The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Damaged: A First Responder’s Experiences Handling Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder by James Meuer

Episode Date: April 16, 2026

Damaged: A First Responder’s Experiences Handling Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder by James Meuer https://www.amazon.com/Damaged-Responders-Experiences-Handling-Post-Traumatic/dp/1449799558 One man’s journey as a first responder suffering from post traumatic stress disorder. He takes you through real emergency calls; some are graphic and have scarred his heart forever and so has PTSD. He was a hero in the eyes of most, and yet PTSD tried to take that away from him. He’s haunted by what he has seen and by the dreams that follow. The dreams are wicked and prevent him from sleep. Daytime does not ward off the attacks; even small things like a door slam send him into hyper-vigilance. He will lose everything before he will find his way. About the author James Meuer was born at Travis AFB California into a military family. He spent his early years in Texas before returning to California. He initially pursued an education to be a doctor becoming a paramedic and firefighter instead. After his sixteen-year career in California he moved to Texas and continued working as a Paramedic. He also served as a Paramedic in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He returned to continue his career in Texas. Shortly after his return, the spinal fractures he suffered years earlier took its toll and being diagnosed with PTSD, he reluctantly retired. His story titled DAMAGED-a first responder’s experiences handling post traumatic stress disorder, is now available. James can be contacted at [e-mail] “My faith simply wraps itself around everything I write and I consider it my mission to encourage First Responders’ with PTSD.”

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We're talking about his journey through life and everything else. His book is entitled, Damaged, First Responder's Experiences, Handling Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, June 17, 2013 by James Muir. We'll get into some of his stories and journeys from his life as a fireman, I believe a fireman, first responder, and we're going to find out in some of the PTSD experience and the stories that haunt him. So let's get into him with him now. Welcome the show, James. How are you?

I'm doing good. Thank you, sir, for having me. Thanks for coming. We really appreciate it. You were born at Travis Air Force Base in California, the military family. You spent early years in Texas before returning to California, and you initially pursued an education to be a doctor. You became a paramedic and a firefighter instead. And after a 16th year career, you moved to Texas and continued working as a paramedic. You also did paramedic work in Saudi Arabia, and you returned to continue your career in Texas.

You had some spinal fractures you suffered over the year. years that took its toll and being diagnosed with PTSD, you reluctantly retired. And his first book, Damage, is a story of what his experiences are and the stories and lessons of life. Welcome, James, to the show. We really appreciate it. Thank you, sir. Thanks to my honest for tuning in as well.

Give us any dot-coms. Where can we find you on the interwebs and all those places? I used to have a web page. I used to have everything. I got hacked a few months ago and had to restart. I have a damage the book on Facebook and I don't have near as many followers. I had over 50,000 followers on there. And my personal Facebook, Instagram lost it all.

So I've slowly put it back out there, had to change all my emails and passwords, which I can't remember half the time. Yeah. Yeah, it sucked because as soon as I lost damage, they changed it to some other name and page and I took all. my followers and I thought I sure hope they're not spreading false stuff but hey it happened so I'm kind of back at the beginning and actually honestly I wasn't sure if it was really worth getting going again you know I yeah you got to have those online those online brand presence as it were yeah people who read your books they always want to find you so that's important to them too so let's get into it give us the 30,000 overview of what's inside your book

Oh, that's my heart and soul in this book. It was a hard time writing it. I'd get up before anybody else in the house in the dark of the morning and sit there at my computer and type as write as much as I could, crying through the whole thing. And in fact, I haven't read it since it was last edited and put out for publishing. And these last few days, I tried thumbing through it and tried writing it and reading it some more. And it is hard, hard now as it is then.

And, you know, I've come through a lot. And I don't speak just for myself. There are hundreds, thousands of men and women out there doing this job from, you know, police, fire, ambulance, dispatchers. all of us out there. And so you lived this experience in the business for 16 years total, is that correct? 26 total. I started off as a EMP and then a paramedic in Sacramento. Okay.

