The Team House - From Special Forces to an Outlaw Motorcycle Club | Kenny Robertson

Episode Date: August 8, 2026

Kenny Robertson reflects on his career from the Marine Corps and 101st Airborne to 5th Special Forces Group, including deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Syria, and Ukraine. He also discusses the toll of years in combat, his struggles after leaving the military, and how psychedelic medicine led him to create Waypoint 6 to help other veterans.https://www.waypoint6.com/https://www.instagram.com/waypoint_six/Today's Sponsors:Quince⬇️go to: https://www.quince.com/housefor free shipping and 365 day returns GhostBed ⬇️https://www.ghostbed.com/houseFOR 10% off! Blue Chew ⬇️https://bluechew.com/Get 1 month free when you buy 2 of BlueChew Gold with code "HOUSECALL"For ad free video and audio and access to live streams and Eyes On Geopolitics...JOIN OUR PATREON! https://www.patreon.com/c/TheTeamHouseTo help support the show and for all bonus content including:-live shows and asking guest questions -ad free audio and video-early access to shows-Access to ALL bonus segments with our guestsSubscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseSupport the show here:⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse___________________________________________________ORDER JACK'S NEW BOOK "THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN" ⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/803651/the-most-dangerous-man-by-jack-murphy/paperback/Subscribe to the new EYES ON podcast here:⬇️https://www.youtube.com/@EyesOnGeopoliticsPod/featured__________________________________Jack Murphy's book "We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History" ⬇️https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1N/——————————————————————Or make a one time donation at: ⬇️https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouseSocial Media: ⬇️The Team House Instagram:https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_linkThe Team House Twitter:https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePodJack’s Instagram:https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_linkJack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21Team House Discord: ⬇️https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6"Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio"00:00 - Start02:24 - Growing Up and Joining the Marine Corps04:59 - Reenlisting After 9/1107:38 - OIF 1 with the 101st Airborne12:28 - Blackhawk Door Gunner and Two Hard Landings18:48 - Discovering Special Forces20:04 - Becoming an 18D Special Forces Medic27:45 - Training Partner Forces in Lebanon37:44 - Deploying to Afghanistan40:52 - QRF Mission Turns Into a Major Firefight44:06 - Performing Emergency Surgery Under Fire50:13 - A Nine-Hour Firefight and the Reality of Combat55:04 - Talking a Teammate Out of Suicide57:39 - Drugs, Addiction and Special Operations1:08:03 - Becoming an 18D Instructor1:19:08 - Rebuilding the Special Operations Medic Course1:29:38 - Leaving Special Forces After 22 Years1:31:09 - Getting Deep Into the Outlaw Motorcycle Club World1:43:07 - The Double Homicide That Changed Everything1:50:48 - Going to Ukraine After the Russian Invasion2:02:58 - Targeted by a Russian Tank2:11:58 - Alcohol, Drugs and Hitting Bottom2:18:01 - Discovering Psychedelic Medicine2:24:43 - 5-MeO-DMT and Ego Death2:37:59 - Creating Waypoint 6Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Hey guys, I'm Jack Murphy. This is the team house. And we're here in studio with our guest today, Kenny Robertson. He is a former Marine, served in Army 101st Airborne, and then had an extensive special forces career in fifth group. And I mean, a whole bunch of different things that you got involved in teaching the PJ course, going over to Ukraine, doing executive protection jobs. And today you're with Waypoint 6. Do you want to tell me? people like just off the top of the interview what way point six is yeah so jack thanks for having me what we're going to talk about a little bit is you know aside from military history which a lot of the viewers are well aware of but this veteran mental health which can kind of be a boring topic for most guys but starting to become a lot less taboo so yeah after my years of service and after a lot of things that i found that shaped me to be a guy that i did not want to be um It took a little bit more than just a talk therapy or going to a VA. So sua sponte, I end up out of the country down in Central America and find myself in the middle of an ayahuasca ceremony.

And waypoint six was derived from that. So I founded that based off of my experience working with the plant medicine. So now we're able to take veterans down to Central America. And we even have a spot locally in Texas where we're able to operate. out of and we're getting guys the mental health treatment that they need. That's awesome. And we'll get into that a little bit deeper later on in the interview. But to go more or less like in chronological order, tell us a little bit about, you know, how you grew up and how that took you towards the military. Yes. So I grew up in Virginia.

And outside of Richmond, not a big city, kind of, I was more than the rural areas and you know my dad had land and would take me out hunting and fishing so I was working with guns from a small age and you know kind of learning a little bit about the land and um I found my way into I was trying to play pro football but uh turns out Jack I'm not that I'm not that big I'm not that good I had football so uh I needed another option and driving race cars was out of my budget. So, uh, I had to pick something. And honestly, I was like, man, the Marine Corps, that looks cool. Um, this is in the 90s. What was cool about it was the dress blues. Let's just be honest. Like, they got snappy uniforms. They do look good. That pretty much is

a defining factor of how good of a Marine you are. How high and tight is your hair and how much starch was on your uniform. Now not so much, but, uh, I thought the only thing that matters is the guys that qualified on iron sights versus, uh, everyone who came out. Iron sights, obviously, you know, in the 90, that's all we had, right? So you had to be able to run fast and have a tight haircut. So yeah, that, that uniform was a drew me in. I did that, but realizing that the head didn't fit in the jar. Uh, and this was before Marsoc, this was before anything that was. So what years is this that you went to boot camp? Uh, 97.

Okay. Uh, and, uh, what unit did you end up in, in the Marines? So I was over at Camp Lejeune ended up on, uh, started out, I was with intelligence. Okay. Yeah, it turns out a loss of security clearance. Okay. Can't tell you that. That happened, but it did.

So I ended up with a squadron across this, across the road over at, uh, New River. And so I was there, by the time he got out of all the training and stuff, almost the first. year is gone so after a few years I decided that nope this isn't for me there was no war happening so I'm I'm done and then I got out and then there was a war so I needed to make a move I did that pretty quick so you get out and after it's after 9-11 that you see this opportunity yeah yeah and so what year did you re-enlist in the army in 01 oh right afterwards yeah okay went right back in. And when that happened,

I could just jump into the 101st. Because when you were in the Army and you wanted to go be a Marine, and I had this in my Marine Corps would call it boot camp, right? Army was basic training. I've never gone to Army Basic Training. Oh, really? Yeah. We had a E5 sergeant in the Army in Marine Corps boot camp.

I didn't have to do it. So they were just like, nope, you can just go right into, the army and you just there you go sign here and here's a costume go all right and uh so i did jump went over to the 101st and they're like yep we're going uh we're going we're going to do this thing over in iraq and i'm like yeah that's why i'm here let's go so off we go so now we're into like 2001 2002 and like the buildup for iraq is starting yeah and i didn't even really get a chance to get into a buildup i just go right over um Um, like, I don't know, two weeks after I'd gotten in.

Holy shit. Yeah. And I'm probably three weeks. It was a very, they were just, they were pumping guys out. You go through, um, med pros and you go through a couple of things. And they're like, there you go, man. Here's your initial issue. You're green on.

Good luck. Here's some ammo. So yeah, I got like three different color camo stuff. I got like, I don't know, I got something in desert. I got something green. I got. So it was definitely wild west. It was some weird times.

And I was young. I didn't even know anything about the army, right? So I was still bringing Marine Corps, which they bring a lot of pride, morale, all kinds of stuff that in the army, they don't quite have. Yeah, yeah. The discipline isn't quite there. You're calling like the E7s gunny. Yeah. Yeah.

For a few times, I would call it like Sergeant First Class. And I just, just say sorry. And I was like, I'm not programmed to do that. I can't, I can't do that. So, and I'd still wear a high and tight. Like the first, I don't know, two years, I'd be out like in Iraq, trying to like cut my hair all looking like I'll get a horseshoe. Like I'm trying to keep people at work until 9 o'clock.

So you went and met your unit that was already forward deployed. Yeah. What brigade did you go to? I was over with third. Okay. So tell us a little bit about what that experience, was like about OIF one. So OIF one was not a lot of rules and regulations at the at that time. And we also didn't know what the hell we were doing, um, except just go take everything.

Occupy land. Go take take real estate. Um, so we would, we started, we pushed, uh, up to Mosul. and then we pushed out west out into Talafar and kind of owned that whole northern area. And it was just kind of just chaos. Yeah, I mean, from Kuwait to Missouille. Yeah. So the fun thing about it was, you know, the former the vice president of the United States at the time, former what CEO of a company that built the entire cities that we then later on lived in before all that could happen uh we didn't have anything just what you brought right right and you're stringing up what 550 cord to wash your clothes and dry them sleeping under a truck

when we still slept under trucks but now you know the safety guy won't let you do that anymore so uh yeah we just it was you ride around in your trucks you lived in your truck you lived with your platoon and you would get resupply with some food and you would just be out and about. We would take over wherever it might be a palace. We might take over any type of real estate and then that would kind of become where we lived. And you might stay there for a few months. And then you're just pushing out and going and finding bad guys. But of course, at that point, everybody was a bad guy.

We just showed up into their neighborhood. They don't like that. I mean, you come to my house at 2 a.m. with big green eyes, you're going to be met, you know, with a field of fire. But I didn't expect that they felt that way, right? So I'm going to show up at their house at 2 o'clock in the morning and, like, I just kicked down your door. Why are you shooting at me? You're the bad guy. Did you guys have some pretty big dustups with the Iraqi army at that time?

Yeah. Yeah, definitely a lot of conflict. Because those guys didn't want us there either. But at least for my perspective of it, some of their, some of their, I guess, like their high-ranking officers understood the political portion of that and what we brought to the table. By that, I mean, our weapons and our aircraft. Like, they knew that that was important, right? And that's what they were going to be able to use to take back over their country. but a lot of the other like junior guys, the enlisted guys,

they didn't really want to work with us. They didn't want us there at all. That's interesting. I mean, I had a lot of people tell me that at the time, maybe like 80% of Iraq supported disposing of Saddam Hussein. But, you know, then the question becomes, well, why are you guys still here? Right. So I think the problem, and it was the same in Afghanistan,

in. It was when I say that they don't want to work with us because they're going to, they sit down on the objective. We can't really push them to do but so much. Their work ethics different. Yes. Right. So if we're out on a hit, if we're out doing a raid, if we're halfway through it, we're still in a gunfight, they're just going to go sit down. They're just not into it. Now, the Kurds up north were a lot better than some of the other cats that we had to work with. Those dudes were pretty motivated to get the job done, but a lot of these units just didn't want to. It reminds me, you know, you talk about like doing CQB and like the priorities of work and the room and all that kind of stuff. I remember I had one of these guys walked right through

the door, did not clear any corners at all, went right to the refrigerator, popped it open, shuffled around in there, shut it, sat down on the couch. Like, we're all there like doing this, trying to clear the structure like what the fuck that is a priority of work screaming i was screaming at this guy uh but yeah it is different dude they'll take smoke breaks or after it man we're in a gunfight i'm treating a patient and they just come over they just sit down and they're just like we're good we're gonna take 15

what were some of the like uh memorable uh actions that you know you recall from the invasion um crashing oh yeah yeah uh so no i don't think i can call it a crash um i think i call it a hard landing uh twice so i actually i saw i was in a black hawk for they needed some dudes to help with the air crew so they were having guys fly the left seat behind the pilot on the Black Hawk. You got a left seat and the right seat where the crew chiefs would be. But they would have one crew chief because those birds in the air and like all day, all night, right?

They're constantly working. So like, hey, man, we need dudes to help augment. And I was like, man, that sounds cool. I'll be a door gunner. So, yeah, man, I got to hang out. And we had the old M60s at the time. We were just starting to get some 240s like in 0, yeah, 04 or 5 is when they first got fielded out there.

but maybe they have 60s at that time. So I got to ride a lot of left seat. I think I got close like 500 and some hours in that thing. Yeah, it was ridiculous because you'd go out for 12 hours a day. They'd break. They're not supposed to break this crew rest. They can only be out for a certain amount of time. But, you know, the rules were slightly, you know,

they'd worked with them a little different back then. So we had some two hard landings about six months apart. and I was on that aircraft both times and I had the same crew chief with me it messed him up like he had I mean his head got scrambled so he ended up having to get out seek a lot of

he had a lot of TBI stuff going on and a lot of VA appointments I just kept driving on and in the same pilot both times different co-pilot or maybe he was the co-pilot And it was a different pilot.

But same dude. He ended up, when we got back to Fort Campbell, that dude, that pilot ended up, he died in a another crash that was a training accident. Yeah. So those were definitely some. We actually were flying the speaker of the house at the time, Bill Hastert. Uh-huh. And we crashed with him. He was in the other aircraft.

