Locked In with Ian Bick - Iraq War Veteran SURVIVING Mine Fields, PTSD and Addiction | Josh Austin Pt. 2

Episode Date: July 13, 2023

After receiving backlash from his first interview with Josh Austin, Ian Bick invited Josh back for part 2. In this episode we dive into Josh's experience in the military, what exactly he experienced during the Iraq War and the addiction that developed from it. Connect with Josh Austin:Email: [e-mail]00:00 Intro 01:52 Enlisting into Military/Losing weight to get in10:52 Mortality 14:18 Boot camp/Bulimia 26:49 Trying to get out of Service 29:16  Sent overseas to Iraq48:04 Trauma induced huffing54:53 Meals in Iraq57:26 Huffing Continued1:04:14 Is there help? Anyone to talk too?1:09:08 Relationship with people back home1:13:31 Seeking help with his addiction 1:18:28 PTSD1:23:45 Lowest part of his life 1:29:52 Message on Recovery  Connect with Ian Bick: https://www.ianbick.com/Subscribe to our membership program on YouTube to get early access to interviews, see behind the scenes photos & more:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRvVklIft6DMelVW18M0oBw/joinPowered by Q29 Productions, LLC Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Real intention. Why? Because real matters. So whether you're pouring milk, melting cheese, or just grabbing one more spoonful of yogurt, keep it real. Look for the seal. Real California milk by real California farm families. Welcome back to another episode of Locked in with Ian Bick. On today's episode, I have Josh Austin back for a part two.

A few weeks ago, we released our episode with Josh Austin, where we went through his early childhood. We talked about his service in Iraq, the addiction he fully. from Iraq and then his life after he was he got home from the service. On that episode, I got a lot of feedback because I didn't focus on his time in the military because I was so caught up as a new interviewer, as a new podcast, and focusing on the addiction part because our podcast is about addiction, crime, and overcoming that, that we left out big parts of his story in the Iraq War. So today I have Josh coming back for a part two, to dive deep into his military career, his time in Iraq, and the events that exactly

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tuning into the show. We appreciate all your support, the love you've been showing us. And make sure you guys, please, please, please leave us a review on Apple Podcast or Spotify or wherever listen to your podcast, it helps us significantly boost the show and reach more people. Also, if you guys are interested in Josh's early childhood and the direct events after he got out of the service, I encourage you to listen to part one of my interview with Josh Austin, which is veteran hooked on huffing. That's a few episodes back, maybe from about a month ago. You could dive into that interview with him before listening to this one. Thank you guys again for tuning in, sit back, relax, and enjoy my interview with Josh Austin on Locked in with the InBick.

Josh, thank you so much for coming back, man, today for part two. We've been talking a lot. We went out to dinner the other night, and I've really gotten to better understand you since our first interview and talk to you and really develop a friendship and a relationship, and I'm grateful for that. And I'm excited today to sit down with you for a second time and really dive in depth into your story. This episode today is going to be mostly about, you know, starting from your military experience and the addiction you developed from that and then going into how you overcame that. How are you doing today? I'm doing good. I'm much more enthusiastic about it this time. I was real nervous the first time. And then after I looked at the comments from the first one,

I was a little discouraged and didn't think I would want to do it again. But, you know, I saw some very positive things in there too. And I decided that I wouldn't let some haters, you know, keep my story of hope away from the media here. So yeah, thank you for having me back. I appreciate that. Of course. And most of the comments like we were talking the other night were about me. A lot of people are angry with that interview. And only because I didn't dive into it. I was, I think that interview and reading those comments and listening to the feedback really helped shape me in the direction of this podcast and just my interviewing skills and ability to listen, I feel like before those episodes I wasn't always present and I was still learning how to interview and how to do this podcast

because I've never done anything like this before in my life. And this has just been like a once in a lifetime learning experience. And I'm glad I got a chance to redeem myself on this one. And, you know, it's all about listen to the feedback. We wouldn't be here without the viewers, the listeners that watch us on YouTube that listen to us on the audio platform. forms. We wouldn't be here without them. And so I look at their comments and I read them and I write notes and I try to figure out how I can get better and perform better. I've been listening to a lot of like Jay Shetty's podcasts and people like that that have those mindset podcasts and I feel like that's really helped me. So without further ado, let's jump into it. I want to know when you decided to

enlist in the military service and what made you decide to do that? Yeah, I was in the, I was in Christian school in the 10th grade. I finished 10th grade out there and then starting my 11th grade year, something happened the following year at the school that was, I just told my parents I wasn't going back. And so I re-entered the public school system midway through my junior year, finished that up. And then in my senior year, my parents set me down and told me they weren't going to be able to help me with college. So that was kind of the motivation where it started out, but I didn't, I wasn't thinking military at that time. I didn't know what I was going to do. But in my senior year of high school, around January, I made friends with a guy there. And he, he told, he asked me what

I was going to do after high school. And I said, I really don't know. I don't have a plan. And he said, well, how about you come talk to the recruiter with me? I've joined, I've joined the Army while I'm in high school. What I didn't know is at 17 years old, they had a program where you could join up with like the buddy system, and as long as you had your parents' permission or approval, you could join and start getting a paycheck. So that's kind of how it all started. I went to the armory down the road, literally less than a quarter mile from my house with this guy, sat down, talked with the recruiter, but at that time, there was a big problem. I was 200 and about 70 pounds. I'm only six foot two, and at my age at 18 or 17, the max I could weigh up was 194, and then they would go up to 204,

depending on how you taped out. They would tape your neck and your stomach. So I went down there, talked to him. The recruiter was like, listen, I want you to join, but you can't join. You're too big right now. So what I went, what I went home, and I just decided that this is what I was going to do, no matter what. And I started running as hard as I could from 3 o'clock to dark every single day. And I end up losing approximately 27 pounds in about two weeks. So I got down to that 240 mark. I went back to the recruiter and talked to them. They taped me out. And I was within the guidelines of the body fat that I could join at that point. However, then we had a conflict about what I wanted to do when I was in the Army.

So I was never the hoo-rah kind of guy, didn't want to kick in any doors, didn't care about being on the front lines. All I was really concerned about was getting my college paid for and not really doing much for it. So I asked to be in mortuary affairs. I asked for like 15 different jobs before I finally settled on what's called a 13 Bravo field artillery. And the recruiter told me that you're never in the battle on 13 Bravo. And I did have to get my mom to sign, and she wasn't going to sign at that point. And so I said something very nasty to her that either you sign now and let me start getting paid, or I sign when I'm 18, and you never hear from me again. So I joined on March 24th of 2006 in the middle of my senior year. At 17

years old, I went down to the MEP station, and that's really how everything started. I still couldn't, actually ship out until, obviously, until I graduated and got my diploma, which I would do that in June. But then I was still overweight. I was under the weight to join, but I was over the weight to go to boot camp. So I still had to lose about 20 more pounds. Something I'm interested in is most people, when they're told no and that they're overweight and you can't do it, they're going to just go with that and they're not going to pursue it farther. You decide, you use that as a motivator and you said, I'm going to go lose the weight and I'm going to go run. What do you think was like your mindset that forced you to do that?

That got so motivated that you're like, I'm going to do this and I'm going to get into the service. I mean, I made this promise to myself that I was going to be like the break in the chain and the family and the poverty and an addiction and everything else that was going on surrounding my family at that point. So I was just motivated no matter what. I didn't even see another option other than the military. So I was very motivated. However, I didn't see anything else. I wasn't going to be able to get any student loans because your parents have to sign for you.

I just didn't know what else to do. So I said, this is my best option, and they were going to pay for my school. And I just totally bought in to everything that recruiter told me, everything. And at that point, there was not even a thought of you would go into a violent area or anything like that. No. So I joined up as in the artillery. And again, from what he explained it to me is you don't go, you're on the front lines on that. He also used a lot of analogies that, you know, don't make sense today, but did then.

He said something to the effect that, hey, have you ever heard, you ever turn on the news and hear about a car accident and someone dying in it? I was like, yeah, absolutely every morning. He said, well, was it ever you or was it ever anyone that you've known when the answer was no? I mean, that's a poor analogy. But for a 17-year-old guy, it was like, well, wow, that makes sense. He also explained to me that, you know, we're coming, the unit that I would be joining

where they just came back from Iraq. and that they probably weren't going to go back for another three or four years if they were going to go back at that point. So everything really made sense. And then what spoke the loudest to me is they gave me a $20,000 sign-on bonus just to join. So I thought that was a million dollars at 17, and I got very blinded by the 20,000 in the promise of school. Can you explain the time period? Like what year is this and what's going on in the world at this time? Yeah. So this was 2006 is when I joined March 24th of 2006.

I would graduate high school at 17 in June of that same year. And to my knowledge, we weren't really doing anything over there. I think we were kind of scaling down, I think, at that point. But, again, I wasn't really paying attention at 17 years old. I don't think I even heard much going on the TV about the Iraq War at that point. So from what I understand now, there's kind of a mixed opinion about, you know, the next couple years. Some people say that we were inactive in that part of the area, and some people said that we were ramping it back up because we had lost control a little bit. But, you know, I was 17 years old, didn't care about it.

And I was entering as a private, and I would have never known about any of that anyways. So, but that was basically my idea. I wasn't going to, I was never deploying in my mind. I was super naive and ignorant to what I was signing up to do. If you knew you were going to deploy at a later date, would you have still signed up? I think I would have stuck closer to more of an admin job or mortuary affairs. I always had a fascination with the funeral home business at that time. I had a girlfriend that was a girlfriend, I say loosely, that her father was in the funeral home

business. And I got very fascinated with the whole process about how to sell plots and coffins and during a very difficult time. So it was just something I was very drawn to. But every time I picked something, I just, you know, he talked me out of it. But yeah, I would have probably either picked a different job or two, my ASFAB was high enough to join, you know, do anything I wanted if I should have probably talked to the Air Force instead of the Army. Why do you think you were drawn to the mortuary aspect of it? I honestly, I don't know. I just, I've always been very compassionate with people. I've always been my, I've had been told that I can like feel the pain of others.

