind of threw it around. I went, okay, I'll, you know, I'll, you know, I'll take your advice, and I started throwing him in the summer, and I wound up enrolling in

NASA Community College in New York, and NASA every year had like top 10 football. They always sent literally anywhere between 15 and 20 guys to Division 1, and big Division 1s, like Ohio State and Miami and things like that. And so I was going to a real place to play. And when I showed up, man, I was skinny. I was 17 going into my freshman year of college. Damn, you were young. Yeah, it was, yeah, it was...

Bro, your dad for all this pushing should have held your ass back like two years, dude. Two. You're right. You're so right. So, you know, I show up, again, 6-4-180. And, I mean, this is like a Division I junior college. These guys are fucking massive from like Brooklyn and the Bronx,

and these guys are like straight up meat eaters. And I'm like, man, I don't even know. I belong here. So I hung in as a freshman. You get redshirted. I went to practice every day. I worked hard. And I turned 18 that December of my freshman year. And like in February, I went from 64-180 to like 6-4-225. I was on the program. Getting jacked. And yeah, it was good. I was actually, you know, I felt like a, felt like a human after that. Well, and I didn't know you. That but from what I gather, all that pent-up frustration

from the bullies of your childhood, you started taking it out with your increased size. Yeah, we've talked about this. So, yeah, so with the increased weight and size, yes, Amber is correct. I did. I started getting into a lot of fights, Jaco. Really?

Like stupid, like dumb. Like all the time, a lot. And it was like... And this is when you're at this community college? Yeah, it just fed me, I think, because of the years of maybe, you know, dad and then, like, being skinny. constantly getting harassed.

I finally put on some weight and I would just snap. Every time we went out, it didn't matter where any bar, I was getting in a fight. Guaranteed. I was that guy. You drinking now at this age? Yes.

Yep. That doesn't subdue fighting. It doesn't help at all. It doesn't help. Yeah, I think growing up on Long Island, I actually remember the first time we drank because it was all my high school buddies freshman year, I believe it was a memorial day.

Like, hey, we're all going to get together. We're going to go get a couple cases. We're going to go down on the beach. We're going to drink some beer. And I remember saying, how can, like, how can you put something in your body and it makes you act weird? Like, I don't, I don't get it. Like, I honestly did not get it. And we were having this argument.

Like, I don't get it. Like, I could drink 10 of these. Like, I'm going to be fine. And I think I remember at some point of that night, like, humping the pole, literally. And so, yeah. don't drink or if you do be responsible. Plus, this is your freshman year. You're like 12 or 13 or something.

Literally 13. I think it was 14 at that. Because it was the second part of my freshman year. So did you keep drinking through this? Was it a thing or not really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I drank. But I drank on the weekends when we went out.

So never during the week, Amber still makes fun of me that I was in bed. He had a bedtime 9 p.m. until he left at the house. through senior year of high school like not even during senior year was this mandated by the old man this is mandated by mom okay but at that point though

I didn't think for myself at all I was just like oh it's 830 I need to get ready and go to bed you know the light was on and my mom screaming down like Marcus shut the light off go to bed you gotta get up in the morning and catch a train you know meanwhile Amber's out at my house in college till like three in the morning

but we'll get into that after. Yeah, so where were we at? Are you thinking through high school, are you thinking about the military at all? No, not at all. I mean, I didn't think much, Jaco. I'm just starting to come into thinking the last couple years. And you're just totally focused on athletics.

That's it. That's what you're going to do. That's it. But, yeah, I didn't think. The only thing, the only connection I had to the military, my grandfather had a purple heart. It was in the house. I didn't know the difference between a purple heart and a purple rose.

And he mentioned it was from a mortar attack fighting the, I think fighting in northern Africa against the Italians. But he was another guy who evidently got in a lot of fights because I guess military was a lot different in World War II. They would pull like your rank away like when you weren't on the battlefield. You know, if you got in trouble like he did. and then when he came back, I don't know, some weird story that I listened to. It was probably completely wrong coming from my dad. So that's the only like real. Oh, and your dad was in the Army.

Well, he was by, I think on, I don't think, I don't know if he got. Your dad, the hippie was, your dad the hippie was in the Army? Yeah, he was an MP. He was a dog handler. That's all I heard about growing up was his ferocious dog that bit everybody. So I'm like, so you're a shitty dog. Yeah. Because we had a few of those guys too, right?

Did he give you any impression of like, hey, you know, the military's dumb or you shouldn't join it or whatever, anything like that? Absolutely, yeah. No, he never, I don't think he ever talked about it negatively. Just, just wasn't there. Yeah, it just wasn't there. Got it. And I wasn't with a crew of like, you know, first responder families, like police and fire. So I just didn't have that, you know, it was more like artists and, and, but nothing negative.

Nothing ever negative. But really no, I was not. never, it just wasn't a part of my life. I was raised a Patriot. Marcus was not. I have a letter that I framed that I wrote in third grade on Veterans Day. And it was, it's so funny to read it back. But even as a nine-year-old, I'm like, yeah, that's who I am. Were your parents military, or was your dad military or granddad or anything? No, my great grandmother had five brothers in World War II. And two or three of them were killed. One of them was a POW. And so, So, you know, I just, it was just instilled in me that we love America and we honor our military.

But I didn't ever think I wanted to be married to someone in the military. That's a whole different ball game. Right. I was also, you know, my hometown was so small. And it wasn't, you know, a very, there wasn't a lot of money in the area that I grew up. And so people that joined the military in my hometown couldn't afford college. It was just a way to pay for college. So, like, I had this great appreciation, but I also, I was completely dumb to, like,

what the military service actually was. All right. So let's get into this how the coach's daughter. I mean, how does this go about? This can't be. Not controversial at all. Right. Marcus, I mean, this is, like, taboo.

Is there anything more taboo than, oh, that's the coach's daughter? Cool. Yeah. That's where I'm going to go. Yeah, that's exactly it. So I end up at Southern Illinois. in, I don't know, what was that, 96, Amber? Yeah.

And I just trying to think how I get into, how are you and I, so, okay, when I was first looking at the, like, the media guide for the football team, this before I even went to Southern Illinois, I was still in New York, I saw that Coach Watson had, had a, you know, obviously had a family in there and had a daughter.

And I just, again, never even, I was like, oh, wow, that's interesting, you know? That came across my mind, but that was it. Like, let's put that away now for, like, two more years. And I show up at school, and I think about a year and a half in is I met you at Kuckoo's. No, at a golf tournament. But I didn't even see you there. You didn't see me.

I saw you at the golf tournament. You looked really angry and pissed off that you were there. Yeah. Yeah. So we did a, I guess, like, volunteer. for some golf tournament. And I remember seeing Amber there, like, at the table, and she was angry.

And I remember guys saying, like, that's Coach Watson's daughter. You know, and everyone was like, okay, stay away from. Are you just trying to keep people at bay, just scowling at everyone, or what was up with that? I don't know. I think I was probably, I don't know. I think I was probably traumatized by having to be there. Yeah.

So that's the first time. Marcus, at this point, Are you like a full-on, like, just straight beard-swilling jock? Yes. What we're dealing with this? 100%. But I was a nice jock. I don't know if that makes any sense.

But you're fighting a lot. I'm fighting a lot. Still fighting a lot when you get to college? Oh, yeah. Oh, gosh, yeah. I mean, we'll go into, I mean, I was suspended from Amber's dad my whole sophomore year. After I just got named the starting quarterback over four seniors. So your dad was great.

in recruiting me, but not in the choice of personality. So that night I go out, go to fraternity party. This is the night you get named as a starting quarterback. So you're a sophomore. Freaking stoked. And I'd been hearing about him and, you know, like the whole area had been hearing about him because you get like this big, good-looking guy from New York. And it's who's named Marcus Capone.

And so I'm like hearing this buzz. But did you meet him yet? When he gets named as the starting quarterback? No, and apparently we'd been at that golf tournament, but I didn't know who he was. Got it. So, anyway. So now you get named. So we go out, myself, the fullback, who was my roommate, who's just a stud, you know, like 600, 400, 400-pound guy, like a squat bench, you know, that type of dude.

It can run like a 4-5-40. And we go to this fraternity party, which is really off-limits. Football athletes and fraternies really didn't mix. Okay. Most of the fraternities. Like, officially, like you're not allowed to go to them or just? No, it's more you just don't because a lot of those guys were high school athletes that couldn't play in college. And so there was a little bit of like, you know, bad blood.

We went because a lot of the female trainers that, you go in and get your, you know, put your ice and, you know, your elbow in ice or get hooked up to STEM or whatever, they were all sorority. So they invited us. So three of us went. And right from the get-go, you can. can tell, like just it's in the air. You know exactly what I'm talking about. The, uh, you could feel the energy in there. It was just not going our direction. And, uh, one thing led to another and the next thing, you know, there's, uh, literally a whole fraternity house on top of us in the middle of the yard. Um, there were so many of them, I think it was lucky. I think it was what saved us because there

were so many that they couldn't like get to us and like punch and kick and everything else. But I do remember like being on the ground and going, man, they can't even get to us. There's so many I remember this hand, I could feel this hand like coming up like my arm and then my shoulder and then my neck and then I feel it like it to my face and then like just start like like like raking me like raking my eye. I'm like this guy's trying to pull my and I couldn't do anything about it. So for somehow, this is the best. So somehow the fullback, my roommate, crawls out underneath all of them and charges the wooden fence and literally hits it and knocks the whole. whole fence down in the yard. So you can tell how well these fences were made in a college,

you know, collegiate house, pieces of crap. So the fence goes down, which enables us to get out, because now we're out of the yard. So I'm standing in the street. Like my eye is completely red, like they, now, like it's, it's good and scratched. I'm missing a sandal. My shirts rift. you know, I'm standing in the street cursing and we cool down a little bit and we go walking back to the dorms, go to bed because that was a fun night getting jumped by a fraternity house, the Pikes. And I shouldn't even gave him that shout out.

You guys were just jealous. And we come across we crossed the strip where all the bars and clubs are at. And out on the street, this club is emptying. And it's the, all the guys in the football team are coming out. And they're like, Marcus, what's going on? Wait, what the fuck happened to you? I'm like, oh, man, you know, the pikes, they jumped us.

And these guys, everyone's drunk. And that was it. So they. decided they're going to go back to the fraternity house. So like 30 dudes go back to the fraternity house. I follow behind them. And when I get there, it's complete mayhem. There's people getting bricks busted over their face. I watched a person in the NFL pick up a grill and throw it on somebody. So it was that type of shit going on. And I was like, wow. So, You could hear police sirens coming and like everybody splits and kind of the rest is history.

I get brought in because I was the only white guy at the fight. They couldn't identify anybody there and they wanted me to give up all the names of the guys over there. And I was like, no chance. I don't even know who was there actually. So because I would not give up any names, your dad, Amber, suspended me for the whole season. God. Because they couldn't identify anybody. And so I wind up being suspended for pretty much, and that was a kind of crushed.

Your dad's a hard ass. I think it was pressured. No, my dad is very principled. And on the same hand, my dad, you know, was trying to turn this program around, and his entire team would have been out. So Marcus took the punishment for the whole team. and I know he felt bad about that, but I also know that he respected Marcus not giving up anyone's names, and it coincidentally saved his house too, I'm sure.

But I remember that fight because I had worked really hard all summer to save money for a car, and we were going to go buy the car, and I had picked the car out, we were supposed to go in Saturday. We mean you and your dad? No really, just me. Oh, okay. Just to go back, like, it wasn't a local fight, but evidently some of the guys of the fraternity

houses, dads were in kind of higher positions in Chicago. So it made national news because there were eight guys got sent to the hospital. Dang. Yeah, it was like a, it was not good. That's a legit scrap. And I had a few drinks, as you can imagine. It was legit scrap for sure. So I had picked out this car. I'd been working so hard for it. My dad had been so busy. And we were going to go on Saturday morning at 10 a.m. something. And I call my dad. And I'm like, Dad, are you ready? And he goes like, no, honey, my quarterback caused the biggest fight last night.

You have no idea the shitstorm I'm dealing with. And so I'm like, screw your quarterback. I hate him. I don't even know him. All I wanted was I've waited so long to get this car. So anyway, that was also the beginning of my independence of being like, you know what? I'll go negotiate this deal. And that's exactly what I did.

So that was sort of how I came to know who Marcus even was because it was all over the news. and then I saw his picture in the paper, and I was immediately like, oh, damn. This is the guy. He's so hot. And like, fast forward probably a year. My best friend had drank too much at a bowling alley slash nightclub, and I had to go pick her up.

And I was not happy about that either. And so when I walked in, I went to the back door, and the bouncer opened the door. so I could get in to get her and Marcus was like remitted him right now like he was right there and I was like immediately taken so aback and I just said oh you're the troublemaker

and we sparked this conversation I was so smitten but I didn't I don't think I let on like I was and I saw you there every week for like four weeks I went back every week and then he wasn't there one week and his friend who was a bouncer there, took my number and gave it to Marcus and he called me that night.

And we hung out for the first time on July 4th of 1997. And we've been thick since. The end. So you get suspended. Was that your sophomore year? That's my sophomore year. You get suspended. Are you allowed to practice?

Like, what are you doing? Yes. So I had, yeah, I did everything. Yeah, I worked my ass off. I practiced every day. I went into treatment room, you know, three days, three times a day, still went to study hall, which we had to do every evening. And then I broke down every film.

So I'd have to watch hours and hours of every play from every angle of every upcoming game. And then I would write, you know, take notes and like all defensive coverages. And so I learned, you know, I learned, but it was miserable because I couldn't play on. What did you think of my dad? I don't think I've ever asked you this. What was your relationship with my dad? Like, it was good. No, I mean, we always had a good relationship.

I mean, I was angry because I didn't get to, you know, I didn't get to play. Like, how did he treat you then? He treated me well. Yeah, I mean, I was cut up film from everything. It seems like like there's a little bit of mutual respect. Like he respect, kind of respect the fact that you didn't rat anybody out. He actually said, they said that too. They all said that because they were like, kind of saved the season.

Because if you, if any of those, you know, they were all the, you know, they were all the stars, right? And these were good guys. So they weren't, yeah, they weren't angry. They were just like, you're an idiot. One, you got caught, two. What are you doing at the pike house? You know, that's what I mean. There was one time when we were dating, but hadn't been dating for too long,

that Marcus came home from practice and said, your dad knows. And I was like, what do you mean my dad knows? Yeah, but that's after he left and went to Northwestern. Yeah. So we were never dating when my dad was there. Got it. That year that Marcus was breaking down film and whatnot, at the end of that year, my dad took a job at Northwestern. And so a new coach had come in, and I met you when Coach Kew had taken over the team.

Yeah, and your dad already left. But he did find out and he called and he was not happy with her. Yeah, I was 17. I was in my senior year of high school. Oh, damn. And how old are you at this point? 20. Oh, yeah. That's not a happy dad. I got three daughters, man.

Yeah, you wouldn't be happy. I have a sophomore at San Diego State. I get it. Yeah. She has pepper spray and taser on her all times. I had to call him because I didn't, you know, I respect my dad a lot. And I wanted to call him and sort of like head this off. And one of Marcus's coaches who was still friends with him, like, hey, Coach Watson knows that you're dating his daughter. So I called him and he was like, well, honey, I'm going to tell you this. He said, Marcus is one of the few players that I can say that I truly love. Like, I love that kid.

He's like, but he's a womanizer and he will break your heart. And if he breaks your heart, you tell him I will break his neck. Oh, there you go. Right on. Pops coming in hot. He had a temper. He had a real temper. On the field, he had a temper.

No, yeah, because he had a temper everywhere. He's an amazing human being, though. So your dad leaves from coaching that job the next year, now it's your junior year in college. Are you starting as a quarterback? No, they brought in a really good quarterback from Missouri, who actually split time at University of Missouri with one of the guys who was up for the Heisman. So, you know, really after the fight, I feel like everything just,

went downhill after that. So were you still on the team? I was still on the team. I was still in scholarship. So I, this guy came in and, you know, we're actually really close to this date. Kent Scornia, he's very successful in Missouri in St. Louis. And he actually is a donor to vets. He was always my roommate on the road.

But he, yeah, he came in. He was like a true quarterback from the Midwest. Like this guy could sling the ball all over the place. And I played quarterback more as a linebacker, you know. And that was our difference. So I would, you know, I would put my head down. And, you know, he would throw the ball, you know, and slide and things like that. And finally they moved me over to tight end my senior year just because I wasn't going to get on the field with him.

But we actually split time the first couple games of the season. And I did well. But he wound up like kind of taking command and control and, and, and, and, uh, He was like a true leader, true quarterback. I was a bit of a knucklehead and wanted to get in fights and run linebackers over, you know. And yeah, so. At what, was there a point in your life when you thought you were going to play in the NFL? I mean, from when I was, you know, five, Jacko, right?

Like, that's what I wanted, that's what I wanted to do. I should have rephrase that. You know there had to be a point in your life when you were going to be playing in the NFL. When did that dream go out? Like, when did that flame extinguish? That flame? extinguished my was my

before my senior year so I popped for testosterone this year of college yeah yeah going into the senior year so Marcus you're moving over a tight end you're going to start a tight end put on some weight Roger that so I went found some testosterone

sipping 8 and got bulky and faster and I remember we were doing off-season workouts and the the quarterback who who we were about the same speed. I put on 20 pounds and then I started beating him in

in sprints. He's like, dude, what the fuck? He's like, how can you gain weight and be faster than me all of a sudden? So the NCAA came in actually three weeks early and a few of us popped positive for

performance enhancing drugs. So that's like I had a, I knew a guy that was a bicycle rider and he said that, when you're on, maybe I just heard this on a, I don't know where I heard this.

I think I'm this guy I know. Who said, like, he's a bike rider and he said when someone's on juice, it's like they're on a Harley. Like, you literally just can't hang with them. They're just that much better. So did you feel like, I mean, it sounds like,

dude, you put on 20 pounds and you got faster? Oh, you mean, I could, I could dunk a basketball just from a straight vertical leap, you know? Yeah, it's pretty, pretty potent stuff.

When you're, when you're, it like that not when you're like using it for like replacement therapy you know where they're trying to keep your levels at around seven or eight hundred we're talking about you know 2400 2,000 you know your blood your blood levels are through the roof and but you do you feel like who's your guide during this guide yeah just bro science this is this is straight up is better bro science no google um this is what three of my buddies said oh yeah that guy was in the marine corps this guy you know took steroids in high school.

And yeah, we think it's okay. You'll be fine. So you pop positive. I didn't even know the NCAA was testing back then. Yeah. I guess I'm just the idiot. They tested everybody. Well, I shouldn't say they tested everybody who's random.

But. And so then are you done? I'm done. That's it. And I'm done. So you said that's the moment when you realized the NFL wasn't happening. NFL wasn't happening. And you finish.

How did your dad feel about it? that before we go what do you finish but so Amber uh no wasn't your dad uh no your dad already left the co head coach called they weren't happy uh-huh you know but everything you know they were always like yeah it's not Marcus's fault you know it was it must have been yeah my parents oh oh your parents were like yeah they shifted blame they covered for you a little bit but your dad must have been realizing that the dream was over probably his dream the NFL dream yeah his NFL dream which by the way I had like a one in like a trillion chance of making it to the NFL.

For sure, for sure. But you got to, I mean, it seems like anybody in pursuing any athletic pursuit that hard is going to think, well, I'm going to be able to make it. And then at some point, you go, it ain't happening. You want to go as hard and far as you can, right? I mean, that's all you know. Literally, it's all you know. I mean, I remember getting in the teams and telling guys and buds, like, dude, I never

turned a wrench. Like, all I did. All my dad had me do was play ball. Like I literally, you know, so I learned a lot just, you know, that's why I thought just the teams were so good. Because I just learned a lot of like man shit outside of, you know, playing ball, which I look at now. I don't even, I don't remember the last time I watched the sporting event, right? Yeah. You know, I kind of frown upon some of the stuff that's going on.

It's gross. But yeah. So is this when you started thinking about going in the dames? Into the teams. What was the trigger there? You're going to love this. This is right up your alley, Jocko. So my roommate, of course.

Dad was a seal in Vietnam. I don't think he was. He may have been a Marine. Wait, what roommate? Jason. Jason O'Neill. Oh. Yeah, we lived in the apartment, remember?

Yeah, I didn't know he was part of the story. Oh, he's part of the story. I'm just thinking, you know, you said, I'm going to love this story, so I figure you're like one of your brother, one of the friends, dad wasn't. You're going to love it, you're going to scratch your head too and be like, all right, we're going to go with this, Marcus.

So we're sitting, we're sitting in the apartment one night. And this guy actually started as a freshman, wind up when we graduated. I went in the Navy. He went to the Marine Corps, flew F-18s, you know, did the whole thing, Top Gun and all that good stuff. And then, of course, the Marine Corps, what they do to their guys who go to flight school, fly F-18s, and go to Top Gun, you would expect them to continue flying. they handed him in M16 and put him on the ground in Afghanistan, you know, with all that training.

I guess as a fact. Yeah, that's what the Marine Corps does. And that's one of the best things that they do is because those guys can talk to aircraft better than anybody else. And 100% and he did. But he did complain because he said, man, you know, they spent all this money on training me how to fly. And he's like, I was really good at it.

And then I'm on the fucking ground in Afghanistan, dodging mortars, you know, which he never, ever, signed up to do. So it was just interesting to hear from his perspective. Like they don't like, they don't like it. You know, they want to fly and now they're stuck calling in CASS. One of my, one of my really good friends was the same thing. Marine Corps, F-18, Top Gun, Top Gun instructor, Top Gun, Senior Instructor.

And he was a fact on the ground. He was Anglico team leader in Ramadi with us just getting after it. And it's funny because he taught, like all the stuff he did in the Marine Corps, he taught, like, He talks about what he did for this one six-month deployment to Ramadi because a lot different than what it was, as I constantly tell him, being in an air-conditioned to cockpit, you know, 20,000 feet up in the air. That's right. Yeah. Yeah, so you're right. I mean, those guys, can you imagine what kind of perspective they get on the ground and then go back up there and go, wait a minute.

Like, I know what it was like down there. Yep. That's the Marine Corps. And I've read some great stories about like the Korean War, those Marine Corps pilots that would go and deploy. They're like the Marines. Everyone loved them because they can just talk to those pilots the way they need to be talked to. So I mean, and look, we have the J-Tax. There's J-Tax are awesome too.

But in the Marine Corps, it's just the way they do it. And it's pretty freaking cool. So this guy is your roommate? So my roommate. So I come home. We throw on the TV and on comes this movie. And looking at it and, you know, it's got people running around. I think you're talking about Sean.

No, I'm not. Okay. No, you are incorrect. Amher's incorrect two times out of 100. I always tell her. She's always 98% right. I just don't remember you living with him. Yeah, we lived together, remember for like six months.

I don't remember that. All right. Okay, sorry. It's okay. Go ahead. It's all good. I love you. And, and they, so here, G.

G.I. Jane. So G. I'm just going to get, you know, I'm just going to get to the point, all right? G.I. Jane comes on TV. And I'm like, what is this? And they start talking about, you know, these units and this and that. And I have, when you were talking about exposure to the military, I had none. So if I had exposure, I could have maybe called this out right away.

This was it. This was my military. I'm like, I want to do that. Like, this looks hard. They said these are the best of the best, right? Because they talk about it in there. Not Demi Moore, but the rest of it. So that's what actually just told me that there's a unit out there that's special and supposed to be the toughest training in the world.

And that's what piqued my, at least my initial interest to start to look into it and go, let me just look into what this is. And so, you know, then I read the first book because back then it was, there was nothing online about the teams. So I just, I read, I literally read every book from Vietnam. I mean, everything. All, and the more I read, the more I got, like, focused and the more hungry and, and, you know, and then nothing else mattered. Do you start training at this point? I did. I did.

You also met someone who was at S-I-U and he was his seal, right? Yeah. Oh, God, I forgot his name. Yeah, from, yeah, from team. He died in a car accident. Yeah, team four. Yeah. I remember.

about. Yeah, I thought he was like... Will Bouchel. Will Bachel. There you go. Will Bachel. And so imagine you're in college, you know how it is. You want to be a team guy or in high school. And then you go, you find out that there's a guy that was a team guy. So he, of course, he, you know,

he slit people's throats, he was behind enemy lines. So every time I saw this guy, I was like, I was in awe. You know, and of course then when I got the team, they're like, oh, that shit back? No, no, I'm just kidding. I'm totally kidding. He actually had a decent reputation. But, yeah, I looked up to this kid and I was just you know I was just hungry after that jaco it was uh nothing mattered

I called my parents I told them what I wanted to do and they thought I was crazy um Amber thought I was crazy um but as you know once you get on that that path nothing else matters and it's nothing but focus and discipline and like that's it what did you do uh will you drop and wait were you I stopped lifting. That's what I did. So all I knew was like sport lifting, you know, heavy weights. I completely stopped lifting and all I did was body weight workouts. So the typical like Stu Smith, I think I had maybe the book, you know, pushups, pull-ups, sit-ups, dips.