Like, we were like the gunship that was supporting him. and we crashed So Were you one of the dudes that was there When they found Uday and QSay Because I remember 100 first was 1001st was there I was not there

Oh guy gotcha gotcha I was in the region but not Unfortunately I missed that one So you were over there sounds like you were pretty busy No no shortage of jobs to do Yeah we have plenty of work Yeah How did kind of that like campaign

and wind down for you? That was it when we just, we were done, came back home and then it was just one day. We actually started building some pretty good fobs. And we were hiring some local forest dudes. I was paying them $4 a day in cash. And they were lying them up at the end of the day. They did work for eight, nine hours, digging ditches. building stuff with, you know, wood that we were, you know, a crew into build whatever kind of

structures or places for guys to live and things like that. Um, so it was kind of a fun transition when, uh, you know, I got to see that we were doing, something was happening. Right. Right. It was like we were leaving some kind of infrastructure in place. So that was good. Now, we did have an interpreter that I worked with, I'm not going to say daily, but definitely multiple times, week and we would have to get money from accounting and then we would use that cash you know we'd pay out our dudes we'd have contractors to help moving heavy equipment moving earth whatever so my interpreter was kind of also like the contract liaison um and a pile of money got him killed once he left outside of the fob uh yeah

So that happened. After I'd go out to the edge of the fob that we were building every day. And I had this big concertina wire fence. It was probably like, I don't know, 80 feet, 50 feet or something. And there'd be 150 dudes packing to this thing trying to get them to do work for us because they're getting that $4 a day in cash. Right. So they would be out there and me and Chris would go out.

and it was just chaos man they he got all these dudes trying to and most of them were good dudes iraqi citizens that wanted to get some work and so they're like they're begging you know and they're going to come up to you and they're going to be like man you start touching us like that we're freaking out we're still i mean i don't know what the hell's going on at this point he come up here you start touching me now i feel like you're reaching for my magazines or whatever. Now I'm screaming like a fool. Everybody get down. Like I'm Rambo, you know. And bring a 203 out one day just to, I don't have any, no ammunition for it, but they don't know this, you know, just to make a sound like a ragging a shotgun. So it was, it was interesting to say the least. Just trying to do like two dudes trying to do this crowd control.

And then you grab 10, 12, 15 guys and they throw them in the back. You know, I drove one. truck he drove another truck. I think it was just kind of all over the place. You're also a young guy kind of sounds like in some ways acting like the mayor of a little town. Early 20s. I did not have any business doing what I was doing or doing what I thought that I was doing. Yeah.

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safety information. And we thank Blue Chew for sponsoring this podcast. So when you get back to the United States, when does SF sort of come into the picture for you? How is that on your mind? So when I was deployed, I saw dudes that looked a lot cooler than me. They had pockets on their sleeves and Velcro. I remember I was coming from the Marine Corps. I didn't know anything about the Army. So this got Chris, I'm talking about like, who are those cats? You like, those are special forces man they don't even exist I'm not see them they're right there he's like no man you can't do that like okay like what do you got to do you're like ah he advertised a sear school because that's all he knew about it yeah oh man you got to like

you know go live in the woods and survive all right let's try it so yeah man you talk to a recruiter that tells you a little bit more about it still slightly vague I was like yeah let's give it a go and uh I got in shape and I went to a selection and uh yeah that sucked that was what year was that you went to selection what eight seven okay and then uh yeah so I was like you know that you got to fill out a wish list and I was like you know that you got to fill out a wish list and I was like, I'm going to speak Arabic and be an 18 Delta. Yeah, and they were like sold. And they're like, got it, man.

Like, skip selection. You just go right to the course and train this guy. Who wants that? So, yeah, got what I wanted. And yeah, that was super interesting. And I got through the medic course. it made it out to fifth group. What was kind of your impression going through the Q

course at that time? Was it sort of the experience that you were hoping for? Yeah, it was professional. It was really professional because, especially the 18 Delta course, that part was definitely, uh, that was an experience that,

because that's long, you know, going, through that it was a year long and it was run by civilians i mean there was definitely a lot of military cadre there but it was a majority of it were civilians pas um retired guy yeah a lot of retired 18 deltas uh dudes that have now gone on to nursing school dudes that have gone on to become pas civilian pas um dudes that have had a lot of experience and these guys are super smart, like ridiculously intelligent and trying to teach me how to be a doctor and a surgeon in less than a

year. And I was like, man, I, you know, I couldn't even put on a Band-Aid, you know, before going to this course. I had no idea about trauma medicine. Guys are teaching me how to do an IV, you know, back when I was in a regular army. And I didn't understand the concept of like a needle and a catheter. It's foreign to me. I have no idea how I made it through that course. Zero social life, three hours of studying every night, and a lot of luck. Yeah. Because I ask you some really crazy questions on there on these tests. And you're getting tested every few days.

All right. So. And then they've got, so we had cadavers in this course and we had this pin test, which I went to as a cadre. Like anatomy? Yeah. I was a cadres I tried to help alleviate some of that struggle because it's it's at a doctorate level for sure it's asking you about you've got this cadaver that's broken down into all the nerves vessels veins everything you can imagine and it's asking you not specifically like what muscle is this okay cool but what happens when you flex this muscle what does this one do and then the nerve that's to that and the innervation of that nerve and say what the what do I need to know this for

it. Um, so yeah, and you forget it. So I don't that was my point when I went back to as a cadre. I was like, we don't need this man, because we're not going to use it. Right. So I don't know. And was there a final exercise in the course back when you went through? Yeah, not it was, but it was it was kind of watered down. It wasn't, it was very anti-climactic, which is actually one of the things that I wanted to change during my tenure there.

So I think we did a pretty good job of doing that. We actually brought in a whole different phase during my time, because I went back as a cadre later on for that Delta course, and we were able to include prolonged field care because that wasn't a part of the course of the time. Yeah, it was all the golden hour was the thing. Right.

And then you realize that, okay, well, we're actually going to have to sit on this dude for days again. Because Africa's going on and those dudes aren't getting a quick transport out of Africa. So when that happens, we're advertising that we can sit on a patient for 72 hours. But yet we don't push blood. we don't do a lot in ventilation. We don't do a lot of things that we're advertising. You know, we might have practiced the skill one time, you know, for like two days and then we move past it. That's not a proficiency, right?

I'm not going to honestly expect myself to be able to go and handle that two years, three years from now. So a lot of that did get to change and we were able to bring in a really good final training ourselves. Yeah, we'll circle back around on that for sure. But after you graduate the course, you get assigned to fifth group for Campbell, Kentucky. And your first kind of spot that you landed is in Fourth Battalion. So now what was this, 2008 maybe? Yeah. So we were there at the same time, actually.

Yeah. Yeah. So what was your experience like? On 3.5, it was, it was awesome. One of my favorite teams that I was ever on. That's awesome. Um, actually when I got there, because they weren't spinning up for deployments. So at that time, um, at least not all the teams were, I went and did a Caribbean dive

requal. I didn't even go to dive school yet. And I'm in the Caribbean for a month. So that was like, oh, this is a vacation. That was kind of one of the coolest training exercises that I'd gotten to go on. Is I recall they had some of the teams going out on J sets around that time frame, right? Yes. Yeah.

Yep. We went, we were doing dive requals and just starting to spin up later on. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And then I went over to third battalion. But I mean, they sent you to dive school while you were there? No. Oh, really?

No. Nope. So there was a, I guess there was a school. school of thought at this point where Sarmajor was like, look, at that time, no, that was Ranger's school because I was trying to go to Ranger School at the time. He's like, man, I'm not going to lose you for

63 days. I'm not going to lose a Delta for 63 days. This was just one Star Major's mindset at the time. Maybe more feeling that way, but you know, being a Delta, we weren't a lot of us. Like, not every team had two, right? So as you know, like a lot of teams had one. Some teams didn't have

any, you know, for periods of time. matter of fact, I had to jump to a couple of different teams to help make their missions, even deploy with other teams. And even while I was gone on a deployment, the team would lose a medic, and I'd go over and augment over for another team for a little while. So I did not get to go to CDQC. I did not get to go to Ranger School. Where did you get sent?

I went to dive teams. As a dry medic, I went to Halo teams, never got to go to Halo school. I got sent to J-sets and deployments. So I didn't get to go on any of school schools. So you're like a floating medic in some ways. What J-sets did you get sent on at the time? I did a lot of Lebanon's. Oh, really?

Yeah. I didn't even really realize we were shooting people over there at that time. Yeah, we did a lot of Lebanon's. Well, what was that one like? So Lebanon is actually a pretty cool country. Well, it was until recently, until it's now in shambles. But so the, in Beirut is where the embassy was. The Marine barracks were there.

And that got blown up and that was what, 83? That's still there in all of its parts and pieces. Oh, no shit. There's still a 50 calis sitting up on the top under a cover. I don't know if it's the one from 83, but it's been up there for a very, very, very long time. And the people that work at the embassy were like, yeah, man, that's been here forever.

So Lebanon is kind of nice. You've got mountains. You've got beaches all in the same day. They've got ski resorts there. They've got, like, terrific restaurants. Um, so that's kind of fun, right? But then, you know, you get a couple of days of that, but then you're for another 20, 30 days up in the mountains in the cold, training these dudes, uh, you know, walking through the mountains and put a POI together for, for a month or two and then come back down and enjoy a couple of days. Uh, but it was overall a pretty good J set. Um, I mean, they had nightlife. They had, and we'd get escorts.

everywhere we go. But then later on, it became a lot more free. When I ended up going back in 2018, and we kind of just do whatever, just as long as you got somebody with you. You know, we take a, we take a truck and high lux and you can go out to eat restaurants or whatever. What was it like training the Lebanese partner force? So I have to, You know, a lot of guys got foreign jump wings. Do you get any foreign jump wings? Chilean, I believe, weirdly enough. That's unique.

Yeah. So a lot of guys get like Italian and all kinds of stuff, right? Unless somebody out there, somebody is going to search internet and prove me wrong or make a comment that they got them after we did. As far as I know, we were the first team and only team. ever get the Lebanese air assault wings. Interesting. Because we trained their air assault unit. And they had this air assault school tower. We went repelling off their tower and we got these Lebanese assault wings. There's only 10 of us that got awarded that because not everybody went down

on tower. A captain was doing something or whatever that day, briefing another officer. We've had sitting in that same chair, uh, Mike Taylor, who was a 10th group guy. Yeah. But back in the day, 10th group covered down on Lebanon. Okay. And he was on the first MTT to Lebanon. I believe it was 83. And then Gary Harrington, he was over there too around that same time frame.

So yeah, it's just interesting to hear these different experiences, you know, and the more things change, the more they stay the same, I guess. Yeah. One of the, I think I went back again in 15 or 14. And yeah, during a rotation in 14, I, we were working with the dive team, uh, with the Navy SEALs. So I was on a dive team at the time. So we went down and we were training their, their Navy SEALs. And the irony is like there was a lot of dudes, uh, that couldn't swim. Couldn't swim, yeah.

So I could say, yeah, man, taught the Navy SEALs out of swim. That sounds like a. Total ass by saying that. Let's add, they were Lebanese. You know, telling these stories, I knew a couple National Guard guys who had a really cozy gig going where every summer they'd go down to Jamaica and work with Jamaica. They have some sort of dive team, rescue dive team. I don't know what they are.

Yeah. Work with them every summer for a J-Sat. Like, it's pretty cush. Yeah, those were, those were pretty good times because we'd do a lot of waterborne operations and the Mediterranean's really, really, really good swimming. That's a great place to go dive, go swim. No sharks. That's a big worry. Now, when we go down in the Caribbean to do dive requal, we would at a team start, uh, he did he was awesome. Uh, he's still still a good friend, but he would purposely find

like these coordinates of where these, a bunch of sharks from the waters before he puts you in there. So we'll get to that one. So we'd go dive down to where. is known to be little shark neighborhoods. And so it might be 60, 65 foot down. So going down in the bottom, now I was a civilian diver. So when I'd go on dive recall, yeah, I hadn't gone to CDQC, but I was a civilian diver from Nowey. And so I dove down and yeah, we'd be swimming around with those dudes. And so I got to swim with sharks, got to dive with sharks, which was terrifying for the first like five minutes.

And it's, you want to kind of break that fear of it. I'm not going to say you don't notice them anymore, but you pay them a little less attention. Right, right. And you recognize that you're in their area. And they're just seeing what's going on. And, you know, I think I played, I tried to play chicken with one. It was like kind of coming towards me a little bit. So I planed out.

I started swimming towards him a little bit. Like, I thought I was a lot tougher than what that was. he didn't stop coming so yeah, bailed out. And yeah, he won. I'll give it to him. But we did chum the water. We actually went out to this place

called One Two Bowie. One two buoy. We take the boats out. We're just going to free dive out here. We're going to go spear fishing. My one two buoy, mind you, is 6,000 feet deep. This is like a collapsed volcano or something?