And I've always really been interested in like that part of it, walking a family through the most difficult. part. I'm still interested in it today. I don't think I'd pursue it, but I did try to a few years ago and got turned down because someone had just died in my family. So I'm not really sure. I've always had a morbid fascination with reading the obituaries. I've read obituary since I was 15. I've always read them. I've always enjoyed reading about people's lives, what they did, the impact they've had on others. I even wrote my father's obituary five years ago this August. So it's just been a weird fascination for me. Yeah, I get fascinated ever since I was a little kid reading obituraries.

Like I'm someone that always like reads the news in the morning on Apple News or just Googling like the Danbury News and you'd always see like the deaths and stuff and you just go down this rabbit hole of like their life and how they passed away and this and that. And it's just, I don't know, it's intriguing, I guess in a way. It is. I always always would circle back to it. Why do we appreciate these people that passed away once they pass away, but not. while they're here. So it just, it was a, and I didn't even really experience any death growing up, for the most part. I had like one friend die that I wasn't really close to, maybe two or three in our graduating class died in our senior year, but nothing crazy. So I honestly, I can't give you a real answer on why I was drawn to it other than I just enjoyed reading about people's lives

and what they did and the impact they had on their communities and families. Do you think it makes you appreciate your life more when you read stories like that? Absolutely, yeah. It always, when I would see young people die or kids or babies or, you know, adolescents, it would always hit me really hard. And it would always remind me that we never know, you know, when our last day is. It could be today. For me, it could be tomorrow. So I'm always been grateful, you know, for every day that I get, you know,

when I read these obituaries. Because even with my, the man who raised me, he died in six weeks of his diagnosis. So, you know, it always has just re-centered me and not to take my life for, granted. Yeah, that's something I've like worked on and just like got dived into recently. Just like life's too short. Like you have to you have to do the things you want to do. You have to go after the people you want to go after the business, the ideas and you just have to have to do it. You can't. I don't want to think about the what ifs. You know, I want to at least try it and see if it works out. Great. If it doesn't, then at least you tried. You don't want to leave that on the table because it's just too

short. You don't know how much time you have someone with someone and life happens. Right. I ended up working in a nursing home recently in New Hampshire, and I probably held the hands of about 20 people that passed on and took their last breaths. And I've never heard once heard one person talk about wish they could make more money or this. I've heard all, it's only been regrets for the most part. I didn't do this. I wish I could have spent more time doing this for that or, you know, told my family this. So it's, you know, it's something that I've always been really focused on, you know, in my life. Absolutely. So you enlist. you make it in, what's boot camp like? What's that whole process? So I get to boot camp and well, right before I got to boot camp, I went down to MEPs in Charlotte and they weighed me and I was one pound overweight, just one pound. I was 21 and they said I had to be 220. And so they sent me home for two weeks. I was already prepared, ready to go, already set my goodbyes. I was really upset. I just asked if I could like go use the bathroom or something. Can we do something here?

you know like but it was the answer was no i had to go home i lost a few more pounds came back and then i eventually i shipped out to boot camp september 11th 2006 uh is when i left for fort sill oklahoma uh what i didn't know when i was going is i was going to do a program called osit and what o set is it's it's uh 16 weeks it's nine weeks of your uh boot camp and then it's another seven weeks of your trade school um most people go to boot camp and then a i t there's a separation uh once you get to AIT, you're like a soldier now and you're not in boot camp anymore. I was in Osset, which is 16 weeks of week one. So no privileges, no anything straight through just the same thing every day for 16 weeks. So I was kind of shocked when I heard that when I got there, I thought when I graduated boot camp

that I was going to move on to that AIT part of it and be a soldier, but that wasn't the case. And when I got there, I was surprised of how well I was actually doing. I had got down to about 218. I was in fairly good shape when I got there, you know, with all the prep that I did, and I didn't seem to struggle much. It was, it wasn't hard. We scaled up. It was kind of a crawl, walk, run phase. But what ended up happening within a couple weeks is I ended up developing a eating disorder. I did have an eating disorder before I got there. I was suffering with anorexia. My boot camp, my drill sergeant, I'm sorry, my recruiter was giving me diet tips, and I don't want to insinuate. He encouraged anorexia, but the diet that he encouraged would be

considered anorexic. And so then when I got there, I didn't feel like I was losing weight. I couldn't see the progress that I was making, and then it just, some idea popped in my head to start vomiting my food. And that became my first addiction in boot camp. And it was, first it started out about losing weight control, then it turned into a stress reliever. Anytime that I was stressed after a long run or a bad day in boot camp, I would just vomit my meals. And the euphoria that I got after throwing those meals up was just amazing. I felt like I was in control at that point. I felt like no one could control my weight. And when I was stressed out, I would go throw up. So my boot camp was turned into hell very quickly because I was having to

exert myself, you know, in boot camp, Army boot camp, I was quickly went to A group running, which was six-minute miles. And I was, you know, doing all the PT, but I was also throwing up all my meals at that point. I was getting no nutrition, no, no, sorry, no nutrition at that point. I wasn't keeping anything down. So I didn't realize how much weight I was losing. I got there about 2.18. and when I went to go get my dress clothes, they measured me and they fitted me there. And then right before I was to graduate, we had to put these things back on. And two people could fit in these pants. And I was shocked at what I had been doing to myself.

One of my drill sergeants came up to me and said, listen, Private Austin, he said, your eyes are black. He said, they're sunken in the back of your head. He said, I've had people following you after meals. He said, we know what you're doing, just admit it. and I wasn't going to admit it because I knew at that point they were going to kick me out for that. And I just kept doing it and I didn't admit it and I kept pushing myself even further and further and further. And I eventually, when I came back from boot camp in just a very short 16 week period, I was 178 pounds. So in almost less than a year, I went from 270 pounds to 178 pounds to the point where when I landed at the airport,

my parents didn't even recognize me. So that boot camp became a real struggle. And I went full blown into this bulimic state that I couldn't stop. Now, when they were asking you, if you were having issues or needed help or anything, what do you think stopped you from reaching out to them and telling them what was going on? What was going through your mind that you didn't want to come forward about it? Well, one, I was ashamed of what I was doing as well. at some point because it was just something I couldn't control.

You will never, you rarely ever meet another man that admits to being bulimic. It's typically a female disorder. So I was ashamed about that. And then three, I was just always ashamed of something that I couldn't stop. And I felt like I was a fraud that I had, I'd been telling people that I had lost all this weight due to the boot camp. But in reality, even though the boot camp had a part of it, the real reason for all the weight losses, I wasn't keeping any of my food down. So I was ashamed of that as well. And so that's what I can, and I thought that this was a mental illness at that point.

And at the Army during that time was still under the data, don't ask, don't tell mindset. And I thought if I came and asked for any help for the bulimia that I was suffering, that I would be kicked out, medically discharged from the military. And then that would be the end of the college that I was hoping for. Do you think that anyone else was going through similar circumstances at that time, too? I never met anyone. I've only met one other person in my entire life that did suffer through it, and it was a female, so I don't know.

I don't think so. But I can't answer that question. I didn't, no one ever told me or said anything. No one said, hey, go talk to this person. But I was always questioned by drill sergeants, and then ultimately my parents, and then ultimately me, my unit. Everyone started to pick up on it very quickly. That private Austin always went to the bathroom after every single meal, no matter what.

What would you say looking back on it now that your older was the main trigger? Because you went through that first weight loss after the recruitment on your own. You were running. I'm sure you're still eating and living a healthy lifestyle. What do you think was the actual trigger in boot camp itself? The trigger in boot camp, it was more just a control. and I initially could not see the weight that I had lost until the drill sergeant that questioned me brought my pants out, the pants that I wore two-fortsill, and he asked me to put them on,

and they were 40s in the waist, and when I put them on, I could pull them out where another person could get in them. And I realized then I was losing too much weight, but I still liked the feeling of vomiting the food at that point, the euphoria, you know, the rush to the head that I was getting And so that was, it turned more in just to a stress reliever at that point besides the running. You know, it was something that I can control. I'm really surprised you were still able to make it through boot camp with not having the nutrients and the supplements and the protein even to even function because you're training. What, like, what's the training like on a daily basis? I mean, it's, you're up at 4.30 in the morning for 530 PT.

They have three different running groups, A, B, and C. And A group runs the shortest, but the fastest. So I was always having to do extreme PT. When I was in to graduate boot camp, you had to do at the end. It was a 12 or 15 mile road march with about 40 to 50 pound backpack on, and you did that at the end of the day. But at the end of the day, when after I had my meal and threw it up, I had about 103 fever.

And the drill sergeants weren't going to let me do it. But I did sign a waiver stating that if I got injured or hurt, that it wasn't their fault. So I was very sick through boot camp, But I was so determined to make it through it no matter what. When I graduated that day, I did that 12 to 15 mile road march, and then I low crawled 100 yards under barbed wire and mud while they live fired over us. And two or three o'clock in the morning, I went back, showered off, and the next day,

I was hospitalized in boot camp for about three days. I was on an IV fluids, the whole thing. But again, because they couldn't prove it, what I was doing, no one saw me with their eyes. They heard things, but they couldn't prove it. So I don't know how I made it through it. I, you know, I was so tired and so sick and so weak, but I was determined no matter what that I was going to push through and make it through it.

So I became a PT freak. I scored over a 300 on my PT test, which is phenomenal. No one ever does that. And it just became a game to me. How, you know, how far could I push my body at that point? Do you think you would relate that feeling and experience to what we hear about sometimes with people that are in very dangerous situations where the average person may have died in,

but these people find a will to survive and push through. Like people that are trapped maybe in a storm or an avalanche. You hear about these like once in a lifetime things that someone is near death and they find that willpower to keep pushing against all odds. Yeah, I mean a little bit towards that. I think what it, for me, I tapped into a Josh that I didn't know existed.