Nobody taught me how to do any of these, by the way. Nobody taught me how to even like jog to it. Like I didn't know anything. Like I never jogged. Like just went out and ran like six miles. Everything was like 40-yard sprints, you know, or maybe hundreds. but that was it. And so I thought I was like jogging at a good pace

until I ran with Sean Toll, who was in the army for a long time. I went for a run with him. Were you jogging slower? I was jogging slower. I was like, oh, this is good. I'm like, I'm working out. This is jogging. And he crushed me.

Like I couldn't even, I could barely keep up with him. And he's like, I'm not even running out of a hard pace. I went, holy shit, this is like. So he kind of brought me up to another level that I just didn't know about. So then I started, you know, yagging faster. And so this is what you're doing your senior year of college. Senior college. And it was like this summer before your senior year that you decided to do this.

He came to me and said he wanted to be a seal. And of course, there was no 9-11. I didn't know what a seal was. I really didn't know the difference between the Army and the Navy. Although I was, I knew I was patriotic. But then I also thought that maybe the military wasn't for me based on what I knew about kids from my hometown. that went in it. And so I thought, you know, it's just a great jumping off point because Marcus was so captivating and so cute and such kind of a check in the box for me to be like, I dated the

SAU quarterback. I don't expect that we'll stay together. You know, I thought maybe we'd date for the summer, you know, whatever. And we'd been together at that point for two and a half years. And I met him at 17. So, you know, in my mind, like no other guy had ever existed because he was everything to me, but at the same time, I knew that I was young and I was, you know, very independent. And I was raised an only child. I have two half-brothers who I love like brothers. And I consider them brothers, but I was raised an only child. And so I wanted to be independent. I wanted to be, I wanted to graduate and move to maybe Chicago or St. Louis. At some point I even thought, like, maybe I'll move to L.A. or New York. I just wanted to be. And when he told me he wanted to

go into the military, I thought this is perfect because they're kind of been thinking this and we're young and probably not going to stay together and get married. So by jumping off point, you mean jump off the freaking Marcus train and go your own way? Yeah, but in a healthy way. Yeah, like, all good. We talked about it and he's like, you know, these are my goals and this is my vision. And I'm like, you know, I'm a couple years behind you in school and I wanted to rush a sorority. I wanted to be young and be not being this committed relationship. And so we'd we had super amicably decided to break up. So you break up and this is how, when did you talk to a recruiter?

So that's what I was going to talk about next. So I did. I just went on the strip, the same place where I ran into the guys coming out of the club. There was recruiting, there was a Ring Corps Navy recruiting station there. And I went to talk to the Navy recruiter. And he was a, I think he was a diver, combat diver. And he was really cool, like really cool. And he just said, hey, he's like, you're at the, you're at school here, right?

And I said, yeah. He said, well, you know, you can be an officer. And I was like, what's that? I literally said, what's that? Fucking knucklehead, right? He's like, well, you know, you go to college, you get your degree, and, you know, you could become an officer in the military. Most people that are enlisted, you know, don't go to college and they enlist and kind of

explained it. I said, oh, okay, well, that sounds cool. Like, let's do that. And so he handed me off to St. Louis, which was running, I guess, they, they, I think they managed the individual. Yeah, the officer recruitment. And again, I didn't like have, I had no mentors. You know, as you know, a lot of the, you know, the officers that go on either go to the academy or they have, you know, congressmen.

Like, they just, they have a better network. I just didn't know anybody. And so I was training on my own. And then the day I had to, he drove, the officer recruiter drove down from St. Louis and met me at the university to take my, like PRT, C-O-P-R-T test. I borrowed a pair of, I've been training in sneakers.

I borrowed a pair of boots because I didn't have any. You got to wear boots. I'm a size 14. The only size that was available to me, I think it was like 11.5 or a 12. So I literally squeezed my feet into these size 12s.

About the second lap in, I completely like both my legs cramped up. finish the run do start doing push-ups and I'm doing what they call them grasshopper push-ups Oh like like little half push-ups Yeah like your elbows are in

Instead of like out here And he's like stop What? He goes you're those aren't those aren't push-ups Those are we call those grasshopper push-ups I was like well it's the only ones that I know You know so I'm going to keep going Because I know you can't because they don't count

You have to move your arms here So the whole test was a complete failure Like I fucked that thing up completely And, you know, I found out, of course, I didn't get picked up for spec war, but I got picked up for every other officer program. So you come in, go to nuke, you go to, whatever, SWO, you can't go to Buds, and you can transfer after two years. And I went, yeah, but, you know, the reason, you know, just the only time I actually thought a little bit, and the only reason I'm going in the military is to be a team guy. And so I just told him like, no, I want to go to Buds.

And he said, well, you can just go back to the, you know, the recruiter and you can enlist. I said, great. Can you give me a ride? Yeah, give me a ride. We shook hands. I took my, you know, my little packet that I already started building my record and went back to the recruiter. And I think I enlisted right there, like signed, you know, MEPs.

I think it was MEPs. Or early. I think it was no. Depps. Deps. Delayed entry. Yes, that was it. And then MEPs is where it actually happens.

MEPs you go to. Exactly. That's a place. Yeah, you're right. So you, how long was it like when you enlisted, how long does you have to wait before you could leave? It was quick. And we'll get, yeah, we can get in that story. But from when I talked to the recruiter, I think it was about six months.

So I was, you know, I'd show up every month and they'd have like little gatherings or whatever. But I was still training, starting to get a little bit indoctrinated into the, into the military. So were you guys, were you guys split up? when you actually signed the papers? No. We were actually living together. Oh, dang. And I don't remember that, no, I'm just kidding.

And, yeah, you were just training and getting ready, and we knew that the end was coming. But we were still together. Okay. And then you signed the papers, and now you got your date, hey, you're going to leave on this date. I'm going to leave on this date. Which was that?

June 15th. 2000 and I don't know when did you tell me you were also finishing he had his last semester in school which ended in December and then you did your internship I did my internship I did my internship for four weeks no four months at the breakers resort in Palm Beach Florida what is it wasn't a terrible internship it was like resort management like I basically got paid to be a a cabana boy and like get tips I mean literally and then two weeks run the children's like kid program. It was great. And that's what you did from December until April. Yeah. Until April came back, graduated, didn't walk. I didn't really care about like walking

across the stage to me. We're missing a huge chunk of that. Don't go too far into the story. Where do you want me to stop? Because, well, in May 2000. Okay, good. So in the summertime, July, August, school starting is when we decided this will be last semester together. I knew he was going to leave at the end of the semester. I also had an aunt who was dying of breast cancer. And so, and I was working full time. I had 18 credit hours. I was working 30 hours a week. My aunt was dying. And so for a couple of months, I was thinking, like, I'm not sure. I feel quite right. But I just kept delaying what I would soon realize was the inevitable, which was taking a pregnancy test. Oh. And I finally took.

this test in October. And I had been pregnant since August. So I was in about 12 weeks pregnant with our son when I found out. And he was set to leave in two months in December. Set to leave for the Navy. For his internship. All for the internship. Followed by the Navy.

Okay. So got it. Now I'm tracking. Hey, I'm still trying to track the story. It's a long time ago. So. It was a whirlwind.

And what did you do? I mean, so... Freaked out. Completely freaked out. And Marcus was so supportive. Initially, he's like, he's like, this is going to be fine. Like, we're going to be parents. It's going to be fine.

And here he is, like, all these dreams and plans. And I was the one freaking out. And then he told his parents and they freaked out. And when they freaked out, he freaked out. When he freaked out, I really freaked out. There was a lot of freaking out going on. There was a lot of freaking out. Freaking out shit rolls downhill, obviously.

Well, I just thought, like, my life is over. It's absolutely. I was so excited about this new beginning and it's over. And I now see that is the beginning. That's the beginning of everything. Thank God. Wow. So you find out in October, then in December you're going to be a cabana boy in Florida.

That's right. Cabana boy. But meanwhile, you're an expecting dad. Right. At the same time. Right. at 20, what, 22 years old. And you're already know you're going to join the Navy?

Yes. 23. 23. And then what's the call then? So the call is I go do my internship because you got to do it to graduate or whatever. I got to graduate. Amber stays back. Did you, did you go to school in the spring?

Oh, yeah. You did. Okay. So Amber's pregnant. She's going to school in the spring. I'm in Palm Beach, Florida, working as a cabman. Bannaboy and snorkeling in the evenings on the, on the, on the training. You ran to him from work.

I trained my ass off down there. No, I did. But you're working 17 jobs or whatever with 18 credit hours? I was still, you're just like. I think I took 15 in the spring. But yeah, I was working full time and going to school. I was, you know, nine months pregnant and taking finals. It was.

Amber worked forever. Like from the day I met her, she was always working like nonstop. And it hasn't stopped. So the reason we're still here. Um, yeah, she worked her ass off. She really did. She's a grinder. And then how did this whole, uh, scenario impact your decision to go in the Navy?

It, I mean, it really didn't. Like I was, this is what I want to do. I, you know, at 23, I, I didn't, um, I didn't, um, I didn't even think about what it was like to start a family. Um, but then again, what, what were we supposed to do? I was supposed to graduate and then get a job, you know, like, well, here's your job. Yeah. I mean, here's your job. How are you making money?

Again, you know, my dad handed me a ball when I was three. I don't know. I was scared to death. I remember saying, I'm supposed to put on a shirt and tie now and go step off in the private sector and get a job, you know, doing what and making what to support the family. Like I was scared to death too then once I started really thinking about it. But did the Navy seem like the viable option to have a family?

The Navy seemed at that time, comfortable. You know. Yeah, it's like paycheck, health care. Paycheck, health care. Yeah, and I think that's some of the probably advice I got from individuals. I don't remember. I mean, I think maybe I talked to a few just said, hey, you'll, you know, she'll be taken care of, you'll be taken care of, you make a few hundred dollars more if you're married.

Whoa. And at that time, and you don't have any money. And I don't think anybody, my parents are definitely not supporting us. And I mean, Amber's family, of course, would have, but I don't think we were thinking about that. So you end up getting married? Prior to leaving? Well, we spent most of my pregnancy apart and not just because he was in Florida.

It's because we had this whole like existential crisis where we didn't know how to make this new curveball fit. And there was there were several months when I thought, I'm just going to raise this baby. You know, I absolutely thought about ending the pregnancy. and I couldn't. There was no way I could. And I thought, I don't care what this means. I don't care how hard this is. I'm just going to figure it out.

And, you know, even if that meant doing it by myself. And Marcus was in the kids area, like he had alluded to earlier. And we had picked our son's name before he left. And at the time, no one was naming their kid, Caden. It was like he wanted to name him Cadence. I think we saw in a baby name book. And he's like, oh, it's like the quarterback calling Cadence. He's like, but it sounds like a girl's name, so let's shorten it.

And there was this little baby that came in when he was at the Breakers named Caden. And we never heard that name before. And so he called me that night, and he was like, I can't do this anymore. Let's figure this out. and so that's what we did. And we named Kaden. We named him, Kaden. Of battle, of war.

That was the... Ready for battle. Ready for battle. That was the meaning. Jack. That was the meaning. Jack. Why not?

I mean, I tried to call him like Niko. Oh, Niko, Vito, and Major were his three names of choice, but I wasn't going for that. So, yeah, we named, Kaden was born in May of 2000. Marcus came back, proposed. we got married in June of 2000, and then six days later, he left for boot camp. Typical story. Just like most Americans, right?

Did you stay at home in Illinois when he left for boot camp and everything? Because there's no point in anything else, yeah. I couldn't move. The Navy wasn't going to move me. And of course, and then he had to go to A school and C school to be a sonar tech. And so when he was finished with C-School and he was getting ready for Bud's end dock, I was able to move out.

Caden was nine months old at the time. So I was 21. I'd never been away from my little, you know, tiny town in southern Illinois. And we moved to the towers in Coronado. And so he would walk to work, like, you know, walk to Buds every morning. We had no money. No, we were raking in the money at $1,000.

$182 per paycheck. And our rent was $1,000. And I was going to say, what was the rent? A thousand. A thousand. So we got a little bit help from mom and dad a little bit. Not really. Not really.

Not really. Not really. You're right. We just racked up a lot of credit card bills. And now you're rolling into buds. Rolling into buds. How is your preparation? Are you good?

I'm good. Yeah. Really good. And you joined in May, June, July. So when's September 11th, when is that? What's your career? Where are you at? Yeah.

September 11th happens. Were you in a school? get into that no I was in third phase oh damn yeah before we get to that let's start let's start with first phase I mean how's that going you you you're first phase was uh first phase was good so I showed up a hundred and seventy five started wait 175 pounds no no no I'm sorry the number of people in the class yeah got it so I get yeah I show up and I look around and there's a I mean that's a lot of people 175 is lot. And all I keep hearing is, you know, one and four are going to make it, like 25%. And honestly,

the first thing I thought of was, how can I be one of these one and four? There's so many people here. And I'm, again, I'm, I don't even consider myself. I'm not a big guy compared to, like, the guys I played ball with in college, but everybody else there was like, oh, Marcus is a big guy. Oh, yeah, for sure. How tall are you? Six, four. And how much did you weigh when you start a buds? Like two and a quarter, two and a quarter, two 25. That's a big dude going through butts. Yeah. And I was, just, FYI, I was like, just turned 19,

and I was 174 pounds when I got there. I was like a little kid. It was so awesome. We had guys, like you, we had guys in buds that gained weight during buds. I did. I gained 10 pounds, you know? I gained 10 pounds. But like, if you, you were what, 23, 24?

That's 23. Yeah, so you're like a man. I was a man-ish. Well, I was not really. Well, I was like, physically, physically you were pretty close. I think you were 24. That'd be questionable of the instructors if we were men, right? I think you were 24 when you started buds.

Was I? Who's counting? All those years run together. So you're in pretty good shape. You're in good shape, but this is where I'm getting at. So I look around and see these guys and all of a sudden, we start doing the endoc, and everybody is just in phenomenal shape. They can do pull-ups forever.

They can run forever. I'm still a little heavy, so for me, pull-ups, I can do them, but I can't do, like, I was watching guys do like 20, 30, 40, 50, 50, at one time or run our class, I swear we had at least 10 individuals, you know, Mike Murphy, Nelson Sanchez, these guys were running sub 24 minute four mile time run. Murph and Sanchez would always be like, that's insane. It was insane, right? And I was, you know, I never, so this was cool about the runs.

I never, I was in the Goon Squad literally one day, one time. never failed four mile of time run and never got gooned except the one time. So like for me the running I did it and I you know I got ahead of the goon squad but it was miserable. You know it was what class were you in? 236. 236 check yeah and so so third phase jaco so we're in third phase oh we'll go back to first phase yeah I was in good shape but but again I look around and see 175 guys and I was I was nervous and then after I started seeing guys work out and then guys doing literally doing splits I'm like am I in the right place like these guys are these are just some freaks here you know like Olympic swimmers and all these these these crazy individuals and then as

you know class starts and the loudest it is wild and the loudest screamers all of a sudden you're like hey where's so-and-so he you know he talked a lot of shit you can't even comprehend it like we were talking before we started record it. It's like you and I have survivors bias, meaning every friend I have 100% made it through buds. So as far as I know, the freaking pass rate for buds is 100%. So you know, like everyone made. Everyone I know made it made it. But yeah, the wild thing is the people that like you said, like Olympic swimmers and Olympic this and D1 this and D1 track guys and D1 football players and everything and they all just quit. It's insane. Yeah, they all go away pretty quickly.

Was there anything in Hell Week that like tripped you up or were you just like, hell yeah? No, the only reason I say hell yeah for me is because I like sucked at everything. Well, I didn't suck. I was okay at everything, but I had to put out really hard to pass runs. I had to put out really hard to pass the O-Cars. I had to put out really hard to pass the swims. And look, everyone's put now. But I had to put out really hard to pass the evolutions.

But in Hell Week, it wasn't, it's not pass fail. It's just keep going. Just do. There's anything I'm okay at, it's like, oh, I can keep going. I will keep going. And so for me, Hell Week was almost like a break because you just had to keep going, which I was good at. Everything else, like I did. I failed a four mile time run.

I paced myself. I was an idiot. I mean, I wasn't fast enough to pace. I just needed to sprint. I failed to swim. And again, like a bunch of people failed to swim. And I was one of them. So that sucked.

I don't know if I failed an obstacle course. I probably did. But like so I was kind of middle of the pack, but it was because I was putting out hard. So for me, Hell Week was like, cool. And a bunch of people quit. A bunch of people quit. And I was like, damn, are you dumb? Like.

Yeah. And a lot of those individuals were up front. Oh, yeah. It's insane. Yeah. We had some pipe hitters, some like legit good. I shouldn't say pipe hitters because they're not. They're good athletes.

Right. They're good athletes. And yeah, it doesn't really. matter, man. Get tired, wet, and cold. We had a bunch of Rangers and Marines in our class. We had some Egyptian officers in the class. I mean, it was diverse. But, you know, I did have trouble on the runs, but like you, I put out. So I had to really put out hard to stay up and pass the runs. I couldn't, I couldn't like keep it back of gear. You know, I had it really put out. But no, everything I did was, I did okay.

I remember one time they pulled me out of the log PT because everybody was literally just falling on their head. And I was just, I don't know, I was in a different gear. And they're like Capone sit down. Like a higher gear? Like doing better? Yeah, yeah. I just felt, I felt good, you know, with the log. And they made me sit down one time.

They're like, you know, just sit down because you're, you're. Damn. You're doing all right. It was one time at Hell Week, I think it was, what were those? Elephant? Elephant runs. Elephant runs, yeah, when you're like holding. Yeah, so there was one day I was super dehydrated, and I remember this.

And like I thought it was going to die. And I kept trying to like pull back so like guys would run. And I was literally trying to like pull it back because I couldn't keep up. And, you know, I was getting yelled at. I'm like, guys, I don't know what's going on. Like I can't. I can't do anything right now. And I barely made it through that evolution.

I remember it. It was miserable. I remember to this day because you know how it is. Everybody hits a point, right? And I hit that point where I could not, I felt like I couldn't go any further. And the only thing that kept me going was like probably the guys behind me, like kicking me in the ass.

Like, hey, dude, like keep going. And then there was a, there was a rock hump when we used to do, you used to do the O-course, throw on a pack, whatever it was, three miles. There was a time there also that I felt like I was about to pass out. Something was wrong. And I remember one of the guys in the class, and I remember never forget this, Ben Souters, who, you know, a lot of guys made fun of because he grew up in the Midwest and he was a Bible

beater and he never cursed and he never drank and never did anything. He comes running up past me. He's like, hey, man, what's wrong with you? I said, I don't know. I was like, I'm about to die. He's like, I'm going to stay with you. And I'm going to, is that cool? I'm like, yeah, absolutely.

he ran with me the whole way until we finished. And this was because you were dehydrated or something? Yeah, probably just like dehydrated or whatever. So those are like the two times I just remember at Buds where it was like you're about to, you're going to die, you know. But other than that. How about dive phase? How were you in the pool?

Because you surfed. I like, yeah, I like to water. I think I had some trouble with pool comp like everybody else does. My, I think if I remember, exhalation not, I almost fucking. drown because I'm like, hey, there's water going in my tube here and it's not supposed to be. You know, so you come up and like, I'm trying to explain myself to the instructor staff and they just jumped all over me. No, no, no, no, no.

Wait, just listen. Just hear me out one time. I was talking pool comp with Andy Stump the other day up at Jitoo Camp because he was an instructor. He's a third phase instructor. And you know how that, that motherfucker is like, he's just like. So hilarious. And but he's telling me from like his instructor point of view of what he would do and what he would see and how he would do it. And like he's laughing hysterically like and I go, how many people did you?

I go, were you like the hard instructor? He's like, oh yeah. I go, how many people did you pass? Oh no. I said, I said, were you like the hard instructor? And he goes, I passed three people three years or four people three years past his pool comp. Everyone else failed. And he said the guys that passed, he said, I respect.

you know, because you know he put them through hell. Yeah. Andy, we did Andy's podcast, and Andy put me through jump training. Okay. Yeah. And he was, you know, and he knows this. He was, God, he was such a dick to all of us. Except if you were in his, like, his circle, you know.

But it was cool to see him up in Montana. And, yeah, it was great. Just what he's got going on now. And he was awesome. He was one of the best, you know, obviously one of the most talented, jumpers that I Yeah, and one of the most talented wise asses. He really is.

Just so good. But yeah, you gotta have him debrief you on his experience as a I think he was a freaking dive instructor or a second phase instructor for like a couple years. Oh man. So he was telling me about how like he'd watch the kids hands and when their hands would go

into this like involuntary claw like motion. And he goes, yeah, that's when I knew I'd had him. It's like, good God. I cannot imagine. him having more fun torturing people, but I guess he's doing it. And then you're in, so then you get to third phase. Third phase, and third phase, I couldn't wait for.

I think like most guys. And yeah, third phase is great. The only problems I had there out on the island, we made a really shitty hide site for like, you know, your day that you were supposed to take hours to do it. It was so pathetic Jacko that one of the instructors came out I don't want to say his name

But he Lost his shit He lost his shit so bad that I think if a Some type of brass was there They might have thrown him in jail He flipped out on us He took one of the students Like just threw him every rich direction

I think put his boot in the guy's chest And like kicked him a mile You know it was one of those things We were scared to death And then we worked on that hide for another four hours. I sure it was tight. But because of that, we had to sleep on the beach. It was at Camp Stupid.

So I got to sleep at Camp Stupid, which you really don't sleep because I was getting, I was trying to sleep on the ice with those ice plants. And ice plants had nothing but some kind of nasty bug that was just biting us all night. So we didn't get any sleep. Some kind of sand flea scenario. It was bad. So, yeah, so that was my third phase experience. and...

Well, also, the towers came down. Well, then the towers came down. So we're up at... We're training out east, you know, in the desert. And... Structure comes out from the house there and says, hey, U.S. is being attacked. The World Trade Center just got hit by an airplane.

And we looked at each other. I'm like, man, can these fucking guys just leave us alone? Like, we're in third phase. This is a conversation. We're about to graduate. And they're still messing with us. Like, what did we do wrong? Like, we had a shitty second phase.

I shouldn't talk about that. We had a really shitty second phase, but. What made your second phase so shitty? I actually did. Me and I'm going to name him. Me and Jeff Boss. So he and I are swim-budding it to the bathroom. And we go running out.

And our proctor was a guy by the name of, you know, Fevera? Super laid-back SDV. guy. I don't know. Like, probably the, actually we were told, the only instructor that you can't piss off, like it's impossible to piss him off. We somehow figured out how to do that because we were running to the bathroom.

We didn't see him. And he called us, evidently, like three times. And we didn't answer. And he fucking flipped his lid. Because of that, and because of the cadre was like, yeah, he doesn't ever flip out. Like, we've seen him for, like, 15 years. they made us spin the wheel of misfortune every day for this was the first day of second days they made it every day just you and your swim buddy no the whole class oh god which is even better right

so we got really we got we got we made a lot of friends after that um so the wheel of miss fortune i've talked to classes like before and after us like oh we we spun it like twice i'm like twice a week or like no no the whole phase i'm like we spun it every single day we got back from our dive. So we'd get back from our dive. Didn't matter. One o'clock, it doesn't matter. Put all your stuff away. Get back on the grinder. Spin, you know, spin the wheel of misfortune. Oh, 2008 counts. Go. So we did that every day for second phase, which I was told, like, never happens. And it was just like a miserable second phase because we had to do, you know, more PT for like an extra hour or whatever. So it sucked. Third phase, we're still being harassed. We thought it was a joke. They march us in. We watch it on TV for

30 seconds, we marched back out to the grinder. And we just didn't have any idea what was about to happen. The cadre, their demeanor was completely different. I'm getting chills, you know, talking about it. But you can tell, like, they knew what was about to happen. And I remember them, like, having this, like, hatred and just, you know, like, we're about to go to war guys. And we're just like, no, we're out here. We're in Buds. We're on the beach. We're working out. and the demeanor from the class, which is all we want to do is get through buds, this sucks,

from their demeanor, which was like, we're going to war. Like, this is what's happening. And it was totally different. And from that day forward, from the last part of the third phase, like they were serious.

It wasn't more of this, like, joking crew of cadre. Like, they were, like, this was real. This was not the shit, you know, that, in all honesty, that some people signed up for.

I mean, there was, right after that, there was a few guys from SQT, and one in particular, I remember quit in SQT. It was like, I didn't sign up to go to war, you know, at the college and whatever.

So I think some people, this was like, obviously a big reality check. For us, I don't think we knew any different because we were just trying to get through buds. So.

Damn. So, Amber, this whole time, your new husband is coming home freaking, with the shit beat out of them, and he's working crazy. hours and all this, like, what's your, what's your impression at this whole scenario before

September 11th? I really, Jocko, thought, we just have to get to the end of buds. I literally thought after the six months of training, things are going to really even out. Of course. I mean, even minus 9-11, that, you know, nothing could have been further from the truth. But in my mind, that was like at least something that was an end goal. And so all of the late nights and ice baths and I don't, I just need to stay on the couch all weekend. That to me was going to come to an end and life was going to be normal again.

It's also some of the sweetest times because he was so spent and I look back at photos of our one-year-old climbing all over him and he's got both knees, you know, wrapped with ice and he's trying to be a dad and, you know, we've got pictures at the zoo and I can see how beat down he was being a bud student and trying to be a dad. He came home one night on our anniversary. and it was like, you know, midnight. Like he'd missed the anniversary, and he had geraniums picked from our apartment complex.