Then I moved to the fire department. And then I was back to the ambulance. And then I did some teaching on the, at the local paramedic school and then i moved back to texas and started up there and then i went to reaude for a short bit i came back earlier in my tour because my middle daughter was sick and i i came back to her and then went back to work on the ambulance and then in the hospital and then i was done i just i didn't have it anymore you know i had a fracture in my neck and my midback I had had surgery

and these are these are actual common injuries amongst us out there you know because all the stuff you carry those heavy hoses and yeah you know it's a young man's game I guess if you want to say that

man you know the injuries you know I've got scars on every part of my body either from the job you know I went through I've done it. I'll be honest, I haven't told very many people this, but except for my counselors and some close friends,

I did some self-cutting, you know. There's a song, you know, you bleed just to know you're alive. Yeah. And, you know, that was kind of it. That's interesting. Now, was that part of maybe the PSD, do you think? Or was that just coping mechanism?

A little bit of both. See, what? PTSD effects. everybody differently, but yet the same. You know, we have some same, some commonalities, but then we do things different. One guy may just drink himself blind every night, another guy could be using drugs, and somebody else is doing something else. Now, me personally, I was an alcoholic. I became an addict. You know, I was getting prescribed so many pain peels.

Wow. I was taking vast quantities, and then I played the system and went to med clinics, paid cash, got my drugs, you know, did those kind of things. And, you know, it honestly, I just wanted to go to sleep and not have dreams, you know, being able to sleep because I wasn't sleeping. And that's a big thing with most people with PTSD. We don't sleep very well. Yeah. We have dreams that are just so vivid. My first dreams I remember getting was just all these faces coming at me and screams and stuff.

And it got to a point where I was afraid to even go to sleep. Really? Wow. You know, I'd stay up as late as I possibly could, you know, get up after four hours maybe. and being fretful and be up early and just go on through life and do it all over again. There we go. Let's start. Go ahead.

I was just going to say PTSD is waking up tired still from the day before and having to act normal and put a smile on your face. So let's talk about the beginning. Let's start from there and we'll walk through some of the different instances and stuff. your book. What made you want to get into this field? What was the was there a moment that you, you know, there was some sort of proponent that happened, there was an impetus and it was like, I think I'd like to do this. Yeah, actually a good friend of mine suggested, hey, won't you become an EMT and help pay for your med school? And so I did it, man. I totally loved it. I fell in love with it. What did you love about it specifically?

I think we all that do the job have a bit of, you know, we like that adrenaline rush. I liked the independence involved. You know, we could go in, we pick up our ambulance, and then we hit the streets. And you're just there for a call to come in. And no one's, yeah, we had supervisors on duty and those things. But we weren't, I don't want to say we weren't watched. I mean, if we screwed up, obviously, we took our hits. but it was the independence of it and being able to do stuff.

And I was doing stuff more than med students were. I would talk to some friends that were in med school after I realized there's no way I can afford med school. And I had friends in med school and they were like, man, I haven't even done that yet. And I haven't even done that yet. And I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the late nights, the early mornings. I love the people we met. I loved, honestly, I loved helping people.

I still do. No one told you it takes a toll on you. They don't teach you that in school. Hey, you know, you better guard your mind. Stuff's going to hit hard and you're going to have to deal with it. It might cause all kinds of issues in your life. Boy, did it. Yeah.

That was a price to pay for sometimes our vision's paradise. But, you know, the need to want to serve others, to help others, to make people feel good, save people, you know, be the person who runs in when everyone's running out of the building, the hero of the day, or the hero in life. You know, I mean, God bless that there are people like that because a lot of people just run away. Yeah, my great. You know, we run towards the flames and everyone. Towards the dangers.

You guys are like, danger where? Let's go there. And everyone else is, run away. When did you, you know, I imagine there were quite a few years in the beginning where maybe you really kind of enjoyed it or did right away you start seeing some of these things that haunt you now? It was real early in my book in the very first chapter was, I would say, the worst call I ever had. And I'd only been on the job.