I couldn't tell you. And I don't know. I mean, that is terrifying just psychologically. Yeah. Maybe not for everybody. For me, it was absolutely like just knowing that it's 6,000 foot deep for whatever reason. It's not going to sink to the bottom. I got fins. I got a mask. It doesn't matter if it's 10 feet or 6,000. But the abyss just had me, right? So, okay, we splash in. We're swimming around. We're spearing some amberjack.

You know, this big Amberjack We're probably only this big, but nonetheless So we throw them On to, uh, we're chum in the water Ultimately, because we throw them in a net that's hanging off the side of the boat And keeping them fresh, but you know, it's blood in the water Now we got some big dudes coming along. I mean, I say big They were probably seven, eight foot

And that was just, that was uncomfortable. The first dudes I ran into were like six foot you had that extra couple of feet on there that made a huge difference so yeah we got chased out of the water and but we'd go do the three case swim you get dropped off three kilometers you know and you got 90 minutes and you're in your kit and you know you're out there you know I know the Navy does it out there in San Diego but you know we're doing the Caribbean which is a lot nicer because you could see the visibility was a lot better you could see pretty far away those dudes were there. Jeez. If upgrading your full sleep setup has been on the list for a while,

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that's ghostbed.com slash house promo code house some exclusions apply see site for details uh and so you spent some time how long were you at fourth battalion i was just there for a year oh okay so they kept you busy in that year yeah and then you uh how did you move over to third battalion they needed some dudes over at third battalion needed a medic they were rotating so i ended up on uh on 36. And that was good. That was best team in fifth group, actually.

Had the trophy. So had that for a while. And then from 36, I went to 1-2 and did some

deployments out there in the northern region. Now then one, two, we were attached to 95. Well, the old ODA 595. Oh, yeah. So, yeah, they did the initial invasion. So we went with them and I got to work with 9-5 for quite a while for that, you know, a lot of that deployment. And we got into some pretty good ticks.

Where was that? That was in, outside of Mazur al-Sharif. it was in the north so that's like is that harot out in that area no okay it was outside of mez okay okay uh so well first you were with three six did you get sent anywhere with that team Lebanon oh that was my okay that was your Lebanon trip or scott trip that Lebanon okay and then one two to Afghanistan yeah um and you were The Delta on the team, I take it? Yeah.

And so what kind of stands out in your memory from that time? And what year was it that you were there? I did that one in 12, 13. So Ben Laden has been taken out. Yeah. And like, what was your conception of like what you were doing there? Why, why the team was there? You know, at the time, ever since, like, the initial invasion and the

reason that we went over there. In my mind, it was just full send. We have to go and do this for America. We've got to do this to protect our freedom. And it didn't matter about whether or not the leader of the largest terrorist cell

in the world was dead. because all of them aren't dead. Right. So that's still the problem. We have to finish all of that. What does finish look like? Yeah. Right?

But then what does finish look like when no one else is standing? Except, you know, the good guys. Yeah. Which is kind of an insane objective when you think about it, right? You know, reflect back on that. And I've done a lot of reflecting since then. So, you know, we'll get to that. but that was kind of the objective is just keep going and keep trying to do what we thought,

man, this is God's work. You know, they're all bad guys. And how we made them, we made a lot of those guys bad guys. Like I said, if you come to my house and you break in at, you know, whatever, 2 o'clock in the morning, I'm not going to be too happy about it. And it's like if we weren't there, would that guy be trying to kill Americans? Al-Qaeda guy maybe, but like Taliban, dude, what the hell do they care? They know.

But I'm over there and I'm in his house where his family sleeps. Yeah. Yeah, piss off the locals. He's got a problem with that. Yeah. And I don't understand that. At that time. At that time.

Yeah. What were some of your more memorable experiences from that trip? I don't know. That's a good question. That's a very good question. I've got some, maybe they're not in good memories. They can be good, bad, funny, whatever you want. So we got, so we were QRF one night.

Nine-five was on a hit. And so we're sitting by the fire. aircraft is sitting there ready and we've got a package for them. We're going to bring either ammo or some med supplies, a couple different packages. So they're going to go do this hit. We'll call it $2,300 because I'm pretty sure that was the time

the hit was. About 2315, the radio crackles these dudes are like, we need some help, man. They're calling in the entire package. Okay. I'm like, bro, you guys just got onto the objective. Like, we're in route. Everything is loaded up. We spin up and airborne we go.

We're there in, I don't know, 30 minutes, maybe a little less. But hitting the ground, I know roughly where they are. We all do. So we've got, now we prepared with everything. We packed it all. it should have been in a truck, but we don't have a truck. We've got a UH 60.

And so now it's like a selection event trying to carry all of this shit because we're on a ridge line. So we've got to go down this ridge line because aircraft won't even get us super close because it's going to drop us off out of five, six hundred meters away from the objective. So now we've got to try to haul all this stuff.

And teams are, turns like can he go because they're they need medic support pretty bad so me and a couple guys we all asked we're heading on to the ex everybody else like carrying equipment uh so i get there and one of the the bravo on the other team he's walking up this little ridge line where we're linking up and he's got a dude on his shoulder and uh i was like hey He's like, oh, Kenny, you're here. He's like, hey, I got somebody for you. Okay, cool.

Let's put him over here on the flat ground. So he puts him on the flat ground. Oh, there's, we're still in this, like, pretty good firefight going on. And so, you know, there's three rules at SF. Always look cool. That's rule number one, right? Always look cool. So when I heard that in the selection, I was like, yeah.

Sunglasses, for sure, or merils or something, you know. Cool watch. Got to have it. And then rule number two is don't get lost. No problem. GPS. Top and ass directions. Rule number three is if you get lost so cool doing it.

Right. I really didn't understand that concept either. Maybe I was like the slowest guy. I slipped through somehow, but I didn't understand really what all that meant. And it might mean different things to different guys. I'll tell you what it means from me. And it was there when he, gave me this guy that's missing a big chunk of his head.

And he's got multiple gunshot wounds on him. And I'm like, oh, this dude is not in a good situation. He's not doing well. But you're the medic. So you got to be cool. And I'm the medic. And now he brings me another guy. So I'm putting this one dude's head back together.

I'm running through my algorithm. I got in the bleeding stopped. I'm putting his head back together. Dude brings me another guy. now you know it's midnightish i don't think we have a full moon out so the loom is very low and you know you can't white light anything and just right there is the village that this gunfight's still happening i got my bravo's now showed up and he's running his gun it's kind of loud and i got two patients putting one's head back the other and i'll get to the other one

I'm going through my March algorithm, massive hemorrhage airway respiration. So I get to airway. I was not doing good. So I'm going to in in abate this guy. And I've done this plenty of times in the hospital, but never during a gunfight at my original at midnight, under knots. So I start to open up his mouth and it's not really opening. And I was like, you know what?

I'm not even going to do this. We're going straight to the crick. Because of injuries. Yeah. I was going straight to the crick. I pull out my knife. and then this Jack this is when it made sense because inside I mean I'm kind of freaking out

but you wouldn't know it right right I've done this 100 times a thousand times in training so I'm like look cool right just look calm and collected and then all right so I grab this dude's neck

I can't really see super good so I've got a palpate I got a feel the Adams apple I got to feel where that cartilage is going to be and I was like don't get lost

so I start to make the cut you know I fuck if you get lost look cool doing it you know success success drop the tube

bam you know now I'm feeling like oh man I'm badass big deal I played it that way yeah definitely did not see

that wasn't on my bingo card I got up this morning, but there it is. We did it. And so that's where those three rules. SF came in. And that was kind of a memorable moment because then that carried with me for a lot of different things later. Yeah, we ended up, I had several patients. I had six patients.

Medic on the team on 9-5 ended up with shrapnel from a grenade through and through. He was Medevac first thing as we came in. So, like, it was me out there. And I guess I got to learn a lot about, a lot about me and a lot about the training. It really validated everything that that Sockham course is teaching. I mean, through those halls make the greatest medics in the world. I'm the biggest believer in that. Like those guys are absolute studs.

When you get out of that course, if you're able to make it through that course, very difficult first time go rate but if you're able to make it through the course you are stellar I would let any 18 Delta work on me before a lot of these like I don't know some of these dudes out there in the civilian world yeah I trust 18 deltas and did that kind of like you said that kind of like stuck with you would did you find that you know in in times of high stress you were able to remain calm. It's certainly helped up. Even working with some of the local populace, we would do these little kind of like a med cap, right? So we'd do medical capabilities. I would show up as the, you know,

Western doctor kind of guy, you know, and I would get all kinds of folks out there. Kids, I had a kid, and I was seeing this kid every few days I'd have him come back. He was burned. the story that I got was they kept changing but nonetheless you take off like from his feet to his head just his whole body was completely different um because of just the severity of the burns was this scarred over or is this still open it was some still open and a lot of it was just scarred over and he was is still trying to heal from this. This is not a sterile environment that, uh, he's not at all. Yeah. So, you know, I'm like, I, I, what I've got with me, man, this guy needs a long-term burn unit. He needs skin grafts. He needs surgeries. And I can't do that, right? But I do have some

things that I can do. I do have some pain medications to help him get through his day. Uh, and I can wrap him up. And that psychologically makes them feel better. So I spent a lot of curlecks on this kid, but the family was very thankful and that showed gratitude. And I've, even though I know that that's not what he needed, but I can't give him what he needed. I'm going to do anything that I can. And I guess that made me feel that I was, I was doing something good, but then who did that to this kid? Did we do that to this kid? Accidentally. Right, right.

In an airstrike or something. Right. Because we may have done that to not that kid, but somebody else. Sure. When we were in, we were in a tick and we're getting after it. Everything was going pretty smooth, what I thought. But he just wasn't ending. We're about nine hours into this thing.

We got some air support. And so my Bravo is like, man, I got this 320. We got all these grenades. Let's go. Yep. Let's do this. So we just, we're just firing for effect because we're, this one, this one group of houses. These dudes are just all over the place.

Yeah. Well, ants in the ant hill. Yeah. So I'm like, you know what? Cool. We're going to do it. So we just start lava grenades in there. And we get a call from C-130 Specter.

And it's like, hey, you guys got a dude running around on fire down there. I found this funny at the time. Like maniacally evil. Funny. Yeah, nine hours into the firefight. You're not thinking. Totally clearly. But then, like, fuck, man, you know.

I feel like I whenever I was running my gun I felt like I wanted to I don't know at least be decent about it even back then because I saw what happens with dudes that really injured and all that pain and all that that I'm getting to witness as the medic. So I'm like, you know what? I'm not going to be that guy, right? At least I'm going to try to do my work to the fullest extent so that they don't have to, because they don't have me on that other side or a guy like me, you know, with with fentanyl lollipops and pushing ketamine and, you know, this guy's going to suck for a couple minutes, but then I'm going to take care of him and, you know, snow him and he's going to be okay. Pain wise, they don't have any of that. So I, I,

Thought I was a good human. But, you know, having that mindset. But then catching Scott on fire, then I was like, I don't care like that's funny. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. That came back around years later. So it wasn't, at the time, it felt completely normal to you. A lot of stuff that we did.

Yeah. That looking back, it's like, that was not normal. Yeah. But we normalized that. particularly, you know, when you're a special ops guy, like you deploying over and over and over again, having those like repeated exposures. Yeah. Like you can't help but feel like this is normal for you. You get numb to it.

Yeah. You get numb. Like I said, I tried to keep the human factor involved in it. But there are definitely times where you felt it slip away. We just, we're just doing work and it doesn't matter and you have to just cut that off. no emotion you can't show emotion to everything um because it's all going to come and catch up to you some point but i tell you it's not going to happen today you know during this during while we're out here on this mission none of that's happening i don't think i think very few people even think

that far ahead that you know what are what are the long-term repercussions and i i wasn't thinking that at that time either yeah like i don't think anybody was Nobody really talked about that. And when you did have some kind of feelings, emotions, thoughts, mental health is what we're calling it now, right? Nobody wanted to talk about that. They except one guy. And it was, there was probably a little bit of alcohol that might have gotten, you know, moved around into the country that, you know, what might not should have been there, but it was.

and I think that that was a major contributing factor but I did have a teammate he was on the other team but we were co-located together and was going through some some struggles and I found him with his 9mm-millimeter his mouth. That was a difficult encounter on deployment. Because, oh shit, man, I got to be super gentle with this because I could say the wrong

thing. Yeah. Or make the wrong move or whatever. And fortunately, I don't know, a good two hours. You know, we talked earlier about, you know, talk therapy. you can go to a VA. But if you talk to somebody that's, you know, you're, you've done similar things, right? You can probably get the point across a lot better and things can, you know, a brotherhood type of thing that you can work out instead of talking to a somebody graduated a psychology degree and has never been in the military.