And it was the sweetest thing. Like, he was still trying so hard to be sort of this dual role. And after 9-11, like, it's like cadre. I mean, he completely changed. And what about what did you realize what an impact September 11th was going to have from the perspective of when I was going to

going in the SEAL teams and it was 1990, 1991. I thought I was going to Vietnam. I thought I was going to Vietnam War. Like I thought we, hey, there's SEALs just sneaking around the world, just killing people. And that's what I was going to be doing. So I just thought that's the way the SEAL teams was. That's what you did. Then I got to the SEAL teams and it wasn't like that in the 90s.

It was not like that at all. So did you have the impression like, hey, he's going to war anyways? Or were you like, oh, once this is, once he gets done with the SEAL training, we're going to be, you know, able to just kind of live normal lives, but now this September 11th happens. I didn't know what had happened because I went from being an independent sophomore to a pregnant college student to a wife and a mom.

And now 9-11 happens. And my birthday is on September 12th today. And thank you. My mom had come to visit in 2001. set or yeah two 2000 9-11 oh my gosh it's 21 years 9-11 okay yeah sorry zero one yes anyway my mom had come to visit and um I remember telling her like I think he's I think he's at war like I think he's gone he was on the island I had no idea I'm like I think he's probably going to leave like today and we also it was just a crazy time I had no

idea how much it would. Yeah, I don't think any of us did. Yeah, even, I mean, from my perspective, I had been in the Zeal teams for like 10 years at this point and, you know, you thought like everyone was, I was paranoid that, you know, I wasn't going to get any. I was going to miss it. It was going to be over. Like everyone was feeling like that.

And because it seemed like it would last, you know, what? Six months, maybe, maybe. I wouldn't even, I was about to say maybe a year, but I don't think anyone thought, oh, this is going to go on for a full year. Like we would do some strikes, we would do some hits, take out some targets, and then that would be that. I would love to hear someone tell me that they knew it was going to last 20 freaking years. I would be very suspect. Now, I did have some senior officer friends me that said, when I was like, hey, get me back to a team, please now.

They were like, hey, this is going to go on a while. I'll give them credit for thinking that and for telling me that. But almost everybody was like, oh, we need to get over now. If you don't get it now, it'll be another. You know, because the first Gulf War, you kind of based some stuff off the first Gulf War, which was 72 hours. Yeah. It was 72 hours.

Russia and Ukraine, right? Right away, everyone said, oh, this is going to end. This is going to be a month. Yeah. And now it's like, wait a minute. Yeah. Oh, wait a minute. It's a lot different.

Yeah. So I think that everybody in the community, no one no one that I talked to was like oh this is going to last two decades that wasn't even a thought um

to did you go to sqt on the west coast yes yeah okay so you was only yes that was like I think I was the first I think it was the second class where they didn't do the STT anymore everyone did SQT

you didn't get your well actually you got your you got your trident when you graduated SQT oh so that was your class. That was a class, I think, before us. I think it was like, it was, uh, was it like, was it like, was it like, Gagins and, uh, Brent. I know it was relatively new.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I remember too, Jocko thinking like, I'm so happy that he's going to get to do something with all this training. Because, you know, seals during times of peace versus, you know, 9-11 on, I'm sure it's a very different way of living and deploying and being. And I just thought, like, I know it's been, you know, it's been peaceful times for a while and good for him.

I'm glad that he gets to actually utilize this training. And I also remember thinking, seals are so incredible. They, nothing, you know, they don't die. I guess you hadn't, you know, you hadn't hurt. And I was, my thinking back then was so naive, but I never was afraid. like he can't do this anymore or I was actually very I was afraid but I wasn't thinking that I needed to intervene. I was very supportive of you know of him to plane. That's so crazy because you're young.

I mean I think so I was in the Navy for 13 years before I shot my weapon at the enemy. So 13 years that you're talking about like this peacetime and I actually, it was awesome. had a great time like we worked hard we trained hard we were hanging out with our friends we were trying to be ready for combat which was the big thing that we didn't know and didn't understand so you're kind of preparing for something that you don't really that you really don't understand but I really loved the job of being a seal even if the job is just going out and going into the desert and doing desert warfare training I love that job it's an awesome job and but I mean what you're

talking about Amber like the fact that you feel that as like a mom and a wife Even you felt like I'm glad he's gonna get to do his job Imagine what the dudes are like the dudes are like oh You know it was it was I mean we used to I hate saying this because it sounds so freaking horrible But we used to like pray for war like just want to go to war so bad we just that's what we wanted to do And um yeah We got we got what we asked for We got what we asked for

I was gonna ask you about SQT so you go through SQT and now that must have been those dudes must have been like fully full on like we're going to war you guys are all going to war

yeah absolutely it was it was weird too it was like a transition so they were bringing guys in that had just gone overseas and done something and like after actions and so like all of a sudden

the shift started changing from like H gear to stuff that actually you know fits you and works and we also had I think 11 11 guys in SQT class that came back that had gotten out. Right after 9-11, they came back in.

So we had all these guys that were team guys before, went out in the private sector. That's to your point, Amber. Like, can you imagine you're a dude? You're in the team for four years or six years. You get out of the teams. You're going out. You're doing whatever you're doing the outside. The war kicks off.

You're like I'm going back in. I'm throwing everything I have away, all built up, whatever. I'm going back in because that's what dudes wanted to do. Exactly. Uh, did you get, so you get your trident at the NSQT? What, what, what, what team did you go to? I went to 10. They just commissioned 10 and 7.

So half the class went to 7 or STV won, and then half of us went to 10. Did they, did you, did you keep your trident when you got there? Because I know I heard some good stories, like some teams were taking your trit and painting it blue. So it was inert. Two and four? Two and four. Oh, yeah. Like you showed up, like you didn't have it.

You got it ripped off, I think, as soon as you, came across the quarter deck. I know. I want to say somebody at SDV was telling me they took the tridents and put them into a bird cage. That's what they did on the East Coast. They put them on, they put them in bird cages. You can look at it,

but you can't, you can't have it, you know, and of course, the ones, you know, the guys who struggled, uh,

they had to keep their tritants in the bird cage, you know, a lot longer than guys that were, that were squared away. So, but we did, you know, we did,

um, we did getting beat into our chest, uh, from the instructor staff at SQT. You know, while all the fans, Families were there and stuff. So that was,

you know, at least we felt like there was something there, but maybe not so much. Compared to how it used to be like. Perna, it used to be burking the day. Yeah,

it was cool. You know, I checked into the team and we went through something called seal tactical training at the team and then you did a board with your, did a board with like the

senior people in each department. But man, the training that the guys get now, the training that you got, this like centralized training with all the experience, all, consolidated. It's awesome.

Like, there's no doubt. They're, I think they're coming out of, I don't know if they, they might be coming out of buds now, not just SKT. I mean buds with like four weeks of CQC training. Yeah, it's, you know, compared to like, you wouldn't even see it until you're at a team, you know, six months down the road that you went to Shaw's for two weeks, you know? Yeah, and the thing is like when you were talking about guys coming back from like combat deployments that are getting in there. And that's cool, right? That's awesome. But imagine like it turned into, hey, these guys were.

in sustained combat operations for years because I remember in the 90s like if a guy did a mission like singular like one mission it was like hey dude this guy's combat experience and like they had this thing that you didn't you know like I had a platoon commander who's an awesome guy and he had been in Grenada and was like you know he had he had slayed the dragon and we were all just looking at him like yeah he was the coolest guy ever We had first phase instructor. It was on the train op in Bosnia.

Oh. You know? Yeah. And it was like, wow. Man, there was a gunshot like five miles away. Yeah,

a farmer was like shooting an animal. And like, that was contact left. You're getting debriefed on it. Not judging anyone that was there. Just passing. Passing gouage. You did.

You did what the country asked you to do. So you get into a, you show up at the team now. You go right into a platoon. Is that the right into a platoon? Yeah. What's your job? Do you just get it?

handed a 60 or what? How did you guess? You didn't think I'd be like the comms guy or. I got handed a 60 just because I couldn't wait. I was like, give me too, please. I couldn't wait to be a 60. Did you get a Mark 48 or did you get a 60? I got a 60.

Sweet. By the way, Marcus had never shot a weapon before going into the Navy, right? Yeah, I mean, I was, like I said, I grew up. Yeah. I grew up playing ball. Well, the cool thing is no bad habits. Good hand eye coordination. because you were an athlete.

Like, that's all points to you probably being a pretty good shot and everything. I was a better pistol shot. I picked that up quickly, immediately. Rifle took me a while to get proficient at it. And even when I went over to Depp Group, you know, I never struggled with it. But, like, the pistol, I was a really good pistol shot and quick and faster than everybody. But the rifle, like, I was like middle of the road. I struggled with it, actually, early on.

I remember out at Shepard. Shaw's the, we're the guys out there, Ross, and just coming over and saying, hey, you know, just, you know, don't, don't put your magazine on the car. Like, just is a bunch of things that, like, he's like, I can work on. But soon as he worked, like, with me, you know, I went from being pretty, like, not good to, to excelling. But it took me a while, and I tell people, I was like, no, I actually had to, like, really focus and practice and, like, stay late or, you know, go out to the range in the evening when guys were, like, hanging it up because I just, there was just something not right about not being proficient at it.

Right? Like, I want to actually be good. I don't want to just hang it up and walk away. So I got decent at shooting a, you know, a rifle. What year was it when you checked into Team 10? 2002, like April. And do you know where you're going on deployment? No, nothing.

We didn't know anything yet. Oh, because the world was still just chaos. Yeah, it was chaos. and new team, like they was going through, you know, growing pains, I think. And so we didn't know anything. And my first appointment, actually, we went over to Germany and just got your U-com on. We got our U-com on. Yeah.

And that was, that was whatever, right? And train, more training. Yeah. And the frustration level is everyone just going nuts. Like, you've got to be kidding me while we're here. The people that were getting out, like after, you know, as soon as a platoon wouldn't go to, you know, Iraq or Afghanistan, like guys were getting, you saw it out here, guys were getting out immediately. You know, they were jumping into Blackwater and all these other places.

I saw a lot of it. I mean, guys get out to one platoon because they weren't, you know, because you'd hear about like these Rangers and SF and like all these guys are going down range. And you're like, what? I'm fucking going to Germany to do what? Like, yeah, I just went to Buds and SQT and did a two-year workup. And what is this for? You told me I'm like, good.

You know, maybe that was garbage. Yeah. And plus, you had that feeling that the same thing. whole thing's going to be over like really quick and I bet if I don't get it now if I don't get out and go work for a contractor. This is horrible. Well how are you like in the team life? Amber? You know what? I didn't mind it. I realized really early on that there was a pretty clear distinction in the wives that you know it is probably best to keep one foot in but don't try to you know jump in full throttle and don't stay completely away. I saw that there were women that were

very angry and resentful towards their husbands. And I felt like there were women that were really supportive and I always wanted to be supportive. I also felt like, you know, it was not something that I wanted to necessarily make my life about, but I wanted to support Marcus enough that I knew what was going on within the community. And so it was good. And you know, we had two kids at that point. Oh, bang. Yeah, I got pregnant with our daughter when Marcus was in was December of 2001 right after 9-11.

So we had two kids when he checked into his first platoon. And he was pretty much gone all the time. So. Wait, no, no, no. We had, no, I was at lead climber when you were like nine. I was overdue. You got home on my due date and then I ended up being five days overdue. But yeah, he was at lead climber.

And I'm like, can you tell them that you're having a baby? And he's like, no, no, I can't. She's literally ready to burst. And I'm like five hours away. It's just like, it's such a, you know, the way. It's the way. It's the way. I'm like, if you're deployed, that's one thing.

But you're in West Virginia. I'm in Virginia. He had no cell phone. There was one cell phone. No, a pay phone you walk to. And he would call and be like, have you had the baby yet? So he got home on my due date, but I ended up being a little overdue. and, you know, just gone all the time.

It was really actually hard. I was an only child, so there was part of me that really, you know, I was raised an only child, so it was part of me that did love that independence and didn't need him around, but it did get lonely. And I was now with two little kids away, and I was meeting wives, but it was, you know, there's just, there was a lot of, like, I don't know, what schools have your husband been to? What's your husband's rank?

I just, I don't ever, I've never played that, sort of like living through, getting validity through your husband's career. Marcus was always like, you know, my reputation means a lot to me. And so don't ever do anything that would embarrass me in the community. Like, don't risk my reputation. And I really respected that.

Yeah, yeah. My wife was due with our first kid. And my ex-o, who's a prior on list of guy who's an awesome guy, this is at SEAL Team 2. He's like, so when did your baby do? And I was like, oh, you know, like September or something.

And he's like, well, when are you supposed to go on deployment? I'm like, August something. He's like, he's like, you're not going. I was like, yeah, sir, no, I'm going on appointment. He's like, yeah, you're not. I was like, sir, I'm definitely going on deployment. Like, I'm not, I'm definitely going. He's like, you are definitely not going.

And so he literally said, hey, you can go on deployment as soon as she has that baby. And that's what I did. And I missed about a week and half of deployment. She had the baby, and I left the next day, which was probably, I mean, at least I was there. But the attitude from me was just like, no, it's like first baby, whatever. Like, I'm going on deployment. That's just, that's just the way it is. I mean, so like for you to be like, no, you know, I'm not coming home.

I'm at a school right now and I'm not coming home. That's the way it is. Like, it's just the normal thing. And then I remember I told my wife, God bless her. She called me at work. I forget what was going on, but she called me at work. And my chief was like,

hey, Janko, your wife's on the phone. And I remember I pick up the phone and I go, what? And you could tell she was like so apologetic because it's this, I probably put the same freaking psycho pressure on my wife

that Mark is put on you of like, don't, you know, don't freaking mess. Don't embarrass me. And so I was like, like, what? And she's like, uh, you know, blah, blah. And I go, okay. And that was it like hung up like a total jerk like I'm a total savage

So I'm sorry darling about that But what I'm saying is like that's just the normal thing like you you just you're in the team you all about the team Everything's the teams and it sucks to be married to those dudes I think in a lot of way It does but there was also the shared sort of like aggression if you will for lack of a better term that I understood that he needed to be so focused and I was just pissed after the attacks of 9-11. And I just thought, like, yeah, get over there and, like, do whatever you do. Hell yeah. Do it.

Go do it. I don't want to know about it, but go do it. Like, I knew that the teams always came first, and I accepted that because I knew that it was a short period of our lives. And it needed to be done. Mm-hmm. So your first deployment, you go to Germany. You're sitting over there. So why the hell are we doing this?

you get back and then roll into another platoon, are you going to be a 60 gunner again? What's up? Absolutely. I asked for it. But I think at that time, then I was Karen to Mark, it was like Karen in 48, 46.

Got to the Mark 48, nice. 46, too. Yeah. So that was good. We, you know, that was, my task unit was, was Red Wing. So, you know, we,

you know, we worked up together. We flipped a coin. you know McGreevy's platoon basically got to go to Afghanistan first we go to Germany first Oh this is when we were ripping out like halfway through To get guys more exposure

Yep so literally over a coin toss And so those guys went down range And we went to you know We went to Germany and then You know The rest is kind of history And once the Helo went down We actually deployed a week later

Because you know they were a wreck I mean half the platoon was gone and the other guys were you know not good how do you mean how'd you guys get word what are you guys doing it was terrible how we got word um we actually got word from from them so here we are we're forward deployed in germany an actual unit and we got to find out from our spouses that there's guys uh in full uh military dress showing up at people's door Like that's how we found out. So it was a, that was a rough couple days. It went on though. I mean, the communication wasn't a whole lot better back in Virginia Beach because they were still searching for Marcus Latrell and you know that went on for like what almost a week. And,

you know, no one knew if their husband was on the helicopter or not and the ones that survived weren't allowed to call home. And so it was literally pins and needles and they weren't hearing much more. but then when the Knox started coming, they were finding out. Yeah, I remember being on the phone with you and you like scream and crying because like somebody was, like somebody showed up to the door.

Like they were all, you know, women were together and stuff. So it was like just a shitty, you know, just a shitty time, I think, for everybody. And then the community, as you know, didn't really, didn't experience a loss like that. So it was really difficult how people were handling it. when those guys got back to Germany,

I think they flew in a psych to like meet with everybody for 30 minutes. The first guy went in there and didn't come out for almost three hours. So they were going to, they gave each guy 30 minutes to talk to psych and the first guy went in to come out for three hours. So it was just one of those things

that I don't think anybody even knew how to prepare what to do and so was just a bit, you know, it was a bit rough for a while. But again, once we got like over that week got our heads back straight, we were like get us over there yesterday like why are we still sitting here but we did we wound up within a week we were in country and we were doing our first mission like within the first

couple of days so and then what were you guys doing what was like your mission set uh mission was going after different like different cells different taliban cells that were um but like larger it was almost like a little bit different wasn't like CT missions even though we did like a CT op right like initially the first op was like a no shit like it was probably the coolest stop ever. Like, you know, Blackhawks come in, ropes go out, you know, fast rope, you know, charge on the gate, like, boom, everybody, you know, like it was like a real op. And then because that was done at night, it got shut down. And the whole country then got shut down because you're not allowed to go after bad guys at night because that's not nice. So that's what

we were dealing with in, you know, in Afghanistan at the time. So then we started just, you know, going out to, in the daytime, um, chasing different, um, different groups like in valleys. And we were working with the Kansofts or the Canadians who were like men compared to us. They were like, they look like Vikings, but they wore way too much gear. And we had to tell them too. Like, like, dude, you're going out in the mountain for three days and you got six nine mill mags on your body. Do you think you're going to use six nine mil mags?

I really hope you don't need to use six nine mil mags. So, you know, shit like that. But, but, so that's what we were doing. And what's your job on the platoon? I was an air ops lead breacher. And so I, you know, and a fire team later. And, yeah, we had a good, like, I don't say good, good deployment. Yeah, it was a, it was a really spicy deployment.

I mean, we had, like, multiple engagements. We had, our chief got, we got lit up by a, Army Apache Which was wild because like that was not supposed Obviously it wasn't supposed to happen But it was a big deal because it was it was daytime Still don't know how they didn't

Recognize us Full on engagement like full on gun run not just like oh there might be a position of more Like we were we were engaging a small group That was engaging us and we were it was like five of us and we were maybe three of them. And we were starting to bound forward like from cover to cover. And, you know, I actually,

I was patrolling with a saw. So it was a little bit lighter. And I just remember just like, just fucking going off on that thing. It was awesome. And then I remember hearing this deep, like deep, deep, deep sound of just like, do, do, do, do.

And I'm like, what the fuck is that? And literally in the middle of this little valley, and it was not wide, I turned around, and this Army, this Apache is in a full-on, like, front-tilt, gun run. And I literally thought it was a movie. Like, you saw, like, the dirt and the, you know, whatever there was, a 20-millimeter maybe? It was just coming straight at me. And I'm like, you know, all this happened so fast.

I'm like, are you fucking kidding me? Like, we're getting engaged by our own guys. And so it's come. it's tearing ass. We all dive out of the way. I remember diving behind rocks and watching my chief do a full-on, like dive, like into rocks, like did not give a fuck.

And the thing comes tearing through. You can't see anything because dusts everywhere. He wound up getting hit in the face. Well, the way they were working gun runs then is that dash 1 would come in and do 20 millimeter guns. You know what dash 2 is coming in with next. Ooh, right? 2.5.

rockets and so I just get this rock and I just huddle up and I'm like this is fucking it like I may live but like I'm going to get fucked up I'm going to get fragged here because like we've been calling in gun runs all day long into caves and like we'd get we'd get engaged we'd pull back calling some guns move forward that's what kind of mission it was through the through the mountains there and so I was just waiting I was like huddled up and like oh this is it we're going to get I'm going to get sprayed hopefully it's not bad like I was like trying to cover up my face I'm thinking like like, okay, if I just get wounded, you know, it'll be okay, but just not my face from my head. And the second one just comes tearing through and doesn't fire anything.

But I could see them. I could literally see them in the, they were so low. So somebody who didn't have their head up their ass was able to move over to fires and call it off. Somebody cleared them hot. I still don't know to this day and we still talk about it because like it was a fuck up. You know, it was a bad fuck up. How bad was your chief wounded? his whole face was like

Like you couldn't It wasn't bad bad But it was like If you took a picture You almost unrecognizable Because the I guess the frag Going that fast was so Fast it just kind of blew his face up

And he was like Like spitting blood a little bit But he honestly was fine Yeah totally Like let's be real Yeah yeah 100% Like you know looking back You're like

But yeah that was a big deal I just remember I think when we got back And again I was a E what I think E5 at the time, maybe E6. You know, so I was, I was tucked away, but I think the leadership got in the ass of, of that unit, you know, over it, over at Ced Dsodaf. And it's just like, what happened there? You know, who caught first off, who cleared them hot?

You know, we were on the offensive. It was just a, it was a total mess. When I was a young radio man, I was standing out in the desert in Fallon, Nevada, trying to call in for an extract from a helicopter, two helicopters. and I'm sitting there and I'm looking, they're like maybe a couple hundred feet at altitude and I'm just standing there making calms of them like, hey, you know, we're ready for extract and they couldn't see me. And I was like, this is crazy.

I started like waving my arms. They still can't see me. And finally, you know, I'm like, I'm getting a bearing and I'm like, hey, I'm right over here to your southwest and they just can't see me. And finally I like pop or whatever, pop a smoke and eye mark you identify, blah, blah, blah. But it showed me that when you're in the air,

like things just look so totally different. Totally different. And they can't see shit. And they're moving freaking 150 miles an hour. And they get told like you're cleared hot. Guess what? They're going to freaking shoot, man. Because a lot of times they're saving your ass.

They're saving someone's ass too. Yeah. And you know those like, I mean, you know all the blue and blue that was happening just everywhere. And again, it's not, you know, of course it's not nefarious. It just, it happens just like that.

Yeah. But we had, as I'm sure you know, you did, we were in day panels. And I popped out immediately. And they were like, are you fucking kidding me, guys? Like, we can't see a day panel that's cut up out of your shoulder. So the lesson learned that day forward was like, no, no, you got to carry a full day panel and like bust it out. Because that's the only thing. They said, that's the only thing we can see.

There's no way we can see that little thing on your shoulder. You know? So incredible lessons learned. And so that deployment wraps up. But, I mean, you lost freaking so many guys from your task unit. Good guys. Yeah, a couple of buds mates. And yeah, it was wild.

I mean, matter of fact, right before we deployed right after the helo, well, not right after the helo went down, but they flew, Marcus flew back to Germany. and they're like, hey, you and so-and-so get up to, I forget it was Ramstein, like go meet him. Like, he's fucked right now. So we got in a car, went up there, met him, like, once he, I think they'd clean him up once he got out of like the, you know, the, you know, the, um, the ER or whatever. But he was covered in, and he was nasty looking. He was like, he was like, it looked like he, his, all the wounds he had were just like, just healing. It was like his face was covered in shit

All his arms and legs were like covered in like he looked horrible But he was like super excited to see us because he was Yeah He thought he was gonna get his head cut off for I was uh I was the Admiral's aide and I was just about done with that job So I'd come back from Iraq and I became the Admiral's aide and so when that was happening I was tracking what was happening and I remember they're like I like they're telling the admiral hey it seems like there's a guy that's alive and I was like I said I was a radio man so I was like bro they're like they have his they have his radio like this isn't my I didn't say this verbally but I was thinking to myself man they have his radio and they've turned his radio on and they turned on the transponder or whatever you know how is a guy alive right now it didn't make any sense and then by the next day it was like no they have they actually have comms and I remember thinking this is a freaking miracle.

How this, if this guy's alive, for real. And the weird thing was I had met the Latrell boys at a West Coast reunion. And I just saw them, but I remember because they were big giant monster guys and they're twins, right, which they just stand out. Corn fed Texas. Yeah. And I remember like seeing them and being like, damn, that's freaking legit. You got your twin brother and you're both in the dude.

It's like how cool is that and then sure enough as I put the piece together. I was like oh shit it's that guy. It's one of those two guys and man that was horrible horrible scenario. I remember thinking at that time, A, this is definitely going to be made into a film because the story was just unbelievable and B, oh shit, like bad things can't happen to team guys like you know you'd heard of like a death or two a training accident or or, you know, someone died overseas. But until that helicopter went down, I sort of thought team guys were invincible. And for the first time, I remember thinking like, oh, shit.

This might not end well. And, you know, you see so many of your girlfriends suddenly become widows and got real, really quick. So what did you do when you got home from that deployment? We had a huge party. We had a big party, invited everybody, including the CO. And I think to this day we still talk about

that Amber bought me a Keggerator. She was kind of celebrating us coming back. And, you know, a few people were not happy at that because of the Hilo coming down and guys didn't come home. And those were all our like brothers and friends and sisters. And we, you know, Amber's thought was, I just want to celebrate like that guys came back, you know.

And so we threw a party and she bought me a K-grader, I think, from Costco. And that was really cool because, So I just all of a sudden I gained like 100 friends overnight. Like guys would just stop by and be like, hey, I'm just grabbing a beer. How did your kegurator? But I think that night Amber had the CO's. Stop.