You see, that was 1988. So I'd only been on the job two years when this call happened. And it was first thing in the morning, you know, we get this over the radio. You can just hear this firefighter just freaking out on the radio. I shouldn't say freaking out. You could tell he was excited. And usually everyone's calm on the radio. And then so we started heading out that way and then they canceled us and I said, there's no way we're going to be canceled to a call involving a child.

And looking back, yeah, we should have canceled. And we went forward and it was it was pretty pretty dramatic. And it was the first time I ever had to tell somebody that their loved one had passed away. Oh, no. Yeah, that was. I'm glad I didn't actually have to say those words. I just told the mom, I said, you know, your daughter, and she says, it's okay. She took my hand, and I was like, okay, this is, you know, this is different.

Yeah. But, you know, and not to spoil the story, but there's a good ending to that because in 2018, I met her mom, the little girl's mom. Oh, wow. Yeah, I had been trying for years to find where she was buried because I thought, you know, I'm going to go put some flowers there someday. And actually, I found her and they had this memorial page, but nothing was written. So I wrote on there, I said, you don't know me from Adam, but I was the paramedic that that was there that day. And a day doesn't go by that I think about you. And it wasn't shortly after that I get this email.

And I couldn't even open it. I gave it to my wife. and I say here it's it's Krista's mom now changed her name in the book but her mom has since said I could say her name so her real name is

Krista and so my wife Tracy opened it and we ended up they came her and her son who was five at the time came over to our house and we had a good talk and I realized I'd been feeling guilty all these years. I felt guilty

because I didn't do anything because there wasn't anything that could have been done. But you felt like you just felt that survivor's guilt maybe, would you call it that or something else? I don't know. I really don't know. I just, I remember the next four days because I had four days off because the way our schedule

was we'd get four days off in a row. Now we're working on and off for three days. I spent four days in a fog. And then I remember going and taking a shower and just. having a heck of a good cry. And then I pushed it in somewhere in my brain and sucked it up and moved on and acted like it was like everything was cool. But every once in a while, just like every call, it comes back and it haunts you. And I kept thinking about Krista and heard throughout the years and visited the school where she attended.

and they had put out a little plaque memorial out there. And yeah, you know, it never seems to leave you. Because one day I was in there teaching paramedic class, and this guy comes in and he goes, you are on that call with that little girl. And I was like, don't mess with me on this one, man. Do not mess with me on this one. And he's, no, I was in her class that day at school when they came and got her sister.

Oh, wow. I was like, yeah, wow. Small world. Yeah, exactly. I imagine do a lot of firefighters and EMT folks, you know, people who work in the paramedic field, do you guys tend to suffer from these ailments? And, you know, I can't imagine, it seems a stupid question, because I can't imagine that it wouldn't. But what's up? Yeah, it hits us more than we'd like to admit.

You know, we're supposed to be 10 feet tall and bulletproof. We put on our turnouts. We got this gear. we got stuff on our belt and here we are. And none of us wants to admit that something hurts or that we now have a dent in our armor. Nobody wanted to admit back when I first started, you know, it was called burnout. And everyone's, oh, I'm never going to burn out, you know. And then after going through so much crap and finally getting to a counselor, which they send

you to a counselor who swears they're an expert in PTSD and the first person counselor I have, she was crying. Oh, wow. Yeah, I wasn't too sure about this counseling thing. And then when I was back in Texas, I started seeing it actually started testing me. And then I went to a counselor. She said PTSD. And I was like, wait, man, that's for the military.

That ain't for us. You know, that can't be. And they're like, no, it can affect you. And this is why. And it's a psychological injury. It's an injury. to our brain. Yep.

It's a normal response to abnormal things we've seen. And if you don't deal with it at the time, it just adds up. And people probably have heard this, putting a rock in a backpack. Unless you take that rock out and you just keep adding them, it just gets heavier and heavier. And they're beating you up and banging around back there. And then it, and then it, then it explodes. way. It's got to look out. One counselor told me I'm like a volcano and it just spurts out on the

side. Now, I used to have a temper. I'd go from zero to orange jumpsuit in a second. And that did happen on a couple occasions. I never physically heard anybody but myself by breaking my hands, punching walls, the dang engine I couldn't get a spark plug out of. And, you know, I spent a couple of nights in a psych ward. You know, I had road rage. I was angry. Anger seems to be a common thread amongst us to have PTSD. Yeah.