There was this different level that I could go to, and I didn't realize that. And when I found out that I could excel at something better than anyone else in my platoon or boot camp, I did my two miles, I think my fastest two miles that I did was like 1202. I couldn't even join the baseball team at my high school because I couldn't run one 630 mile. I quit the team because I couldn't, every practice I had to, after practice, I had to run the mile and couldn't do it. So when I tapped into this and realized that I could excel at something, I just kept pushing myself further and further and further. And it became very exciting to me how far I could get to the limit.

And you're tall too. You're over six foot. Yeah, I'm six two. Six two. So you're skinny, skinny. I'm 178 pounds, six foot two. And that wasn't the bottom. I would, in Iraq, it would get far worse.

But yeah, I was very skinny. I went from a 40 in the waist to a 28 in less than 12 months. Wow. So once you get out of boot camp, what's that time period? Like, what happens? Are you getting help? Where does it go? So I'm not getting any help. I joined up in the National Guard. That was another kind of an insurance policy for me that if I joined up in the National Guard that I wasn't going to go anywhere, I show up at my unit in 2007 and I don't make a good impression. I'm first, I'm late to formation, and then I don't have a haircut. hairs everywhere at this point. And I walk into the office and the first sergeant, you know, was very nice to me, but I don't even stand up and show him a military courtesy. So I start out very rocky on my first, my first drill, once a month, two weeks in the summer is what the recruiter

told me. And I started that in 2007. And that actually went as planned. And I started working at CarMax selling cars during the process and fell in love with that process. I made great friends who I'm still friends with today, still vomiting all my food at that point. And sometime early or late 2007, early 2008, we get what's called a warning order that we're going to be deployed to Iraq. And I don't remember which one it is. It's Title 10 or Title 32. You're one on the National Guard, and then they'll switch it to the other to make you active duty. I go active duty sometime in 2008, and I never look back. We spend a lot of time in Camp Shelby, Mississippi and Fort Bragg, North Carolina, Camp Butner. We spend time in all these places,

and I'm told that my half of the platoon is getting reclassed, and we're going to be doing infantry-like task in Iraq instead of field artillery. So I fall into a deep depression at that point because I realize I'm not doing anything remotely what the recruiter told me. And I start realizing, still naive, not thinking anything was going to happen, but realizing that I was going to be doing something much different than I signed up for. Are you trying to find a way out of it? Because this all just hits you. You have the job at the car place that's making you happy.

And you're like, I'm going to Iraq. I didn't sign up for this. Are you looking for an out? Yeah. I mean, I'm breaking rules all the time. I'm wearing my uniform out in public after drill drinking at the bars in Charlotte. I'm missing drill. I'm a wall.

Like, I'm doing everything I can to piss these people off. and they're just not let, I mean, they're giving me Article 15s, which are taking my pay, and I'm getting in trouble. And, and then I went to a party at UNC Charlotte one night with some girls. And I went back that night, and I left, and I got a DUI when I was 18 years old. And I thought, for sure, this was the end. I went and told my command. They wanted to give me, they wanted to give me community service. And they told me if they gave me community service that I'd be dishonorably disheartedly. discharged from the military. So I went back to my attorney and told them, and he said, don't worry, we'll just get you a night and lock up, and that'll be it. And I was like, well, that's not really what I want. But then again, I didn't want to be dishonorably discharged either. So I got that DUI. I spent 24 hours in the county lockup. I got out, and then I, I went. Like, they weren't, they weren't reprimanded me. That was, that was it. So it was, it didn't seem like anything that I could do to push enough buttons to get them to actually discharge me from the

military in any form of way. How does the military court stuff work with like the article 15s and is there a hearing? Is there a process? Well, it depends on which one you get. There's a fill grade. There's a company grade. I ended up getting multiple of both. At this point, I forgot which one's the worst, but they start with the lesser of the two. They have discretion on what they can do. They can give you extra duty for 45 days so you can be on active duty. You're 8 to 5 and then after that you have to work after until 8, 9, 10 o'clock, whatever they decide that you're going to do. And they can couple that with taking some of your pay or all of your pay.

So it just started out with extra duty and just being a shipbag and having to do just the stuff that no one else wants to do at the end of the day. And it would eventually lead into far worse than that. They would end up taking all of my pay for months at a time. So I was in the Army doing my regular job, doing extra duty, and then also not getting paid for it at all. How long were you going through this stage of limbo before you actually hopped on a plane and they were sending you overseas? This was for about a year. We trained from 2000, from, let's say, late, let's say November of 2007 to November of 2008. I ended up going to Fort Irwin, California, and I did 45, 60 days out there.

I came back to Fort Bragg where we were deploying out of and lived in what's called Tent City from November till about December 31st and got about 30 days leave and then we would ship out early 2009. And you're still suffering through an eating disorder during this time period? Right. I mean, I'm puking out in the field in the Port of Johns and this and that. And I'm getting, actually, I'm getting caught throwing up at this point and they're thinking it's just heat exhaustion. They're giving me IVs. They're, you know, they're just, you know, they're not thinking what it is at this point. And I'm getting away with all of it. And they don't know. They don't know yet. And that's something that I think the listeners and viewers are going to find

fascinating is that this literally foreshadows exactly what's going to happen towards the end of your service with a different type of addiction and the hiding from your superiors and your colleagues and everything like that. And it's going to be interesting to see how that develops over time. Right. The bulimia that I was suffering through, they, you know, first of all, most people don't even, most men don't even really, doesn't even come to their head. And then we're talking about army, infantry, field, artillery, frontline people. They're not psychologists, like they don't know what's going on. And, and I'm not sharing it with them either. So, right, I was able to get away with it because it was just, and I don't know what the, I think it's 1% of men actually suffer through bulimia. And, um, and, and I'm not. And less than a half a percent of men ever admit it. So yeah, you're right. It does foreshadow what comes next. Do you have like a message to someone that's dealing with an eating disorder now on how to get through it, how to get help, anything like that? Yeah. If you're if you're going through an eating disorder right now, I strongly, strongly recommend you going to your going at least telling

a doctor or a psychologist, there's medication for it. Unfortunately, bulimia is probably up there with pornography with the highest relapse rates. But it's very deadly. Your throat, your esophagus can explode. You can choke on your vomit. You can have a heart attack. It's very deadly when it gets to the level that I was at. I fortunately, there was an event that prompted me to stop, and I've been clean from that for over 10 years now. But if you're having that and you're struggling for that, you don't have to be embarrassed. You can admit it. It's okay. There's help for that. And growing up, we know that this is very common among young adults, teenagers. Women, girls.

Yeah, women, girls. We would hear stories like what you're telling in high school and stuff, and people would think it was like a joke or it was funny, and this is a real issue. Absolutely. I mean, this is only the third time I've ever, I've told a couple other people my entire life. My wife didn't even know until two, three years ago,

that I was suffering through bulimia. So it's been something very private that I didn't share. I never shared it in my rehabs that I was at. I haven't shared it in any of the public speaking engagements that I was at. But it dawned on me in the last three or four weeks that this was something that I really needed to share because I could have died from that and wanted to offer that hope as well that you can overcome it. I appreciate you opening up to me with that. And I think the viewers and listeners will definitely appreciate that too because people,

it's a big world, people know someone that can be affected by that. Right. Now, the day you ship off to Iraq, what's your thoughts, feelings, like, does it hit you that this is real, that I'm actually going to a place I never thought I would go to? Um, I mean, it was, you know, everything hit me that we had our little, um, we were sent out on in Raleigh, North Carolina at, um, North Carolina states. I think it's the RBC center. And, uh, we had this nice little conference. And then, um, my mom and my dad, were there and it really hit me. I've only seen my dad cry one time in my entire life and it was when his dad died and he came up to me that day and he shook my hand and he was he started to cry and told me that you know begged me not to be a hero you know like he asked me to promise him promise him

I was coming back and it hit me like right then and there the seriousness of what was about to happen but I was still naive and when I flew out I was just I didn't still didn't have a any thoughts. And then, you know, when I got to Kuwait and how nice Kuwait was, I just, I was fooled into what it was really going to be like. So even then, I still didn't have the proper viewpoint and perspective of what I was about to enter. And then once you landed, what happens? What's like the journey that those weeks a day is, what's the environment like, where are you living? I spent the three weeks in Kuwait, which was wonderful. It was, you know, nice accommodations. It was better than what I expected.

And then even when I got to Iraq initially at biop, it was still nice accommodations better than what I was expecting. But then when I landed at JSS Copper, it was a culture shock. I landed there, and I explained that on the last podcast on some of the things that I saw, and then my living conditions. Then we were six or seven of us in the back of a conics, you know, what you would see on the train.

I was sleeping on like a plywood. bed. I mean, it was reality hidden very quickly, you know, what I was, where I was at. And I still wasn't, I was still naive to the danger of where I was at. I just didn't realize how crappy this was going to be. And what I started out to do was I was started out was 12 hours on, 12 hours off of Tower Guard, where I would sit in this, you know, this concrete tower and just stare out in the fields and nothing would ever happen for 12 hours. Absolutely nothing. You're bored, I was bored out of my mind. And so that's how I spent my first couple weeks in country. And that's at the actual barracks itself. Like you're not leaving the compound or anything? Yeah, I wasn't leaving. That's

JSS Copper. It's a joint security station. It's where we were sharing a base with the Iraqi soldiers. And the unit that we were replacing was the unit, I don't know what the name is out of Germany. But what was cool was one day I was in Tower Guard. I actually was in there with a guy I went to boot camp with. So there's three guys in this unit that I was actually at boot camp with and two other guys, they told me had passed away while they were there, you know, in IED explosions. So that was where the first like time I started thinking that maybe this wasn't going to be a good idea that two of their guys died serving out of this, out of this base. Did you get to a point where you were comfortable with like, this isn't maybe not so bad

because you're just at the barracks? or were you warned and knew that there was going to be other tasks assigned to you outside of it? I mean, I was never given anything up front. Again, I was a private. I wasn't included in those conversations. There was all kinds of rumors going around about, you know, what had happened in the past at this place, what didn't happen, you know, special forces, supposedly was there at one time.