There might not shed the same insight. So I was able to work with him enough to get the gun out of his mouth and two hours of talking. A lot of hugging, a lot of crying, a lot of all kinds of stuff. That was very, very unusual for a situation like that at all. Yeah, unexpected. Because guys didn't really want to talk about mental health. You just, you go, you work, you do things, and then you keep that buried. You keep it where, you know, it doesn't need to come up.

We don't talk about it. We don't. It's just. I've heard stories over the years that, like, I really feel for, for some of these teams. Um, in the story, it's always some variation of this. You know, my team sergeant got killed. My team leader got killed.

The guys are hurting, but the mission continues. These teams are left out there on these little fobs to continue the mission. And stuff starts disappearing from the med cabinet. And that's kind of like what brings the whole the whole shit show starts rolling downhill. You know, as the guys come on gluto. over time. You can see how it happens, you know. That did happen. Not to me, not to my team. I was always very good on the accountability of our meds. I'm still yet. I've pushed a lot of ketamine. I've never experienced ketamine. A lot of other things, but ketamine never.

So maybe one day. But on another team, we're all going out on a deployment. You know, several teams all flying out together. This dude shows up. He's a medic. He's just not looking good at all. And I can identify when a dude's been using. I don't know exactly what it is he's been using, but I know he's been using. And he's got a problem.

I didn't know the medic very well at all. You know, you guys down the hallway, this team's gone. This team's gone back and forth. Like, oh, man, you're the new guy here? Like, nope, been here three years. like shit I've never seen you you know so it's kind of one of those deals

and I could tell that I said you know what this is actually good that he's gone on to its appointment because whatever he was doing he needs to get away from that now I've got no oversight of the dude because they go on wherever area that they're going to

and turns out he got into his med box so he went home which also was not the answer because when he got home he OD'd on heroin and died

geez so it's a slippery slope whether you know I don't know the underlying circumstances whether the guy just likes to get high or whether it was a trauma related issue that he'd been experiencing through

you know, previous deployments that he's not been able to deal with. To throw away his special forces career and then to start injecting heroin, yeah, there's got to be some underlying issues. Definitely, yeah, a situation going on. But he's not the only case, you know, for so many more. Yeah. Not just with heroin, but with one, all types of drugs. Opiates.

Well, heroin's an opiate, but yeah. Other opiates. Yeah. And, and other drugs. Yeah. Um, I was not an exception to that rule. So. And was that when you came back from some of these trips that you're kind of like self-medicating?

Yeah, it was. So during that time, it was alcohol. Uh, as we talked about, yeah, alcohol is socially acceptable. Especially in the army. Man, everybody's drinking in the, um, in the army and team parties you know alcohol is always a staple it's kind of the almost a focal point

so you get used to that just being the way that things are and that's just life what we know but we don't really practice is the fact that we have to understand that that is a depressant that will lower, get all hippie woo-woo now,

but that lowers our vibration. Lowering that vibration, allow some negative energy to come in. Now, when you go out and you spend your life doing some negative energy-filled stuff, like going on raids and hits and, you know, unaliving people. Yeah.

Being in that environment where that's a thing, like some negative spirits are going to, to you because now what's happening at home when you're out doing this not for all guys some guys have amazing you know support systems back at home some guys don't they come back the support system's gone right this leads to a lot of divorce this leads to a lot of you know problems now guys don't have their kids because of these divorce so now you they're dealing with all this compound interest of garbage right of of trauma not just from what they did in you know peshamerga but what happened when they were gone and what they're dealing with

with now that getting home. And so you turn to alcohol. You turn alcohol, you lower your vibrations, you allow some negative energy to get into you, and then guys will black out, right? They'll do stuff, say stuff the next day. They're like, remember saying this? No, I don't. Yeah, it's some kind of dark spirit was in you taking over, man, and live in your body. And we do that. We do that for years. and that one thing leads to another. You start with the alcohol, you move on to something else, some other kind of drugs, whatever those may be, prescription pills, tram it all was a big one that guys really liked

because that was an opioid. And pain medication, just popped that pill. It's like a really good-looking proxin. That takes the pain away. But then you become addicted to that. You just need that to just, keep on the function. And that's the same with most all of those types of opioids. And also the guys, you know, again, I can feel like sympathetic for it. As a guy goes through their career,

starts racking up injuries. Like there's a toll on the body as well, not just the mind. And some of these guys start using steroids because they want to stay on their team. They want to stay on the game. They work very hard to get to that position. They don't want to leave because their vertebrae are fucked up and they got injured so they need to get something to help them get that. Right, right. And things just continue to kind of spiral. It does. And then

it happened to me. They go into these like subcultures and motorcycle brought me into a whole new subculture has it up with a lot of guys. When did that begin? Man, I got my first bike when I was eight so I've always been riding and I've had Harleys for 20 years.

Okay, okay. And everybody knows about all these, you know, high in 1% clubs, you know, they're, they got movies about them and TV shows and documentaries, Hells Angels, outlaws, Megan's, and those helped kind of spawn other clubs that a lot of veterans are involved in. And you go around to these military bases, there are a few other, kind of big clubs that will also feed into those big one percenter clubs. Now, a one percent or club is going to run the whole, like, whatever territory.

So if your club is in that territory, you answer to them. Yeah, like if you want to wear the, what is the three piece set, you got to be subservient to whoever the big daddy is in that region. and there are military veterans active and retired that will prospect. They will go through six months, a year, sometimes longer, depending on the club, to earn that three-piece patch to go ride their motorcycle along with a bunch of other dudes wearing that patch. Yeah, it's not quite sons of anarchy, but it's... Sometimes it's not too far off from that. Depending on how deep some of these guys.

And military organizations are involved in some of that. Which then spawns into a lot more alcohol use, drug use, which in the biker community, they like speed. Those dudes like methamphetamines, cocaine, not to say all the veterans organizations that ride motorcycles are doing. that what I'm saying is that you get the you might get some exposure a lot more exposure when you're around that type of culture than you would just being in the military. Mm-hmm. And a lot of guys do get, get exposed to that and then end up going down some of those routes. And the MCs I've been told like really love these guys because you've been trained to use

weapons, explosives, you have all kinds of like counter surveillance training, you know, how like spot undercover cops and that kind of stuff. So like military, or do you think military guys are like specifically sought after by some of these motorcycle clubs? They're looked into, and another one of the reasons is because they're also easily or more easy to be vetted.

An example is if you're in one of these one percent or clubs, you're not going to come from a law enforcement background. Like that's you have to hang around these clubs just as like a random dude, a friend. It starts to get to know these guys. And that might last for a year, two years. They call them like hangarounds or something. Hangarounds. Yeah.

And then from there, they might ask you, you know, if you wanted to step up and participate more, they might allow you to then become a prospect or probate. And you might do that for a year, two years, before you can become a full patch remember, that's a whole vetting process. They're vetting you, you're vetting them. And yeah, they're not going to, if you're a military, at least you're, they know a lot more about you. You're, you come in qualified.

You come in with not just that background knowledge, but also it's easy to know that you're not a cop. Right. Yeah. Yeah, the police aren't going to put you in the military so you can infiltrate a biker gang. Right. Yeah. And there was some guys that did.

did go towards the 1% of route from the military in the outlaws and in the Hells Angels. After some of those trips of 9-5, were you still in fifth group after that or were you moving on to SWIC? Then I went over to SWIC. Okay. Yeah, I went to the Delta committee. Gotcha. So what was it like becoming an 18 Delta instructor? I don't know.

man, it's a pretty cool job, I guess. Because, you know, the first time you go through the medic course as a student, you're just trying to survive. Yeah, yeah, looking through a toilet paper tube. Forget it. You retain 30%, 30%, maybe, right? You learn something and you dump it because there's so much more. You've got to learn this next week.

And then it's just over and over and over again. Now, once you get out to the later phases of the course, the trauma phases, the hands-on actually doing you know life-saving skills on on people and also on we were using k-prine's goats um those are the types of skills to stick with you and you know those are that's a lot of fun to me not working on the goats i don't like that i don't know i like animals i don't like people. I didn't, it wasn't my favorite part. I think every 18 Delta student hates goats by the time they get out of that course. If you try to feed it to him, man, I'm going to throw up. I can't stand the smell. It's just that, I don't know, PTSD and my old factory nerves is going to how that was

awesome. But to answer your question, it actually started to get watered down during my second half of the tenure. Um, the reason being is because, there's a standard with everything across the board, whether that was Ranger's School, whether and, you know, whatever we can have that conversation about what actually happened, you know,

did the standards change or things just get looked at differently? We were getting looked at differently. A guy, I'll give you an example. A guy came through the course that, but his faith was Muslim. and he was fasting and we had the UBR upper body round robin. Okay. So I'm not familiar with that.

You have to do like bench press. It's like your body weight or 80% of your body weight and how many times can you do it? You got to do like a minimum of like four or five. It's super low standards. You have to be able to do like three pull-ups. Um, you have to go to like hang from the bar and then put your ankles up above your head and do like four of those. Like to get a basic score, you know, and then of course, guys are getting like 25. And then you go to the dip bar and you get like eight dips, dudes knock out 40 or whatever.

We had this guy. He was Muslim. He's fasting. And he couldn't even get the bare minimum of any of them. And then it ends of the five-mile run in 40 minutes. He failed every single event. not only that he failed the PT test that was given like two weeks after that he failed like three written tests he failed like two or three of the hands-on versions and it was hey you got to recycle this guy you got to give

him another chance you got to give him another chance because now we started shifting over to being a little bit more. I don't know if you want to use the word woke, but things were changing. I mean, this might be a little controversial, but it's been said that when there are people going through the Q-course who have unique language abilities that they get pushed through, no matter how poorly they do, some of the tests. Yeah. And you know what? Maybe that was a portion of it. And I would have said, you know, I 100% agree, but then it didn't stop there. That was just the catalyst to then every other dude that couldn't make it through. And it's dangerous. Was, oh, no, we're giving another chance, another shot. Give this guy another opportunity.

And that just became the norm, almost to be like, you can't fail a guy. So, so what did that look like when we were getting briefed by this two star that comes out? And he said, look, you guys are a green race. A small group of us me and maybe four or five other cadre. And he had a captive audience, there we are. And he's like, you're here to train these guys because as a green beret, you go overseas. And then their target language, you're going to train them to be just like you. And you're telling me you can't do that with Americans that are motivated that want to do this. So, well, I mean, no, you got a point. But of course, there's definitely two different standards of training. I'm not going to create an American Army Green Beret with an Afghan National

army guy. That's, you know, it's not going to happen. But that was kind of the message that was floated to all of SWIC for a period of time. And the Delta course, you know, medicine, it's not for everybody. Just because you are not a good medic doesn't mean you can't go be a Charlie Echo Bravo. Like, there's other opportunities for you, but maybe medicine is not going to be it. If I don't want you working on my family, you know, if like, if you come to my house, like you're the guy. I'm like, I don't want that. If you're looking a little iffy on the go maybe.

Yeah, then I'm like, I'm not going to pass you, right? Like there's a standard. You know, and I can be pretty lenient. I know we,

you know, we need some guys out there. We're not producing these, you know, mass producing soft because we're not supposed to. But it did get a lot more lenient. And, you know, I can't say that

that was like the worst thing because I feel like we learned from it. Uh, a lot of folks got slipped through the cracks. And I think now things are changing. I mean, we could see a lot of changes that are being made with this administration, specifically speaking on the ideology of military training and what our standard regulations are for the troops.

Uh, I think that's gotten a lot better. What was kind of like your perception of like why this was happening? Um, I, I, I mean, like when that general came and told you that, like, did he really have like an ideological belief? Or was this more like a mandate from DOD that like you need to produce more green berets? I mean, I don't know what the what the deal was. Yeah. What's being fed at the Pentagon and what we're getting fed is probably two different messages.

Yeah, I'm sure. Most likely it is the we're going to violate the rule that says, you know, soft is not going to be mass produced. I think that one kind of, they wanted to put that one out the window. And the other part of it was that, I don't know who knows maybe an OER bullet, that they came with science.

And I say the OER bullet because somebody for their OER bullet, we should explain to people, an officer evaluation report is how military officers are evaluated. they're going to get promoted based on how well. It's like their, you know, their annual review. You know, you get your annual review and theirs is their officer evaluation as their annual review. What did you do over this last year?

Did you increase safety by 22%? Did you, you know, increase the readiness of this organization by 38% and everything's got to have a quantitative value? And if so, if you look better than your peers, then you're going to get that next promotion. And those promotions end up into political promotions at a point. Sure. You know, after around 04, 05, now it's all political. But with that, somebody fed them all this science. In their quotes, yeah.