But none of us, you know, initially I didn't want to admit it. And that's the hardest step. The hardest step is asking for help. Because once you've done that, you let the cat out of the bag, you can't stuff that cat back in. You've got to go forward and continue. And it's all started. My wife said, she says, if you think you're the only one and you feel like you're the only one, there's got to be others that feel that way. Yeah.

And so I put this book together, got it out there. I've made a few friends over the, across the country. Oh, well. Philly Fire Department, Montana, Arkansas, different places. that have in fact my friend in philly he says i saved his life once he read my book and his daughter actually wrote me and said the same thing you saved my dad's life wow that is powerful like dude i'm just some guy that's lived through this that wrote a book to let others know they're not alone and to let others know there's a medical physiological reason behind all of this

You know, we have this little part in our brain called the amygdala that will not let us forget. Sorry if I get too loud. I get excited. I'm passionate about this. Boy, I can get into this. You know, because so many people, to me, have said, dude, that happened a long time ago. Won't you just let it go and get over it? Oh, my God.

If you think I could, I would. You think I like not sleeping? You think I like being a mess? And, you know, and now I've been clean and sober 20 years. I don't look back on that time and it's I can go

my oldest daughter is now a nurse my next child the daughter is a doctor and now my son's graduating paramedic school and I said didn't she all learn anything from me? Well

yeah they don't do drugs and drink that helps yeah I mean a lot of times when we're doing drugs and drinking, when we have trauma or damage or PTSD like you had or some sort of infliction that our mind just won't let us alone and it beats us over the head with our memories and haunts us with stuff, a lot of people turn to drugs and alcohol to anesthetize that and make it go away. Yeah. And it's not a good way to handle it. Obviously, therapy is, but, you know,

some people's scars are deeper than others and they take a long time to heal. You know, my friend I'll never forget my friend became a paramedic on an ambulance crew in New York and he did it right before COVID started and he

may be going through some PTSD he saw some shit told me some of the shit he saw you know part of it was they were they would you know somebody would be like

hey we are from Bob for week you know because everyone was isolated and you know then they go find Bob bloated with his air conditioning off and and he died of COVID and

had been there for five days or something and just extraordinary stuff that they would find they would just find people that had died and weeks had gone by you know and no one was really noticing like when we were all in lockdown no one noticed you were like you know

hey we haven't remember from Bob for a while you know he hasn't shown up at the bar because no one was at the bar and so everyone just figured Bob's isolating yeah he told me some stories and the stuff that you guys have to see are just like war you know open bodies, destroyed bodies, you know, people, you know, pain and tragedy and begging for help.

And, I mean, it's extraordinary what you guys go through. You guys carry a lot of weight for society when it really comes down to it. It can get heavy. And, you know, again, like I said, man, we're supposed to be 10 feet tall and bulletproof. We can't let anybody think that we're weak at all. And it's not a sign of weakness to ask for help. that's the strongest thing you can do because that's the hardest part. Like I said, just a little bit ago.

And so many people don't. But I remember when COVID was, I was so glad I'm like, I am so glad I'm not out there working this. And then I got to thinking of like, now the world understands what it's like when you have PTSD and you don't want to go outside. Yeah. Now, I locked myself away when I was back in Texas two years in my parents' house, just blowing up another marriage. And I stayed in. I thought, wow, I can order food. I can order groceries.

I don't have to go anywhere. I left to go to the doctor and to church. And that's the only times I left. And I was happy with that until November 2011 when I started talking to my now wife, who I hadn't talked to since 1978. And so I loaded up everything. I have to put that in my book. I loaded up everything. I had a beat up F-150.

It was smoking part of the way here. Yeah, and I drove here. And now we've been married 12 years. Best things ever happened to me. And that's one thing. If you get a good support group, like my wife. Oh, my goodness. she found me a PTSD support dog and I cannot say how valuable those dogs are.