I mean, there was all kinds of stuff being said, none that I could have verified, none that I know if it was true, but I started hearing things. and then I started to hear that as the unit that we were replacing was going to be going back out, we were going to start taking on the patrols that they were doing. And then it started to hit me that this was going to be a rough ride. Now, you had mentioned the Iraqi soldiers. What was the relationship with the U.S. military and the Iraqi soldiers, and what were they like? I mean, from what I understand that when I got there in 2009, that we were scaling back

our role in the conflict and that we were asking the Iraqi soldiers to take more of a lead and things and we were training them because we were eventually we were going to start pulling out in 2010, you know, all combat operations were going to stop. And so that was kind of the relationship. We were training them on how to, you know, do patrols. We were training them on how to fight back, you know. And the thing is, though, you couldn't trust those guys. Those guys were only there because we were paying a little more money than whoever was paying them before. And so that's where my trust issues really started was there. There was a fence between our side and their side, but there was nothing stopping them from coming in or coming out because we would go over

there, our leaders. So it was, I started to become a little paranoid about those guys and realizing that, you know, we were training them, but only because we were the highest bidder at that point. And, you know, I didn't know what to think. Did you hear stories of them like turning it all or anything crazy in that regard? There were rumors, again, nothing confirmed, but there would be times where, you know, we would be mortared or things like that. And it would just be, it would seem just too convenient at the times that, you know, it would happen. So you could never know. Everyone was, you know, searched as they came in.

But, you know, we just proceeded with caution. I did for sure. I was very nervous when I was around these guys. Did you believe in the cause for why you were out there fighting, why the military was out there fighting? I mean, I don't even know why I went there, what the cause was. All I know is when I got there, the cause at that point was just to have my brothers back. And that was the cause. So I did believe in that.

I never got caught up in the politics, whether there was weapons of mass destruction, winning the hearts and minds of people, or what we ended up doing later down the road, handing out Operation Christmas Child boxes in the most dangerous parts of Baghdad. I never got bogged down in that. I really bought into protecting my brothers. And it was at the general consensus among the other brothers and women soldiers in the barracks at that time. Were they thinking the same thing?

We were all male unit, so no women there on our base. But yeah, we were all pretty, we had no idea why we were there while we were there. But yeah, we were pretty much like, you know what, we're here. We're going to make the best of this. And we made sure we had each other's backs. Was it normal to have an all-male unit during this time period? Well, at that time, they didn't, the Army didn't allow women to do combat. Any jobs with 13 Bravo, 11 Bravo, anything that was front lines, they didn't allow women to do that.

Now they do. But, yeah, so it was fairly, it was very normal at that point. That's interesting. Now, the first early days of patrol, when you're finally leaving the barracks and you're going into maybe more violent areas that were a little bit more rougher than where you were at then. What was that like? I mean, it was scary. The thing is, is nothing happened for weeks.

It was just nothing. They would, you know, when I first got there, they showed us all these videos about things that were going to happen or could happen and the bugs and the snakes and the scorpions and the IEDs and like everything that could possibly happen. And so when I was going on patrol, my first patrol, I ended up almost having a heart attack in that Humvee because I couldn't fit in the backseat because I was too tall. And it was so hot. There's no AC in the Humvee and you couldn't open the windows. So I was having a panic attack because of the heat. And then it came to a point where you just never knew what was going to

happen. Like we would stop for, you know, trash in the road, animals. You know, it was just, we were always very cautious. So we, I lived, at first it was like, it was just fun and games. And then when the suicide bomber attack that hit one of our sister platoons and killed those four people and all of the civilians and that's when my mental shift my mind changed that I was in danger. That was your first ever experience with violence in Iraq directly. Right hearing about it. It was one of our fellow lie lieutenants that passed away from the armory that I

actually joined up at. He was the only one that I knew in that that incident. And then it became real for me that this was not a good place where I was at. And I was terrified every single day that I went out on patrol. Even if nothing happened, I was terrified. And then I had hatred in my heart, you know, that this was, that I was here and that I had sold my soul for $20,000 in some college money. I started to really go through some mental turmoil, you know, after that event. And what, what's the hourly rate you're getting paid to be in this area, this dangerous area? How much are you being compensated, aside from the bonus and aside from college? I mean, I was getting E1 pay, which is nothing. I think that's $1,

a month as an E1 back then. But you get all the extra pay. We would get imminent danger pay. We would get hostile fire pay. We'd get all kinds of different extra bonuses in that. So, I mean, up coming back from Iraq, even with all my pay that was taken away. I ended up saving like $70,000 while I was there. So, I mean, it was good pay for 20 years old, but not worth the trade-off. I couldn't have made the same money here, you know, at 20 years old, probably. Did your mind ever shift where it became more for you than about the college and the money when you were out there? And did you feel like you were finding a purpose at that point? No, I never felt like I was found a purpose when I just felt like everything that I was doing was really useless.

These patrols were 12, 10 to 12 hours. Nothing was going on. I just felt like it was a complete waste of time. And I didn't see the point. I didn't see what we were doing, you know, when we were kicking in these doors, searching these places. And men and women and kids are screaming and crying and were causing terror in there. Like, I didn't see the point. There was nothing in these houses, but you had to treat everyone the same way.

And I got really sick and tired of doing it. Did you ever, like, speak against it, or is that not allowed to say, hey, I don't agree with what we're doing? I mean, later down the road, I started speaking against certain things. And, I mean, it wasn't the reason I started getting punished and started getting, you know, pushed back from leadership. But it just added to the fact that, you know, as a private in the military, you don't ask, questions you don't speak out. You just do what you're told. When's the first time you're involved in a violent act in Iraq? Well, I mean, the first incident that I had that I was directly involved

and that was serious was on a weapons and cache search. And so we got the mission. What we were going to do is we were going to be led by the Iraqi army and we were going to go search certain fields and certain houses for bombs, weapons, all this intel that we got. And I had a metal detector. And so we started pretty early six or seven in the morning. And we spent the next eight to ten hours, my metal detector just going off all the time. And every time I would dig around it, there would be nothing there. It would be some shrapnel. It would be just metal of some sort, nothing that I can make heads or tails of, but not a danger either. And then at the end, my metal detector, went off and I started digging around and there was a one-five-arthur artillery round buried about

18 inches under the ground. And I wasn't all too worried at first because I thought it was what's called a UXO, an unexploded ordinance. And so I wasn't concerned, but I started looking out in the distance and seeing the Iraqi army, the two guys that were leading, watching me while I was sitting there. And I was told to dig a little further underneath it and there was another one. And this one actually had a telephone on the end of it. And the significance of the telephone is it was one of their primary ways of detonating IDs from afar. So they would wire the phone to the to the round. And when they made the call, when that receipt, when that handheld receiver made the connection, it completed the circuit and that's what would blow the bomb up. And I knew about that because we

had briefings in classes about it. And when I saw that phone, I knew that something like I would, this was, this was, I was in danger at this point. And I call it up and I call it up to my platoon sergeant. And what I noticed on that is that there was 47 missed calls on that, that little phone. And then it was going up to 48 and 49 and then 50 and 51 and 52. And at that point, my platoon had backed up with the Humvees because of the situation. And I was told I needed to sit there until EOD got there. all while I'm watching these two Iraqi soldiers like stare and watch with their hands in their pockets. So I start getting very paranoid at that point. And I didn't know what was going to happen at that point.

I thought that this was it. Like this was the way it was going to end. And I'm sitting there kneeling down. I don't know if it took EOD an hour to get there or 10 hours. They're not known for their speed. But I just started daydreaming thinking, wow. this is how it's going to end. And I remember right as EOD got there,

I looked up and saw this sunflower and how blue the sky was. And I just had the weirdest thought ever, if this is the way I'm going to die, that this is the most beautiful scenery that I've ever seen. And that was the first violent and dangerous situation that I was in.

I ended up backing, I ended up being able to walk away from it. There was no pressure plates or anything else that was going to set that off. And I was probably about 400 yards away from that situation when they detonated it and when it went off like I could see the wave, the shock wave coming and I just got terrified that day when that went off and I lost all trust in my platoon sergeant that they just left me there sitting there on this ID and I understand

what they were doing. You know, it wasn't malicious at that time, but I lost all trust that these people had the best interest in my mind. And from that point forward, I wasn't ever the same. What do you think their mindset was, though, to leave you there because you were there for hours under the hot sun in the middle there? What do you think that was for? I understand it was to protect the rest of the platoon, right? If one person has to die okay, but we're not going to intentionally kill all 20.

So I get what they were doing, but that was the second event from the suicide bomber attack, and I had started huffing at that point. and, you know, things went downhill very quickly when I started huffing, and I lost all trust in them. And I was broken that first, the suicide bomber attack, and then I became an animal in my mind on the suicide. And with the IEDs, I didn't know what to do anymore. And I didn't trust my platoon sergeant. And I started to become very paranoid at that point about my safety. And the huffing came directly from this IED.

the first suicide bomber. Can we touch on that and walk me through how that directly affected you and what happened that day? Right. Well, what I had learned after the fact is that the platoon had been sent in at the same time on the same day. There were a bunch of mistakes that were made, which, you know, caused me to lose faith. And then we ended up losing our captain, which was a great captain and it was replaced by another captain that was involved in the situation. And so everything started to kind of spiral down control or down the hill about that. And I started huffing and no one knew at that point. But I was huffing because I didn't know what else to do and I was terrified and I was thinking it dawned on me at that point that, that, you know, I was in danger at this

point. The naïveness was gone. The ignorance was gone. And I just, I wanted out of there. I reverted back to that behavior that I was doing in 2007 and 8 doing anything I could to get kicked out of the military at that point, but it just wasn't happening. What exactly is huffing and how relevant and how often were guys doing it out there that you were able to access it so quickly and just start doing it? So huffing, what it is is I never heard of whippets. I've never heard of most of the stuff before that, But what huffing is, is you take a fume of a substance and you ingest it and it cuts the oxygen off to your brain. I think in the 70s and the 80s, maybe the 60s, it started out with glue. People started sniffing glue as from what I understand.