Don't even say it. No, it's great. She had the CO's wife doing a kegurator. Had her like legs up in the air. She got thrown into that in her defense. It was great, but it's still a good story. I think it was E5 at the time. She's great and he's great.

And they're the greatest. They're amazing. What about career? What are you doing now? What's your next move? From there? Yeah. So come back from my second deployment.

I'd already screened for Devker after my first. And they just said, hey, we're not taking anybody after one platoon. So go, you know, you're good. Go do one deployment and come back and you'll be in that next class. I was in 06. And you're rolling into that selection. How was that? It was good.

Again, just full focus. I know I know to my surprise guys didn't practice but like I just wanted to be there like I wanted to be just you know when I found out about that place I was like yeah that's exactly what I want to do

so I trained and worked hard and yeah I just I had a good CQC block and like I was saying you know like was one of the I was the top like pistol shooter and with the rifle that's where I was like struggling with the rifle and I went from like

they post your scores every day your time there's no hiding like like when you shoot like you show up and you're like oh Marcus 57 out of 60 like what and everyone's like oh look at shitbag like if you don't move up you're out of here right and so um I wasn't like in the pistol pistol pistol was at the top but the rifle the initial week I was really close to the bottom and I'm like dude this is not like I can't that's so weird I can't it was weird and then it would be good at pistol and not good at rifle it's just weird it's weird was there something that didn't click in your head and then something finally made it click

Jacko, I'm still trying to figure out what's fucking in my head. I don't know. Man, I wish I could say. But I managed to crawl my way back into the top ten just by sheer, you know, have to. And you would respect that. Like I just, I had to get good. And I got a lot better. But no, I did really well.

I finished that. kind of finished green team and, you know, they kind of do a ranking and, you know, you're not supposed to know, but I guess I was chosen first, and I went over to squadron, hung out with our, got to work for our bro that I talked about earlier. I don't know if you care if we say his name on here or what, but. I say don't say his name. Okay, there you go. But yeah, it was everything, everything that I thought, probably actually more and a lot of stuff that I didn't expect. for sure. And probably Amber will tell you, like, life just got weird or after that. So now you start knocking out deployments.

Yeah. What's the cycle that you're running there? Every year. So we were deploying every year, sometimes twice. It's different now, but at the time. It was six on and then three, six on. It was three, yeah. Three month deployment. Three gone. Six back. Yeah. Three gone. Three training. Three on standby, three gone, three training. And then on standby, you know, flyways. and it was good again, but out there's a way way more than even at the teams. Where are your deployments to? Al-Assad, you know, Bagram. So both Iraq and Afghanistan?

Both OIF, OIF, yep. And you're bouncing back, and what's your job? I was also a breacher there. Yeah, I mean, that's that's exactly, that's all I did. I loved it. And I was, I did a lot of the combatives. So it was that split at the time where it was like, sport fighters and combatives and combative guys hate sport fighters and sport fighters think combative guys are gay.

And, you know, it was like that thing going on, you know. And I thought it was funny. But I do tell this story. Because I trained every morning. I went in. We had, you know, Coochie had his guys every day. And so I'd go in for two hours and train. I never trained at a gym just because we, after work, I went home.

But I did train every day. And there was one day I was, I had a guy in a full mount, and I was trying to figure out a way to put a, like a collar, like some kind of choke with, you know, and I was trying to grab his collar. And then it like stopped. And I looked at it. I'm like, what the fuck are we doing?

Why am I trying to choke you? Why aren't I like, why don't I like hitting you, put my knee on your chest, like get up and go to my sidearm or pull out something and stick you with it or just like push you and get away and from there i was like you know i'm not doing any more sport fighting i just like i just want to know how to like just like pound pound or you know gouge your eye out or just like stick you in the gut with a knife and just get the fuck out of here and and and then like i started more moving into the camp of like the combative side of the house and then of course you had people saying well no if you're a better sport fighter that are transition it's like the

skydivers like if you skydive slick forever no i could any of those guys could strap up on a heavy ruck and you know so it was just anyway it was back and forth and I don't know I digress where are we going on that one I loved all of it however that it was you know I um but so okay my you asked me what I was doing I was a breacher and I did you know I did a lot of combat and I climbed and Amber what's what's life like for you now now he's gone even more I was way more settled so that's actually when I met around that time is when I met Sarah Wilkinson And our life was very centered around the command. And, you know, other command members, command families, we all sort of, you know,

worked out together, hung out together, weekends together with the kids' sports and pool parties and birthdays. And, you know, it was very tight-knit. And one of the things that I remember so much about when Sarah was talking through, you know, her experience with Chad was like it left such an impression on me she's just talking about like this personality change that she saw from him over time and you know it did were you seeing that kind of thing from Marcus at this point were you seeing was he getting withdrawn was he you know short fused was he it's you know it sounded like what what what chaffirms

was doing was more like the withdrawn thing and you know she was like look he wasn't like the most talkative guy in the world but all of a sudden like she noticed that he was different yeah and and and before you even go like and so I worked with Chadd he was one of my reckey guys and I never like he was smiling happy joking and again this is right when he he showed up there and yeah it's in 2008 so he was still like just back from being out in the private sector for a number of years And so, like, he was, I feel like he was still, like, giddy and just, hey, life is, life is chill. It's good. It's, you know, nothing's really taking me down.

At least that's how I remember him. If, you know, we go back to the examples that I already gave of Marcus with, you know, our son crawling all over him and showing up with the picked geraniums. Like, he was still very much into being a husband and a dad. And even in his first and second platoons, you know, with Maggie's birth, he was. there, work came first, but he was there. What we transitioned into was living completely separate lives. And so he would come home and he would say things like, hey, where are your cups? You know, in his own home that he was paying for. And we would get everything looking perfect because he would be home for five days, which, you know, was pretty typical between trips. Anything more than that was

a pretty long time. But he had, we had become distant, and I had become, you know, way more rooted in my friends and my life and my kids. And it was okay that we lived separate lives because the ladies that I was around and their children were living that same life. And so there was this shared respect and sacrifice that no one else understood, but the people in your inner circle knew without having to even talk about. And so as he was becoming more and more distant, I guess you just sort of chalk it up to that's how things are now. And do you actually notice it or is it like the proverbial like boiling of a frog where it's just like,

the frog doesn't know that the water's getting hot until all of a sudden it's dead? It's too slow. Is it like that kind of thing where you're just going through it and it's like, oh, yep, he's going on another trip. and oh, it's another trip and he's back, but he's going to sleep or I don't want to bother him that type of thing over time?

Yeah, like we could play nice for those five-day spans where the house looked perfect and the kids behaved perfect and he was as present as he could be but it became a lot more comfortable to live separately. And, you know, it was all in the name of

the United States of America. It was all for the greater, good. And it felt like when he would come home, he would certainly be more checked out. Like, he couldn't wait to leave again. Like, I could sense that. And family time felt like forced time, especially at the command. So it was getting really hard. He was getting, certainly pulling away more, drinking more. He felt like a stranger. How much you drink it at this point? Normal amounts. By team standards.

By our standards, by the bros standards. Yeah, I think we just, man, we just went around a rabbit hole. I mean, we, I think I was just drinking a lot of bourbon often. And I never really knew that because it wasn't with him that much. Yeah, but even when I came home, like it was. I didn't know, like, what his drinking habits were because we were really never together. I mean, the last couple years that you were deploying,

he was gone for almost 300 days of air, like, you know. But I think it's pretty toxic. I mean, we're all, everyone's doing the same thing. Everyone's drinking hard. Everyone's, I think, going through the same things. Some are affected probably more than others, and I didn't see anything wrong. You didn't see anything wrong.

At what point did you start to see something wrong? 2008. Yeah, I think 2008. Josh? Yeah, Josh, one of my close, best friends from Buds and then through the teams

passed on a op. And that was just unexpected. And that was like a river and stream crossing, right? Yeah. And it was just, it was tough because I was supposed to do that river and stream crossing. And we, when he got sweat,

down the river, we, I think we looked for him for almost, it's like 10 to 12 hours. And then he washed up 50 clicks down, Kona, which was like a, you know, class four rabbits. It was nasty. It was gnarly. So just, you know, seeing him kind of get pulled out of the water is like really, it's not good. Not good. And myself and another. individual took his body back to his family in North Carolina and we stayed there a week and then we were there is when Jason and Dusty got killed like a couple days later on an hop direct fire both of them got shot and of course we were supposed to be on that up and it was just you know you went through it jaco and it was just one of those times that was it was you know I tried to look at it

is like, though, this is what it's supposed to be. Like, this is just the way it happens. And I became numb after a while. You know, even when extortion went down, I remember talking to Scott Moore, I'm more, I'm more about it. And it was like, Admiral, I'm fucking numb to this. Like, this doesn't affect me anymore. Like, I don't just, I don't get it.

Like, why is it still happening? And it was just, it was just, the conversations we were having, I think, through these years, we're just getting just odd. And I think I remember seeing the psych for the first time in 08. at the command, just like asking them, like, what's going on? Can you, you know, help me out a little bit or whatever? And that was like the first time I ever actually went and spoke to somebody. But we didn't talk about it.

Like, nobody talked about it, maybe. But he also has, we have his medical record, and I was just looking through it. And it says, like, you know, decided not to talk to the command psych for fear of not being able to deploy, which is the, you need to hear that all the time. I don't even remember that. Yeah. So I was certainly noticing that he, it seemed like he was just like a renegade to me.

He did not care. He did not care. And those deployments were so insane. It's like someone was dying every deployment. And so it felt like Russian roulette. And I just, between Josh in 2008, and then there were other deaths that weren't so close to us. And then Adam Brown dying in 2010,

who were very, very close with Adam and his family. and our kids' best friends at the time, I was just like, this is nuts. We can't do this anymore. Yeah, and so it got to a point where I just felt like I had to do something different. I wasn't, like, fully checked in. And, again, talking to the Admiral, he's like, you should go to OCS. He's like, you should be an officer. I'm like, I just, I need a break right now, bad.

He's like, no, you should go to OCS. You're going to be a good officer. And so I went to OCS for, like, two days. Oh, yeah. Wait, didn't you have to put like a package together and everything? I did fucking all this shit. He even passed up being promoted to chief so someone else could have it because he thought he was going to become an officer. I went in and talked to the, yeah, the CMC at the time said, don't make me a chief.

I said make so-and-so a chief because I'm, you know, I'm going to go to OCS. Like, why would you make me a chief? And I'm like, you're going to take it away from somebody. So they didn't they made him chief and and I went to a CS. So you knew what you were getting into with this? Not no. Obviously I didn't. Because no, I didn't.

I didn't. Honestly, like I didn't. I was not, I wasn't thinking clearly. Let me ask you this. When you went and talked to the psychologist. Yeah. What do you say? What do they say?

They have like a, you know, they have their standard list of like SOP, you know, like what? how is your home life? You know, how is your family? You're like, oh, my wife is great. My kids are great. It's fine. Like, are you drinking? Yeah, like, yeah, a little bit.

But, you know, normally what, you know, what the guys are doing, nothing, you know, like it's very vanilla, right? It's very templated. And I think, you know, obviously we'll talk about the route that I went eventually when I separated. But I think that's the problem is, like, you go to school and they try to solve a problem. this box that they're taught, but everybody's different. Like, you're different than me and I'm different from her. Like, they can't use a standardized template to, I think. It's also like a check in the box.

Like, you know, it's actually called the 30 minute checkup from a neckup, right? Oh, is it? Oh, wait, is this like a, like they say, hey, did you get ordered to go do this? This is a start part of the standard operating procedure. Okay, you're back from three deployments. You got to go check in with the psych. Is that what? And then you give the answers, you know, that you think. We'll probably get them off your back. Yeah. Let me figure out what I have to say. Yeah.

So they're not. Life is fine. Kids are great. I'm ready to deploy. Yeah, I'm good. And so is that what you did? Did you go in there? Because you said you were a little,

you were starting to feel it a little bit. Did you expose that at all when you talked to this, this doctor? I don't know. I don't think so. I don't even remember. I'm not sure. I just remember him telling me, Marcus, you guys aren't crazy. He's like, but your wives?

He's like, they're freaking nuts. Well, it is crazy. He stayed very too. I mean, like, I literally, like, of all the conversations, that's what I remember. He's like, Marks, I don't think you guys are crazy. He's like, but I do think your wives are crazy. I'm like, all right, all, doc, whatever you say, I'm on board. So that's kind of crazy that you win in there.

You're feeling like something's not right, but you still get like an up check to go to OCS, by the way. It was, the reason I went to OCS is because I believed in the admiral. I believe in my skipper. Like, that's the only thing. And I don't want to let him down at all. And so he's all fired up. He's all fired up. He's like, hell yeah. He's always fired up.

I love him. Yeah, for sure. And so he tells you, no, you're going to be a great officer. He sends your OCS and you're like, Roger. I'm like Roger that. It made sense on paper. For sure. It's like we need a change.

He wants to go to the West Coast. But I remember telling my close friends like, like, no. Like my very close friends was like, like, I can't. At the airport. I can't do this right now. Like I can't, I'm not good. He's like, no, bro, you got to go. Like, you're going to regret this.

I'm like, no, you don't understand. I can't, like I'm not good. He's like, Marcus, you got to get on that plane. What did you mean by not good? Like, I was just not, I was not into it anymore. Like, I was not mentally, like, focused or determined or, like, driven or, like, any of it. Like, I just didn't want to be there. Were you seeing this, Amber?

I was. But I was also in a complete tailspin because we just needed to, we needed a change of scenery. I just needed, like, a calm in the story. to reassess. You can like survive, you know, like a tornado, for example. It's much easier to survive than it is to like survey the damage. I was in complete survival mode. And so it seemed like, okay, well, this is something that could get me to the other side to survey the damage.

That's a good metaphor. So you're like in the storm shelter. You're just mayhem going. You're okay in the shelter, but you know at some point you've got to get out of this thing. You've got to get somewhere safe. Yeah. Yeah. And then once the storm is over, like, you know, you think about like, you know, you think about like,

any natural disaster we lived in on the East Coast hurricanes like preparing and surviving the hurricane isn't the hard part the hard part is cleaning up all the mess on the other side and so I knew we needed to get to a place where we could start cleaning up the mess but you just you're in such survival mode that you don't even know what that looks like and so for me OCS sort of like check that box it was a different change of scenery and in my mind Marcus always needed a goal his goal was to get a scholarship to become sealed to get to the command. This was just the natural next goal. I didn't know that he was so depleted mentally that he didn't have the willpower

to care about the goal. And it was the first time that I had ever seen him not care about a goal. That's what I was going to ask you because you're describing a mess, right? But at the same time, you're both also kind of like, you know, the kids are doing good. You're doing everything. No, we're doing everything. So was there some like under, I don't know. The reason I'm asking you this question or this line of questioning is because if someone is a wife and they're looking at their husband, what are they looking for?

And how do they go, oh, you know what? I know what this is. I understand what's happening. There's a loss of motivation. Did you see behaviors? Was there anything that you said this is not, Marcus is not in a good spot right now? Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, there were certain. I just felt like he was reckless. I felt like he was a complete renegade. He just didn't care. And so for me, OCS was a way to dial it back in, give him some direction and focus. Because, like, I mean, he didn't cut his hair for nine months. He was drinking and then, like, the RSO the next day, like, drinking until 4 a.m. Then the RSO at 8.

Like, to me, it was just sort of, like, very atypical behavior for him. maybe not necessarily of the teams, but he was so laser-focused that the sudden sort of renegade attitude was definitely alarming at the same time. I never saw him. So it was probably 10 times worse than I knew. OCS?

OCS. Do you hear all about it? OCS is, because I went to OCS. I know. And I can't imagine. He'd come back from deployment like literally a week or two prior. I fucking hated it.

I showed up and, you know, you have to all the Marines. and they're like yelling and shit and you have like a rack like this and they're like, what fuck is this guy? And I honestly, I'm out of the last three day and a half.

I remember sitting, first off, I was getting migraines. They gave me, they got me ibuprofen six hours after I was fucking hurting. And then I remember sitting on the floor. My back was killing me.

I had all types of like shit going on with my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my,

my, my, my, was it, 11 general orders of a century? Like I'm trying to, you know, trying to memorize them. And I remember taking the book and throwing it across the room. And I'm like, hey, who's in charge here? Like, in a very nice way.

Oh, the tenant starts. Like, can I speak to him, please? Yeah, sure. I was like, hey, sir, here's the deal. I was like, I just got back for my sixth combat deployment. I was like, I got back a week and a half ago. I'm like, and I didn't curse. I was like, why are, if I have to go to OCS, like, why are you guys sending me with people who, like, never been here?

here before. I don't want to be around any of these people. Like, honestly, I was like, I just want to go back to my unit. He's like, you know, we usually keep guys here for 12 weeks. He's like, you can go tomorrow. I'm like, thank you. And I did that. Dude, that's insane. I was like, what am I doing? I'm like, I'm learning how to fold my underwear again. Are you kidding me? And I remember going back and telling Admiral, I was like, hey, I was like, if you want good people to like stay in, you guys got to figure out this OCS thing after guys are going over to see us to, to war for 10 or 15 years. Like, come on. Like, that's just, you're going to, you're going to get more people like me that are like, fuck this. Or they hear about what OCS is. And instead of going through

the whole process of sending their packet in, they're just going to hear about it and go, there's no chance. Because that's what I've told, I talked to a bunch of people when I got back. They were like, oh, yeah, you didn't know that? They're like, that's why I didn't go. I was like, how can you go deal with that for another 12 weeks after all the other shit? They're like, so I didn't. They go, but there's this workaround. And if you, if you become a, you, it's like if you go on reserve, you go to like a fork in knife school for like four weeks,

you get pinned, and then you go back on active duty. They decided to tell me that. They figured something out. Yeah, they figured something out. But he honestly, like, he knew, intuitively you knew. You shouldn't have gone.

He called from the airport. He called me and he called his best friend. And I think I said, like, you've got to listen to your gut. And he just ended up pushing through and getting on the plane and going. But the day I showed up, I'm like, what am I, I'm not, what am I doing here? Yeah, that's, this is fucking the last place I want to be.

So, boot camp welcome, like, so. So, yeah, it was good. So they sent you right back to the command. Yeah. Well, and they usually keep people, they out-processed. They keep people in holding self like 12, 12 or 13 weeks at OCS. And yeah, they let me go like the next day. And what did the, what did the commands there looked like the detailer say?

They were just like what, you know, what is. Because that's bizarre, dude. Like, get a bill it. It's hard to get a bill to OCS. I know. I did have to apologize to the Admiral. He's like, hey, I'm like, I know. I was like, I know.

But he was, I also think he was on the committee that selected you. Yeah. Well, I'm sure he had a lot of pull, whatever his position was. Yeah, for sure. But in hindsight, it's like, who ever thought that that was a good idea? Anyway. But yeah, so I went back and they were like, hey, what do you need to do? I said, I just, I said, you know there's someone out there right now going, see, OCS is so hard.

It's so much hard. He's got quit. Yes. That's it. I quit. Yeah, so I just told him, I said, hey, I need, I just need a break. It's wherever that is, I said, I was thinking maybe go out to the West Coast and just forget about stuff. And they're like, yeah, that's fine.

Go do it. So that's what we did. So I went out to, yeah, I went to the center and wanted to teach tactics. And they threw me in first phase. which is like the worst place they could have put me. And it was not good. Like I was, and as you know, all the guys there are awesome. Like good dudes, all of them been overseas, hard-nosed dudes, like, great workers.

I didn't want to be around anybody. I was like, I don't want to make friends with anybody. They probably thought I was like standoffish because, like, I didn't want to hang out with anybody. It was just not a good time. I body slammed a student in front of the flagpole, and one of the instructor staff grabbed me, and he was like, hey, man, he's like, you're going to get in a lot of trouble if you don't fucking, like, tone it down.

Like, I don't know what's going on. And so there was just a lot of little things like that that were starting to happen, and I just didn't care. I was like, you know, fuck everybody, you know, at the time. One of my guys, J.P. to know, who's been on this podcast a few times, and he was in my task unit, it was in Ramadi, came back, went to another platoon,

and then they got shoulder surgery, got pulled out, and they sent him to buds. And it was like, one month deep, they called me over at Trayette. They're like, you gotta come get you a boy. It was the same thing. He was just not in a good headspace to be putting students through, you know, first phase

because you just wasn't in the right spot, you know, like had to get him out of there and get some freaking, and you know he was a loose cannon. You're working for how long are you in first phase for? First phase for a year and then finally they kicked me over to SQT. Now, now you're sitting here saying like, I didn't want to be around anybody. I didn't want to make friends with anybody.

What do you see in Amber? What does this look like to you? Talk at home with him. And we had been apart for the bigger part of every year leading into this. And so it was very very. very, very, very difficult. I was trying to be optimistic. We were super settled in Virginia Beach,

and so I'm like, oh, a new beginning. I bought cruisers for everyone. I thought we would come out to California and suddenly be this happy family. And when we got here, everything just completely hit the fan because I didn't have my community anymore. And we started every single morning

at Sarah Wilkinson's gym, CrossFit Odyssey at the time. It was a core group of girls, and my kids had their friends, We had an amazing neighborhood, a great house, and suddenly we're in California. We don't know anyone. And now Marcus is home. And the kids, you know, like our son in particular, had this sort of idea of who Marcus was in his mind.

He's sort of like this myth of a dad. And, you know, he really didn't know him. And I think that whenever we, the dad that he got delivered back was nothing like the dad that he had created in his mind. at the time. And so he started acting out. Like, everything was going bad. And I don't know. I just It's hard for me to like picture this right now because you seem like a super chill dude, like all nice and mellow. And like, so what like what does this look like at home? He had become a monster. Well, first of all, he was completely disconnected to us. It felt like he didn't want to be anywhere, really. I mean, I didn't feel like he wanted to be any place else. I felt like he wanted to be nowhere.

Like he didn't have a purpose, a belonging of, he didn't give a damn about anything. He was definitely drinking a lot, a lot more than I had realized, or he started drinking more than, you know, I was comfortable with. And there were certainly times that I was, I just thought there's no good way out of this. Leaving him is not going to necessarily solve anything. staying with him, I don't know how much worse this can get. Yeah, but just to go back, Jacko, like, I was still, like, I was still functioning. Like, I was still, you know, engaging with the guys.

I mean, I had, you know, I had bros and stuff, but I, but I was, I didn't want to, it wasn't, it wasn't fun for me anymore. I didn't want to be one of the guys and, you know, it was just not, it just wasn't the same. It was just, it was different, you know, and thank God, got kicked over to SQT. So I ran CQC for about a year and a half and a great staff. I mean, those guys, you know, I joke because we had a great cell, but I feel like those guys did everything.

I'm like, I didn't even need to be there. Like literally the LPO. I mean, they just, they ran the show. And so thank goodness I was just kind of in the background. Just, I think I started school online at USD. I did a graduate program there. So we would, you know, work the students in SQT. And then at night, we'd put them to bed.

and then I would stay up and do work and stuff. And so, you know, it wasn't like a complete mess. You know, I think everything was, like, I was functioning. Yeah. It wasn't, you know, I don't want to sit here and say like, you know, he was like stuck in the corner of his house, sucking on his thumb every day. No, no, no, no.

You're still functioning. Still going to work, but, like, you just didn't care. I was checked out of everything. Marcus doesn't do well without a goal and, you know, something to work towards. And so going back to get his master's degree while he was at SQT, it was definitely like a check in the box. And then I think at some point, oh, well, then the Bin Laden Raid happened, which.

I kind of lost my mind on that one, just not being there. Like you, put me in the, put me in coach. There was like this big sort of like resurgence of let's get back to Virginia Beach. So I did. I called up the CMC. I was like, hey, I want to come back. He's like, done, come back. And then I just kind of faded quickly.

Well, no, it was replaced. I mean, that was our plan was to go back. And then extortion happened and, you know, so many more of our friends died. And then it was like, what are we going to go back to to that same game of Russian roulette? We just didn't know each other anymore. And it was very uncomfortable to be in the house. He was learning how to be around the kids. The kids were very uncomfortable.

like how does dad fit back into this dynamic? And so we thought like at the time, we know dysfunction. We know deployments. We know not being together. We don't know how to be a normal family. I don't know what families do on the weekends. I don't know how a family spends a Friday night. But I know how to be a single mom.

And so rushing back into that dysfunction was the safest thing at the time, which was replaced by a big fat, reality slap of, oh, extortion just happened, we're going to go back to the Russian roulette. Do we really want to do that? And so at that point, he decided, let me just get out of the military altogether. No, you missed a whole bunch. Oh. My turn. You missed something. You missed something. What? That's when I went to speak to OIC from SQT. And I was like, hey, I'm like, I'm not, you know, there's something not right. Like, I'm not doing well. And he's like, why don't you go speak to the, I don't know, it was a West Coast Dive Medical Officer,

whatever they call. So I went over there, and it was the psych, and he just started telling them about what's going on. He said, Marcus, he was like, first of all, you're not, you're definitely not the only one that's come in here. He's like, matter of fact, he goes, I can't even count the number of guys that have come in here now over the last couple months,

and they have literally given me the same exact story. And he goes, I don't know what it is, but he's like, you guys are all experiencing the same exact thing. And he said, so this is what I'm going to do. And I think I got prescribed a SSRI or SNRI first time. And I guess that was supposed to stabilize mood. And then I got sent to NICO, and I came back with like four more medications from the NICO, you know, the NICO clinic out in which I thought was actually a pretty good place.