Oh, wow. That's interesting. I had never heard of one. I was like, what the heck do they do? Got one from this organization in Texas. Uh-huh. And to say their name, if that's okay. Sure, yeah.

Totally fine. They're called Tad Sox, train a dog, save a warrior. Oh. And so I got this dog and, he was half great Dane, which was perfect because I could hold his collar and not have to bend over. And he was the biggest sweetheart baby. And let me tell you, man, if I were to meet somebody brand new, he'd stand between us. Really? And then once he saw everything was cool, he'd sit behind me.

And if he hadn't seen me in a few minutes in the house, he'd look for me, put his chin on my knee, and I'd tell him it's okay, and he'd go lie back down. It was great. He was great. It's so great how dogs are. I'm glad there's companies that do that. You know, a man's best friend is a dog. It's the only unconditional love he's ever going to get in his life other than his baby's mom. And they have such a way of connecting with you and monitoring your emotions. Like I can just be, I'm not visually upset.

Like, we're not crying or yelling or anything, but I can just feel like depressed or, you know, something happens. You're just like, what tough? you know and you're kind of feeling it but you're not really exhibiting it much and they know they'll come over and start you know hey you need to you know you need to relax me pet me go throw the you know and they really keep you grounded too you know my dogs come in and they go hey man you've been sitting in this stupid office for too long get off your ass and come out here get some fresh air some vitamin d sun and and play with us yeah when my when my first dog cosmo passed away in 22.

My wife got me another dog and we were like, okay, we'll put him through training, we'll do this, we'll do that. And we started the training, but then I like him the way he is. I don't want to, I like him, and he's a doodle. So he's all over the place and he's probably sitting outside

my door right now. He's like, check on dad. Yeah, yeah. He's that too, like you were saying, if I'm feeling like crap one day, he'll just come in lay on me. Make sure.

And he does, he checks on my wife too. Now, my wife has some medical issues. He epilepsy, migraines, other things going on. And,

you know, he wants to check on her every once in a while, too. Yeah. That's one thing I, I suggest to people will deal with PTSD.

Besides getting a hobby to keep you busy, keep your mind active, it's get a dog. Yeah. Get an animal. they'll love you they'll look in on you with you know don't get a cat just get a dog though

cats are different they're like screw you buddy 50% of time 50% of time they like you and 50% of time they hate you and don't want anything to do with you and so people always ask me Chris why didn't you ever get married I'm like look if I want someone who hates me half the time it loves me half the time I'll just get a cat that's my marriage chance Yeah, I've been, Tracy is my fourth marriage. Whoa.

Yeah, I know. I blew them all up. My anger, drug use, alcohol, stupid stuff. I blew them all up. I take responsibility for those. But, man, Tracy has been such an angel. She has been supportive. She has read about PTSD.

She has the ability to get in my face. And it cracks me up. And I just can't be mad or upset anymore. I just want to smile at her and just, you. It really helps if you have that supportive partner. Yeah. That instead of antagonizing, you know, your afflictions, they help. Yeah.

They help you cope with them or deal with them. You don't need people making it worse. Right. And my, I had a relative, I was at my folks' house. I picked up the phone and she's, Are you still doing all that with those bad things? And I was like, no. And I said, you know, I held a lot of dead babies.

And she said, you think you're the only one? You need to stop this and get over it. And I was like, oh, my gosh. See, even family. Jesus. Yeah, sometimes family doesn't even get it. Now, I haven't spoken to my brother in, I don't know, 10 years. You and me.

Yeah, and I haven't spoken to my sister. and over 30. I don't know, and I'm good with it. You know, I still hope one day maybe we can make amends and get through it. But, you know, a lot of that was caused from PTSD and my anger and drugs and alcohol and stuff like that. And, yeah, it was crazy. And it still is. Now, you know, I don't have as many dreams anymore.

I kind of, I like to say I made peace with my dreams. I don't know what it was. I'd start getting dreams and I'd be like, nope, these are dreams. Don't want to listen or watch these anymore. I'm done here. Eventually, they stopped. In fact, I can't remember the last time I had any kind of dream. Oh, wow.