Then it kind of developed into whip. It's the whipped cream cans. And then paint, spray paint, gasoline. Each substance requires a different form of how to ingest it. But what I chose to do was the, the duster, it's the aerosol cleaner, and the reason it was so accessible was it was a way that we could cheat in cleaning our weapons. It was always available because we were in sandy areas, and so we could easily get it from the bases, and that's how I would eventually start getting it. We'd get two or

three cans at a time, when we would drive by a base that had a PX, and then I would take it back, and I would start huffing. And at first, it wasn't a big deal. I would make these small deals with myself that I would only huff on this day. I would only huff on bad patrols. I would only huff on this. And I eventually started breaking all of these patrol or all of these deals that I made with myself. And I decided that I no longer wanted to be there

but didn't, I was too much of a pussy to ask to leave. So. What were the lead-ups? Like, what were those exact moments when you first tried it for the first time? Like, what's your mindset? How did you know that this is what you wanted to do? That you wanted to take this can and you wanted to inhale it and you wanted to get high from that.

My best friend brought it to me, saw that I was struggling that day. I was crying in my can about the situation that was going on. And what happened? They cut the internet. They cut everything off when someone passes away. Like you can't even contact anyone. It's like two or three weeks. You know, they don't want you to tell someone's loved one that they died.

They wanted to come from the Army. So I had no outlet. You couldn't talk to anybody. The chaplain came in for like an hour. you know, like just to show his face. And I went back to my room, just an emotional wreck. He came in. He saw the duster in my room. He said, he showed me how to do it. He said, hey, if you do this, it'll feel good for a few minutes, and you'll relax. I stuck it in my mouth, pulled the trigger, but there was this bitter agent in it that was, it was disgusting. And I didn't

get enough in me and nothing happened. And I was like, this stuff sucks. He's like, no, no. He said, you've got to try it again. Just take a big hit of it. And when I took that hit, I fell in love with that stuff. I mean, I loved it what it did. I mean, it gave this euphoria to my head. I had never, it reminded me of the bulimia that I was also doing while I was there. And I had never done any drugs ever to that point. And I didn't have anything to compare it to.

It was the best thing on the planet. And I fell in absolute love with it. Did the military know that this was actively going on amongst its service members? They did. there while I was there, there were two or three majors that I know of that had passed away in their office with the duster on the desk. I don't know how far the investigations got, but I, huffing on our base, brought it to light and it became a major issue where our sister platoon, Bravo platoon, one of our guys were huffing there and they actually shipped him off to

Germany to avoid the problems. Were there other drugs at all or liquor or anything like that or is it just strictly duster on these? You know, the crew that I hung out with didn't drink or do any other drugs. We were all doing the duster together. So I don't know. I know that we had a supply sergeant that was there that was getting pills and crushing them up and putting them in a cigarette. So there were things going on, but I wasn't really a part of that. So I don't know. I'm sure there was. But I was only focused on the duster. And what about your eating disorder at this time, too? Are you still struggling with that while going into the duster, or did the duster kind of offset your addiction? I mean, so when I got out of boot camp and was doing, I was trying to take it back on the bulimia. And I did get back up to

210 pounds. And I was, I was very fit at that point. But when I got to Iraq, I started doing both. the bulimia came back full force and then the then the then the duster as well so i when i came back from iraq i was a hundred and forty eight pounds now something i am interested in is the meals as a service member in iraq i've heard on some of our comments from people of veterans that the meals are kind of similar to like prison commissary in a way like that the meal kits what was your experience with them so we were being on a jSS copper, we were self-sustained. We got one clip a month. Once a month, all our supplies would get in. We did have a pop-up kitchen tent in there, but for the most part, everything was boiled in a bag.

The chicken, I mean, everything. We had powdered eggs. That food was terrible. People say MREs are terrible, but the MREs were like a five-star meal compared to what these kids were cooking on these pop-up kitchens. So I've never had the one or two times I've been in jail for overnight. I would give my food away. So I can't compare it, but it was terrible, didn't like it. What I did get to look forward to is we would eat out in the community. When we would go on these patrols, it was an honor for these people to feed you. So we did eat good food when we were out on our patrols, but that came with the tradeoff.

I came back with worms and bad digestive problems. I mean, there's no sanitation. So every day was the same meal for over a year. like Monday was chicken cordon blue. Tuesday was going to be this beef brisket slop. Wednesday was my favorite day, which was stir fry. Saturdays was hamburgers and hot dogs. But the thing is, we were on four days of patrol and then two days of Tower Guard.

You weren't there four days, and you got back. Sometimes there was food left. Sometimes there wasn't. So it was just, I really focused on trying to eat out in the community. But the Army food there was terrible other than those other bases in Kuwait. and, you know, that had the nice commissary chow halls, which were phenomenal. Was there ever a worry that these civilians would try to poison you guys? Like, how are the relationships with the civilians of Iraq? I mean, I never was worried about it because when we were

going into these towns and we were having these what's called key leader engagements, like, these were like wanted by the people. We were going in there trying to figure out who was new in the community, who just showed up, you know, like they wanted our help for the most part to keep their communities strong. And we would go on there and build chicken farms and irrigation plants and schools. And we were giving them money for this. So I never feared once that they would poison us. And then when I looked a little more into their culture, like offering a meal was like sacred. So it was something that I didn't feel like they were going to violate at any point. How often were you around service members that would become or later became killed in action

in your unit? Nobody in our unit actually passed away, thank God. We all made it back. We just had that one loss that was from the unit that I joined up at. So we all made it back, but a lot of us fell apart while we were there. So when I came back, we had one or two people pass away instantly from like motorcycle accidents, drug overdoses, things like that. So thankfully, our unit that we had together was we stayed intact. but we, it was just, you know, for the grace of God that we were, you know, we weren't touched like that, thankfully.

The first time you started huffing, how far into your service time were you there for? I started huffing probably in about 2009, or May of 2009 when the incident happened, and no one knew about it, except, you know, a few of us that were huffing together here and there. The way it started to spiral out of control is I didn't want to be there anymore, so I had the right idea to like go outside of my can where I was sleeping and I was huffing on the T-wall barrier and I fell down and a medic did find me and then that's where leadership started to find out about my huffing and it's where the it's where the it's where the pushback and where they started to treat me very poorly started they brought me in and to the what's called the talk and they told me

that they knew others were doing it, and they knew higher enlisted people were doing it, and they told me that if I told on them, that I wouldn't get any punishment. And so at that moment, I was like, didn't know what to do. I just wanted out, but they gave me a few minutes to go back to my can to take a break. So I went around and told every single person

that I was huffing with that, listen, they want me to tell, I'm not going to tell. They're threatening to kick me out. Just know if they pull you in, the only thing they know is what you tell them. and some of these guys got scared and told on themselves, and what happened was is that turned some of the platoon against me and my leadership against me.

First, my leadership didn't want to do anything with me because I wouldn't tell, and then my friends thought I told on them. And they started writing things on the towers like Austin the Huffer, Austin the Snitch, Austin the Rat, you know, and I didn't tell on anybody at all. This is all while I've gotten Article 15s. losing pay. I mean, my senior enlisted command was punished for how they punished me. They made me clean out, you know, the towers had these holes with piss bottles and like from years of soldiers in

there. And there was just various things. I was made to guard outside of the wall with no ammo. I was literally pushed outside of my base with a weapon with no ammo. I mean, there was just very bad things that happened from that day forward. And, you know, it just, it became. came a very miserable time for me. And it just increased my huffing at that point. So the military's reaction to your addiction that is becoming more and more out there by the day and people are starting to seeing is by just punishing you. They're not trying to give you help. They're just giving you punishments. Right. And that IED situation that I explained, I had to go speak to a couple of generals about what I saw that day and just recall to them what

happened. And I was going, I was supposed to get a Bronze Star with Valor for that because I was the one that found it, but because I had an Article 15 going on that my unit decided that they were going to give it to the platoon sergeant instead. So there were just a lot of repercussions that I started to face and pushback to the point where my platoon sergeant ended up pulling me from the patrols, rightfully so, because I was huffing on patrol at this point. I was walking through the towns with a can in my pocket. I would volunteer for radio patrol, and I was putting my guys in danger at that point,

and it would just get worse and worse from that point forward. Were you ever worried that you were putting your brothers in danger because of your addiction? I did feel like a dirt bag for that when I was huffing on, when I volunteered for radio patrol or this or that, but I also was very upset with them for what they were saying about me and what was going on. But you still continued to do it,

regardless of those feelings. Right. I ended up getting, I ended up getting demoted four times in country, which is unheard of. I mean, I got demoted four times. I got four article 15s. They took my pay. I kept having to go see what we call as the Brain Ranger, the psychiatrist, you know, the top brass to tell them what I was going on. And things really came to a head when I went home on my two weeks leave, if you're going to spend a certain amount of time in country, they're going to give you what's called R&R. And when I came back, I would completely disengaged from Iraq, like, I had never been there. And then when I went back to the airport in Atlanta after doing that, I seriously thought about going AWOL because I knew my unit was going to treat me the way they were treating me.

And so when I got back to Biop, I went and got a can of air from the PX. I went to the bathroom and started huffing. I was caught by someone I don't even know who they were. They took the can from me and said that, told me that to get out of here and that if I didn't, they were going to report me. So I left for a few minutes, came back. He threw it in the garbage. I got the can, went back in there. I start huffing. And the next thing I hear is that motherfucker is back. He had just went to the bathroom and was still in the bathroom. And at that point, I threatened to kill myself and told on my platoon what they were doing to me, which called. even worse problems for me at that point.