So the science said that if they make it through the selection phase, then they are going to move forward. But this is the training portion of this. They've already been selected. Right. This is the training portion. Now, I can say that, you know what, if they don't want to get rid of them, you know, out of the 18 Delta course,

like that's a big problem because the medic piece of that is, we're training these dudes to be like amateur T-moved doctors and surgeons out in the field. So you really need to have your stuff squared away But this spread to small unit tactics Right It's spread into the other committees And it's not just affecting the medics It's affecting everything

Like these guys get selected They're now going to get trained So you go from You know selection is Though the numbers around 30% maybe pass rate You know let's just say 30% You go to the Q course It's like that's 50%

60% they want that like no these guys are like 90 95% you're gonna push these cats through OER mass produce soft I don't know take your poison but by the time I wasn't a fan of it because you know I made it so I got mine so now I need to be this tab protector how I was gonna ask you know you became the NCOIC of the Delta course out there how did you kind of deal with this situation So that place is a, well, it's a museum, for one. By that, I mean, we got politicians. Every star. Everybody that's going to have anything, Congress, whatever, these folks are all going to come to the Delta course, right?

So it's a dog and pony show. Maybe not every week, but at least three times a month. We're going to have distinguished guests and visitors. So we've got TVs up there playing our video on loop. We've got a band and instructor, damn near, that stands outside of each section of the classrooms with like a banner hanging up of his section and what he's doing to give his two-minute brief

as I walk them all down through each and every phase. Because the first six months, five, six months, you're in classrooms and you're not. knocking out like just physician level, anatomy and physiology, just really getting into the weeds with diseases. And it is the second half of the course when things get what students would consider a lot more interesting. That's when you're working with, you're working with moulash, you're working with trauma. You're working with mannequins, a lot of it, and then you're working with live tissue. So you're outside doing a lot of work.

and, you know, wearing your kit and doing medicine that way and, you know, sweating and being out there 12, 13 hours, just doing all these repetitions over and over and over again. So guys really get a lot out of that. But then the very last phase, the third phase of trauma three, that was my favorite. That was the, that was my baby, if you will. Like I said, when I was a student, we really didn't have a final training exercise. It was kind of really watered down. It wasn't, I didn't feel like I got anything out of it.

Hell, I didn't really wasn't even sure. Like, are we doing this right now? I was like, are we in the FTX? And all of a sudden, it's done like 10 minutes later. So, like, man, this needs to change. So we built a really good FTX. Three days, 72 hours straight, no sleep. Just go.

We had a day crew, a night crew of Cadre, 12-hour shifts, and just punishing these guys and still failing them. You get to the last thing, the FTX, and a guy doesn't do the job, he fails, you know? Well, that one didn't fly. We got away with about six months, but after a while they're like no more failing at the FTX. All right. So we built a 100 acre compound. Like the contract was in order as I was showing up to be a cadre out there.

And so we got the contract to go. build this like 100-acre type of I could build villages, classrooms. I put Black Hawk helicopter frames out there, some tank stuff, and there's a river, built little warehouses and really a great training area so that guys could do trauma medicine. We work with paintball guns, so we did have a little bit of kind of, you know, a lot of fire stuff while you're doing medicine. And, you know, we'd have pneumatic machine guns. We had a lot of smoke, really try to generate a good type of experience where you're doing a lot of care under fire. So it was a month-long program out there, it's followed by that 72-hour FTCX. And it was great. It was super fun. And guys just,

they loved it because you're really out there just playing Army. Doing the job, yeah. And we had side-by-sides and guys are out there just screaming around on these things and loading casualties in them and practicing in the back of Humvees while we're driving around and doing medicine. So guys got so much out of this at the end. So I was like, for the instructors, I was like, man, we need to build you guys like a logo, a team shirt.

We have a team shirt for this place. Logo, team shirt. I sit around and I'm building one. I'm not a graphic art kind of guy. I can't draw a stick figure. And I think I'm using PowerPoint is how I was assembling this thing. And I built this logo. It was a skull because everything's got to have a skull.

Hell yeah. Come on. We had a Navy. We had seals and we had SOIDC, Special Operations Independent Duty Corpsmen. We had boat guys. Gotcha. And so the skull has got to have a paddle that runs through it. And then Green Beret, we've got to have cross arrows.

Okay, we're going to take one of those arrows out and put a trident because we got seals. Man, it's all coming together. And then we got a trauma three because they're the ones building this logo. So we'll put a Roman numeral three on the skull. And there was 13 active duty instructors that were teaching this course. So everybody gets a star. So there's 13 stars wrapped around this Roman numeral three, which I guess mirrored with some other type of logo.

Not intended at the time. But that became like kind of viral at the schoolhouse. Shirts, hoodies, hats, water bottles, all kinds of stuff were team fund was running rampant. It was doing fantastic. There was even an online store set up for this. And then it became a little controversial. did become a little controversial. So then we'll fast forward, I don't know, seven, eight years, January 6th happened.

Apparently a similar logo. I don't think it was exactly this one, but I don't know. Was seen in that area ended up turning into a safety stand down for that schoolhouse. And it ended up on the internet and websites, special operations school uses extremist logo. And they had it so wrong. They had it incredibly wrong. But nonetheless, there we go. That logo became famous.

But it was SWIC that shut you guys down? Yeah. Yeah. Did it have to be redesigned or what happened with that? It just got, it got, you can't use it at all. It was gone. Or is it? Because it's still out there.

Yeah, they fought back, actually. The guys at the schoolhouse fought back. And they've kind of kept it in a lot of areas off that grid, but still thrives. Yeah, they're wearing it on their t-shirts underneath their... It is. ACUs or whatever the hell they have now. The fun thing about it is my son used to wear that, you know, as a good. kid growing up he had the water bottle you know a hat he didn't really know much about what it was uh you know

it's like kind of the cool logo for the special operations combat medic school so he grows up and goes to be an army ranger and goes to that school and yeah i got to show up uh during the ftx and run that lane that was probably one of my more proudest moments that I had was being able to because you know you go through something you know like that school anything you have a little bit of home field advantage here to uh having built the course I think a lot of people gave him shit going through that course you passed everything on his own I had no influence on not that I could mean that that's like you either doing it or you're not and everybody's there witnessing so Uh, you know, I couldn't persuade anybody on anything if I wanted to, but, uh, you know, you go through any kind of, you know, the, the 18 Delta course going through the Q course, you know, Navy SEALs going through buds, whatever. Those things are, that's a significant time. That's a significant event. To be able to have your son, you know, go through that same thing, walking down those same halls

and doing everything that you got to do, you know, that is, that's cool. And after your SWIC time, you went on to be a team sergeant? So I went back to, I went back to group and immediately deployed again. Where to? We went back to, at that time, I went to Ghosta, which was, also in Lebanon. Oh, no kidding. Okay. Yeah, I lived there for a year and a half. No shit. Off and on. Just. So your team was really going back and forth to Lebanon. If you love that. In Syria. Oh, you did Syria too. What was your impression of Syria? That's a shit hole.

Yeah, that was a short stint of just training some dudes that that was kind of, kind of, it was anti-climactic. Mm-hmm. Yeah, you guys weren't like on the front line. No. We really didn't get to do anything cool. Yeah. What we consider cool.

What we consider cool is what, you know, when you're, you know, call a duty, you know, like when we're living that, that's cool, right? And when you're just out there doing day-to-day J-SET stuff, essentially. Yeah, right, right. That's not cool. So yeah, went and did did some more training out there in, uh, in Gosta. And yeah, I did another five or six months out there. And then I was offered, hey, you want to be a team star in Syria on another rotation. I'm at 22 years at this point.

Mm-hmm. Like the war at this point is 2019. It's all done. Yeah. starting to feel it, you know, at a couple of hard landings. Aida charge had

some other underlying factors of some explosions that I won't really get into that I got some hardware in the leg for, but the my body was just not really cooperating

you know because at this point I'm in my early 40s and yeah guys on there just still studs yeah I can hold my own but I'm like I think it's about that time because I thought that I was mentally ready um yeah and I wasn't

and all those years like eventually just all hit me at once. And during the transition, that was the, that was a challenging time. But it was one like, I'm already committed to my ex-ville.

What was your plan when you got out? Yeah. There wasn't one. Everybody says have a plan. And, you know, the plan, the plan for a lot of guys that don't have a plan is go contract. Yeah. Because, well, that's still there. They're still paying good money.

So, yeah, it turns out that that also started to dry up. And all that money started to kind of not be the big money that it was. And it became like, well, I don't think it's worth it. to go over there anymore and do this for what you guys are offering. So it's time to change that plan. Drive motorcycles a lot. Yeah, you were telling me that kind of like to keep that kind of adrenaline level high. And it was starting to get a little out of control.

Yeah, I was riding with one of those, uh, with one, a club that the FBI would be interested in. They would be. They would be. Yeah, in Tennessee, the outlaws have that area. And I was very tight with one of the members that that was, he was an enforcer in the region for them. And that's where I started finding some adrenaline. feeling like I'd had something to do.

Like I had a team again. Isn't it, wasn't the Hells Angels started by World War II veterans mostly? Fun fact. Interesting like connection there, isn't there? So the Hells Angels, the outlaws, Pegas, Mono, there's a bunch of, there's four or five big ones, but they're one percent our club. So after World War II, a bunch of dudes, because you know that allies sent a lot of Harley Davidson's over. And so guys were riding those. And, oh, that was something that you got around on.

Well, they also got good at fixing them, right? So then when the war was over with, then there's a surplus of these motorcycles. You can get them relatively cheap. Everybody knows how to work on them, you know? throw a gallon of gas in there and off you go. So a lot of guys got into that, you know, culture is just a way of riding their motorcycles around. And then, well, you ride with your buddies. Well, a bunch of guys were doing this together.

And you have in California, Hollister, California, the American Motorcycle Association would do this annual event. And all these people come from all over, you know, ride their motorcycles. It was a week-long deal. It might be some drag races and stuff like that. Well, then, you know, if me and you were riding together, you know, whatever and we're going to show up, we're going to wear the same, like, jacket, you know. Same color-looking. Well, we're going to have a uniform. We got to look the same.

Everybody's same, same. Well, there was a bomber squadron called Dallas Angels. so they adopted their bomber squadron name and then used that. Now, they might not follow with all the rules that the American Motorcycle Association had in the store for their week-long celebration for their bike week or whatever in Hollister. Some people didn't care. They're like, lock your rules, whatever. 99% of bikers are, you know, good dudes, follow the rules, whatever. There's 1% that don't care and wear that 1%. So they adopted that.

They wear that as a diamond patch on their cut. And they take this very seriously. Now you've got veterans, motorcycle clubs, like motorcycle clubs that veterans belong to that when it says MC, motorcycle club, they've prospected to get that, which means that they've been doing a lot of work for, it could be four or five months,

could be over a year, to be able to earn the privilege to wear that entire three-piece patch. And those clubs that they belong to, say most. I don't want to lump. everything in and speaking in absolutes, but are going to belong to an area. I got some real estate and that a real estate isn't owned by that one percent or club. And that comes with responsibilities.

Each organization has got different responsibilities to what that might be. But, yeah. But it gives this, like I was saying earlier, it gives guys an opportunity to get into things that they shouldn't get into. whether that's more alcohol, drugs, or being involved in some type of, you know, organized crime, whenever that might look like. And it happens. You mentioned earlier that, you know, it's a subculture and it is kind of interesting. I mean, special forces in of itself is sort of a subculture in the military, but then there's this parallel subculture where now that you're a different uniform and there's a different

selection process and you belong to this other thing it gets better you got special forces guys we already said that you know we're kind of our own brotherhood you know sf guys you know they they're belonging to one club and you got another s ff guy belonging to this club oh yeah and now there's this this riff fist fight riff even worse does that carry seeing s fsfxf guys wearing they got a different color jacket jump dudes s f dudes because they're wearing that color jacket it's like oh your third group i'm seventh group i'm you know we're gonna fight for what and they do that does they do that does that stuff that rift kind of carry into the workplace sometimes yeah it does some of the committees that the qualification course has are good examples of this.