But they do a lot of checking and giving you drugs. And they don't do a whole lot of, in my opinion, healing. When you go and you tell this doctor, something's not right, how do you describe something's not right? Like, what does that sound like? Again, I'm looking at this from a perspective of a dude that's a first responder, a firefighter, a police officer, or somebody in the military. That's what are you tracking that they should be paying attention to? I think one of the biggest is lack of motivation or like lack of purpose. You feel like nothing matters anymore at all.

Like, what am I doing this for? Like, I don't even care. And you're like, well, what do you care about? Well, I used to like to surf or work out. I could give a shit about surfing or working out. Or I used to like to go, you know, do X, Y, and Z. I don't even, here, we'll give you two weeks to do that. No.

How about I just sit in my house and watch TV and drink bourbon? Because I don't have to think about anything, and I can numb myself. And so I would say to the people out there listening, it's you're going to start to see that you're becoming less motivated to do things of things that you really enjoyed in the past. And that's, I think, one of the biggest signs. That right there is a telltale sign. The stuff you really enjoy doing when it comes to like a screeching halt,

like go talk to somebody for sure. And I don't know if that's now depression kicking in or now if you want to call it like PTSD or anxiety. are like you know now we're getting into the science of it and I don't know also like is this a is this a chemical thing because right now that that study that just came out said yeah it's not it's not a chemical thing right so now it's like okay well what's what's going on your life that you can't get out of bed in the morning like you don't want to go to work you don't want to answer your text messages so it's really just like a lack of just like like if you just like slumped your shoulders

down and just like not gave a fuck anymore that's that's really the there was also a lot of anger, irritability. I think those are all things that are part of it. So like you become this person that doesn't want to do anything and then you do snap or you throw mugs through the window or you choke

out the bartender at the country club and stupid shit that all these things have happened by the way. That you probably shouldn't be doing. There's like a weird I don't know, that's the wrong word, when you're when you're living your life and everything's like like you're saying you got goals you got things that you want to do and you got a long-term vision and you got kids and when people die that you know that are your friends and then there's this like there's there's this thing of like well They're gone and the world is still going.

And what is, what, what does any of this shit mean of, oh, my friend was this awesome guy and now he's dead and where I'm still going to, you know, morning muster? What is, what are we doing here? I think that sort of thing, you know, because you start getting like an existential thought of this life is the most important thing. But now, oh, you lost a bunch of friends and we're still here and we're going on. But we're going to end up where they are. And this is the way things are going. It seems like that could lead to, well, I might as well just watch TV. I might as well just sit here and drink bourbon.

I might as well just do nothing because this is where we're heading. This is where we're all heading. I don't know. Again, this is just like I'm thinking out loud as I'm hearing you describe, you know, where your head space was. And especially when you're sort of get detached and you get put into a different environment where you don't have the same friends and you don't have the same, like, crew of families that you're with.

Um, you know, one thing I can say about losing guys in combat was like, you lose guys in combat and you're with all your friends and then you're going to go do more stuff in combat and you don't really that feeling of what are we doing here. Actually, the opposite happens. You now know why you're here. Like we're going to go and we're going to make things happen. We're going to go do our best. We're going to stand tall. Like you're going to go do all those things. So it's sort of the opposite.

You get juiced. No, you get juiced up. Yeah. No, I think you get fired up. Like you want to go do that. 100%. And then. the environment you're talking about, without a doubt.

I mean, like I said, after that Hela went down, like, I couldn't, we couldn't even, we were screaming, why are we still sitting here? Like, why isn't, why in the helicopter land right next to us, put us on there and send us over there to go, to go get redemption, right? And then when you don't have that outlet anymore, and then you're looking around and you're saying like, well, why am I even going to get out of bed this morning? Yeah, I think, you know, what you're describing, you know, someone told me once, and I kind of laugh at it, but it makes sense. He's like, Marcus, I'm not sure.

He's like, he's like, definitely, definitely dudes have this PTSD, but he's like, I think they have what they call LSD, lack of stress disorder. He's like, I feel like we have to be in chaos. And once that chaos stops is when our shit like unravels. And I said, you know, I was like, I get that. And I said, I feel that they're definitely, that's part of it. But there's got to be part of something else. Like, why is everyone, and not everyone, but why are there so many experiencing the same exact thing? You know, I'll never tell you that.

And I'll still, to this day, sometimes fight it, that, you know, like you, I loved going overseas. I loved going to war. I think that stuff is great. I think it makes you grow. Like, it makes you better. you know, maybe it was some stuff that happened younger, then maybe some wartime stuff, then maybe some transition stuff, like you said,

like where I wasn't around some people, and then maybe some of the family stuff that wasn't working, and then maybe the concoction of all these fucking medications that they put me on and said, you're going to get better if you take this, and I'm going to believe you because you're a doctor, and you're telling me this is going to be good. You know, and then you get out,

and then you're in the private sector, and then you don't have any of that at all. so maybe just all that together is a recipe for it's a perfect storm we found ourselves right in the middle of a perfect storm i have never taken any um like drugs or anything uh don't yeah like so so even when i hear that and i but i've i've you know i've heard there's been a bunch of um data and information about them what they're like and what they do and you know people you get on all these, what are they called, psychosomatic drugs? Is that what they are?

They're... I mean, there's a, yeah, there's a bunch of them. Some are supposed to, like, help you release some serotonin, so you're, like, happier and others are supposed to, like, stabilize your mood, you know. But then the problem is once you start taking those, then, I don't know, all of a sudden you're feeling a little tired or you can't focus, so now they give you some provigial, a new vigil, so you can focus. But now those medicines are causing migraines.

And I'm like, hey, I can't sleep now. So, like, oh, here, you ever heard of Ambien? And I'm like, yeah, it was on him for six years while I was deploying. But no, you need this. Or maybe we won't give you Ambium. We'll give you the other one that's not as, like, it's just as a constant cycle. He was on no prescriptions until the year of it he was getting out of the Navy. And like between that time and, you know, a couple years after, he had 10 prescriptions.

He's on zero today. Amber, I got prescribed my first at NICO. I know. That's the year he's out. from the psych and then from NICO they prescribed me four medications because I was just looking at my medical record. It's crazy. And then once we went into all this, I think it was on seven.

And we get on average, you know, what we're doing on that nonprofit. The average is seven to eight medications at one time. We have people coming to us. These are team guys. Over 20 medications that they're on. Not that they're like, hey, I want to be on this. That they're being prescribed. Say, here, you're a fucked up.

Like you should take these. Like who prescribed somebody over 20 medications? That's like he seems completely insane to me. It's insane. And you know, no, look, I have friends that are psychologists and they've explained to me that there's like certain things, like there's certain times, certain people need certain things and like it really helps them. But damn, like seven prescriptions for some stuff that makes you stay awake and focus

and then give you something else that's going to make you sleep. I'm not a rocket scientist or a psychologist, my damn self, but that doesn't seem like a great thing. Yeah, probably. It's the go-to. It's the number one tool in the toolbox, at least if you are being treated by military medicine or the VA. If you can't write a prescription for it or talk to a therapist about it, they got nothing

for you. I think the best research that came out recently is that they said, if you get your heart rate up, go for a run, go on the mat. The actual research is showing that that's better than these antidepressants that they've been getting us for 35 years. And that's why I think now, antidepressants are, like, there's a lot of bad shit coming out about them. Like, there's no, like, every press you read about them now is not good.

So I think they're slowly going away. Yeah. Well, I never stopped working out and never stopped training in Jiu-Jitsu. Like, maybe that's, maybe that's it, dude, I don't know. Probably the best thing, at least, well, I understand you can do. But I still think, not for everybody, right? So I still think there's certain individuals that probably need something. Yeah.

But, you know, when they just came out and said, hey, going for a run, getting your heart rate up is better than these, like, we should, we should take that on board because, like, most of America is sitting from the computer for 12 hours a day. They're wondering why, you know, they're angry or they're depressed, you know, just a little bit of, you know, heart rate, increased activity. You'll help that out. And you throw booze into the mix, right?

Because, like, how good is that for you? You got seven meds, nine meds, 12 meds. And you're drinking, like, and not working out as much. Ooh. So, so you decide that you're going to get out. Mm-hmm. And how many years do you happen at this point? 12.

12. And you decide, all right, I'm going to go do something else. I'm like, I just want to run away at that point. I literally just wanted to run. Yeah. And what are you thinking, Amber? Well, I should have learned from OCS that big dramatic changes are probably not the best. But at the time, I thought, I don't want to go back to the Russian roulette.

And I know Marcus needs a goal. And he probably feels like, you know, leaving the command and becoming an instructor is going, you know, not necessarily going in a goal-oriented direction. And so maybe having a career is the next best goal. He just graduated. He got his master's degree. And I went with it. Dude, only a freaking team guy could be going like, on all these drugs and drinking and still get their master's degree. It's fucking retarded. It's like, that's so ridiculous. I told people, I was the best when I wasn't thinking.

Like, if I could just go, if you could just wind me up and go, I'm fine. As soon as I stop for half a second is when chicken's stumbling down. That's insane, dude. So little did I know that I was actually like stepping into like the, you know, the perfect, perfect storm. We were living in a pretty bad one, but the perfect storm. was childhood trauma, war trauma, head trauma, transition trauma, family trauma, loss of purpose, loss of paycheck, loss of community, loss of identity. And he wanted to get so far away from

the military and the teams that he went into banking. What was pushing you away from the freaking teams? No idea. No clue. If I had a guess. Just anger. Like anger at, like anger at, and probably wasn't the teams. It was just anger of like everything. Because you know what it's like when you like see one of your team guy friends that you haven't seen in a while and you're just super stoked. Like I remember I got back from my last ballooners working to trade at, dude. I worked to trade at. You know, so there's different team guys coming.

Every day was like a reunion every day. Like, yeah, just like, oh, hey, we go. Like every day was like that. I know. I mean, my freaking kids will say to me, my oldest daughter right now, she'll say to me like, why don't you just. go back in. I'm always like, well, I can't really go back in. I'm like an old guy now.

Why don't you just go back in? So what, was that just not there anymore? Were you feeling like, you know, you see your friends and you're like, I don't, I don't care. I don't care. Yeah, it was just, you know, Jack, it was just like a, I don't know how to describe it. He was completely numb inside. He feels like that now.

That's what I'm saying. It was a period of time. When the Hilo went down, I had this weird conversation with the admiral. I was just like, I'm numb. This is not even affecting me anymore. Like, I don't get it. And he's like, yeah, but this hurts. I'm like, yeah, it hurts, but I'm, I just don't.

It's not even registering. It's just. So this is, this is when we see, like, there's something, like, to me now, like, okay, there's something wrong. There's something going on in here. Like, for a team guy to not, like, be kind of stoked to see their friends. Like I just remember my whole life I would go to work and just be stoked like there's never a day where I was like I can I'm bummed out to go to work today every day was Just awesome and fun and gonna see my friends and we're gonna hang out and we're gonna shoot some shit and like

Thank God. I always had that feeling you know I always had that feeling so this is what tells me like again going back to Chad and hearing Sarah describe this change in his personality, you know? And that's where I, the only thing that I could imagine that could cause, like, like it has to be something else that's causing you to get in this mode of, you know, oh, there's freaking four guys that I haven't seen in five years and I went to buds with them or I was at a platoon with them or whatever. I think you would still have been like that, though.

Yeah, but I also used to want to run and hide too. Remember that? Like, I never wanted to go back to Virginia Beach. Oh, well, that's true. anybody. And also like you know he sort of had, he was at this pinnacle of what he wanted for his career in the teams. And so

to leave that and go to a new place was hard. You know, it would be like transferring coasts for anybody. You're making all new friends or being out here. The vibe I mean obviously we love it here. We're here now. But the vibe here versus the East Coast was very different and that people are a lot more spread out here. So we were by ourselves in a neighborhood far away from other military families. And we just didn't feel like people really got it. And so

I think that he got to this place of being so numb and not really caring after the transition. But it was very hard to go back to Virginia Beach. But I hear you now because like we live in Coronado and I love it because I get to see like my bros, like guys that are contractors. they come in like hey what's going on you know so it's good now it's but now it's different i mean i'm obviously a different place i guess the thing that i'm trying to say is like you can it's like the freaking check engine light in a car like to me that's a check engine light in the car of like just about every team guy you know like when they see other team guys they're stoked i remember one of my buddies was uh stationed up in up in germany in north germany with

the Combshrimmers. He was up there. He was up there for three years. And I went up to see him one time when I was in Germany. And like he was, because he'd been not, he'd be these around kick ass, badass, badass comps guys, which is awesome. And they're great. They're studs.

And, but man, when he saw me, it was like he was, he couldn't stop smiling. Go, bro, he's, I was like, bro, you're so happy. He goes, bro, it's so good. He goes, it's so good to see you. And it's so good to speak English. He'd been speaking up in German. for that kind of shit. So for me to like sit here and think about that,

I'm thinking there must be like some, there's something wrong with the engine. Like there's a check, that's a check engine light. Yeah. The real check engine light is coming on. And then you tell me all these other things. Like that list you just rattled off

of all these things that are going on, Amber. You're like, oh, loss of this, loss of that, change of this, change of this, you know. Yeah, you can't outrun. it. Whenever you're processed out and you're a civilian, it all comes crashing down for so many. And we were one of one of those cases where we couldn't outrun it anymore. And, yeah, I mean, if you're good, you're good. And so, you know, I think if you get out and everything is tracking and there's no check engine light and you maybe go through some transition, whatever, but you're fine. But if you're not,

You know, I like that. I like that analogy. I may use that. I'm going to steal that from you. Yeah, of course. You can, Sarah describes Chad as like a light going out. And I certainly would have described Marcus the same.

Like, the light in him completely went out. And, um, but over time, you just start to, like, sort of like justify it or rationalize it in your head. Like, well, like, I mean, I guess that's how things are now. And they're kind of all like, like, that and you just you just rationalize it and you try to handle it but like the level of suffering that you guys can endure is so great it's terrifying well this is how you get a dude that's like going through all this and getting his master's degree like that's such a good example of I'll just suck it up like I'll just suck it up and just do this stupid assignment you know you're a grown

ass man you're getting told by someone to write a paper and you're like cool give me the freaking computer let's rock and roll yeah yeah so um so you decide you're going to get out what kind of plan do do you have like where are you going to get money from did you already get a job did you get a job lined no no i got i mean i was yes yeah so i was lucky enough i had um i had a mentor and you know and mentor connected me to some folks and so i did like a new york city tour met a lot of different people that met a lot of people in banking and some other stuff and then got introduced to a lot of West Coast folks and just kind of went out there and figured out what's next. So I, you know, I consider myself lucky there that I got to, I got to meet a lot of people and kind of figure

out what I wanted to do. So I had a choice, really, I had a choice. And so you got, you actually got a job lined up before you got out. Yep. Which is freaking amazing. Because sometimes guys don't realize that they get a paycheck every two weeks. And that when you get out, that paycheck stops. Yeah. And, you know, like, it's, it's a rough transition for a lot of, do it. It could be very rough. And so, yeah, I was, yeah, I was lucky in that regard. You know, looking for something else to do. And I mean, I wasn't thinking any other way. Again, like, the way I'm thinking is I'm getting out to go do something, not to, I guess, figure it out. So. And so what was the first gig? You were a banker? What was it? It was a private banker,

which is really like a fancy way saying financial advisor. And I had some people tell me, don't do it unless you have a lot of rich friends. Literally, I got told that by several people. Really? Is that how this works out here? But no, I got lucky. I worked for a really good team up in L.A. And, yeah, I did that for like a year.

Did you guys move to L.A.? Yeah, that was terrible. That's why I moved to Texas, like, within a year after moving there. Were you still working at the bank when you moved to Texas? No, no, I got hired somewhere else. Again, through my mentor. Doing the same kind of thing? No, doing different stuff, like operations now.

Just kind of more like leadership, operations, business development. And how's your headspace at this point? I mean, I feel like it didn't really, I was like really excited to get out and do something different. But I'm not sure. He was in a holding pattern at that time. Yeah, I felt like it, like, it subsided. You had enough tasks to get on in another. Yeah, yeah.

I was all of a sudden I had something that like I was. That was like excitement. Yeah. Yeah. And I didn't mind L.A., but I certainly, you know, we were so disconnected. And it was a challenge. Like our relationship was a challenge. His relationship with the kids was a challenge.

Drinking was still an issue. I was still on the meds, obviously. I was on the meds for seven years straight. And by the fact, you were incorrect. I got prescribed while I was still on active duty. So from active duty until 2017, November 11th is when I was on. No, I just meant that right before you got out of the military, you went your whole career not on meds.

Like even when he would get injured, he'd be like, I'm not taking that. And then, you know, finally relented in like his last year of service. And then from that point forward, he was prescribed more and more and more. But, you know, things were really still deteriorating at home. home. And I remember thinking, I can't be stuck in California, like, as a single mom. My dad had just taken a job at the University of Texas as offensive coordinator there. And Marcus was working in North Carolina commuting. And so at one point he came home and he's like, why are we paying California, Texas? I don't even work in the state. And we decided to move to Texas. And I just thought this is going to be

a great place for me to raise the kids and just feel better about the kids being raised in a place like Texas. And I can probably afford it more than California because I thought we were done. I didn't want to be done. But I just thought this is this is not working. So from your perspective, as you're saying raise the kids, you're thinking you're going to be raised alone. Because it's that bad. Well, it was just, you know, my dreams of my feeling of support. for his job in the early days sort of turned to like indifference and feeling like resentment that the teams always came first. I never gave him an ultimatum or anything like that, but it was this sort of like pride was replaced with pain. And from there, I just kept thinking, well, maybe if we

try this, I'll get the feeling back. Maybe if we try that, I'll get the feeling back. Maybe moving will help my family. Maybe getting out will help my family. And nothing was helping. It was actually just deteriorating. And so I was basically losing hope that I would ever get the feeling back of like caring. I did care, but I just knew like this isn't the way I want to, this isn't a marriage I want to have. And so it felt inevitable. I thought at that point we would just divorce. I wasn't afraid like anything bad would happen to him. I just felt like this isn't workable. And what are you feeling, Marcus at this point. You moved, you moved to Texas.

Yeah. Is this where you're choking out country club people? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Texas, it just got worse from there. Like, nothing, nothing definitely got better. It got worse.

I hated it there. I needed the water. I needed the mountains. It was flat. It was hot. I didn't like the people. The town we lived. You know, I got along with a few people.

But again, like nobody got it. I felt like it was in that space. of nobody gets me, you know, and, you know, I've been to war. And, like, I can't get, I can't have a real conversation with anybody because only, the only thing they care about is, like, money and, and, uh, it was just, I was just going through all of that. And, and again, it wasn't like we were struggling in terms of, like, financially or any of that.

Like, honestly, like, we could have made it, could have made a million dollars a year. Nothing would have changed. It was, like, just, it was just a, it was just bad. just was not, I don't know. Again, I think I had less friends when we moved to Texas than I. We joke about it, but, you know, I don't want to be too, too angry here over the radio. Everybody's listening to me. Definitely a challenging time.

And that's when the wheels really came off for us. I think that part of what has grounded Marcus has been his ability to get in the water and travel. And so, you know, in the Navy, you're always stationed near water. And in the teams, you're doing a lot of traveling. And so when we were in Texas, he was basically stuck at home. And it was 110 degrees outside with no water. And he tried to take up golf. He's just got to have, you know, that outlet.

And in taking up golf, he started hanging out with the crew at the country club that were very, very, very, very heavy drinkers. And he started to drink. Yeah, kind of fell back into that. I think I was drinking hard anyway, though. You were, but it certainly escalated to a point that, and I basically had to, like, sit them down at one point and be like, listen, don't call my husband anymore

because this is becoming a problem. And it just, our son at that point was... Yeah, then he started spiraling a little bit, I think just because of what was going on at the house. And so then, you know, we're dealing with him, not being a, you know, just like, your typical kid that can go to school and get good grades and come home. He's not doing that.

He's not doing that, you know. And so the mix of a little bit of everything. I think it was at that time when, you know, Amber again started just like seeing more changes. And so she started getting me into brain clinics. Yeah, it was actually... There was a former teammate of Marcus's who took his life as well, like one of the first to seal suicides. And his wife actually did a two-part series in the Virginian pilot over Memorial Day. And that was in 2016, I believe. And I read this article about him, and she described him as the

light going out. And she described all these struggles that he was having. And I was like, hold on, this is what we're going through. No one's talking about this, though. And it was the first time that someone had like had the courage to say that they were struggling. And I had so much respect for that. And I was also scared chilless. And so what the article basically ended by saying was that there was a pattern of scarring found in his brain linked to blast exposure. And there was also some mention of CTE. And I started researching this. And suddenly I was like, I remember going to the garage and calling my best friend. And I was like, I feel like I just read about a terminal diagnosis like That shit is scary.

I started really digging into the effects of blasts and repeated head trauma and, like, his 15 years playing football and 13 years as a breacher. And I was like, I don't know that this is purely psychological. I don't know that medication is going to help this. I know talk therapy is not helping it. And if anything, I feel like it could get worse over time. And time is of the essence. So that's when I really did this heart pivot.

And I saw him through new eyes. And I was suddenly overcome with compassion for him because even though he had become a monster, I remembered, I chose to remember who I met and who he was before this deterioration. And so I held on to the hope that I could get that person back, but I knew that it was going to be really, really, really tough and it might not happen. I started, like, I was most comfortable with Western medicine. And even though he was being a really good soldier and, like, taking all the medication that he was prescribed, I was like, I'm not sure that medication is what's, you know, fixable here. His only diagnosis really was he had his TBI documented all

throughout his medical record, but it was primarily like PTSD, PTSD. And in my mind, I'm like, gosh, I don't know about that because he loved to deploy. And he would probably still be deploying if, you know, shit didn't go so far south. I don't think that this is wrapped up in anything he did overseas. What did make more sense was the TBI piece. And so I started getting into brain clinics, and I got him into like five total. And he was willing, but, you know, it was weeks away from home.

It was a lot of diagnostics. There really wasn't a lot of hope or follow-up on the other side. And he was becoming more and more and more angry. and frustrated. And it was really hopeful that I get help. And my hope was diminishing month after month of more failed things. What do you do at a brain clinic?

Oh, gosh. I mean, they're all different. You take, you do a ton of batteries. You do a lot of cognitive testing. You know, they put you in machines. They spin you upside down. Like they do a bunch of stuff that are really, in my opinion,

for people who could like barely walk. and talk, you know, or have, you know, autism and all these other things. And so for me, I was there just, I felt like passing time. I'm like this, none of this stuff helps. Like, what am I, you know, what am I doing here? And really, oh, and you do like a lot of balancing. I mean, it's for people, again, this is my opinion, but it's for people that I consider really fucked up, right, that are not, like, could barely talk.

Do you at this point think you're fucked up? I was just looking for answers. I was like, just please, just somebody tell me like something. Okay, so you think there's questions of what the hell's wrong with it? 100%. Yeah. I mean, I left NICO with, you know, with some, you know, the fMRI is showing like, oh, you have these dead and parts of your brain that, you know, aren't working. And those are just TBIs.

Those are like TBIs, mild TBIs. He looked to me one time, Chaco, like, he was trying to get out the door and he used to be so, like, regiment. and like, you know, everything had a place and everything was organized. And he was just kind of like this disorganized, functioning, but chaotic guy now. And so he's trying to get out of the door for a flight. And he was profusely sweating. And his eyes were gigantic. And he looked at me.

And he was just like sheer terror. Like something is wrong with my brain. I don't know what's wrong with me. Something is not all right with my brain. And so. All throughout his medical record, it's like cognition issues, memory issues, balance issues. And I'm thinking he's the most capable human I know. There's something that's out of his control.

And I don't know, like doctors aren't helping. When they look at these TBIs, these black areas in your brain, what do they do about it? Do they do anything? No. No, because I think it's, again, I think it's, personalized because I know some individuals that had no scarring that were struggling bad, and then I know individuals that had a lot of scarring and they were fine. Maybe they weren't fine or maybe they were saying they were fine and they weren't doing well. But, you know, my

recollection and the conversations I have, people are all over the map. So individuals with no scarring to, you know, 45 lesions on their brain are acting different. And it didn't mean that the ones that higher scarring were acting worse and the ones that were, you know, maybe had none. So like I'm not a, I'm not a neuroscience or neuroscientist. Like I can't tell you why. But I think like everything else is just personalized. So there's no protocol for like, oh, memory loss, here's what you need to do. Yes.

No, there absolutely is. There's like exercises and yes. Yeah, there's things you can do. There's supplements you can take. you know, and I do all of it. Like I take every supplement that I can find that says this reduces inflammation or this helps you, you know, think clearly or, you know, whatever it is, like neutropics. Like I'll try anything now that says, hey, this is going to make your brain younger.