And what happens next once you do that? They end up sending me back to my platoon. I meet with leadership. They're asking me why I told this and that and said, you know, and I pretty much shut down at that point. I was throwing up my food. I was huffing every second that I could get. I mean, I was really going downhill quickly,

but at this point, they put me back on patrol. They just kept pushing me forward. You could have gotten someone killed at this point. I could have in my platoon sergeant that I ended up getting in the biggest fight with. I thought about shooting him. He came into our little recreational room. I was told by the first sergeant that I was off punishment and that they wanted me back on patrol. And he told me that I couldn't go back on patrol.

But first sergeant outranked him. I didn't go to first sergeant detail that morning. He came in there screaming and yelled at me and I picked up my weapon and pointed it at him. And is there psychological help for you guys out there? Are there psychologists on base, therapist, anyone to talk to? Not where I was at. I mean, I did get shipped off to bigger bases to speak to psychiatrists and psychologists, but I can't blame the Army for not getting help at this point.

I didn't ask. I went in there and at some point I went in there and lied, realizing that they weren't going to kick me out. They just were going to keep punishing me. And at this point, I just told them what they needed to hear. I wouldn't do it again. So you think if you actually genuinely asked for help, they would have helped you at that stage? Well, they did. Our counterpart, one of the guys did ask for help, and they did send him out to Germany. He was huffing just like me.

And was there a lot of soldiers in your position that were suffering? And you guys kind of maybe found each other and talked about it together at that point? I stopped talking to them because they thought I had told on them. Our first sergeant and captain, they came in and they made us take everything out of our cans, like literally every people. piece of article that we had. They searched everything. They took every piece of canned air that anyone had on our base at that point. So I caused a bunch of issues for our unit. So you're very isolated and alone. Right. I got very isolated. I was very, you know, and at this point, we're still going on patrols. I'm still not, I'm still throwing up. Like all this stuff is still going on for no money. I'd have to come back. And for example, I was told one of my punishments one day was to put all

my battle rattle on and just walk around the base until they told me to stop. Okay? Well, I decided I wanted to know, I wanted to know how many times I could run around the base, you know, as fast as I could. I wasn't asked to do that. I was asked to walk. I didn't know a, like a colonel was going to land there that day and see me running around in 110 degrees, stop me and ask me who asked me to do this. You know, I, unfortunately, I put my leadership in a bad position. You know, even though they were not following the rules, I was doing things not making their life easy either. Do you have thoughts at this period of time thinking like you're crazy and that you're the problem and that you cause this on your own? Or did you know that this directly resulted from those traumatic events and it wasn't your fault and you needed

some serious help? I mean, it's a 50-50. I really, it's hard to straddle that line and blaming things and taking responsibility. Those events did put me in a position to make a choice. I had no idea that Candair was so addicted. I didn't know huffing. I never heard of the term. So, yes, those incidents put me in a position to make a choice. I made the wrong one. And I will say that there were a couple people in the unit,

a captain that ended up moving on somewhere else and a first sergeant that did give me, looked me square in the eyes and promised me they wouldn't discharge me dishonorably and would get me help. Looked me right in the eyes and I told them no. So I turned down the help. that I was offered because I didn't know if I thought they were lying to me. And this all stem from traumatic experiences in the military?

Right. It's one thing after another, we would go in and we would kick in doors and nothing, you know, things wouldn't be there. Platoon sergeant would say things like, you know, Josh, you're going to be the point guy because you have the widest shoulders. You can take the most bullets. You know, like, I know it was joking, but like it started to wear on me, you know. And then we were, there was times where we did get mortared. there were incidents that happened. It was just we were fortunate to never get hurt. And, you know, it just, for example,

the last time we got attacked was New Year's Eve, 2009. I thought it was fireworks outside. Honestly, I was sitting there in my can watching Dexter, and I start hearing these explosions in the background and then thinking, you know, okay, it must be fireworks. We must be doing something here because on the 4th of July, our platoon sergeant led up a little bit. we stopped on MSR Tampa, which is the main road, and we started firing our weapons and

like our grenade. I mean, we had like a great time that night, like shooting in the road and all kinds of cool stuff. And so I thought maybe this was just fireworks. And then the lot, all of a sudden there was an explosion that shook the tent. And like I ran out there. I was in such a mind frame that I was in sandals, no shirt, shorts, and I forgot my weapon. I mean, I was just in a daze, you know, because of everything that happened at that point. And what did you do in that moment? I just stayed under the bunker. I was like, it was too late then.

Like, I didn't have a weapon. Fortunately, no one passed away. The great thing about these mortar attacks and anything else that happened to us is that these people that were doing that weren't skilled. So they, you know, they didn't know how to do it. They would walk in the mortars. They would either be too short or too far.

Or if we got shot at, you know, it was while we were on patrol. We just kept pushing through. So, I mean, it was very fortunate. And what are your relationships like back home with your family, your parents, your girlfriend, if you had one? How are you communicating with them? Do they know what's going on? So early May, really early in my deployment, I just told my parents I wouldn't be calling them no more because I got tired of, like, lying about things that was going on or not going on.

And so I told them, I just said, listen, I'm going to call you every once in a mile, just, you know, no news is good news. If you don't hear from me, what means it's okay. I'm not dead. and I didn't have a girlfriend at that time. I didn't really have any other friends. I was keeping up with a handful of people, but I got to the point where I had just lost interest in everything at that point. Do you think that was really selfish looking back on it? You probably made your parents worried and how they felt.

I don't know. I mean, I told them no news is good news. And I don't know if it was the right or wrong thing at that point, but they would call and they would be asking me questions. And I just, I was never, I never wanted to lie. You know, they would ask me how I'm doing. Like, how are you doing? But they don't mean, like, just in general.

They like, it's a deep question. How are you doing, son? And I just, I lied to them. I wasn't doing good. They had no idea about the duster. They had an idea about the bulimia, but I had never told them. So, I mean, it was just, maybe it was selfish, but I, you know, I got tired of lying. The rest of your military career, it was spent high and on duster?

Well, when I came, so back in December of 2009, maybe January of 2010 while I was still there. I was put on talk duty where I was just answering the calls at that point. We had moved from JSS Copper. We had to tear that whole base down and give it back to who the landowners was, which was absolutely terrifying. No walls, no fence, no anything at this point. We're literally all sleeping in one wood structure, you know,

the same dangerous place that we were at. And I was answering the phone calls, and I looked back in the closet and I saw a can of duster. And I went back there. I took a huff and I was tried to get back to the desk as fast as I could, but I had passed out. And they found me at this point. They knew what I was doing, but they couldn't prove it. I thought that was the time.

They said, listen, if you ever do it again, ever, we're going to kick you out of the Army, dishonorable discharge. That's it. Like, they were fed up at that point. I don't come back until February of 2010. And I'd stopped. I believed them at this point. and I was at Fort Stewart, Georgia is where I demobed at, and I immediately started having PTSD symptoms. I woke up that first night. Like, they took our weapons from us that, I don't know why,

what happened. They just took all our weapons. When you're back in the U.S. Right, at Fort Stewart. And I wake up, I can't find my weapon. I'm freaking out. I'm, like, where's my weapon running around? I get up. I'm running sniper. Like, I'm a basket case at this point at Fort Stewart, Georgia. And but then, but again, I, I went through the process where I was offered help and I just wanted to go home. I just kept telling them, no, no, no, no, no, no. Like, no. And it's just get you through the process as fast as possible. And it just made it worse and worse and worse psychologically. Right. And so I, I started to really have the issues. And, you know, when the

good thing is, is when I came back, I started to do the same thing. I was having PTSD. but I didn't know what I was experiencing at this point, and there was no way that I was going to verbalize it to my command because, again, I had a whole bunch of stuff going on. At least my bulimia alone had enough to get me kicked out, at least a medical discharge. And so when I got back, I went back to National Guard for a little bit, and I moved in with my dad,

and what I decided, I went back and did the same thing. I started getting two or three cans a day and decided that would be for the week. I made these little small agreements, And then one time in February 2010, I got tired of driving back and forth to Walmart, which is only six or seven minutes. I sat in the parking lot and I did about 70 cans in three straight days in the car. And that was like an eye-opener for me. My dad came and got me, found me.

And he was like, bro, you need some help. Like, something's wrong with you. Like, seriously. Like, wrong in the sense that I should be ashamed, but, like, you went through hell. Like, go here, go get some help. He found a rehab. He found a whole bunch of stuff for me, but I was 21 years old. I wasn't going.

I told him no. I went back to selling cars, but the thing is, is I did meet this woman while I was in Iraq and on my two weeks leave, that's how I got familiar with this area. I came up here on my two weeks leave to meet her in New York City, and I fell in love with her. And so I got busy, you know, I started doing to school. I started coming up here for two weeks at a time. She would come down here.

I went clean and sober from that for six straight years. But only for the fact that I was in school, I was in a relationship, I was getting married, I was having kids. So you weren't, sorry to interrupt, but you weren't doing duster or anything for those six years? From 2010 to 2016, I did nothing. You were just going through the movements of life. Right. I was so busy.

I finally realized what most people don't realize, that people that join the Army for school, I think it's 80% never even cash in on the benefits that they, they agreed to. And so I immediately got in there, went to community college first to get all my stuff knocked out, even though they were paying for it. And I just kept going progression after progression. And this relationship became serious. And it was the first one in my life that I, you know, was really thinking, wow, this is going to move forward. And, and even in the Army, when I came back, I was barred from re-enlistment. But I turned my whole life around in these two years initially. And, and they asked me to re-enlist.

When I left, they brought me up in front of the platoon. I'll never forget it. The first sergeant, the captain, and everyone brought me up, and they briefly told, you know, talked about, like, you know, how of a dirt bag I was for my first, like, six years in contract or four years in contract, and then they told me how proud they were of me that I changed my life. I got my rank back. I mean, when I, that last day that I, they even let me leave 30 days early.

They didn't even make me finish my contract out. I was just, I was proud, I turned it around, you know, I was very, like, motivated at that point. I stopped the duster, you know, and got married. And then I had a family, right? Like, I had a family. And then things really went downhill with some relationship issues that were going on in about 2015. And then in 2016, the wheels fell apart when I moved up here. I was working for the Hartford Insurance as an account manager.