I'm not going to dime any of these out at all. I mean, in a few cases, I know exactly what you're talking about. But there's a couple of committees where, like, yeah, we work together, but you're wearing that color and I'm wearing this color. And that's a problem. And it bleeds over. certainly bleeds over oh man that's wild isn't it yeah it's sub subculture it's i don't know it's beyond me i was involved in it for quite a while yeah i mean if you're

willing to talk about i mean how deep did you go uh so i i was in a a traditional emce um by that i mean we followed all the protocols for a motorcycle club. We held what's called church. It's meetings. It's going to be like a skiff. Phones outside. We're going to talk about some some things. It's very organized. Just like any MC, there's a structure. You've got officer rankings, president, vice president type of thing. You pay dues. You have a clubhouse. And that clubhouse is, you know, going to have a bar, living room, areas for guys to

sleep in. So it's pretty cool. It's welcoming. It's inviting to guys that have left the team life. And it's like, all right, now what? It's a whole new team house. And

whether that's just for our club, it's like that for all clubs. It's a team house. Whether you've been a civilian or whatever and you get involved in one of these things, that is what that that does provide that for you um and guys need that uh guys like that and they're motorcycle enthusiasts so it gives them something to to go they ride motorcycles they plan poker runs fundraisers uh different events to keep going um and that's how it all started and then i started getting a little bit deeper

into it and I started going because you meet with other clubs at events parles one club might have a hosting an event at their at their house all the other clubs in the area will go there and support this club now you've got dudes whether they're Ranger Regiment's got a club

You know, SF's got a club Just Army veterans or military veterans in general have a club Civilians are all mixed into To some of these Civilians in general

have some of their clubs and then these one percent of clubs And you get them all in one area Just like anything Guys start talking Now you have to do this sometimes weekly So you're doing this every week on bike night or you're going to like a local bar like the one percent of club's going to say hey this week's bike week bike night is going to be at this specific bar and

if you fly your colors in this area you're going to be there okay so i got some other random grown man telling us where to be you're prospecting at this point oh even when you're a club Yeah. If that one percent of club says, hey, your club is. And if they tell you to come be the doorman all night, like, you have to do it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

They don't tell you to do it. You just do it. It's just kind of like being like the new guy on a team, like day one. Right. It's just things that you do. So then I started with the one percent of club in Tennessee. And I was, I got in pretty deep with those guys. I was at the clubhouse a lot. until the sun came up

a lot yeah it ended up on a bike night and so there was this one per center club that was a different one per center club that was moving into this area turf war we can't have that

so rod and motorcycle at 100 miles an hour because that's how you ride them when you're in this club up and down the streets looking for these guys going to these different bars looking for these dudes that are encroaching on your territory then one specific bike night i had to let's just say i had to go out of town for something else um so i wasn't a i wasn't with them on bike night. I was doing something else. And the dude that I spent all that time with, I lived at that clubhouse for so many times. He stayed at my house so many times. He gets involved

in a double homicide. On the rival MC. On the rival MC. Because that's what you have to do. Yeah. That's what's ingrained. as you wear that diamond, like, that's what you do. And now, he ends up riding off, gets picked up, and this might have happened at 8 o'clock at night-ish. The mayor was inside eating dinner. The mayor of Clarksville. This happened in Clarksville, Tennessee.

Oh, shit. He was inside that restaurant that it happened at, eating dinner. not that I really made much more of a difference. Didn't help. Did not help. We're not keeping that one quiet, not sweeping anything under that rug. I get a call at, I don't know, 11, 12, 1 o'clock. Was this the steakhouse over by the mall?

Yep. Okay. Yeah, I know that one. So I get a call late at night. and it was a detective, the arresting team. So they didn't take this dude to the jail, like the Cumberland County Jail. There was some weird, unmarked warehouse-style holding place that was nowhere near the jail. Like, the other side of town.

That's weird. Super weird. And I get a call and they're like, hey, man, can you come and pick? pick up your boy. I was like, I'm some, I'm not a, I'm not wearing that color. Like, that's not. So how would you guys associate me with that? So now I'm like, that's not a good situation.

Well, yeah, man, I'm going to come down and get him. So I go down and get him. He's in a Tyvec suit. That's something like, this is getting even weird. Annable Lecter. I don't know what's happening at this point. Detective's like, take care. This is interesting.

take him to his club house like hey dude you're gonna need to go get a burner phone and you know go chill out somewhere so dude goes and he i was like man you need to be in and out of this house i think i told him seven minutes i don't know why i just pick seven minutes like randomly i think you got like seven minutes to get your shit out of the house man get out of here and then you're going to go to this spot get a burner phone you're going to go over to this area for the safe house he's like all right cool and then he's like i'm going to meet you there take a different route. So he did that. About 20 minutes later, that house got raided. And everybody that was in there was face down, got handcuffs on. So, hey, my seven minute thing actually worked. Whatever, they'd already let him go. So it didn't matter. But anyway, so off we go. He's in the, he's hanging out at some chick's house. And then he calls me up a few days later. He's like, hey, man. And I think, I don't know, I think I might need to go back in.

And you tell me what you want to do, man. So, I'll whatever, if you need help. Deputy or sheriff, detective, whoever calls me, like, the next day after that, it was like, hey, I need you to bring your boy in. Okay, cool. So. I can't believe they just let him walk out after a double homicide. Let him walk out.

Now, took him back in. He just did. It's been six years. Oh, he just got out. He just got out. Yeah. So the dudes drew down on him first. He was, so there's an argument of self-defense.

We had talked about how some former military guys go as far as, you know, one-percenter clubs. That was a former military guy that had gone. Matter of fact, a seventh group guy was, turns out to be the president. of Los Angeles in Fayetteville. He died a few years ago. Turns out when that funeral happened, oh, you've got to know, because it happened in Fayetteville, every agency.

The entire alphabet was out there. I mean, the Greek alphabet was out there. Everybody taking pictures of every dude. It's like a mafia funeral. That showed up, yeah. Wow. Yeah. That's crazy.

So what happened with your, motorcycle buddy after you brought him back in into this sketchy warehouse. So I'm doing videos. I'd ask him, I was like, hey, look, can we have no press? Because I'm involved in this thing now, right? I'm saying, I don't want any press being there. Can you guys at least try to, they're like, yeah, no problem. We have a 30, 40 minute conversation with the dude standing outside of my truck as I'm dropping him off. He was complimenting on how good we made the double doors at the clubhouse. Because we got doors from the post office, like these giant steel doors, and had a great security system on this thing.

Had cameras all over. And the bartender had all of his, because the bartender's going to be a prospect, you've got all the cameras up there to look at. So you can see 360 around the house. There'll be two or three guys just watching cameras. at all times and the whether it's the ATF whatever they were like dude you guys did a really good job

putting up to us it was like there's a bitch kid in that house man so I wasn't an engineer and Charlie but yeah it would be good so and they were you know I don't want to mention some of the things

that were they were involved in on this show but they were involved as some things that I knew like, all right, this is illicit activities. This is not. I didn't learn like, you know, my lesson quickly, but I eventually learned my lesson. I was like, this is not, not working out. And at this time now I had transitioned. I'm out of the military and I'm a civilian.

I was like, I need to ex-ville. So I go back to brag because I had a house out there still. and I'm still riding with my club out there who lives right down the street from the House Angels Clubhouse. And I just did not see, I was like, I'm going to end up in the same situations. So I decided to, I was going to get out of that culture altogether and move to Florida. where I actually hung up the helmet completely and got away from the motorcycles all together. I sold them all.

But still kind of chasing that high, right? Oh, yeah. Like you made that trip over to Ukraine when that popped off. Yeah. Yeah, what was I thinking? Yeah, I don't know. It was allegedly, I was telling myself, you know, it was the money. But in hindsight, it wasn't even much money.

So I was wanting to do it to feel relevant. I think that's the best way to describe it. To use your skills and your training? I wanted to feel relevant. And it was an ego thing, I think, also. I mean, like, I've got the opportunity to do this. and let's see how far I can push it. That's a whole different situation

when nobody's coming. There's no QRF. Nobody is coming. I don't speak that language. It's me and I've got a terp and I've got a Hylux that I rented this right at like 20 miles across the border. that's not even supposed to be that far east

because I had to sneak in Robin Sage style from Poland. That was crazy. I ended up, so there's this long line about five miles to get into the border. So we land in Poland and then we go close to the border, like an hour outside of the border to Ukraine. and we've got this aug, like, we've got this like augmentee

that's going to help us get across the border, right? We got some random dude. That was a very odd situation because he was supposed to be at this linkup point at, let's say, 2 p.m. So we're out there at like 1 p.m. Like on Overwatch, because I want to see when this guy comes in. Is he being followed? Is it just him? What is the situation really like?

At like 2.30, nothing. Nothing. I was like, what? Three o'clock, 3.30 rolls around. Almost a couple hours at past calling this guy. He finally answers. He's like, oh yeah, I'll send the driver. The driver will be there in five minutes. it was a van that has been sitting there since before we got there some dude comes over gets in the van i was like all right this is already not not looking good but now he wants to bring this lady with her car and that we're gonna they're gonna take us to the front of the line i was like none of this is adding up man sounds legit this is super not sketchy we're gonna do it Right? He's like, we're in.

And we do. So the border is backed up five miles or so. It might take three days to get into there. We just go on up to the front of the line. This lady had a stolen car. Now I'm going to be in like this international crime syndicate with stolen cars, trying to get smuggled into Ukraine. And like nothing's coming in.

I got some med stuff because like I'm coming over and I'm bringing medicine. I'm bringing like all my trauma gear and everything. Found a dude like 10, 12 vehicles back in a sprinter van, a Mercedes sprinter. Like nice a newer one. I went up to him and I was like, hey man, I need you to get me across this border. I don't think he spoke English. I don't think he, like he understood what I meant. He just kind of looked around, opened up the van.

Now, there's another red flag, right, that I've created. And I was like, yep, we're going in. Jump in the back of some random stranger sprinter van. No, it's one of these vans that it's like it's a free candy van. There's no windows. It's a pedophile van. It's the seer van. Yeah.

And I'd put myself into this sear van to break across the border to go to a war and I felt wildly uncomfortable with it. I was like, man, this is actually, I feel good about this. We get across the border. Jack, we get across the border. Two, three miles, three miles tops. This thing breaks down. Now, we're riding in the back. It's me and two guys that I went with. now because when we get to where we're going, we're going to split up and go our separate ways. So it's me and two other guys. From the back of this thing,

can't see anything. I have no idea, you know, what's, but we weren't back there long because as soon as we got across that border a few miles into it, the van breaks down.

So here we go, we pop out, like, what's the situation, man? Another dude just comes rolling up. They strap a little toe strap on this thing, and now we're just getting towed down the road.

buy some, I don't know, 1989 Nissan pickup truck that's on its last leg towing us where the dude's got to like ride the brakes so you don't hit the

towing vehicle in front of you. So we go, I don't know, eight, nine, ten miles down the road getting smuggled in this thing. Finally, like we hop out and, because it was a rental car place,

about, I don't know, 15 miles or so on the other side of the border. And we go and rent three vehicles, three high luxes. And we each, like, High five. And we go link up with an interpreter, each of us, and we go off into the wild.

Now, Ukraine is, it's huge. So it's not as big as the U.S., but it's big as several states. So it's several hours, like a couple days even to drive from the west to the east. and actually out west is like really nice the landscaping the greenery rolling hills beautiful restaurants the activity was all normal

they became a phase line and when you cross that phase line it was like it went from one to the other immediately and it was like communist Russia looking definitely the vehicles the people what they were wearing and then it got into the most war-torn looking areas in Kharkiv.

And so that's where we started operating out of. So me and my turp, we linked up with some just random indigenous force Ukrainian army dudes. We're like, hey, we're here, man. You guys want some training? And they're like, yeah. And pretty much that's kind of how it went. Shake some hands and started teaching medicine to these dudes. and they're like, we're going out on mission.

And I was like, awesome. Let me hear the mission brief. I'm going to go with you. Because I got this GoPro. We're about to start a new Blackwater. All right. So the mission goes like this. It's like six dudes.

And then me. I'm going to go with them. And they're going to go take on an entire Russian infantry unit, complete with two tanks. They've got, I don't know, all the weapons. and like 40 dudes and there's the six of us and me I was like

no we're not doing that it was an issue we kind of got into like a thing I'm just a new guy showing up there and I wasn't doing it to be a dick I was like that's suicide right man like you guys are going to die and I'm not going to go on that one with you

and I'd strongly advise you not to go because you're not going to come back from that. I'm just being being honest with you. And so a few of the guys were like, this guy's saying that, man, and his resume, and we're going to stick with this guy, and a couple of dudes were kind of angry about it. And they wanted to go talk to the colonel about it.

The colonel comes down. I was like, no, we need to go. Dude, do you understand this mission planning situation? They don't. And they're also kind of in a desperate situation. and which I completely appreciate but I am not in a desperate situation. So I did my best to keep them from going and they didn't go. Now there were some other ones that we did go and I sat in a ditch with tank rounds,

smacking, getting dirt blown on me. And then I remember I was going out to this one unit. It was like eight dudes on this outpost. We had gotten, they were like, hey, man, these dudes out there like really need help. And, you know, they're taking casualties. I was like, okay, cool. I'm going to go out there and help with these guys. So me and my turf, we go out,

we got like a grid cordon that dropped to us. that we go out there and it's a school. Now, in a village, completely desolate. Nobody's there at all. The school has been shelled a dozen times. All the houses got some kind of mortar rounds in them. And then there's this little outpost. And then there's this, uh, an area kind of like a basement, you know, you could go under a bunker.

and so I'm like, all right, so you park, I parked under some trees next to the school. Because up until now, I've been fighting the Iraq, Afghanistan, and we were accustomed to a certain style of fighting. And that's kind of ingrained in us. Drone warfare wasn't part of that. Right. And it is now. So we're going to add this to the menu. And so now it's a lot.

more variables in a country i've got zero familiarity with with a language that i don't know with now new fighting techniques that i'm not accustomed to um and i don't have any team and if anything happens i don't have a uh 60 coming in i don't have a qrf i don't have anything so i'm like wow this is uh bold and maybe not smart we're to do it right So I'm parking under trees because I'm like, man, I got to outsmart the drones because drones can't see your truck under a tree. So that I'd cover the truck up with branches. Hell yeah.