That's going to make you, you know, think more clearly. Yeah, I mean, I think there's still a lot of research around there about, you know, what we can take. But again, I go back to, you know, diet and exercise for all matters. We needed a nuclear option. It all matters. Yeah, you're right. But it all matters. It's not one thing.

And so how many of these brain clinic things did you go through? I would do five. And, you know, and honestly, I went to some really good ones, some like world renowned. And I thought they do really good stuff. But a lot of these places, as soon as you leave, like, it's kind of like they forget you. You know, so they collect your money, which are some of these are astronomical, you know, 15K, 30K, 2 weeks, a month, whatever it is. and then you leave and they forget about you. And that was the part that I, you know, I struggle with is that if individuals want to get better

or these places want to get people better, then they need to, there needs to be some type of continuum of care. Like they just need to check in on an individual 30 days, 90 days, or whatever it is. And, you know, we'll get probably, you know, more into it than what we're doing now. But like Amber was saying, I was getting frustrated because I maybe get a diagnosis, but not a, like, here's exactly what you do. a protocol. Go home and do this every day. It was just, they were all very similar. Great for diagnostics.

Great for diagnostics. But what do you do with those diagnostics? Yeah. Well, they don't make any money either by doing anything else than you showing up, paying your bill and then telling you to come back so you can pay another bill. So what was, when was, and where was rock bottom and what did it look like? Amber, what was it like for you where you are just, it can't get any worse than this right now? Do you mind if I, there's three stories that come to mind and I don't think I've shared them publicly. The first one was our son called me and said, are you home?

And I said, no, why? He goes, I need to borrow a shirt from dad. but when I went to your room, your bedroom doors closed, your bathroom doors closed. I'm standing at your closet, but the closet doors closed. And I'm afraid if I open it, I'm going to find dad hanging. And it was like a traumatic conversation, but it was also the normal in our house. And I just, you know, that was the first real like, oh shit, this isn't normal. How old is your son at this point?

15. And what is it that he? he's picking up on. It just felt palpable that dad didn't have a purpose anymore. And it catastrophe felt imminent.

And I didn't know what that looked like. I didn't know if that meant drinking and driving and wrapping his trucker on a pole. I didn't know if that meant taking his life. I don't know. It just felt like it's coming. And then one night he came home and I, you know, 11 o'clock, he's not home, 12 o'clock, he's not home, one, two. And I heard him come home.

And I was just, I was like, I need to put the dresser in front of the door. And then I ran out the back door. And I thought, this is not normal. This is, he's never, he's never, ever, ever been physically aggressive with me, not once. But it was tending in a direction that didn't feel safe because I knew he'd been drinking. And that particular night, neither one of our kids were home. They were both having sleepovers. And I just got unnerved.

And maybe I overreacted, but, you know, when you're sitting in a parking lot at 2 a.m., you're just like, this is not sustainable. And then the third thing that happened, which was like the true rock bottom, the culmination of my son feeling these things, me feeling these things, was when our daughter was riding with Marcus and he had gotten into some like road construction

and sort of like got lost or got off track and they were coming to pick me up from an event. I was out with my friends. And by the time they got to me, he was so frustrated. And of course, I didn't know. Had he been drinking?

I didn't, I just see my car coming down the street and out comes our daughter and she comes like spilling towards me and he tears off down the street. And she said he's crazy, mom. We can't get on the car with him. He'll kill us.

And she looked at me and she said, how much longer do we have to do this. And I said, not one more day. And the next day, I got on the phone with his best friend who died, Josh, with his family, who had a foundation. And I said, we need help. I think if he goes to California and he does this sort of like trifecta brain treatment, that I can at least have like a minute to figure out next steps. It was my last hope. And so they arranged for the funding. I arranged for him to leave what was supposed to be six weeks turned into like three months.

And during that three months, I came to visit him twice. And the first time I came to visit, things were pretty good for a week or so. But like on the last day of the trip, everything fell apart. And so I went home really defeated and frustrated. And, and, and, my mind, I was like, I don't think I can do this anymore. You know, we got him out of the house and there's been so much peace in my house since he's been away. I was doing, I went out and do TMS, like the transcranial magnetic. There was a, and not to knock that because that's incredibly beneficial, but it wasn't what we needed at the time. It wasn't enough. Would I sign him up to do it again? Like for an extra bonus.

to where he's at now, like totally. But it wasn't what we needed at the time. So I came home thinking, okay, this is it. I got to start making plans. And I did. I started making plans, but I wasn't like totally ready to pull the trigger because I just, I never wanted to leave him. But I definitely felt like I was in a position where I had to choose him or our kids.

And so he extended his say, got more time at the centers. And I thought, I'll go visit him one more time. So around this time for on my birthday, I came out to visit him. And we were in his truck and I said something so benign. And he started just like tearing down the five. And I thought, if I survive this truck ride, I'm done. And it didn't even tell him that I was leaving the next day. I got up and I packed my bag and I left for the airport and I came home.

And my mom was there with the kids. and I called my dad and I basically told my parents that I'm quitting. It was the first time that I'd really quit anything. And my dad was like, you know, this is not a disappointment to me. You are the, you are the most important thing right now and you feel that this is the right thing to do,

then I support you and whatever you need. And I said, I think he's going to be dead in two to five years. and I hate that. But I'm going to try to start forgiving myself now because I feel like the inevitable is going to happen. We are the only stabilizing force that he has in his life. And when that's gone, I don't know. And so I was really working on forgiving myself

and also like during the year or so leading into where we were at that point, I had been on my own really in-depth journey. of like healing and getting back into my faith and like tapping into a higher power to help sustain me. And so there was this massive storm all around me, but I had become the eye of the storm. And so things had never been so out of control, but I had never been so in control. And so I was thinking clearly, I was making like really strategic decisions, but at the time I was listening to my intuition, which was like you need to know that you've tried everything because, one, this is going to stay with your kids. And, you know, if the worst does happen,

they're going to be, they're going to have to deal with it for the rest of their lives. And two, am I going to be able to know and say that I've tried everything? So he was running out of funding in October. And at that point, our finances had become a mess. and he called home and said, I'm running out of funding. Like, can I come home? And I basically said, you can come home, but as soon as you get here, I want to talk. And so he came home and I sat him down and I basically took a completely different approach. Because up until that point, I mean, I definitely developed compassion for him.

And I had tried really hard for, you know, this like 18 months that he was going to all these brain clinics. But before that, it was like guilt, shame, condemnation, all of the things that I was feeling, I was basically projecting onto him. And I was creating what I was trying to avoid. So the more I would guilt him and shame him, the more bad behavior would come from it. So the more guilt and shame I would throw on, it was just this toxic cycle. So like this, the sort of time where I was reconnecting with just a greater wisdom of how to handle the situation, I was overcome with compassion for him and, like, seeing him for his struggles and for them seeming to be out of his control, where before I always thought, like, you're, you know, you

could figure it out. And so I just approached him in a completely new way, and I said, if you fight with me, I will fight for you every day of the rest of your life, but you have to fight with me. I love you. I will never leave your side. We've got to do this together. And he totally, it totally softened him. And he was like, what do you want to do?

And I said, there's one treatment that you haven't tried. One of our dear and trusted friends, a couple had gone down this path. So like one other team guy that we had known at the time. time who'd done this and his situation was like you know more of a crisis situation where ours was like very deliberate and we had been we'd known about it and talked about it on and off for a year but it seemed crazy uh so i re-approached him about it and i said you know to go to mexico and to try this and he was like i mean i'll try it like don't get your hopes up i remember saying that too I'm like there's no chance that something is going to work because we've tried all the stuff that we're supposed to.

Like guys that, you know, other team guys have gone to and have gotten better or not gotten better. But something that I thought was crazy that I read about seemed like it was crazy. I didn't think that trying something new was going to even slowly or slightly help. But I, you know, I committed just because like I sometimes, maybe like you, I feel like a, a, You know, a guinea pig. I'll try anything if you tell me like it works or it makes me, you know, bigger, faster, stronger, smarter. So, you know, I did some research and it started to make sense that, you know, initially when we're talking about psychedelic medicines, you know, they were intended and are intended for medical use, not for, you know, recreational parties. You know, anything could be abused for recreational parties. And so the more I read, the more research I read, I said, that does kind of make sense.

I'll, you know, basically I'll give it a go. When, what was rock bottom for you? Like when Amber's going through all this, like, from the outside looking at you, just seeming like there's just no hope. Yeah. What was rock bottom for you? No hope. Like, no hope, no passion, no drive, anger, frustration, sadness, you know, depression, all of it. Like, it just was like, again, going back to what we talked about earlier, didn't want to do the things I enjoyed doing, didn't want to hang out with anybody, didn't want to have a conversation, didn't want to do small talk, just all the above, just done.

Yeah, just done. And like everything else, I've had, I have days of, like, I don't want to call it joy, but just, you know, like some uplifting days. but the majority of days were down, including weeks on end. Some days I didn't want to get out of bed. Like I said, I just shut my phone off, where now, you know, we joke about it. As long as you're trending upwards,

you're going to have, like you said, like, you know, but yours is different. You know, you get upset over a situation. You know, that's completely normal. I'll still have some down days, but they'll only last like an hour or before they would last for literally days. And, you know, I think that just takes,

time over, you know, what we've been working on over the last couple years. But yeah, I was just, I was just checked out of everything, mentally, you know, mentally, physically, emotionally. There was no, there was nothing in sight. It was just like flat, clear, you know, not clear, but flat and really nothing to look forward to. Just real quick, how the hell were you guys paying for like everything? like just life like you weren't working for months on end how well it was a struggle it was a real struggle we maxed out a lot of credit cards marcus has he he's medically retired so yeah we did okay yeah yeah so i meant but i was like got it but which was not yeah it's not i mean but at least

it's like groceries right i mean yeah yeah yeah no it was and we had money no we had you know we had you know from the teams and stuff over the years um i'm trying to think were you working at the time or no. Well, Kaden had also gotten our Senate was dealing with some chronic health issues and so I was actually pulled away from... But we weren't paying out of pocket for a lot of these medical expenses

because most of the stuff, a lot of stuff wasn't covered in your insurance and you're probably dealing with it. Well, some of the stuff you're doing, but yeah, you know, luckily we had a lot of these foundations are there for like these reasons. All right, so we get the deal

where we're like, well, this is our last. shot last shot at the one treatment that you haven't tried yet which is psychedelic what is it drugs psychedelic plants what do you call it we'll call it we call it a psychedelic assisted therapy psychedelic assisted therapy so the drugs are psychedelics um psychedelic mind manifesting psychedelic that's the meaning of it psychedelic drugs are the you know the class the way this is going this medical route, they're including therapy in it because what they're showing with the research is that if they take the drug and then they bring in the therapy with it, the results are like through the

roof because the psychedelic really opens your mind up for change. Basically gives you new, like, if it's snowing and you have like fresh powder and tracks haven't been on the, on the powder yet, that's what psychedelics do. It basically gives you like this new blanket of snow to build your own new tracks. And you can still build those bad. So you can still build in bad habits. But the idea is if you have that coach or that therapist or that support, you can build new tracks, like good tracks, good habits. And that's the idea of psychedelic assisted therapy. At the time, we had no idea what we're signing up for. I wouldn't even know what we're talking about right now when I heard about this. Right. But there's a team guy who his wife was like, hey,

you need to do this. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, that is the essence of our community is that I would just take care of one another. And so they'd been there for us in the past and we knew about their struggles. They knew about our struggles. But, you know, thankfully, she felt compelled to reach out to me and then I talked to him and then he talked to Marcus. And because we trusted and respected them so much, I felt comfortable. I didn't do an ounce of research. I did nothing. I just convinced him to go, trusted them, got him on the plane. And I literally looked at him. at the steering wheel in my car like, this is it. I did the research.

And like I said, from what, from initially what I thought was, you know, I'll use a term crazy to it started to make sense that, again, these were intended for medical use. And, you know, it was stigmatized because we all know it as just crazy, crazy drugs that people around the 60s and 70s, you know, ran around concerts doing, losing their minds. but, you know, they're intended for mental health and behavioral health use, and now substance abuse and, you know, a host of other things. So the more I read, the more it made sense. And I figured, okay, I'm going to give this a shot.

So you get on a plane? You just said, you drop them off at the airport? Yeah, and I'm like, this is it. This is like putting everything on the table. And if it doesn't work, I'm going to have to come back to the drawing board. If it does work, the best I can hope for is that it buys me some time. to find something that's a little bit more comfortable. I didn't think it was like a magic bullet,

but I definitely thought that if anything, it'll just buy me some time. And then I went to see him the next day. So I can talk about that whenever, but. Well, yeah, let's get. So you get on a plane, and where do you fly to, Marcus? Coming to San Diego. Sweet.

Yeah, it's not bad. And then a caravan down to a clinic in Mexico. I've been operating for a long time with a good reputation. We'll keep those separated for now because one, just kind of security reasons guys going down. We like to try to keep the two separated. Wait, what are we keeping separated? Just us, what we're doing with the nonprofit

and then the retreats that a lot of the people are going to for these to do these medicines. So we just don't like to connect the two. I don't understand. That's okay. That's good. We'll talk about it as we'll talk about it as we'll. go. So, when you say keep these things separated, it just mean like different clinics or something?

Like disclosing the retreat location or name or anything. Okay, got it. Yeah, yeah, for sure. No problem. Got that. Okay. Check. Check and Roger. So my communication skills were terrible there. So I apologize. No, it's all good. So you go to this clinic. Yeah, I go to this place. With the other team guy. Oh, you're with another team guy. Is he going to do it too? No, the one who, he's just escorting you. He's escorted me and watched. He just bro it out. He's, he's growing out and make sure I'm good. Because I don't know what to expect. What is the place like?

Is this like? No, awesome. Is it like a, like beautiful home, overlooking the water, everything, perfect food, staff.

Does it seem like a hospital? Does it seem like a hospital? Does not seem like a hospital. Does not seem like a hospital. Yeah. And it's set up with like full medical, you know, you're on a EKG or a heart rate monitor.

You're doing your analysis to make sure there's nothing in your system. You're doing blood work to make sure you're not, lying. There's a whole protocol. And the more stringent you are on the screening, the better the outcome. Individuals that have trouble with psychedelic medicine, again, is the screening. So if the screening is not done correctly, there can be issues. You screen properly, there's almost little to no issues. And so the more that this whole industry moves forward, it's just got to be done correctly. And so this place, again, has been running for a long time, had been doing it the right way, not an underground shaman that is getting drugs from God knows where and saying, here, do this, it's good for you. Getting drugs from Fred.

Yeah, right. Who's making it in his bathtub, exactly. Who was a chemist in high school. How long are you there for, like, okay, so you show up? Yeah, it's a three to five day event. some are shorter, some are longer. You do this, you know, you do a full, like I was saying, a full intake, a full medical screening. You talk to a psychedelic coach who's a therapist first, so like a psychologist or like a licensed therapist who's trained in psychedelic medicine.

They prepare you for the experience. And again, the better outcomes are the ones who prepare the most. So if you can What that individual does That licensed professional Is going to talk to you about what your experience may be like Or what you're going through and what you may experience And the idea is to prepare your they call it set and setting

Your mindset get your mindset in the right place to go into these treatments And so sometimes you hear about these bad trips Sometimes bad trips are Just that an individual's mindset was not in a good place They were at a slayer concert They were at a Slayer concert or yes, for sure. Or they watched like a nasty movie that they started thinking about during their experience that just turned it sideways. But here's the other thing about bad experiences is what we're learning.

Some of those bad experiences, actually many or most of them, especially with team guys and other veterans, they're good experiences. Those bad experiences, they have to go through to get out the other side. So the bad experiences are some of the shit that they may experience as a kid. Maybe there's some sexual assaults that went on as a child. Maybe they did watch their friend get popped in the head and die right in front of them, and they experienced that on their journey. So all types of that. So those are bad trips, but those bad trips are actually like showing them working through stuff.

Releasing this effect. You know, people may take years doing it through quote-unquote talk therapy. or psychotherapy, you can do that in a few days, done properly. Again, not at a Slayer concert with Joe the Shaman. So what's the... So you screen. You screen, you do some integration, excuse me, some preparation. Again, this is from the therapist, coach.

Once that's done, you're given the medicine. And just like you would take ibuprofen or Tylenol or excedrin or probably a few others that I don't know for a headache, psychedelic drugs are the same way. So there's ibogaine and there's psilocybin and there's MDMA and there's what am I missing? Iowaska that you're hearing about. So there's all these psychedelic drugs that slightly do, they're similar but they do something slightly different. but they're all relatively trying to solve the same problem. And so the drug that I experienced was called Ibigen. And again, to me, you could have told me I was eating fruit loops.

I'd be like, okay, fruit loops. I had no idea. Is it a pill? Yeah, it's a pill. It's just like powdered pill. It's in pill form. You take it dependent upon your body weight. But again, it's personalized.

So I metabolize shit faster than you might. So what works for me? If I take, I don't know, I'm making this number 800 milligrams, you may need, you know, 1.2 grams. And just because I maybe metabolize it faster or slower. So it's science, but there's also a little bit of subjectivity to the amount that individuals need. I'm having a flashback of when you were talking about when you were drinking for the first time. You're like, I don't understand how this is going to make me like think any different. Oh, this is exactly the same.

this is probably even worse because I mean we're talking about a we're talking about going on a journey here the world's most powerful thing and so that's where I was getting at is that Ibegain is considered one of the world's most powerful psychedelics that's why we call it the nuclear option not everybody needs to do this no no way near or not even close to everybody needs to do this but what we're seeing is some of the stuff that I was experiencing you know as I was transitioning out of the teams and like the years of like you know if you want to call it comorbidity of other things like oh he's a little depressed and maybe he's got some tbis and maybe he's going on you know going through some shit with transition and you know ibegain's good but for an individual that maybe just going

through a little bit of depression maybe can't get themselves out of you know out of a whole maybe ibegain is not the right thing for it because it is it is a really rough journey and i'm sure like you said you've talked to some friends. It's not fun. Like, it's not joy at all. And anybody who takes that for recreational use, like, I want to talk to them. And actually, they need to go talk to a psych because there's something definitely wrong with that individual.

So you take it. Yeah, you take, so you take this medicine. I'm going to call it a medicine, even though I don't think technically we can call it yet, but we're calling it medicines because they are medicines. And then, you know, you lie down to bed, you put, like, noise-canceling headphones on. You put eye shades on, and, you know, within an hour, you start kind of going into this experience. And for everybody, it's different. But you basically go on a, you know, six to eight to 12 or even longer hour journey.

And for everybody else, again, because it's your mind or my mind and our minds are different, what I'm going to experience is going to be different from what you experienced or from what, you know, you experience. And it's working on a few different things. So one is the story, and that's like the psychological piece, the trauma piece, where if there are real things that really fucked you up in the past, whatever it is. So a lot of the addiction, right, is coming, finding out from things that happen in individuals' lives, not just because they like to drink or they like to do heroin or whatever. They're doing it because something fuck them up so bad that they turn to that. Whatever it is. And again,

we don't need to discuss what. Whatever that is, the psychedelic is a really good job. And they say it's a jokester too because it will show you that. And it'll fuck with you too. But the thing is, what you just said, sometimes the only way, the only way the only way to heal is through and the only way to conquer something is through.

Like you have to face it. We know that. You can't bury stuff. Or if you have an issue with a team guy that you work with, if you just keep burying or put stuff off on the side, it's going to blow up one day.

But if you can take that person and say, hey, let's settle our differences. What's going on here? You don't like me. I don't like you. you why we have to work together if we don't have that conversation it's it's going to be messed up forever so that that's what the psychedelic does to the mind it shows you the problem that you're dealing with and you face it in this 12 hour journey and it could suck and for me it was it was

it was 12 hours of like gore and blood and just crap but when I was done it literally felt like I just took a thousand pounds out of a backpack. It was just like, it was just like this relief that I never had before. And all this like pent up frustration that Amber's talking about, that just like went away. And for everybody else, it's different. And so what talk therapy or psychotherapy can take five or ten or 15 years.

I mean, I still have friends up in L.A. that are still seeing a psychologist for 20 years. I'm like, dude, I can help you out, probably in a week, like you've been paying this person. It's obviously not helping. You know, it can do that in a much faster time frame. And like Amber said, it's not a panacea.

It's not a magic bullet. Sometimes you need to go down twice. Sometimes maybe you need to do it three times. Maybe you need to do it once a year. Everybody's different. But again, I don't want people who are listening to get the wrong idea that this is one and done or it's like a magic pill because, you know, everybody would be rushing to do it and think like, again, you know, all my answers, you know, be solved in just this, you know,

this bottle right here. It takes a lot of work. The experience itself is going to suck. It's going to be miserable. You're going to cry. You're going to throw up. Like, you're going to, like, nobody wants to face their rapist. You know what I mean? So if they were, they were raped as a young child and that's what's affecting you for the, like, you're going to face that individual during, and that's, that's pretty traumatic for an individual, right? If they're growing up and their uncle was molesting them for years upon years, you know, upon years, if that's still affecting them in their life, they're going to face that in their journey, and that's tough, but you know what? You need to face that to move on, and that's what these medicines do. They also work on the brain, so they

promote neurogenesis, which meaning is like, you know, brain growth, and they're turning on parts of the brain that may have not been working before, and I think, That's what we're seeing in the success for a lot of these guys is if they do have mild TBIs and they have these scarring that we're talking about and maybe parts of their brain, we're not allowing them to function well. It is allowing them to function well now. So there's a host of things and I don't want to get in the science because I'm way above my pay grade, Jocko, but, you know, this experience was radical.

It was, you know, did a 180 for me. It was life-changing and life-saving. And Amber actually came in that, day after. And I walked down the hallway and I, we just. First of all, I freaked out because it hit me when I was in the car headed there. I was very uncomfortable. And I was raised, you know, super conservative. And I feel like, you know, I was in the survival mode and suddenly like, like, this peace had come. And in the car on the way there, I had this moment where I was like, I can't go. I don't know what we've just done. I think what we've done is bad. And I'm too scared to face it. And my girlfriend

was like, you have to go. He's asking for you. And we told him you're coming, so you have to go. And I walked in there so uptight and scared of, oh, it was the most nerve-wracking feeling. And I heard him walking down the hall. And I was just like, oh, my gosh, please, please let this have worked. And he came around the hall and immediately I could just see that he was back. It was like, it was literally like being reunited with the person that I met, which is a complete and utter, excuse me, language, mind fuck. It really, it really threw me in the best ways and also in the worst ways because then you start to doubt it in second guess. like it's too good to be true and like you're just lighting your walls down and you're like, oh, don't do that because it's too, it's, this isn't going to last.

So a lot of spouses have experienced that and that mild freak out, you know, is certainly replaced with this feeling of complete relief. And then how do we maintain this? Yeah. So the first thing I did, I said, Amber, this is exactly, I mean, the first thing out of my mouth was like, this is exactly what the guys need. I say, we keep getting, you know, I keep getting phone calls of, you know, friends at are like struggling like I was.

I'm like, dude, I can't take care of you because I can't even fucking take care of myself right now. So when I experienced this, like, that's the first thing I said. I was like, we got to figure out a way to like get our friends here and do the same thing. Like we have to figure out how to raise money because someone paid for me, you know, $4,000 or whatever it was.

And so I said, well, how do we get, you know, our buddies and families that are struggling to do the same thing? He said, I don't know. We said, well, like, we got to go raise money. Let's, you know, we'll start a nonprofit. again, had no idea what we were talking about. We'll go, we'll start a nonprofit, we'll go raise money,

and then we'll fund our friends so they could get the same healing that, like, I feel like I'm experiencing right now. We thought maybe a handful. Yeah, we didn't know. Honestly, we didn't know. And that's what we did. Well, then we were contacted by Elizabeth, and she said, I want to give to a veteran organization.

He actually had his treatment on better. Veterans Day. So it was really special. And then end of your giving, you know, right after that in December made this lady contact Marcus and say, I need a recommendation for a veteran's organization to give to. And he goes, you know, we can't give you a tax right off, but if you pay this clinic, I could get, you know, five of my friends down there for a treatment that could save their life. And she was totally on board. And that's what really launched what has become vet. but we don't want to talk about it. We don't want to talk about it because it's so stigmatized and so taboo to say you're struggling.

Like maybe some of our internal friends knew, primarily because the wives were talking, not because the guys were talking. And so my thing was I don't want to jinx it. I don't want to, I don't know if it'll work for everyone. I don't know if it'll continue working for us. I don't want to talk about it until 12 months have gone by and we've raised money and provided this opportunity for 12 other guys to go down there. And at that point, maybe we'll talk about it.

This one's not one for like, you know, PR and stepping out of the shadows. So this was a big deal. But I thought, well, I'm just going to buy ourselves a year here and get some really good data and come out with like a little bit of foundation beneath us. And his treatment was on Veterans Day. So November 11th would have been the one. year mark. Chad Wilkinson took his life on October 28th. And we were sitting in his funeral just days before the one year anniversary of Marcus, or right around the same time. And we'd been to the Little

Creek Chapel so many times for more funerals. And this felt so different. And I was seeing all the same guys that would deploy, you know, with Marcus and be at all these other funerals. And like, you know, they had more medals and they had more gray hair. and they had more wrinkles, and they were, you know, getting older and becoming, like, you could see in their faces that, like, they were struggling. And this is the first suicide funeral I'd been to. And I started shaking, Draco.