We move up here to Patterson, New York. I'm living with her in-laws until we can find a house. You know, we found one very quickly in Danbury, but we had to gut the whole place. And I was going crazy at this point. I had been hiding everything from my family. From 2010 to 2016, I had not been doing anything. However, it got really bad. I started to see things.

I started to hear things. I started to hallucinate. I mean, I was having nightmares. There was one time where I woke up and I was on top of, my wife about to hit her because of a hand-to-hand combat situation. These two Iraqi soldiers where we were on a patrol under a bridge grabbed me and tried to take me off. But then they said they were joking after I hit them with my rifle. Right. So I was having these nightmares that I couldn't explain. I lost all sexual interests with my partner because I thought I was absolutely going crazy.

I mean, things were going downhill real quick. I just wasn't using at this point. point. We get up here. I walk in, I graduate with my bachelor's degree, and I walk into Chase Bank, and I ask to speak to the manager, give him my resume and tell them that, you know, that I'd love to work here if you were hiring. They tell me that I'm not working. They're not hiring anyone, but the next day I get a call, I eventually get a job, and then White Plains. I had to go down there to White Plains, New York, to start training, and that's where I picked up for the first time in six years. I was on my own. I was learning to get my financial license and I went on my lunch break one day instead of going to Uno's pizza like I love to go to. I went to CVS down the street. I walked into the

stationary aisle and I saw the duster and I said this would be wonderful to do. And that was a Friday, okay, and I didn't go home for three days. Like I left my house on a Friday morning, love you, hugs, everything, kids, everything. And no one knew anything was going on. And I disappeared for three consecutive days. I went to work Monday, came back. I came back home Monday afternoon as if nothing never happened. And that's where it started. I, like, they, I don't know what they were thinking. Like, I don't think they understood, like the bulimia. No one understood what the duster was. And I was able to just push it under the rug and, you know, just go on with it. But at that point, I was in trouble, big trouble with the duster.

That urge to want to do that duster when you saw it, that happened all those years after you got back from Iraq. Do you think that was just building up inside of you and you weren't like that PTSD was there but you didn't really experience it until certain triggers happened? And then once it happened, it's just everything that you should have felt those years after kind of unleashed and put you into that. Yeah. I mean, I was in serious denial about the PTSD.

I didn't want to accept it. For the most part, my deployment was very calm. I didn't experience. For example, I, you know, I feel like, you know, someone that would have lost their leg, you know, experienced a worse situation than me. But what I, you know, what I didn't realize that my situation was bad too. And it impacted me, you know, just as bad as it would someone else. And that trauma is relative.

And so I tried to just, I was in denial about everything that I was going on. I didn't want to admit it. And then the second time that I relapsed in 2016 with the duster, my family finally like pulled you know called me to the table and for the first time in my life I asked for help and they uh you know my my family told me that you know PTSD wasn't real and that what I experienced wasn't this and that they just like let into me why can't you just get over it you know that that didn't happen there's no way possible and and I mean that was the first time I asked for help you know with people that I seemingly thought cared and that just that just shut

the door on ever asking again. And so from 2016 to 2019, like, I mean, I went from my addiction shifted from thinking I could do it recreationally and stop. I thought for sure when I did one can that it would not lead to the 70 cans, but it kept leading to the 70 cans. And then it shifted to knowing that it was going to lead to this direction. And then it became a suicide mission. So every time I relapsed in these next three years, it was to kill myself. I didn't have a weapon. I didn't know what else to do. I just couldn't live like this anymore. I didn't know where to get help. I wasn't going to ask anymore. And I was doing everything I could to just end it with the duster because I researched it. It's dangerous. It's like Russian roulette. And I just couldn't die. I would remember sitting in the

parking lot of Walmart in Danbury and I would be huffing and I'll never forget it. I'll never forget it. Every time I woke up, I'd see the blue letters of marshals. And I'd be so devastating. that I woke up. So devastated. I even got to the point where I got a blindfold and put it on. So I didn't see those blue letters of Marshall. I was hoping that I would just waken. When I even when I woke up thinking maybe I was dead. And that's where it just got really bad, really dark at that point. I was driving down the road and like I would have what now I know is disassociations like the car would turn into a Humvee. I could feel the heat. I mean, I was just having the most incredible things happen and I didn't know what to.

do. Was there a lot of talk during this time period of when you got out of what PTSD was and how to help it and who you could talk to? I'm sure there was. I just, I started counseling in 2016 at Danbury at the Vet Center with a wonderful person. But unfortunately, I was in such denial about my addiction, what was going on. And I, I wasn't engaged in my treatment at that point. So again, I want to refer back to I was at fault for not accepting the help that I was offered. you know, in these 2016 to 2020. The time period before that, did you think you were good? Or was there always a part of you that knew something was wrong and you were just pushing

it to the side and you weren't like facing the demons, I guess you could say that developed from your time in Iraq? The duster thing, it was off the table. Like that wasn't even remotely an issue for me and during that time frame. But the other stuff I knew there was a problem. I would, me and my wife would go to five or six restaurants in one day that I would just walk right out of because I couldn't be in crowds and small rooms. She loved this restaurant called Foe in Danbury. It's so small. And we probably walked in there three or four times. I would walk out.

I wouldn't go to amusement parks. I wouldn't do anything with her. I couldn't come back down to New York City. I mean, I was just, I mean, I was all but locking myself in the house at this point and totally losing my mind. And when you have situations like that, that directly correlated to your experience? Oh, absolutely, for example. Me, my family one day went out to some pumpkin picking farm here in New York, and I kneeled down to pick up a pumpkin, and I looked out and I saw a sunflower. And I immediately had a flashback of that IED situation, and I was zoned out. And when she, I came to, I came to being told, what's your problem? Why can't you be present? This is, why are you always doing this? And I don't fault her for any of that, but I was a miserable person. And you just couldn't communicate that with her up. as to why. I didn't feel like I could at that point after when I did ask for help, I got shut down by the family. And what about the brothers you were with serving with? Did you stay in contact with any of them? Was any of them reaching out to see how you were doing? Here and there, I think other guys, PTSD, hit them a little later on and we were all eventually found ourselves

in the same boat and we all eventually lost contact. My best friend that I was in his wedding, like we don't talk today. I don't know what the problem is, but yeah, I did lose contact. Moving up north was probably more of the reason, you know, all of them being in North Carolina as well and not going back. What do you, what would you say became the lowest part of your life at this point? Like, when does it get to rock, rock bottom? I mean, the lowest part in my life was, you know, when I got arrested that day in Danbury, Walmart parking lot. And it's not because I got arrested. It's not because I got felonies. It's not because of any of that. But I, I consciously I'll never forget it.

I walked out of the bail bondsman office that day, and I remember making the decision that I made the decision that I was going to live on the streets and be a drug addict and quit on my family. That was the lowest. I remember it. I remember it. I went back to my house and then took an Uber back to Walmart

and started again. I made the decision. That's the lowest point in my life, that as a man, I quit on my family. My wife and my kids, I quit on them. that was the lowest part. And you just felt, like, what did you feel? Why did you come to terms what that's what you wanted to do?

I just realized that I wasn't going to be able to stop the PTSD, that it had been too much, that I had waited too long, and that this duster had such a grip on my soul that I couldn't, I wasn't going to be able to stop it. But you didn't let it, you eventually do not let it stop you. You were able to turn it around. I was. I mean, I can't take a lot of credit in the beginning for it.

It's a lot of police officers, you know, and Danbury arrested me that started it. I was caught by a couple officers here in Fishkill, New York as well. And then, you know, then it was my hospital rooms being guarded and being sent to Westchester. And, you know, there was a lot of things I got taken out of my control. The thing that changed my life and I had just even started is when I was in the hospital here in Newburgh or whatever it was, I told God that, you know, it didn't matter. I didn't want the criminal charges gone. I didn't want this. I didn't need my family back. I said, if you can just give my sanity back at this point, like, I'll accept it. And I'll do no matter, I'll do whatever it takes, no matter what.

And then they sent me to Westchester Hospital to get my surgery. It was broke, my jaw was broken in four different places. When I got there, they do these intakes, you know, what's your highest level education, this, that, I just answered nothing to everything. I gave them no information. and I was sitting in there waiting for surgery, didn't know when it was going to happen, but this woman came into my room, and she introduced herself. She says, my name is such and such. I'm a chaplain. She says, normally I only come into the rooms that I'm asked to come into.

She said, but I feel drawn to come into your room. And I'm like, okay, what do you want? And she said, why are you here? And I was very rude, not answering any questions. And then she's asked me if she could pray for me. And I was like, you can do whatever you want to do. It's a very generic prayer. nothing serious. But when she stopped, she looked at me and said, you know what, Josh? She said,

it's going to be okay. Just remember no matter what. No one heard those words from me. I said those words in a hospital bed. I didn't even verbally say them. I said them in my mind. And from that day forward, I knew that I was going to be able to overcome this. I didn't know what the landscape was going to look like at the end of it when I got out of all the treatment and everything that I was going to go through. But it was just, I knew that finally, I had a little bit of hope that if I just kept doing the next right thing that this could turn around. And it started with me going to Rhode Island. I went to a 30-day program there. And then I went to Ohio to stay with my mom for a little bit. And then I went to Kentucky and did an 80-day program for PTSD there. And then the biggest choice I ever had to

make was to come back and go to Teen Challenge, which was 12 months inpatient in New Haven. And I made that decision. And so it just kept building and building and building and building. And the thing is, is it was all easy up into that point. Like, it was all easy. Like, all I had to do was just do what I was told, right? And then I was divorced, and then just a few weeks before I was to graduate this Teen Challenge program out of nowhere, I received divorce paperwork. no warning whatsoever, right? And that started a chain event of things. And the thing is, is when that happened,

I was presented with a choice. Did I believe in what I said I was going to do, or was I going to back out? Everything that's happened since that last relapse has put me in a position to make a choice. And I have completely turned my life around in regards to that. Do you think that that hospital visit

brought you back to your 17-year-old that was so motivated, so driven to do whatever it took to get into the military? Yeah, one, it confirmed. You know, I had, being a seminary graduate, getting my master's degree and theological studies, and being ashamed of what I'm doing, and it just confirmed that God heard me that day when that woman said that. And then it also, you know, the pushback and the obstacles that I faced moving forward with people writing me off and the divorce paperwork and this and that and everything that happened,

it just motivated me even more to just keep pushing forward, keep doing the next right thing. So yeah, it just put me back into that 17-year-old mind frame that I'm going to do this no matter what it takes. Do you think you needed to go through all of those events after coming back from Iraq to be where you're at now, or do you think that this could have all been avoided and you'd be a different person if you had that conversation with someone the second you came back to the states. No, I absolutely. I needed to go through these events to be where I'm at today. I would have never, I wasn't ready for recovery, even if I would have been given a video of what was about to happen. I could have watched the next 10 years unfold in my life and know it was me and still be in denial,

but yeah, I had to go through this. What would you say is like the biggest message you've been able to create in your mind from this whole experience, everything you've been through, everything you've gotten through, what's that message that you want to share with every single person that's listening, watching, tuning into your story? I mean, recovery looks different for everybody. I can't tell someone what to do or what not to do, but what I do know is I've adopted a couple things in my life. One is just doing the next right thing.