You know, yeah, every once in a while I'll have a nice dream that I remember just the smallest piece of in the morning. But most of the time, I don't even think I dream anymore. But, you know, it's cool. I'm getting sleep again. But I'm still in counseling. You know, I started going once I got back to California. I was in there twice a week. Then it went to once a week.

Then once every other week. Now I'm once every two weeks. And so I'm almost done with that. I feel good. I feel strong. I've got tools to deal with, you know, the heavy breathing, cold water on the face, you know, call somebody, talk to them, you know. And it's working for me. It's working for us. We're doing good. It's just, I got so much that I could

say, I don't know how much time you got left. We're running down on time, but we also want people to buy the book because they need to read these stories. They need to read your experiences. I said, I got it. And when I write stuff, I write it short, sweet to the point. Now is the one thing in English class in school, no creative writing. I didn't add a lot of the fluff, you know.

I didn't do the Melville eight pages of descripting of the eye of the whale. I wrote it short sweet to the point. And I put in some real calls I had that were real tough. And the first one is tough, but it has a good outcome,

but it took years to get that outcome. And I talk about some of the physiology and the things that I went through. And yes, I talk about God in my book, not to be anybody over the head with the Bible, not to say this is the only way. There's more than one way to get through it, but my faith being renewed got me through it. And that's it. It's not there to, you know, I saw a review where the guy wrote, it's not for atheist. He should have mentioned it. God was in there. And I'm like, that's not the, that's not the story. The point, yeah. The point is, is that I had some bad calls. I had a lot of bad calls, a lot of pediatric calls. And honestly, I think I've only had,

out of all of the deliveries, I think I only had one that survived. Wow. All the, and I hate to tell you the number, 37, all those other didn't make it. So, yeah,

those all affected me. You know, it talks about just there's some poems in here I wrote, and one my wife wrote, and, you know, what exactly is PTSD. You know, it's a brain injury. And it affects you deeply whether we want to admit it or not.

So I wrote this to let other people know they're not alone. There's thousands of us out there. And if anybody wanted to email me, it's on the back of the book. It's damaged the book at Outlook. You can write me there. I answer things. I've taken phone calls in the middle of the night. I'm helping a buddy out right now who was in a terrible accident a few weeks ago. I'm helping. He was a paramedic I used to work with years ago. And getting a hobby helps.

A buddy of mine who also has PTSD, also another paramedic. And that started me disc golfing. Disculving. Oh. Yeah. Wow, this is pretty cool. That's where you throw the frisbee and it goes in the steel net thing. there? Yeah, yeah. They have one by my dog park. Oh, that's cool. Yeah, people are like doing the thing. I'm like, that's kind of cool. I'm nowhere as good as he is or as good as all these people out there, but it sure is fun just to walk through the woods. I mean, they have one in Golden Gate Park. They have them up the coast of California and the redwoods, and it's so beautiful and peaceful.

I often say if you ever want to learn how to golf or if you ever want to learn how to swear, try and learn how to golf. Oh, I bet. That's like me at mini golf, you know. Doggone, wrestling, freaking ball. Yeah. It's always the ball's fault, too. Yeah, but frisbees might be a little of us forgiving. Plus, you don't spend, you know, $1,500 on a custom set of clubs and shit like I had to.

I have these long arms, so I had to have custom clubs for myself. Oh, some of these discs are hundreds of dollars. Are they really? I guess that's how everything works nowadays, right? My buddy has, I couldn't tell you, a couple hundred, it looks like. Does he really? He's got a trunk full. He's the one he gave me all my discs in the bag and all that.

See, I remember those $5 ones from the 70s when I grew up when Frisbee was like the thing for a while there. Yeah, some guy decided, okay, there's drivers, mid-range, and putters, just like in regular golf. In Frisbee's? Yeah, and they're shaped differently. The plastics are way different. Oh, my gosh. Wow. Somebody had me a five wood frisbee, please? Yeah, I just throw them and see where they go.

My punter frisbee? Yeah. Yeah. Frisbee up. Yeah, I'll have to check them out. They, right next to the dog park, it runs alongside the dog park. They have a whole wood swing. Yeah.