Like, I had this tremble release response at Chad's funeral where I was jackhammering, shaking. The whole bench was shaking. People were looking down, like, what is going on down there? And I was just overcome with this conviction of, like, If we don't talk, if we don't step out and get out of our comfort zone, more guys are going to die by suicide. And we're going to just do whatever it takes to prevent that.

Because this community and this chapel can't take that. So we're not going to let that happen. And so we started basically just stopped hiding kind of what we were doing and started speaking about it a little bit because we thought, well, if we start speaking about it, you know, and of course we talked to Sarah. We just said, hey, you know, we're just going to start talking about this a little bit so people know. So in the unlikely event that an individual is getting to the point where Chad got to,

they might pause and go, oh, you know what? There's something I haven't tried. Or there's this thing that I heard is working for some individuals after, you know, because mostly a lot, I mean, most of these individuals are on the same path. Like they go to NICO, they go to these brain clinics. They're on a bunch of these mood stabilizers. And then they're like, okay, well, now what? So I at that point just said, you know, fuck my career because I was still like trying to figure out like to get into corporate America and, you know, whatever.

I just said, I think this is more important. And if someone is not going to hire me or doesn't want to work with me because we're talking about psychedelic medicines, then like, Shame on them. Like, I don't need, I don't want to work with that individual. Like, open your mind a little bit. We found something that works, and that's the story here. The story is not Marcus and Amber running around doing psychedelic drugs or running a cult, which we were told, by the way, initially. We were running a cult, which is kind of funny.

But, no, we're trying to heal people. That's all. We found something that worked. I think that's what happened. And so that was it. We just started speaking about it. We started doing, you know, interview here, interview there, maybe a small. podcast, you know, and, you know, one thing leads to another. People get interested, people with

money want to donate, and you also know how the community is. Like, what I love most about the community is just this like unwavering commitment to caring for one another. And for every person that comes through our program, because the efficacy rates are so high, they refer back three to five of their buddies. And so it creates a need that we, simply, you know, are having really hard time meeting. But to date, we've provided funding for over 600 other operators, not all seals. I mean, we serve all branches of special operations. But, you know, it's, it's really taken on a life of its own. And it absolutely started at Chad Wilkinson's funeral and this just goal of ending better in suicide. Did you, your original, like when you first came out

and started talking about it. That was after Chad's funeral. Yeah. At Chad's funeral is whenever I was so convicted of like everything we do, I'm keeping Chad Wilkinson and Sarah and the kids right here. Because the fallout from suicide, like to survive all these combat deployments and then lose your loved one to suicide.

I can't even fathom. I just super convicted. How long did it take to start getting traction? Almost immediately. Almost immediately. We had gotten traction, mega traction, in terms of the need. But what didn't necessarily match that was the donor dollars. It was very stigmatized.

We were talking about four years ago at this point. it was still very stigmatized and unknown. Like there's a lot of, there's a lack of education around psychedelic therapies, and then there's misinformation around psychedelics. And so to combat those two stigmas and to also try to combat the stigma of saying you need help, it's been like, you know, pretty dicey. Yeah, that's a war on all fronts right there. Yeah, yeah.

Well, then you go into the real fun war of like military leadership and policy makers and big pharma. And VA and, you know. But it seems like it's getting really good traction right now. Is it, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah, because veterans are driving it. And the veterans driving it at the tip tip of the spear. It's the seal community and the broader special operations community.

And like, I don't know. If I needed to get something done, I'd call you guys. So the charity is called, well, it's got on your t-shirt there, right? It's Vets Solutions. Yeah, that's veterans exploring treatment solutions. And it's vet solutions.org if people want to go and check that out and can they donate from there and all that? Yeah, yeah. And so what's the plan there on that side of things?

Just continue to grow, continue to accept donations, continue to get more people treatment. Jocka, we get upwards of 10 qualified applications a day needing funding. A day. And it is so overwhelming. Like, I actually dread it when we have to go through applications. We do it on Mondays. And, you know, we have a certain number of grants or funds allocated. And choosing who gets those funds when everyone is so deserving.

It's like... So we actually have to, you know, we had like an algorithm built in to, like, rack and stack who's done the most combat deployments. Like, what are they going through? So it actually, you know, it ranks the individuals, you know, or if there's like an immediate crisis. They immediately get put to the top and they get a phone call immediately. And so there's a whole, you know, there's a whole system to it because, again, of those 10, if we're talking about only being able to support 175 to 200 a year, there's, you know, most of those people are not getting funding. There are thousands, tens of thousands that could use it or need it or

are trying to access it. But because these are scheduled, one substances in the United States, they have to travel abroad. So, you know, one of our, I would say, most effective talking points when we're talking to policymakers and leaders is that, you know, our nation's veterans are leaving the country they fought for for access to meaningful care. And this is so far superior to anything else that's currently available, at least from my perspective, what I'm seeing is there's healing happening in four key areas of veteran suffering. And so when we were in such a bad way, if you would have given me immediate relief in one of the four areas, it would have been an absolute blessing. The fact that it provides immediate relief for most people in all four categories is unheard of.

So the first category is psychological trauma. So anything that's affecting someone, you know, even on a subconscious level, whether it's childhood trauma, repressed trauma, you know, they don't even remember, war trauma. whatever the source of trauma is, it deals with that. Like Marcus said, it shows you the trauma, and then you're able to work through it, confront it, deal with it, put it away, be done with it. There's an anti-addictive benefit, which is really ironic because these drugs are scheduled

as being addictive and like a high potential for abuse. They're actually being used to treat addiction, but because they're so challenging to even research in the United States, that data is largely missing. So Marcus and so many other guys that are going down there Might not have a full-blown addiction But they have substance use disorder And so for Marcus it was alcohol

Some guys go down there because they're hooked on opioids Whatever the addiction is it like resets it scrubs and resets those Receptors Receptors and the addiction you know no longer has the upper hand there's a physiological benefit as it pertains to TBI. At vets, we primarily write grants for Ibogaine and 5MEODMT protocol. That's two of the six psychedelics that we can provide funding for. Most guys are going down there to do Ibogaine and 5MU.

We're just wrapping up a study with Stanford. The preliminary data is not released yet, but I think that it will show significant improvements in cognitive functioning, neurological functioning, it creates this really incredible neuroplasticity in the brain. So the brain's ability to change itself, create new neural pathways, neuronal connections. You know, whatever it's doing in the brain as it relates to TBI is pretty remarkable. And our Stanford study, I think will prove that. The fourth thing is a spiritual connection or reconnection.

And I think that that's what science will never be able to fully explain, that when someone feels as though they're put on this earth by a higher power and we're all connected and like, you know, we're all humans and we're alive and the grass is alive and the flowers are alive and the animals are alive. And you see that you're part of this really incredible, huge ecosystem of purpose and perfection. You feel as though you have a place to belong again. And you feel this God connection that I think is the answer to a lot of society's issues right now. So psychological, anti-addictive, physiological, and spiritual. When you check all four of those boxes, you go home like, I feel pretty good.

Now, on the back end of this, there's a lot of things that are really important. So we're screening, another one of our screening categories is like, how committed are you to this? Because we've got guys coming to us that say, I don't know anything about this. My buddy said to do it. And then we've got guys that say, I've been researching this for a year, and I've changed my diet, and I'm really committed to working with a coach. Those are guys, they're going to have the best chance for success. The spouse support is another huge factor in overall trajectory and success. So, you know, it's every, the secular just provides this massive reset. And then when you get someone like from fetal position to one knee,

like they can stand up and take it from there, especially guys like you guys. So guys are leaving these weeks with this checklist of now what? Because now I feel great again. And so for Marcus and for hundreds of others at this point, you're feeling good and you're feeling like, you know, suddenly you've got a thousand pounds lifted off of you. you're sleeping better. When you're sleeping better, you're getting up early. And you're getting up early. You can work out now.

When you work out, you want to take supplements. You need supplements. You might as well eat right. And it just becomes this sort of like self-propelling, biohacking snowball effect in the very best ways. And those are the guys that are going through these remarkable changes. But for anyone that would think like, oh, you're just going to Mexico to do drugs. Uh-uh.

No, no, no. People that are going down there are. leaning into the hardest work of their lives and actually having to come face to face with things that they might have been running from for decades. She's being conservative about the Stanford study too, but the results are remarkable, like so remarkable that I think there's going to be a lot of eyes on it once they release it to the public Wednesday? No, no, no, no.

It won't be published for quite some time. It won't be published, but we're going up there Wednesday just to they're going to talk about the results officially, but not just from the reduction of symptoms like what we were talking about earlier, but also the fMRIs that are coming out before and after are like astounding. It'll be groundbreaking. It won't just be groundbreaking for veterans. It'll be groundbreaking for contact sport athletes for first responders. First responders. For Alzheimer's patients. for Parkinson's patients.

Like the changes in the brain on the physiological level, I hypothesize that there's not been anything like it to date. Marcus, when you, I'm dragging you back real quick. Yeah. What, give me an example of what you see. You said bloody, gory. Number one, do you, do you, know that it's a cycle that it's psychedelic does it or does it feel like it's a real thing

and like give me just an example just any example just so people kind of can connect all these positive things to like what you see when you're on this journey yes there you go um i tried hard not to use the word trip because i'm sure that's like we're trying not to call this thing trip. I picked that up. So you're on this journey. It's funny you say that because, you know, obviously we're around the whole kind of medical psychedelic community now and you hear all these things or how they correct people because, you know, a politician doesn't want to hear like drug, doesn't want to hear psychedelic. They immediately think of Woodstock or, you know, right? So, you know, we've been doing the same thing. Like we say this, we don't say that.

You know, it all means the same thing. So I appreciate that. I'll make a very simple one and one that's not bloody or gory. One of my close friends, his experience is he was sitting down and each individual from extortion was like dressed in white and would sit down and put their hand on his shoulder and say, hey man, it's okay. Like, I'm good. Like you can let me go now. But he had the conversation with that person.

He would look at him and go, yeah, okay. And then that guy would go. And then another guy from extortion would sit down dressed in white and say, hey, man, I'm good. Like, I'm good. I'm in a good place. And then that person would go. And each person that he was like obviously having whatever this person was dealing with

had to do with all the buddies he just lost on that helo. And once that was gone, again, he, he, he, just dealt with whatever that was his trauma it may have been locked back into subconscious as amber mentioned but that's what he was dealing with in life and once he faced them and talked to them and they talked to him and they told him it was okay he's okay like he's not bad anymore like he let he let that shit go and uh i you know we hear these stories like over and over and over and it's um you know it's it's it's they're all different but they're all the same And I think that's what's pretty remarkable about it.

I've developed some of my own theories, whether they're true or not. I don't know. Amber has theories, as we're finding out of it. Science hasn't proven my theories. But my theory is that whatever the trauma response is, it goes back to the origination of the trauma. And some people channel that trauma in ways that society deems unhealthy versus healthier. I feel like what I've seen in the special operations community is that something in the early childhood has like enabled this sort of like dialing down of suffering. Like like you just the community is able to maintain such suffering.

And so a lot of guys I felt are going way back to childhood and dealing with like sort of repressed things. And I don't know, Marcus, if you want to tell any of her stories like about your actual experience of going back to. actual memories in childhood, but then also to your question, Jocco, on why the blood and the gore, I also feel like when you're in the face of evil, that sort of can stick to you. And Marcus had to get through some really dark, very demonic, you know, heaviness to come out on the other side. And he's been back to do Ibegain since. He basically does this annual protocol reset.

Or like every year and a half. Yeah. And so if he started in the basement of his soul, every year he gets a floor higher. And the last time he did I Begin, which would be the fourth time, he described it as blissful. Yeah, so it wasn't painful. It wasn't tough. It wasn't angry. And I didn't feel like I was like, you know, fighting demons.

You hear a lot of guys, I mean, they talk about literally like fighting demons. It was none of that. It was just kind of like peaceful and surreal and not, not tough. And what it told me is like, I'm good. Like, I think I've scrubbed whatever I needed to scrub. You scrub the darkness. Yeah, you know, you kind of just got rid of any of the garbage that I think was, you know, affecting me. And so, I mean, I'm like, I'm light now. Like, I don't have nightmares anymore. And I think that was like a lot of the blood. go or like, you know, you'd go to try to pull the trigger and like the magazine would fall out or like the barrel would melt, like just all the dumb stuff. Like I don't have, I don't have those visions anymore. It is and some of it is funny.

I mean, if you hear some of the stories, you're like, man, that's fucking hilarious, right? Especially like team guys talk about their funny stories. I'm laughing because like everyone has that dream. Like you're out of bullets. You got's not working. You forgot your grenades or you punched somebody 100 times and they're just like, look at you? Yeah. I'm sure you get even more pissed up.

You're like, wait a minute, I'm really good at fighting. Why can't I knock you out in my dream? Yeah, exactly. So we're, we are trying to get this to as many veterans as we can. That's what you guys are working on right now. And you were telling me earlier, you're also looking to take this in a, in a direction private as well. Yes. Like as a privately owned company.

Yeah. So, you know, as Amber was alluding to earlier, the amount of applications we get a day, those are just from veterans. The amount of individuals that reach out via, you know, Instagram or Facebook or, you know, really LinkedIn, you know, and LinkedIn is like a, you know, professional network. So a lot of, like a lot of corporate, a lot of CEOs and entrepreneurs just asking, hey, you know, how do I do this? You know, I heard you talk on so-and-so. You know, where do I go to find these treatments? Can you introduce me to a coach or a therapist? And so, you know, the more of that I saw over the last two years, I just said, Amber, you know, when we started this, we said, hey, we'd help, we want to help our teammates first, team guys, but we want to help, you know, all the special operations.

And then we want to help, you know, athletes, like, you know, NFL players at 99% of the brains they found autopsied, you know, from the individuals that have took their own life or all had CTE. You know, we want to help those individuals. We said, you know what? Like, we want to help anyone that is, like, going through the same thing. And, again, it's not everyone. It's just everyone that is struggling the same way. And that was kind of like my vision a long time ago is, you know, I want to start with veterans and help our brothers and sisters, but, like, I want to help everybody.

And it took the interest of some, you know, a VC that started donating to vets and just said, hey, I really love what you're doing. Like, I think this is needed. I understand personalized medicine. How do we take this and introduce it to the broader population and reach more people? And I said, well, let's work on that. So I've been working on that for a year, and we're actually launching this week. And the company is called Tara, T-A-R-A, Tara Mind.

The website will be taramind.com. Right now, we'll have a – we basically have a landing and info page for people to go to and just put in some information. and they'll start getting some newsletters and some info. But launching at the end of this year or will be the first couple weeks of January, we're launching a care navigation and directory and basically a platform for psychedelic retreats, clinics, providers, coaches, basically a marketplace to connect all these individuals. And so the individuals that are reaching out to us on a regular basis and saying, hey, where do I go?

What do I do? We're building that platform for them. And we're going to provide educational content. We're going to vet everything and have high standards and protocols that these providers in the U.S. that are doing this. Right now, it's going to be ketamine, ketamine-assisted psychotherapy, because that's the only thing that's legal. So we're just, you know, the vision really is to build the largest platform in the world

to connect, you know, all the stakeholders. And eventually we will be collecting data on all these individuals and we will be going to the insurers and making sure at the end of the day that they pay for these because right now not everybody can pay $6,000 to go outside the U.S. and do it. Right now it's like the top 1% can do that. Or if you're a nonprofit, you know, and you're a nonprofit, you know, raise money for this, you know, then an individual can go. But again, we're supporting 200 people a year. How do you support 20 million? Insurance is going to have to pay for that. So the idea with Tarah Mind is

we connect all the stakeholders in psychedelic medicine. And then eventually we go to the insurers and show them the data and say, hey, this is working. You need to offer this up now as a benefit and pay for these individuals and subsidize these treatments. So Tara Mind. Tar Mind. Where we get that from? Tara mind. Tara is the is one of the highest, the most, I guess you want to call it important deities in Buddhist and Hindu traditions. And it's a goddess of, you know, of empathy and bringing people to the light and those in suffering to bring them to deliverance. So it's kind of a kind of a, I thought, a cool name, especially where kind of we came from and where we're going and what it's doing to people. And the URL was available. And the URL was available for, I think, $12, actually.

Well, it sounds like we're kind of up to date then, right? This thing is launching in a couple days. We talked about VET Solutions, VETSolutions.org. You're on social media. You're on, you're at, Marcus, you're at Marcus Capone. Then you guys have, am I right? Marcus underscore Amber underscore Capone? Yeah.

What's the deal with that? I started that Instagram page. Listen, we both like low the social media, so we're really not on it that much. But we definitely have help with our social media accounts because we want to make sure that we're providing information to others that are interested. Psychedelic therapies are poised to be the next major breakthrough. in mental health care. So SSRIs were the last major breakthrough in mental health care.

Gee, thanks. 35 years ago. Yeah. And they're really, you know, for some they work. But, you know, there is that warning label on the side of SSRI prescriptions that says this may trigger like an uptake, increase in suicidal ideation. Well, why are we fighting veteran suicide with anything linked to suicide? Like, that's so asinine to me.

So as veterans continue to drive this. forward in the United States, I certainly feel like psychedelics are poised to come on the scene a lot faster than maybe some had initially anticipated. Yeah. Especially with some of the conservative, you know, lawmakers that are coming out now. For sure. You know, Dan, you know, French Rose put a, you know, put through an amendment to provide funding, not for veterans, but actually, and this was, I think, a complete surprise for everybody,

for active duty. So he thinks active duty should have access to this if they need it. And of course, you know, Governor Rick Perry, who's been in our corner from day one, you know, he helped us pass a bill in Texas. And he's just been a strong component or proponent of what we're doing. Again, because it's a tool that works. Yeah. You know, that's all he cares about. That's, it's really good to see the open mind of people realizing that this thing.

And that's the same thing. I've seen, you know, I've had some good friends. Had Dakota Meyer come on here. And, like, he actually, he, I think, I talked about this on the podcast. but, you know, he asked me, like, hey, do you think I should do this? I'm like, dude, I have no idea. So I called like Joe Rogan and Tim Ferriss. And I was like, hey, you know, like, what do you guys think?

I have no idea. They were like, they actually know they both were like, were thoughtful about it. And Joe had had Dakota on the podcast and he was like, he was like, yeah, I think I like, I think it would be good for him. And I was like, cool. And I said, hey, man, I'm in no position. to recommend the stuff, but here's what I got from my friends that know more about the stuff. And, you know, Tim Ferriss is really involved in, you know, the Johns Hopkins stuff that's going on. So I feel like at least I, you know, I'm never a person that claims to know anything I don't know. I mean,

I don't ever want to do that. But I talk to people that, you know, gave the best recommendation from their perspective, which, and he went down there and he did it. And he said it was awesome, man. and it really helped them out a lot. And, and I mean, that guy's been through the freaking ringer, you know, just been through the ringer as, you know, losing his freaking team. And, man, and he came back in a much better spot. So when I see things like that, and then you have, like, a real conservative, like, you know, Rick Perry just, like, on board.

That's just really cool to see. And Dan's obviously, you know, he's got friends that have done it. And for, you know, he's, he's, he's. taking it forward. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's true leadership. You know, that's what I say, because again, I don't think, I'm sure they were exactly like I was, like this doesn't sound right, this is crazy, and then you do some research,

you really, you talk to friends, and then you have, like, loved ones that you see have gotten better. It's the only decision to make. But, again, to do it the right way. And I'm glad that you talk to people like Tim, you know, and Joe Rogan, and I'm glad they didn't just say, oh, yeah, go ahead and do it. Like, they were like, well, let's, you know, and we're not. You know, and we've seen that with some of the retreats because, again, we write grants for individuals seeking out these treatments.

So we talk to a lot of vetted retreats. And some have actually questioned, like, wait a minute, it's a combat veteran. We're not so sure that we want to take that person because, you know, they got PTSD and we're not sure if they're going to flip out. And so, you know, we're dealing with individuals that are like, you know, worst of the worst in terms of, in terms of, in terms of, like trauma and some other things. A lot of these other places are just used to dealing with some people are coming in with. I got some depression or, you know, I have a little anxiety I want to deal with. So this should be definitely looked at and approached carefully.

I got asked a question the other day about basically a guy was like, hey, you know, I'm hanging out with these friends and they're drinking a lot and I'm not really drinking. They're smoking pot and, you know, I'm not really smoking pot. Or when I do, I kind of like waste the weekend. or waste the night, like, what do you think? You know, how can I drink less and, you know, is it cool to drink sometimes and blah, blah, blah, right? And I started kind of answering the question,

and I was, I just sort of said, I have seen enough people's lives ruined from drugs and alcohol. I actually, at this juncture in my life, I can't even say like, hey, dude, it's okay, you know, have a, I just can't do it. I can't do it anymore. I just, I've seen too many people's lives destroyed from drugs and alcohol. And so when I talk about this stuff, it's coming from someone that like is as far,

I don't think I could be anymore. Well, I guess I could be a little bit more. I just think that drugs and alcohol are so bad for you and I've seen them ruin so many people's lives. I've seen them ruin freaking, how many team guys have you seen just like trash their lives with just alcohol? Yeah, you can't count.

It's ridiculous. And so I can't get behind it at all. And yet at the same time, I've had plenty of friends that have gone. They've done this. And what I like about what you guys are talking about, it's a hardcore screening. It's not like, oh, you feel a little bad.

Okay, let's just jump right into this. It's like, hey, let's try some other protocols along the way and make sure that this is what you really need. And then I don't know if I want to use the term last resort, because I don't know if you guys consider it a last resort. But to me, it's like, okay, I've tried this. I've tried that. I've tried something else.

It's been too much time and I'm at a rock bottom and I need help. And this seems like, okay, I need to get in there. Yeah, because from my perspective, I've seen drugs and alcohol ruin so many people's lives that I just can't get behind it. But, you know, here you have something that people aren't getting like addicted to it. It's not, you know, it's not like the seven or whatever you said, nine freaking prescription drugs. It's curing addictions. Yeah. Um, so appreciate, appreciate that side of it and not just throwing this at people.

Just like, you know, no one should be thrown into situations like this. Um, you got to go through the proper screening and, and then go in the proper facility. Uh, you know, you guys are talking about like, you know, Fred the shaman from Wisconsin or whatever. Yeah. You know, whatever this, like, just going into random places and doing it or at a Slayer concert. It's not what we're talking about at all. Um, and like I said. It seems to have helped.

I know it's helped. I know it's helped. I mean, obviously, I'm sitting here in front of you, and it helped you get back from the brink, and I've got plenty of other friends that have done the same thing. So awesome to see this kind of progress. Probably a good place to wrap it up, Amber. You got anything else?

No, I would just say, thank you for having us. Thank you for having an open mind. I know it's very nerve-wracking to publicly. I'm scared of it, by the way. I'm sorry for you. I'm scared. Like, I don't want to do anything to me. my brain I don't want to like I'm scared of it I'm scared of maybe it's like that weird like

control thing where I don't want to but like I'm scared what I'm scared of is like I don't want to mess anything up I don't want to I don't want to like I feel for lack of a better word bro I feel fine you know so I feel fine so I'm always like oh man I wouldn't want to do that because it makes me scared to mess something up but that's because I feel pretty I feel pretty good right now So I think that my fear of it is a healthy fear. Yeah. And I think that's good, though. Like I think when you approach, you know, anything with that could be risky, like you should approach it with some fear or respect.

I guess you want to say? Yeah. You know, I mean, it's like the first time when we were playing with, you know, demo and some other stuff or you're like, yeah, you know, I've been thrown 100 grenades, you know, or 1,000 grenades, like nothing can happen. But, like, actually something really can happen. But you approach it with respect and you take care and you make sure you you you tape them correctly. And, you know, you don't pull the, you know, drop the grenade through the spoon or whatever.

You know, same thing with these medicines, you know, approach them with care. Only do if you need to. If you feel fine and you're good, like, why? I've never done psychedelic. You haven't either? No. And I don't feel called to do it. I feel like whenever you know, you know.

and I will say that I've seen it, I've seen these medicines change the lives, like not just help, but literally change the lives, be the difference between life and death for countless operators. And for a lot of spouses as well, and there's a lot of trauma to heal. I used to catch Mark his looking out the window with like this thousand-yard stare, and I would say, like, please help me understand what's going on in your head. what are you thinking about right now? And he would say, how much better off you would be without me here? How much easier your life would be in the kids' lives would be without me here. And so I feel like any time you walk up to that line, you have to have an open mind of like whatever works. I have totally

changed the way I think about what I have been told as a drug versus a plant. Like my faith is so important. to me, and I feel like God has given us everything that we need on earth. A lot of these medicines, most of them originate from plants. So I had to really like check myself, and I have thought that something made by man in a laboratory that's prescribed by a doctor in a lab coat is what is the cure. And a plant is a drug. And I've almost like flip-opped that. And I feel like so many of these answers are found in nature and found within us. And so I've just seen replicated time after time again that you give someone this opportunity with something that's God-given and totally unadultered. And you create this reset and connection and like, oh, they're good.