Whatever the next right thing is, that's what I need to do. If you're always doing the next right thing, you're going to be okay. I made an agreement with me. You know, I like to make agreements. And one of them is, is, you know, if I'm experiencing a problem or a certain emotion, that I have permission to go get the duster if after the fact it's going to make it better, never going to make it better. I would recommend reaching out to your community.

There's always resources. There's always things that you can get into that can help you with recovery. It's not a lost cause. It's not hopeless. I mean, I was hopeless at one point. You know, I was using behind a dumpster at Walmart in Newburgh, you know, with a shirt and shorts on in 15 degree weather. It's not impossible. It's possible to recover.

We do recover, but it takes work, you know, and going to rehab is not a character defect. I was told something recently, and I'll share this to, it's not a character defect if you have a substance abuse problem, okay? It's not. You're just bad at it. Just don't do it anymore. You're bad at drugs and alcohol, so just don't do it. and hearing that from someone, like, really changed my mind frame. It took the shame and the stigma away from that.

And, you know, there are, there's help out there where you can ask, you can go for it. The stigma is getting removed. It's still there, but stigma is slowly being removed from mental health issues. So I would just say, go get help. I mean, you know, I have mentor people now. I mean, I have sponsors that I work with. I'm giving back to the community. I go to recovery groups.

everything I can. I speak at recovery rehabs all across the country via Zoom. I mean, I have totally bought into this program. You don't have to do anything different in addiction. All you have to do is use the same effort and energy that you put into the addiction into your recovery. That's it. That's it. There's nothing extra. Just do what you're doing in your addiction for your recovery, and you'll never turn around. How do you get through the dark days? Because we all still have those, you know, no matter what we've gone through, there's going to be days where it's dark and our demons are coming for us. How do you get through those? You just, you get through them. You just don't pick up. You go to a meeting. You call someone. If you go to a meeting and say, hey, you're new, they'll give you

numbers. I've gotten up to 27 consecutive calls with no answer, but 28 picks up. You know, call someone. Someone cares. Go to a meeting. Find something. Do something online. I started looking at comedy. I started watching comedy. It helped me. You know, there's just things. Just don't pick up. That's it. It's just that easy. Something I also wanted to touch on. too is you became fascinated with what we do on this podcast, which was like a motivator to reach out to us. Can you talk about that, like how you felt connected, someone that hasn't been to prison, but went through similar life-changing circumstances, and you felt that connection with me, with the show, and you decide to reach out because of it, and you've watched and listen to every

episode. Yeah, so, I mean, I just stumbled across you through TikTok, and I think it was something of your food episodes or when you were doing Uber Eats or dating, whatever it was. Like, you were just really funny. Like, I was like, wow. And Danbury caught my eye. I was like, oh, okay, this guy's from Danbury, right? And I started Googling you and trying to figure out what you had done. And I researched your case. And ultimately, what I came to the, you know, at the end of the day is I was like, wow, me and this guy was like just the same way. We just had different outcomes. This guy was a go-getter, very successful. I was a go-getter very successful, except I was faking.

it, maybe it was natural for you. And we both lost everything. And then you get out and you create this podcast and this social media gathering and you're trying to reach others and you're having inmates on how they're changing their life. And I was just like, wow, that's exactly what I want to do. And before I even knew you existed, I was writing a book. And I wanted to write a book. It's called The Unlikely Path to Addiction and the Impossible Road Back and about the five men that changed my life. And then I bought this beautiful house out in Waterford, Connecticut. I've always wanted to have like a sober house and like really work with men. And I was like, I was driving back from North Carolina one night. It was maybe one o'clock in the morning when I sent you a message, I think on Instagram that I don't

even use and just share briefly my story and then sent you like a document to read and thinking I'd never hear back from you again. Like I'm not an inmate. Like I have no idea what you guys go through. I'm not even trying to pretend like I do just because I had some serious charges over my head. And I thought, like, you know, for one, I thought he's never going to contact me. I'm just, I'm not, I can't relate. And then you did. And I was like, wow, and I came to the show. And I just, I felt so drawn to the similarities.

They tell you in recovery, look at the similarities, not the differences. And I reached out and I had no idea that the podcast that we had done, the first one, would have blown up the way it blown up. And I was actually calling you. to tell you that I wasn't going to do it again. Like, I was so discouraged by some of the comments. And, you know, and then before I could even open my mouth about it, you tell me, you know, about the success and how many people saw it.

And, you know, so I ultimately today, what I'm looking to do is I'm looking to start a rehab in my house. I have a pretty big house. And it's just making sense at this point. I'm going to hopefully take in two veterans at the end of the first of the year. I'm starting my nonprofit. And what I'm looking to do is, you know, what you're doing for these inmates. You're bringing them in.

You're talking to them. You're mentoring them. You're helping them through the process. I'm not looking to just do a 30-day turn and burn for these guys. I'm looking to invest my life into them. And it's going to be a 12-month program. I'm going to teach them how to cook. I'm going to teach them how to put a resume together, how to interview, you know,

to get them a job that's self-sustaining, right, where they're not working, you know, at jobs that they can't afford, where they'll put them back in their lifestyles. So, I mean, that's my goal. That's why I reached out. I had no idea I would ever have the opportunity or the audience to even share this with. But that's my goal. I'm really, I know for certain I'm called in this life to help veterans and other struggling addicts, you know, get their life back together. That's awesome. And I really think you helped me. Like, the last few weeks, I've grown so much, just not even numbers on the podcast in our audience, but just like as a person and mental and emotional maturity and the direction I see this going. And I think you help me realize the power

we have here that there's people from all over the country that are reaching out that want to sit down and share their story. And it's not just about the crazy stuff that happens in prison, which is great that people want to know about. But it's about like sharing very vulnerable experiences. Like you're telling me stories that you haven't told anyone before. You're telling another man that you barely knew before, these heartbreaking stories of how broken you were as an individual and that inspires other individuals that want to share those experiences. And I think I've become more grateful just even the last few weeks to be able to have that opportunity because not everyone gets that to do that and to be able to have these connections and these conversations

with people and to learn about them on like such deep levels. Normally people only get that with their partners, their intimate partners on that level. Growing up, me and my best friends didn't talk about stuff like this. We didn't talk about men's mental health. We didn't talk about addiction. I didn't even really talk about, like, things that happen in prison on, like, a deep level. So to be able to have this platform, to be able to do that and to discuss with individuals like yourself, you know, it means a lot.

And I'm excited to see where it goes and it grows. And I'm glad that, you know, we have this relationship now that we could talk. I'm sure we're going to do stuff in the future, whether it's you starting a podcast. or maybe even me coming to talk at your home or something like that. But it's all interconnected. And these are real issues being told by real individuals that have these real life stories. And that quote that I put up on my Instagram last week and on Facebook that someone shared with us was about that this podcast is about broken people sharing their stories. And in the process of that, they're becoming better.

and it's maybe helping other people being prevented from being broken or that are already broken and helping them heal. Right. And I agree. And I truly believe today that I, you know, everyone goes through things. And the only reason they go through them is one to grow and two to help the next person that's coming behind them. I mean, I truly believe it.

You know, in your situation with being an inmate in federal prison, you're helping the other prisoners, you know, the inmates that get out to put their life back on the right track. And what I want to do is, you know, I want to help the same thing with veterans, mental illness, people that have disorders that they don't want to tell people about. I just got on here, you told me how many people saw the last one. I just came here and shared a very intimate struggle that I've had with, you know, with God knows how many people at this point. So I really hope that if people, you know, need help, that they reach out.

I always, I'm willing to talk. What I found good about, you know, not even what's great about reaching to someone that you don't know is that you don't have to see them in person. It's really easy to share things with someone that you'll never meet in person. So my therapist always told me that he's moved on now, but he said, just treat me like a prostitute. He said, come in and do what you need to do,

and he says, don't even look me in the eyes and walk out and feel good about it. So I hope that when people hear this, if there's another man out there that's suffering with bulimia, just know I'm 10 years clean of that, and if you ever need to talk, at least first go to a professional, but I'm available.

I know how it's like. Or if you're a veteran, and just getting out, experiencing this stuff, you know, go talk to someone or here. I'm up all hours of the night. I only sleep about four hours a day. I mean, I'm up. So, I mean, I just, I'm so thankful for this opportunity to share my story, my strength and hope with, you know, anyone out here that's listening.

And if you're struggling, don't keep it in, you know, talk to someone about it. If it's me or if it's someone else, you know, I'll do anything I can to help someone. Josh, thank you so much for coming on the show today. And we'll see you at the Golden Corral. A golden corral. Oh, yeah.