It's crazy, man. I got three sitting here. Oh, do you? Let's see here. Did you see them? Go ahead and hold them up again if you would. Oh, yeah. Whoa.

See, they're different on the edges. Oh. Oh, yeah, I don't know if you can. Yeah, one's a driver, one's a mid-range. I turn one into a drone and then just fly it right into the basket. Yeah. That's probably the smooth. You just make it look like a frisbee, only underneath there's like a little propeller drone.

Yeah. The great thing about sharing your stories, James, is you never know who you're going to impact. You're going to reach so many more people than you'll ever meet. You'll ever know. I remember one time I was in editing. and I was losing my fucking mind. And I was writing 18 hours a day and editing, you know, and the editor would come back and be like,

these 50,000 words are all shit. We kept the thousand and just rewrite the thing. You know, that sort of stuff. And it felt like that. But I remember I was, I complained or something online on my Facebook. I think I'm just quit. I'm just going to throw all this shit in the trash.

No one's cares. No one's going to read this crap that I'm writing, you know. I'm no great writer. And one of my author friends who's written, multiple books took me aside. And they said, there is a person out there who needs your book. And there's only one voice that's going to get to them and save them. And it's your voice. And they need you to write this book. There's probably more than that. But there's at least one person out there. And if you can't do this book for yourself, do it for them. And wow, that floored

me. I was like, okay, we've had authors on the show that they've, you know, they just wrote books on improving your life and better mindset and stuff. And one day they were at a bookstore signing books. And a gal came up and said, you know, you help me get out of prison. And she's, what? That's not really what my books do. And she's, yeah, we took your books. They were uplifting and positive.

We were in prison with a bunch of other females. And we created a book group where we'd each take turns reading your book. And we learned how to plan our life so that we could leave prison without rescinding back. And so she keeps a picture of that gal in her jumpsuit from prison at her desk so that when she writes, she kind of knows who she's writing for. And so I think you're going to save a lot of people and help a lot of people with your book, my friend. You know, again, if it's just one, then that's good. Yeah, I keep a picture of Krista above my right up here. Uh-huh.

And she's looking over because I couldn't tell what she looked like that day, you know, the trauma. So her mom gave me a picture of her That's awesome You know Cute little girl Yep And sometimes we just need to keep fighting for those people Yeah

There'll be others You know It gets tiring sometimes You know I have I still have moments I still leave pair of pants Beside the side of the bed

Where I can just jump in and go Yeah Oh like you're like in your firefighter Yeah I have not been able to stop that But some nights. Maybe it's comforting. It is to me.

It's just natural. And that's fine. Some days I check the door locks three or four, five times a night, you know. And some days I'm like, nope, I'm not even going to bother. You know, I know it's locked. I did it once. It's good. You bet you know, the, all that, I can't even remember the word for it.

Yeah, I know I got OCD. I got that too. I got plenty of that. In fact, I just got on testosterone replacement. It kind of dissipated with my old age and worn off in my 50s. And I was like, this is nice. I don't have ADHD anymore. And it's so nice to be able to look around and not, you know, squirrel.

And then I got on testosterone replacement therapy, which made me feel like I was 30 again. And it brought it all back. It's back. So it's amazing I can do this show without getting up and walking off to go with something. Yeah, I'm like that too. I hardly ever sit. I'm like, oh, I got to do this. I got to do that. I got this. I'm all over in hyper, I forget the name of the word, where you're always on alert. You know, I'm always thinking I'm building contingency. If somebody comes in this window, this is what I'm going to do. You know, sit in a restaurant so I can see as much as I can, eyeballing people. I know where everything is in the house. I can tell you, that's on the top shelf on the left. It's facing that way.

It's green bottle. And it's crazy. I hate it. It's a blessing and a curse. Yeah. It's good when you can use it for stuff that doesn't disable you. But if I don't, I'm honored. One thing that's really helped me, I guess we can get a plug in here.