We were getting in it. And so I'm out there and I'm trying to set up all my stuff to make me a little clinic because we're going out on hits. so I'm setting me up in air and I know we're going to take injuries casualties so I want to be prepared well the casualties is about to be me

so I'm going out to the truck and that's when the drone saw me because I'm out in it's kind of a field and to get to the truck was about 50 meters or so and that 50 meters was enough for that drone I couldn't hear the drone or see the drone but it had to have been up there

because I heard a tank round you ever heard a tank round not at close range like that it was like maybe a click two clicks which is close range for a tank right yeah yeah um and I'd never

I'd never heard it on the receiving side until that day and oh that's a very you it's a that sound you'll know it if you ever get shot by a tank you will know what that sound is without ever having the preparatory command of that. And I was like, I don't know what to do.

I just hit the ground and to get as flat as possible. And from me to that microwave you got there, about six meters away was a little outpost that I just mentioned. It got leveled. And I was like, son of them. So I get up and I sprint the short 10 meters, whatever to get back into the bunker. And I went down there and they just started drilling it.

And I got it on GoPro. Yeah, that sucked, man. So this was like right on the front lines, obviously. Oh, yeah, yeah. It was right on the border. Then I got caught up by Good Morning America. Oh, no shit. Yeah, ABC World News tonight because I said there was three of us.

Mm-hmm. One dude stayed in the back and he's coordinating because, well, we've got to get some viewership on this, but we're going to start a militia, right? We're getting funded by, I still couldn't tell you who exactly it was. None of the three of us that were out there doing it. And I could tell you that. So they caught up with some news organizations and some journalists and ABC World News, ABC World News, ABC, World, Good Morning America, ABC World News. And, you know, they wanted, so I went back, linked up with those guys and got to go do some

footage for them. And then all of this was not blurred or anything. So I don't know if I became one of the most wanted out there. Like a 52. So it was just, the irony is everywhere that I lived. was leveled, not while I was there. I escaped that place. I escaped death.

I'd say more times in a few months that I was in Ukraine than I did in all the other deployments almost combined. I mean, there was definitely situations, but this one was just, just hit after hit. Yeah. An enemy has drones and ballistic missiles and, and I've got like no friends. out there at all. But it was what ended up making you decide to leave?

When I went, so I kind of, I fell back to like almost as far as I could to be in like a safe zone. The hotels were great. They were like $15 a night. So I was staying. And these are like decent hotels. And then just being in there, like, you almost want to feel, okay, cool, I'm safe.

I can kind of relax. Nope. Nope. Rockets are coming in and they're hitting a block away. And it's just like, man, I'm going to be laying here and sleeping. And I'm going to get hit by a rocket. And I've gotten you all the footage. I sent everything that I could to, you know,

know doing this and like you know unless you're gonna up the any of that funding that while while I'm here like we're done uh I got you everything you need I think to get started uh so yeah a few months and I was like I'm I'm done like this tea for trained on Ukraine uh it's time to bounce and did jumped on a train and and went back to Poland. And then now guys are starting to show up and there's more like, uh, you know, retired guys and then organizations are starting to happen. And I was like, good luck fellas.

Um, I'm going to the house and, uh, not coming back. And, uh, so when you did get back to the United States, you started doing executive protection work, you started teaching, uh, medic class, essentially, the fire departments. And I want to get into this whole other, you know, part of your story that outwardly, you're doing really well at this point, right? You know, getting jobs, making money. Yeah. Everything's going good. But internally, you were having problems still. Yeah. So, you know, like we discussed being, you know, you know, get out and want to be a contractor because there's all this money. Because being in the military, you don't make money. And everybody wants to

make money. But we don't do that job. for the money. So it was I was able to find very lucrative careers or training opportunities within my career field, which was teaching medicine. And you can you can certainly do very well for yourself being being going out and teaching medicine on government contract levels. Very well. And, and And so I was doing that because I was like, oh, I want to stay kind of involved in medicine and, again, try to stay relevant. And, oh, it's an opportunity to make some good coin. All that was happening, but it wasn't happening for me and here. Yeah.

So then I was offered, hey, do you do security? I was like, why not? you know what kind of money are you talking about same money working down in south florida is that they were going to were paying me over in ukraine which like contractor money and i was like man this there was some specific types of clients so then i got to work with a lot of ultra high net worth um clients uh some famous and some infamous clients clients that have laundered billions of dollars through countries that we are currently in conflict with. That's a whole other situation with what that recently came out two weeks ago in news on

how that, you know what, let's not get into that one. But yeah, so executive protection, I got to work with a lot of really good, a lot of fun clients. got to see some things that I might not ordinarily get to see and I certainly got to see a lot of people that I would not ordinarily get to meet but that was kind of boring I think

really the biggest thing was the avoid that I felt and it needed to be filled I wasn't involved in any kind of motorcycle stuff you know no team stuff no shootouts anymore Ukraine was kind of a bust

so you know there's still alcohol that's still a good one you know tequila that'll never let you down yeah unfortunately it does every single time it took a few thousand times

of trial and error to learn that it's never going to work out and And the motorcycle world also led me to some substance abuse. And that doesn't work out. No matter how empty your feeling, that is not going to be what fills the void.

As an atheist, the church was out of the question. so I don't know I just needed something I hated myself all these things that I'd you know think that I'd done you know there was a lot that I did that I haven't mentioned that made me hate myself and but I didn't really understand that that's what it was. I was angry at what? I don't know. Anything. This, that doesn't matter. It's going to just piss me off. Anxiety. Kind of depressed states. For what? And not to sound like a complete, but I will sound like a total asshole, but I mean, I was driving a new Lamborghini and it wasn't making you have.

happy. It wasn't making me happy. I was like, man, I still feel dead inside. Um, I was like, I don't even know what to do about all this. Like, why am I so angry? Why am I pissed off of the world? What is wrong? Why am I drinking myself until an oblivion? Not like every day, not even every week, but hell, who knows? If I have two drinks, I'm probably going to have 12. And if I have 12, who knows who you're going to meet. Because it's not this guy right here. You're going to meet somebody else, you're probably not going to like him, and I'm damn sure not going to like him the next day. So I needed to figure out how to get over that. What was kind of the turning point?

Definitely the bottom of a bottle of Casamigos. It was the next day when it's one of those, you wake up and you're like, where am I? okay I'm in my house good holy shit what happened what did I do how did I get home oh man one of those

I probably made some you know comments and stuff the night before but not the detrimental and I'd had an Uber take me home but the point was that I'd had too many of those nights yeah and every time I have one of those

I'm like, man, I'm done. I can't drink anymore. It's just, I can't do this. Whether it is that or going on a, you know, a cocaine bender. Just, I can't do that again. Until the next time. And then you're like, all right, all right, I can't do that again. How many times does that need to happen?

I mean, as we both know, it kills a lot of people. Yeah. It damn near killed me. You know, I say, you know, Ukraine, Afghanistan, during the, during their peak times, were some of the most dangerous places in the world. And I would walk along the edge during a lot of those times. I stayed on that edge a lot longer just in my regular life with drugs and alcohol. Yeah.

I should have died more during the activities that I was doing in that state versus being at war. At war. So what was it, a deciding factor? Just one day I said, today has got to be the last day. And the next part was like, okay, how do I do that? Right. And it's from podcasts. Oh, really?

Yeah. You know, podcasts have given a platform to talk about things that you don't get to hear all the time, right? 20 years ago, you're not hearing this conversation. Yeah. So 20 years ago, I'm not hearing Joe Rogan and Sean Ryan, a lot of these guys that have these guests on and they get to talk about all kinds of great stuff, specifically psychedelic medicine. So I've done my share of party drugs. have had a good time. Psychedelics, that's not something. I'm not doing that. Yeah, if anything, you're like kind of predisposed against it at this point, I would imagine. Yeah, yeah. I'm like,

I don't do that, but I've been hearing so much about it from these guys on podcasts and how it's helping veterans. Um, I was offered it years ago. Uh, and I, I was like, no, that's not for me. Like hippies. I don't do that. Yeah, it's probably like, like, Like, worth pointing out to people, like, from everything I've been told, like, the plant medicine is not a drug. Like, there's no situation where, like, you and I are going to sit here and, like, do Hiawasco, like, trip balls in the, in this office. It doesn't, that's not what it's about and that's not how people use it. Never. Yeah. Uh, but yet I kind of, that was still kind of the stigma that I had, even up until that point. And I was like, you know what, but I got to try something.

so I'm going to do this. I don't know how, where, with who. So I used the internet. This is where it begins. So I'm like, you know, shaman near me, right? So I know there's no shaman down near me in South Florida until there is. Yeah. It's popping up.

everywhere so I decided I'm gonna go to Mexico and I found a guy down there on the internet and I show up now mind you I'm already kind of sketchy about this whole situation but as we've learned from my previous Ukraine sketchy you know what we're gonna let's just do it the sketchier it is the more fun and better it's going to be and I end up down this long dirt road and it's some like house I was like am I at a house I'm picturing some type of sanctuary like a some type of rehab recovery center type of thing and they've got this big ceremonial space and I'm in a dude's house and I was like uh okay and this guy comes walking out in like jeans and a t-shirt and a local

guy from the area and i was like he's like kenny i was like oh all right so i'm in the right spot i was like but uh you know you things you made me feel a little bit more uh less comfortable and he's like no man it's okay everything we're good like okay well then i'm gonna park my car let's get started uh so actually your next door had this little cabana that he had me live in and I got to stay out there with him for five days. And he's feeding me all the types of good food, you know, healthy stuff, keeping my body clean.

And he said, he's going to start me out with this cleansing called combo. Okay. I didn't know anything really about combo. I researched the psychedelic treatment that I was coming down for, and I figured I knew quite a bit enough about it to go through with it. I don't know what this combo is. She was like, you're going to drink a lot of water.

It's like a gallon of water. So I drink a gallon of water. Now, mind you, I got there like, I don't know, we'll call it on a Tuesday. And I just kind of got settled in. And then Wednesday we started all the process. So I drank this gallon of water. Now he's going to take this vine and burn the vine. and he's going to get me in my shoulder.

And he's just making a little cigarette-type burns. So I've got small open wounds in my shoulders. And then I lift my arms up so that he can pour this powder. It's frog toxin into these open wounds and spray them with water. Now, this dude doesn't use us a measuring tool or anything. He's just eyeballing this, just dumb. dumping it out. And I was like, I mean, is it supposed to be that much? And turns out, uh, I don't know. I think I got more than I needed because instantly, I say instantly, about two

minutes into it, I can feel myself turning another shade of green. And I'm starting to just, like wanting to just turn inside out. I didn't feel like I was going to die. Jack, I wanted to die because it was, it was pain. painful. The nausea was just horrible. And I'm describing this. Nobody's going to want to do combo after I explained to him. So, you know, your experience may vary. But I just felt deathly ill. And he kept telling me, drink more water, drink more water. So I physically can't drink any water. And then it finally starts to come up. Now, it's about five minutes or so until it starts to get to the peak. And that peak lasts for about 10 minutes or so.

And then you start to come back down. Those 10 minutes were an eternity. But I got up things that I was holding on to from 2004. I didn't understand why I was doing this. I do a lot better now. You've had a gut feeling before? So your gut is telling you things. whether that's because it's your second brain, whether it's just the data stored in there, memory, trauma.

That's how you get these feelings. It stores stuff in there that you don't want. And this purging ceremony, you have to drink all the water, so you have something to purge out. But it helps the cleansing of that biome so that you can start fresh. and then so that you can accept the medicine. So once I was done violently throwing up, green, orange, I don't know, it was just a kaleidoscope of garbage in there, just of evil that I was getting up from forever.

He was like, all right, you know, we're going to, the next ceremony will be in about two hours. I haven't done anything psychedelic at all. I just did this. and I felt like I had just been in a fight with a couple of like heavyweights and I lost badly. And I was like, man, I'm done with everything. Like, I think we're good. I'm healed.

I'm good. I'm not doing anything anymore. And he's like, why are you here? And I was like, well, I'm here because I need to fix something in myself. He's like, then you're going to stay in work. And I was like, yeah, I mean, he just called me out on that, so I can't say no. All right. I'm going to stay here and work.