They're good as opposed to like putting a Band-Aid after Band-Aid after Band-Aid. The U.S. government is Big Farmers' number one customer. And so, you know, getting people off of that cycle, this carousel of pharmaceuticals is just unintended byproduct of what we're doing but man we are seeing guys and gals really start to live again

yeah I didn't even mention that Jacka so I was on those all those antidepressants and whatever through November 11th 2017 when I went down for treatment I haven't touched a prescription since not anything so it's

pretty remarkable and again my story is like one of hundreds. I'm not, you know, I'm not the only one, which is nice. Good to get rid of all those nasties. The only other thing that I want to add really quickly is another unintended byproduct of our work is that we've seen this incredible reunification. Just this is a topic that everyone can generally agree up on as veteran health care. And so we're seeing both sides of the aisle, like actually come together, actually want to work together. Actually, like one another again. And so I hope that that ripple out effect continues across our nation.

I feel like we need healing now more than ever. And it's pretty surreal what's happening. It's an honor. Marcus, any closing thoughts? No. Just, you know, first off, thank you for having us on here. I know this was a different topic for you. And again, trust me, this was nothing I ever intended out to even think about getting involved in.

But I just, I see the power in it. You know, and to approach these medicines carefully. They're not to be used at the Slayer concert. I think the way we're going about it is the right way. I think the way that he's going to be introduced to the public. is going to be done correctly. I think it's going to be a really medically driven industry, at least first. You know, if it goes other routes, you know, it's not what we're here, what we're talking about.

And so I, you know, I want to just tell people that if they're interested, you know, and they're searching, make sure they do their research. Make sure to find vetted providers that have been doing this for a long time that know what they're doing. make sure they have a coach, a therapist that understands how these medicines work. And again, it's why we built vets. It's why I'm building Tara Mind. Again, it's to provide access and affordability for people. And so last thing, you know, I'll say is that there's hope. So if you're, you know, if you're out there and you're thinking that there's nothing ahead of you, there's no purpose, you know, why are you here?

I promise that that's a temporary thought, and 100% you can climb out of that. And once you do, you'll see how cool life can be and to get back to your old self or maybe invent a new better person. We are living our best life. We really are. And it is such an incredible blessing. I just have to punch myself every day that this is actually happening. Marcus always says I have to get in the final word, which is there's some accuracy to Less word.

Less word. Something else I just thought of when you said that is that part of what we're doing to reverse these stigmas, especially around asking for help, is adopting more of a mindset that really, really true strength is vulnerability. I think that our society would say the opposite, but it takes a lot of courage to be vulnerable. and we're seeing that day in and day out of that. Yeah, if someone, I'm going to get the last word in. If someone thinks we like coming up here and talking about,

like all the shit that's gone on and think we enjoy this spotlight is fucking crazy. Because we don't at all, but we definitely feel as necessary. So like now I don't even think it's about us. I think it's just like this needs to be done. Well, I mean, thank you. Thank you for both of you stepping into the spotlight. And I know it's a bright spotlight. And I know it's a burning spotlight in many cases.

You know, when you talk about being at Chad's funeral and just knowing that you had to do something and you had at least an answer for a lot of people. So thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for your service. And yeah, Marcus, thanks for your service in the teams and for signing the dotted line and risking life and limb. And, you know, Amber, I don't get the chance. My wife has always said, like, my wife has zero percent chance of coming on this podcast.

She doesn't like to talk to anybody. She doesn't, but for you, for all the wives, for all the spouses that, you know, you didn't put your name on that line, but you put your name on that dotted line and what the wives and spouses and friends families and your kids, what they go through is so harsh. And yet you're there and you're supported and you continue to support.

And now you're supporting all the families out there and all the veterans. So thanks for what you have done in the past. Thanks for what you're continuing to do as you help veterans get out of the darkness and move toward light and life. Thanks for what you're doing. Thank you, thanks, Chaco. It's been awesome.

Thank you. With that, Marcus and Amber have left the building. So, a pretty dynamic story of change and a journey that they've been through for sure. Would you, you were sitting in the corner. You were so you were off camera on that one, Echo Charles. you think? Good evening, Echo, by the way.

Good evening. Very interesting. It was funny. Even from the beginning, I was relating a lot because, like, both our birthday, he's one year older than me. Both are birthdays in December, so we entered college later, or we were late, you know, and entered college, played football. And even, and how's this as far as the, was it you?

No, no, him. He was saying about alcohol, right? Like, oh, how's this going to affect me? Like, how can it, you know. You thought that way too. Yep, with alcohol. I was like, I'd always ask my friends, like, because I didn't start drinking until it.

I was like 20, 21. And so I would always ask like, hey, like, can you tell that you're drunk? Or can you tell that you're buzzing or are you just buzzing and then afterwards you remember, oh, I was buzzing or, you know, can you tell? Like, what does it feel like kind of a thing? I remember relating very deeply with that small tiny part. Also, you're the one who said Andy Stumpf might be one of the bigger wise asses. he is I'll go into record

and say he's the biggest oh dang that was one of the stuff getting props from echo Charles number one biggest why is that yes fully what uh you were talking about you think your mind

this is more of the serious one so you know you're you were saying your mind is like you feel okay so like you're kind of would you say scared to take psychedelics what if it jams you up right like what if he did take it

and it like made you because you know how like some people they're so driven but because of like something that's kind of off in their mind. I feel like that's kind of you in real life. That's something probably significantly like off with you. But it sort of like just by happenstance like works for you. You know, some people are like that.

So what if you took psychedelics and then like now you're like you're kind of like more lazy? Like you don't work as hard anymore. I don't like that idea. Yeah, I know. So I've even had people say like, oh, you know you should, hey man, you know you should smoke pot. Yeah. And I'd be like, well, why? Be like, oh, because kind of take your edge off.

And I was like, why would I want to take my edge off? I want to sharpen that. I want it to be rough. You're going to start sending like Christmas cards now and giving gifts. Like, you know, like you're going to do all that kind of stuff. That's what I think. I think you're going to be like, man, I've been, I've neglected the emotional elements of friendships of my life for so long.

Did you get the Christmas card I sent you? Yeah. that's what I think would happen to you that's what I feel think or are you gonna like start really valuing your rest days you know you're gonna start scheduling like two solid rest days you're gonna start exercising moderation

in a bunch of things because it's better for you like all this stuff it's gonna change fundamental I wouldn't count on anything that you're saying but to the serious point of what you're saying like it does that that kind of makes like even just where our joking is like a legitimate concern I wouldn't want that yeah I wouldn't want to be like quote more mellow yeah and

the other thing is you got to remember is we you know me dude I mean it's not like I'm walking around freaking you know like I go home play guitar whatever watch the sunset it's you know what I mean like that's normal stuff yeah fully what was it you watched Robocop 2 not sure so Robocop 2 he's so you know Robocop he's kind of like you he's hardcore. It just goes hard. Drop your weapons or there will be trouble. Yes. Exactly right. So in part

two they're like hey the Robocops for you know he does this whatever he does and then they're like hey he's giving us a bad image I think like some other company came in or something like that and she was like hey let's make them like more appealing you know more and more friendly to the public

and stuff and they write all these directives and like it jams him up that's going to be you bro because they're right by in theory they were right, you know. But how did it cause problems? Like he wouldn't solve crimes anymore. He'd start saying poems and stuff and like some dumb stuff that doesn't really match

his thing, you know, it's like that. You gotta watch it to kind of see. But anyway, that'd be you. So yes, I am not down with messing with what I've got going on right now. And so, but like I said 10 times, I think I

said it 48 times, but knowing a lot of guys that have gone through this kind of thing And just talking to Marcus, man, you know, and he's like, like I said to him on the podcast. I'm like, dude, it's hard to even imagine him getting like mad or, you know, throwing a coffee cup through a window or what, you know, like this guy. He's, he's, he's chill. He's mellow. And yet he's still doing great stuff.

He's not like he's not getting after it. He's still in good shape. You know, he's still, he's got businesses going to him. He's 100% on, on track on a bunch of different levels. So, you know, and this stuff really helped him out. So I'm down. I'm down for if it helps people out for sure. I do think it should be like a last resort scenario.

Look, not so close to the edge that the edge is a threat. But, you know, try some other things out. Make sure you, you know, make sure your diet's clean. Make sure you're not drinking every night and expecting things to be good in life. If you're drinking every night, you can't expect things to be good in life. Yeah. I'm not saying you're going to have a bad life, but there's a chance you are. Yeah.

So clean up the diet. get off the alcohol. I can't give any advice about all the, all the, uh, prescription drugs, but, you know,

maybe talk to your doctor about how you could get off. I don't know, man. Um, he was saying downstairs and he made a really good point where, um, because some people, they like,

you know how you say and I get it because it can seem like this, but some people are, most people with a problem with drinking, they can't just stop drinking. Like there's just, I'm not saying, I can't. I'm just saying there's a lot more to it than just, oh, yeah, just stop drinking, you know? Yeah. So for sure. So he was like, we were downstairs talking right after, right after.

So he said, you can't tell someone who's in the basement. You can't tell him, hey, go on, just go exercise. Oh, just go on the mat. You know, that's kind of hard to do even for a normal person. So you can't tell someone who's in the basement just to do that because that's hard. He's like, let's get them out of the basement first. So he's safe. They're out of the basement. then we can start introducing them to the mats to more exercise to all this other stuff that's going to take more work by the way so you love jiu-jitsu i'm sure working out has been a part of your life for a very long time so it's second nature i know but for a lot of people especially if they're not into working out you're saying you want them to work out for

hour a day pretty much every day yeah like that you know working out's freaking hard yeah well the The other key component of what you're saying is, I mean, if you remember, I, like, tried to nail down Marcus a bunch of times about, like, what did you feel? And what he felt was not, like, not doing anything, like, not motivated to do things. So that, what you're talking about, the basement, like, getting someone to, like, I think, oh, get him to work out. What does that mean? That means you just get up and you work out. Like, to me, it's this normal thing. But for a lot people that might be a big step now listen it could be a smaller step if you put your mind to it you know it's going to help you and maybe you get the rewards for it you commit to doing it for a certain

amount of time it's like that we were just talking to a kid in the locker room he goes I just submitted someone for the first time in three years he's been training for three years got his first submission yeah bro yeah so remember that was one of the one of the things I said when someone said hey I really don't like jihitsu how long should I train for and I was like train until you submit to some train until you submit to someone same thing with like working out like work out until like there should be some thing that you have to do. Like can you do a pull-up? If you can't do a pull-up, work out until you can do a pull-up.

If you can't, you know, run a mile in less than seven minutes, work out until you can run a mile unless it's a... I'm just saying those aren't the correct answers, but I'm saying something along those lines because there's no... If you're not feeling the short-term reward, because let's face it, you and me, We get a short-term reward from working out just because we kind of know how it's going to feel later and we know the long-term health benefits. So even a single workout feels good to me because I know the long-term benefits and I know the I know even the short-term benefits.

So it feels good. But if it doesn't feel good to someone and you don't know about the long-term rewards and you don't see that strategic thing, it just wasn't fun. Yeah, just another thing they're going to avoid. Yeah, just wasn't fun. So yeah he said he said he mentioned something to brew briefly But it there's so much to it where he said I forget exactly the the full context But he said get your heart rate up and it's like better than most medicine Yeah yeah he did say that I'm like man that's so that's true and I used to tell you about this like remember when I was like kind of down for drinking every day or whatever

It was like years ago and sometimes you you enter in this funk you know and I was still working out and like doing everything but it's just a fun you just have a fun you just have a a funky day the next day like you're dragging and sometimes he would go all the way into your mind where I would have these real low level mundane feelings of what kind of what he was talking about where it's like yeah why don't why bother like why do I even care about this what jiu jitzy like who care like what I mean that's the path that I went down during that conversation of like when death when you're confronted with death and then the world moves on and you're like well we're all going to end up in the same spot anyways. So really kind of what's the point, right?

And I think that's the place where you could lose, like lose the motivation to do really anything. Because I'm thinking, dude, we're all going to end up in the grave anyways. So whatever. And that's a horrible place to be because you forget about all the, all the beautiful things that are in life. I was listening to Jordan Peterson the other day. You know what Jordan Peterson goes off on the like,

you know, life is suffering and it's going to be a nightmare and it's a misery and like, which I get. And you know, it's even, it's not just him saying. It's like religion is like, all the religions are like life is suffering and the Buddha is like, oh, it's suffering. And I get it. I get it. But, man, there's a lot of things in life that are really kind of fun and cool.

And look, you're going to. I think the point of Jordan, Peter. is you look you're gonna have suffering right you're gonna have suffering that's what's gonna happen at some point right people are gonna get sick people are gonna die things are gonna go right you're gonna get fired you're gonna your business is gonna fit like all those things are gonna happen right so but to just blanket say because of that life it's I'm gonna I'm not just gonna go into Jordan peace right now I'm going against a Buddha who they say life is suffering I'm gonna say you know what they're suffering in life but

is not suffering there's a lot of cool stuff that happens a lot of funny stuff that happens you make friends you say some funny stuff y'all laugh you've been sitting around laughing so hard that it's just you can't even it like hurts your stomach yeah have you ever had that happen yes sir it's real come on man is that suffering now no it's not so let's not take it to the extreme of life is suffering they're suffering in life and I get that and we're a hundred percent agreement on that who was it I think Hemingway said I think Hemingway said

if two people love each other there can be no happy ending which is true right you know what I'm saying because someone's gonna die and at some point that other person is gonna be sitting there crying because they lost that person

yeah all but that being said live a happy life you know you take care of each other whatever you have family you you know you have grandchildren Hey, like maybe that is a little bit of a happy ending. You know what I'm saying? Yeah.

So I don't know. I think we're leaning a little bit far into suffering right now. And look, I get it. You know, I get it. Man, your heart is going to get broken, you know. And I'm not just talking about, oh, I'm in a relationship. I'm talking, your friends die, your heart's going to be broken. It's going to hurt.

Yeah. But that's not everything. So and I think you know from what from what Marcus is saying You know some of that Visibility of the the good stuff Comes by Dealing with that other stuff and that's another thing for me And I talk about this in Discipline equals freedom field manual a little bit

But I think you know I've lost friends and I've talked about it and I've talked about it and I And straight up giving eulogies for my guys, like immediately, as soon as they die, you're basically like writing about what you thought about them and how you felt about them and what they meant to you and how awesome they were. Like that is so therapeutic. Even though I was doing it as my duty,

it also, I recognized that it was a therapeutic thing. I recognized later in life that, oh, like, how did I get through that? Oh, yeah, I wrote about them. And when you write about them, you detach from it. You detach from it, you get to read, and you get to think, and you get to think through it, you get to process. And all those things happen by writing about, you know, your friend, your hero, this person, this individual that made this sacrifice. And it's a way of processing this stuff that I think, you know, the term that Marcus used was, you know, you got to, the only way to get over this stuff is to go through it, right? And that's sort of like you do when you write a eulogy or you write a letter to someone that's, you know, that's, you get over this stuff.

passed or you talk to their parents about them you talk to their their siblings about them like that is so such a good way to help move through the pain that you're going to feel and you're going to feel pain you're going to suffer but life is not suffering there's much more to it and a lot of it's good so yeah I heard that everyone that I know that went through psychedelic journey All the way, even like some people, some people I do, isn't the official one. They just take some mushrooms, but they do it with intention. It's all worked for them. Like I know people who quit drinking, it's weird, but the two people I know who quit drinking

was real surprising too, but slowly by slowly like it came back and then they started drinking again. Not just all of a sudden. And they didn't just be like, okay, that was fun. And now I'm drinking again. It would be like, you know, six months later, they'll be like, I'll just have one. And then it just slowly creeps back in, which actually went in line with what he was saying,

where it's like, hey, it's not just a magic pill one time. It's kind of like, it's kind of like a therapy almost kind of a thing. Because it's like, I guess it like rewires your, the way I always saw it was like all your,

the way you regard or the way you create meaning or whatever it has to do with like all your past experiences mixed with how you're, you know, your genetics or whatever. So all your past experiences, ups down, trauma,

no traumas like everything kind of creates little meanings with every little interaction. So if those meanings that you created in your head are all jammed up or even if they're, I don't know, maybe they're, everyone's going to have different meanings for different things. So what it does is it goes back to those original like meanings that you're making and it just jumbles them all up. And kind of so you can kind of detach from the way they were formed. So it kind of like, oh, so you can make your, and he made a good analogy with the snow. Yeah.

So it's like you can make your own tracks. Be careful. But yeah, the tracks you make could be wrong. Oh, yeah, because some people, they'll just take it recreationally. And they'll be like, oh, yeah, it was just a trip. And it opened my eyes. But they don't really get any intended, like, positive outcome. They just, oh, I just want to, as my little brother's wife said, some people just want to take mushrooms to fry.

And don't recommend this. No. No, one time Jade was getting all deep in the, you know, one night. And he's like, yeah, you know, you take mushrooms and do all this stuff. And she's like, why you got to try to be all intellectual about it? Why can't you just admit some people just take mushrooms to fry? You got all pissed. It's funny.

But yeah, that's a different thing. You see what I'm saying. All right. Well, if you want to support this podcast, get some Jocko Fuel. Get some Jock Fuel. Pink Mists. Have you had pink mist yet? I have.

How do you like it? It's good. Pink lemonade. But it's not your thing? It's not your jam. It's my jam. It's like good. It's like a secondary.

It's like this. Pink Mists. I taste it. Pink lemonade. Oh, yeah, good. but we already knew that kind of a thing. It's not like mango where I'm like, ooh, this is freaking mango.

Let's face it. Look, if you go, you have a fruit bowl. And you might be different, but this is just me. I got a grapefruit. I got orange. Yep. And I got a mango. You go a mango, huh?

I'll eat the orange, and I'll be like, cool. I'll have grapefruit or pink lemonade or lemon, whatever, whatever good. Fine, but bro, come on, a mango. Mangoes just taste better to me. All the other stuff tastes good. Mango tastes better. All right.

So we got some drinks. discipline go you can get mango i'll tell you what the new the new tactical tea which is like ice tea lemonade yeah a lot of people and you know what i mean by a lot of people a lot of people a lot of people are saying that that might be the one you also got the new dac savage which is ridiculous so basically everybody so like okay so a wise man named cake nuts once said he's all everybody's showing up so in your case everyone everybody he's like you me everybody everybody Joccofuel.com, go get some of that stuff, get some milk. We get the ready to drink bulk, which is, I'm telling you what, I got problems with ready to drink bulk because I'm drinking it way.

It's way too easy. Too easy. It's too easy. It's like, boom. But you know what's nice? It's just like a little 30 gram protein hitter. Yeah. Which is an unbelievably convenient and joyous thing in life.

It's just to be like, you know what? And it tastes freaking good. Pete's on Keegan. Because I don't like vanilla. You know I don't like vanilla. right it's not my it's not my jam as you like this real vanilla but so I was drinking banana I was drinking chocolate and at camp Pete's on Keegan he's like it tastes like melted vanilla ice cream and I kind of didn't believe him because let's face it even people that don't

like vanilla milked vanilla ice cream is hell of good right you know what I'm saying right I'm saying that's a hundred percent accurate you're correct it's a hundred percent accurate so I said to myself there's no way this tastes like melted vanilla ice cream because then it would be Hell of good. And sure enough, I cracked it open. It tastes like melted vanilla ice cream. It's legitimate. Yes.

It is a legitimate, tasty treat. So that's the ready to drink milk. Check that out. Joccofuel.com. You can get it Wawa. You can get this stuff at the vitamin shop. Vitamin shots got pink mist in it right now. Yeah, there you go.

Joccofuel.com. Get some of that. Also, origin, USA.com. If you need jeans. Look, American-made stuff. This is the big thing. All right, because there's people all over the world that are enslaving children to make you a pair of pants. And you should not support that.

You should support America, which means you should support origin USA.com. Get jeans, get boots, get hunting gear. The hunt lines out. Get, what else do you need to get? The new washes of the Delta 6G is out. Yeah, yeah. I'm getting the two years. I'm gonna get the two you.

I'm the middle one. The middle one. I'm getting on all. You're getting them all? I freaking like on all. The thing is about the light one is if it's, if it's their sun out, that's gonna,

that's gonna be a lot cooler. You know what I'm saying? Because sun, dark, whatever. Yeah, it is more summer vibes, is. Yeah. It's a different look. OriginUSA.com, don't forget about geese as well.

Oh yeah. Because once you put on an origin ghee, you literally will not wear another ghee again. Yeah, I literally, literally, all my other geese yeah like just the other day actually two weeks ago yeah for them they have no purpose in life

those old geese we apologize to the the receivers of these geese but at least they can get them started then they can become a world champion and get you know get a good georgia dot com get some of that also jocco store you want to represent we got a new shirt out I talked about it already but official

I'm announcing it I'm going to send out an email to everybody the standard issue discipline equals freedom so It's the kind where if you don't have the standard issue, are you even really representing? I know the answer is probably yes. I know. I know. The answer is probably yes.

Do you want to do it like that? No, I'm not sure. I don't want to do it like that. But what if a dude is just getting after in seven different fronts and he's not got a standard issue t-shirt, you're like, hey, you're not really represented? I know. Do I even have to, you're right? You're right.

And look, hey, look. I'm still hypothesizing on the message. Which people you might not be representing. Yeah. Or just check it up. That statement actually might pissing people off. I kind of got a little bit pissed when you just said it. Yeah.

That's what I was like, it's kind of like, you know, it's a working, it's a working, what do you call it? Yeah. Okay. So less pressure. Either way it's out and it's good. It's cool. People have it. There's multiple versions of it depending on your, your proclivity to support various units.

Yes. good way to put it there's a lot of good other cool stuff on there also the short locker new shirt every month creative designs for luck was this with the last

design was toxic productivity toxic productivity you got me on a surfboard with like a computer in one hand book in another hand papers flying everywhere discipline goes in the wave

all right so yep you can get to shirt locker at jocco store.com go if you want to subscribe to this podcast, do it, leave a review. So Echo, if you want to leave that little review about Echo, where you're like, maybe he should just be quiet. Yeah.

If you want to say that Echo's best podcast ever was today when he wasn't on it, then you can leave that review on there. We'll be happy about it. jaco underground.com go and support. Look, we don't own this platform that you're listening to this on unless you're on the underground. If you're on the underground, guess what? We will be there no matter what.

We're not going to get kicked off our own platform. We made our own playground. Remember that? You know, you get kicked out of some club, make our own club. We get kicked out of some jihitsu schools. Made her own jiu-jitsu school. Mike get kicked off a platform. We got our own platform.

Jocco Underground.com, if you want to support that, go there, sign up, register, YouTube channel. Check that out. Psychological Warfare, you know. Flipside Canvas, talked about Dakota Meyer today. That's his company to hang cool stuff on your wall. Bunch of books. You know what they are. Only Cry for the Living by Holly McKay.

Check that book out. Final Spin. and a bunch of other books I've written. Eschelon Front Leadership Consultancy. We solve problems through leadership. We also have an online training academy, Extreme Ownership.com. You can't just go to the gym one time and be in shape.

You can't just pick up a guitar and take one lesson and know how to play guitar. You got to get in the game. And if you want to get better at leadership, which will make you better at life, go to Extreme Ownership.com. If you want to support Marcus and Amber and their charity vet solutions, go to vet solutions.org. They are helping as many people as they can and they need to help more.

So go and check that out, support if you can and if you want to help. Service members active and retired, their families, Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got a charity organization. And she does, she also helps vets. She puts them through a bunch of protocols. One of the primary protocols is the hyperbaric chamber, like 30 and 45 day protocols where you're on clean food. You're getting hormone treatment if you need it.

You're getting vitamin treatment if you need it. Everything is paid for. That's what she's doing to help out. One of the many things she does, but that's one of the things that she does. So if you want to help that or you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to America's mighty warriors.org. Another little trip that people can take. A little journey.

I guess we're not using the word trip. Another journey that people can take and get a journey in a hyperbaric chamber. You can also take a journey in the wilderness. Heroes and Horses.org, Micah Fink, up there taking people in the wilderness where they're going to find and confront themselves as well. And if you want to follow Marcus Nambor and you want to follow vets, they are. at Marcus at Marcus Capone at Marcus underscore Amber underscore Capone and also at veteran solutions and for us on Twitter on the gram on Facebook that goes out of withdrawals I'm at jockel

Willink of course be wary be very wary of the algorithm and once again thanks to Marcus and Amber for everything that you have done for the country for the teams and what you're doing now for the veteran community and a special Thanks today to all the families all the families out there the husbands and the wives the sons and the daughters the mothers the fathers the brothers and sisters Thanks to all you families that support our servicemen and women around the world and thank you for waiting and Worrying and supporting them through all those sleepless nights your families make a huge sacrifice for our nation and we thank you for that and the same goes to the families of our police and law enforcement firefighters paramedics EMTs dispatchers correctional officers

border patrol secret service all first responders your families support what you provide as families to our first responders allows them to do their job so that we can live in safety and to everyone else out there, look, life is hard and there is suffering and it can get dark and sometimes it might seem like there's no way out and it might seem that you're alone, but you're not alone. And there is a way out and there is light and there is life out there and it is good, but you got to hang in there. You got to never give up and you got to remember that you are never out of the fight.

So keep on fighting. And until next time, Zekko and Jocko. Out.