You might want to try it to help you. It helps me, but I don't use it as off as I should because I just had to dig it out from one of my desk. but it's called a it's called a podoro clock. Pomodoro clock, just like the tomato. Pomodoro, like a Pomodoro tomato. And what it does is you can set focus times on it. I don't know, you're not going to see that very well. I think that's going to blow it.

So you can see there's a little timer there. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And so you can choose three minutes, five minutes, ten minutes, 25 minutes, 30, and 60. and then you set it up and then when you want to pause it or stop it, you lay it on its back. But basically, you sit in front of you when you want to focus on doing a task. And, you know, you have to kind of use your own control too.

You've got to be like, okay, because your brain goes, squirrel! And you're like, no, no, no, no, squirrel. We're in the time mode here. This is the focus mode. And that really helps. You can get it really cheap on Amazon. Pomodoro. I look for it.

I easily do. I have so many fidget spinners. Things like that. I'm constantly. I spin my rings, all those different things. I'm constantly. I can't even watch a 30-minute TV show without getting up two or three times to do something stupid. It's hard, but, you know, I mean, it's a CEO disease. Most top CEOs and successful people have it. It's a cutting sword one way or another. But if you can learn to ride the tiger a little bit and tame it, you know, it doesn't seem like I can never get a tame, but it can really help.

James, we go out. Give us your final thoughts. We want people to pick up your book and read your stories and your journeys and help other people with it. Give us her final pitchout and dot coms where people can find you on the interweb, sir. The book is damaged. The first responders experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder. I had to write it all out because the essence. didn't think that anyone would know what PTSD was.

Really? It's written out. That's how you have to find it. It's on Amazon. That's the only place that it is at this point. Kindle or paperback. It's a short, sweet to the point, hard hitting. But I think it's very informative.

And if I can get one person to realize that they're not alone, I hope that I could reach more and that they would all realize they're not alone and ask for help and talk about it. It helps. That is the great thing about sharing our stories. A lot of times sometimes we get in those holes and we think that life just hates us. The universe hates us. No one else goes through this.

You know, we kind of beat ourselves up a little bit there. And yeah, sharing our stories is the greatest thing, you know. Like I said, I thought, no one's going to give a crap my stupid stories. But, yeah, there's people that they're searching for those messages. They need those blueprints, those stories, the blueprints of salvation, of redemption, of the Phoenix rising from the ashes. And that's the reason we love those stories so much is because we all fall down. You can find me on Facebook under Jim Muir because I had to change my name when I got hacked. Look for me at Jim Muir, me long hair wearing a hat, big straw hat.

I was supposed to wear a straw hat out in the sun, skin cancer and all. And yeah, look for me, write me there. I'll do my best to hit everybody back. What's the other thing I was going to say? Oh, I'll figure it out. Probably about two or three in the morning. It'll come to me. We'll have a link for it all in the Chris Vos show.

So if there's a link there, just send it to us. We'll put it on there. Thank you very much, James, for coming on the show and sharing your story and everything that hopefully will, you'll just keep helping more people, even though you're not in the paramedic field still, you'll keep paying it forward. I hope so. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate this audience. You got it. Folks, order up his book where refined books are sold. It's entitled Damage. Or I'm sorry, let me re-cut that. It's entitled Damaged. A first responders' experiences

handling post-traumatic stress disorder out June 27, 2013. Thanks for tuning in. Refer to the show to your family, friends, and relatives, or also haunt you in your sleep. Go to Goodreads.com, Christmas. It's a for Jesus Christmas and Facebook. com for S.

Christchrist and I'll maybe half the time I'll haunt you in your sleep. If you don't, but if you do, then you'll get

wonderful dreams. And I'll just tell the dream catch your gods to send you wonderful dreams. I don't know. I'm just making

up stuff clearly. Good. Be good to each other folks. Stay safe. We'll see you guys. You've been listening to the most

amazing intelligent podcast ever made to improve your brain and your life. Warning. consuming too much of the Chris Walsh Show podcast can lead to people thinking you're smarter, younger, and irresistible sexy. Consume in regularly moderated amounts. Consult the doctor for any resulting brain bleed.