And I went and rested for about two hours. He called me back for my next ceremony, which is arguably one, the world's most powerful psychedelic. It's called 5MEODMT. It's the frog or the toad. it's the Sonoran Desert Toad and excretes a toxin when scraped and dried in the sun you could

smoke this. I don't know who figured this out but it's I don't know it definitely changes lives so I'm sitting at this dude's house and you take three hits of this you need a third hit as a breakthrough hit so you take a big hit you let it out

and immediately another big one let it out and hopefully you can get the third because you're already going completely incoherent. Oh my God. You are catapulted into the ether in milliseconds. Now, what do I mean by that? So the English language is difficult to, it doesn't have the words to describe what you're in there. I will first tell you that I was dead and I knew it instantly. I was like, um, he didn't measure this out enough. I'm I, I, Odeed. I'm dead. Um, wow, that's a real disappointment that I went to Mexico and OD on drugs and this is going to be a difficult one for,

you know, to explain. Now I lasted about 30 seconds and then I became at peace with it. And I became at peace with it and I just let go. And when I did, it was the most profoundly beautiful experience that words can't describe that I've ever had. And I say, that because it was so intense with just the overwhelming amount of love. And people say that God is love. I've been around the world and I've seen a lot of stuff, evil. And I'm like, God is not love. Like I said, I was a pretty devout atheist.

The Bible, no, that made sense. but when you have no body anymore because you physically you think it's gone because you can't see it because everything that's in your reality right now you know where you're at on a couch, I'm in this chair I can identify a lot of things when all of this is completely gone and it is something completely different

and then you have no concept of time or self what do you have as a landmark to life. You're like a disembodied consciousness. All of those landmarks are gone. Therefore, you feel like you cease to exist because you don't exist in this anymore.

And because time is now gone, you don't know if you're coming back. And this is so profound. You've never experienced anything like this before that you're convinced that, okay, you've moved to another, whatever the next thing is after death. And so once I was convinced that, yep, there it is.

I've died and I've moved on. And I felt that overwhelming love. The 10 minutes that I was in that roughly, because it's very short, very short half. That's interesting. Both of these are like 10, 15 minutes. Yeah. Yeah.

So dimethylptamine is very fast acting when smoked, but very short half-life. And that 10 minutes, when I came out of it, I just cried. Tears of joy. Tears of emotional overload. All of the things that I've, all of the things that I've built throughout my entire life, every memory that I've had and every memory that I've forgotten,

you never have forgotten it. You have just put up a block. Right, right. So conversations that you've had, the way somebody has treated you, the way that you treated other people, you've built walls into your brain that have prevented you. Because if you hold onto that memory, that's going to affect you. So we put up that wall and we forget about that. But it's still there. That is our ego or our,

default mode network. And this completely eliminates the default mode network. It's called ego death. That's why you think you're died because you have. And my heart's still beating. My lungs are still filling with air. But the candy that I was before I took that DMT is no longer here. He's dead.

And I was able to come out the other side. a completely different person. And everyone that knows me will tell you the same thing. Is that because you were able to let go of some of these past experiences or did they feel reconciled? Like what was sort of that process like? Forgiveness. Really?

Absolute and total forgiveness. This brought me to faith because I sat with God and I felt the love. and nothing compares to it. Nothing. And the words can't remotely. I'm using a stick figure to talk about the Sistine Chapel. You just can't do it.

Yeah, I get it. And that feeling then opened up my consciousness and opened up, it gave me a big peek behind the curtain so that I could understand what else is going on out there. Right, right, right. How little do I actually know? And I know nothing. But I do know now that there's so much more and I've seen it. I can't tell you about it because I don't, it's like having a very vivid dream.

As soon as you wake up, you're like, something like an alligator was chasing me, but then I was on the top of the building. But it was so vivid 15 minutes ago. It's like that. I knew everything, but now I don't. And there was like, like, more step in this first journey wasn't there that he had you do so after that the next night

was ayahuasca so ayahuasca just like the 5 m o dm.t is dm t so iawasca is an ancient brew it's been used for over 1500 years and it's a peruvian uh columbian jungle medicine it grows in the ambrose in the Amazon, it's a plant. That it's actually two plants. So it contains, there's a chakruna leaf, is primarily the leaf that's used in the making of ayahuasca. The chakruna leaf is rich with DMT, dimethythyptamine.

If you were to ingest dimethythotomy, you just eat the leaf. Nothing's going to happen. Because your body has got monoamine oxidase. That monoamine oxidase, breaks down the DMT before it can do any psychoactive effect on it. So then you have to combine that with a vine. Now, the Bannisterius Cappy Vine is also grown locally to Peru,

and you chop down a section of that and beat that into submission. And then you put Apollo leaves and some of the vine, and you boil that for 12 to 24 hours, and it comes out with a tea. now when you ingest about a shot like the shot glass you will start to feel some effects in about an hour the second shot glass that's when things get interesting that's when things get a lot of fun uh iwaska is unlike ibegain which is now what we're pushing for psychedelic research it was just signed a few months ago into legislation to advance the research on that.

That's got some cardiac difficulties. It can put a little bit of strain on your heart. And, you know, you're pushing 50, guys in their early 50s. I'm uncomfortable doing that. It requires doctors, nurses, a whole staff. Iwaska is much safer, a lot safer. So this is done in the jungle setting. Now, when I did ayahuasca with that shaman, it wasn't at his house.

because this is not something that you do. Like, you know, if I come over your house, we can smoke a little weed and watch some TV, that's cool. You're not going to do that with an ayahuasca. This is not a party drug at all. This is structured. People take this very seriously weeks ahead of time with a proper diet. Take not eating red meats, abstaining from sex, no alcohol,

social media, staying away from that stuff for a few days. You really put forth all of this energy. into respecting the medicine. And then when you go down to the jungle, where I went, we went deep into the jungle. And it's just you and the shaman and the fire in the jungle. And then this medicine will talk to you. Now, ayahuasca is going to last for about four to six hours.

So when you combine that vine in there, that's got the monomene oxidase inhibitor will allow you to do that. So what I brought for you today is the I ayahuasca vine. Oh, wow. Thank you. And so what is this? So that is the vine that it's an actual vine that's lacquered. But that vine, you would take a section, maybe about three feet, and you would take a wooden mallet and you will beat that, make it all nice and flat, and you'll put it in a big giant tub of boiling water with a big pile of the chakruna leaf. That is what keeps the body from, Okay. Breaking down the DMT. So that's the difference between the first time you're smoking DMT, the second time you're ingesting it. Correct.

Well, you're drinking it. It's different. You have to have the vine attached to it so that it can keep your body from breaking it down. Right, right, right. Yeah. And people have a lot of similar results. Results may vary, but they're all very similar. Similar experiences.

Yeah. So I've worked with over 60 veterans just this year. We've worked with some high-ranking veterans. I've worked with veterans with severe alcohol problems. I've worked with guys that have been going to the VA and they can put on a laundry list of medications to include Zoloft. 200 milligrams. That's like the most they'll prescribe daily. You get on 200 milligrams a day for a few years.

Like, I mean, that's your daily regiment. I have taken guys on a structured retreat, two nights of ayahuasca ceremony, with several other things in a four-day weekend, and no longer on those types of medications. They take cannabis for anxiety and sleep. They don't do that anymore. Their gummies are gone. Guys that were drinking nearly every day, no drinking. I haven't touched a drop of alcohol since.

Not since my first ceremony. I haven't touched it. and I've done, I do ceremonies with, I take guys down to the jungle. Because you know, I said, I went down to Mexico. I looked up a guy on the internet. So since then, I've done a lot more research. I've gone shaman hopping. And I've found some amazing Peruvian shamanes that I've been working with repeatedly over and over.

I've got a beautiful sanctuary in Guatemala. up near Antigua by Vulcan de Fuego. It's the most active volcano. Yes, active is about 15 times a day. That volcano is going to go off and we're at the base of it. Out of lava reach, but that's pretty intense. So you're in the jungle at the base of active volcano. It's 2 a.m.

And ayahuasca is showing you all this love. And Mother Nature is showing, Mother Nature is showing you all the power. It doesn't get any better than that. And this is waypoint six now. Way point six. I decided that I wasn't the only one that needed some kind of help. And people aren't going to just look up on the internet and find a random dude that's going to serve them, you know, plant medicine

and feel comfortable doing that. So I thought it was a good idea for me to help guys. Yeah. And be the liaison for that, right? And I say, hey, Jack, you know, see struggling do you let's let's talk about this hey man I'm working with plant medicine are you available next month man I'm gonna take you down there with me and you're gonna feel a lot more comfortable if we approach it that way right then

you just find somebody out on your own pages right so then I'll take a small group and I'm gonna take you down there I'm gonna put you through the whole retreat I'm gonna do it with you and that's how we're gonna do things and uh Yeah, speaking of which, you want to go? I think I ought to at this point. Like, I've talked to so many veterans that have been through the process and speak so highly of it. Like, probably I should give it a shot myself. I don't put as much energy into the things that shouldn't bother me.

Like, I used to. I used to. And that would give me anxiety, right? And then I would, it would, you feel more focused. It would upset me. I would get angry. And yeah, this, like, those things don't matter. I've seen what matters.

And you can't unsee it. Although I can't describe it to you, I can't unsee it. That's weird. I get it. But it's the most profound thing that ever happened to me. And I just want to share it with the world. And, you know, speaking of which, where people, where can people go to find Waypoint 6? So Waypoint, the number 6.

dot com. Okay, that's easy enough. Waypoint6.com. And, uh, yeah, they can go on there and, and send out an email and, um, usually it's going to be me calling. And you've been doing this like once a month, you're saying? I, I've been going at times twice a month. Okay.

Uh, but yeah, at least every month. So you're in demand. We, uh, yeah, we're, we're, we're pretty booked up, uh, at least, uh, at least, for a couple months out, but, which is sometimes like, hey, I'll run an extra one this month

because I'm not going to call out any other organizations on your show. I applied to an organization. This is why I went on the internet and found my own guy. Because I applied to an organization, nobody got back to me.

I get it like a day or two or three or a week. so I found my own guy I went I handled myself I went and I found another guy later and I was like oh this shaman is the best this sanctuary is great moving in we're going to start working

and started getting into a kind of a rhythm and already taking somebody down there and then that organization finally message me I'm like it's been a few months Not only did I self-medicate. Right, right. But I found the beauty in it.

And I found how amazing it was with my results. I've been taking guys down there to get this for themselves. And they were like, oh, man, that's terrific, you know, great. But that was the whole idea. It's like they didn't even contact me for such a long time. And then when they did, before I actually came out and told them, it was going to be thousands of dollars. And I had to do it, you know, like, hey, we can do it next month.

And it's going to be thousands of dollars. But if you wait, you know, we might be able to get it sponsored. So then I've been reaching out. I understand that they're maybe busy. Right. This is the same complaint that we have had of veterans affairs that you're on this wait list for nine months. And during that time period, the guy self-medicating and doing stuff that's going to hurt

if not kill himself. Yeah. So I wanted to make my effort to be I want to contact you immediately like if you send a message If you're on the website and you're like hey more information apply I want to get back with you within like a day or two And then I want to be able to get you Somewhere let's do it like in a month like or within the month Here's the next available one if I get too many people I'm gonna run another one I don't want guys waiting for months on end.

And then another thing that I wanted to do slightly differently is that a lot of these organizations that are working with psychedelic medicine, which thank goodness, there's so many of them that are out there and that it's becoming so much more, you know, mainstream that it gives veterans lots of opportunities to do that. There's so many of these places catering specifically to special operations, which which great, you know, did a lot of times a special operations guy. All my friends were, you know, soft guys. But they're not the only ones that are in the mental fight.

There's a lot of guys that are, you know, Marines in Fallujah. It's not special operations. Those dudes were just out there kicking in every single door. There's dudes in the regular military units, whether that's 10th Mountain, 101st, the 82nd, whatever, and they're getting boned by IEDs. They're taking RPGs. They're getting shot. They're in there doing it.

They're in the mix. But they don't get the same kind of credibility because they're not a soft unit guy. So we wanted to get away from that and open this up to all veterans that needed. Yeah, it's awesome. Yeah. Not Coast Guard. All the veterans, though. Well, thank you for sharing your story with us, Kenny, and setting this whole thing up,

way point six and flying out here to do this interview. Yeah. Thanks for having me. It's a lot to think about. Is there anything else that you want to talk about before we get going tonight? I don't know, man. I think that's it. Yeah, we talked about a lot.

You got me. Well, like you said, I mean, maybe you've got to go and experience it from here on now. Words can describe it. Yeah. You just got to go. You go with an open mind and an open heart. And you'll come back and you'll move differently. Everyone out there, thank you for joining us tonight.

And we will see all of you next week. Thank you.