#332 Alex West - SEAL Team 6 Operator on Crashing a Black Hawk Into Bin Laden's Backyard

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Go to Chime.com/disclosures for details. Alex West. Welcome to the show, man. Thanks for having me, Sean. Thanks for coming.

“So, uh, we met like several years ago, I think, with, uh, Taco.”

Yeah, with Dan Cerola. We sure did. Yeah, at lunch and, um, yeah, that was, it's interesting now. Here we are a few years later, right? Yeah. How did you know, Dan? I was just curious. I knew Dan from the teams like West Coast, we lightly knew each other, but when I moved out here to Franklin, he was one of the local team guys and we just friend of a friend hung out a few times

and it's interesting because even after his passing, he had, he was helping out at Lipscomb high school and their football team and I am now kind of mentoring, uh, a young guy who's about 19, uh, that Dan was mentoring. Randomly. No way. Yeah, so it wasn't even like, it just passed over this friend of a friend I was talking to this guy and he was like, yeah, did you know Dan Cerola when I was like, yeah, he was like, yeah, he was kind of like a mentor of mine in high

school and I was like, cool, like a small world. Yeah. I love that dude, man. He was such a

always in a good mood. It was great guy. Yeah, great mood. Yeah, great energy. Such a shame. Yeah.

Well, I, I have to say like, what a way to go. You know what I mean? Like, it's, it sounds weird to say like, I'm happy for him, but you know, I'm happy for him. You know, like, you know, he went on a hunting trip with his son. Yeah. And kids are growing. Yeah, they're all doing great from what I understand. Yeah, daughters get ready to get married.

“Oh, different. And, uh, and, um, yeah, I don't, yeah. So I think that's cool. You know, to me,”

I think that's, uh, if there's a way to go, that's the way to do it. Hopefully a little later in life, but yeah, I mean, but, um, what a great dude. But anyways. God bless you, Dan. Yeah. So Alex West, let me give you an introduction here, real quick. Alex West, your retired Navy SEAL, who served for 20 years and completed 15 combat deployments with SEAL team three in Dev Group's Red Squadron. In 2011, you led the assault team during Operation Neptune Spear, the mission that

killed Osama bin Laden. Months later, the loss of extortion 17 in years of combat trauma brought

you to one of the darkest periods of your life, ultimately setting you on a path towards healing

and helping others. While still serving, you founded one more wave, a non-profit providing adaptive, adaptive surfboards and surf therapy to wounded veterans. And today, you're an associate mental health therapist here in Nashville and an advocate for treatments such as eye-begining, helping veterans, first responders, and others rebuild their lives. That's pretty fucking cool, man.

“Thank you. You're the first team guy therapist. Actually, I think you're the first military therapist.”

Yeah, there's not many dogs of you. Is there? Just a few. Yeah. Not many. I'd probably know majority of them. I know we're going to get into it, but I mean, I would imagine there's a pretty big draw to you being military guy, first responders, law enforcement, I mean, I would think they would just be like, like, magnets to you. Anybody that's seeking am I right on that? You're right.

And, you know, at first when I was starting, I thought I would be all about that population,

which just means like, I feel those, those clients and it's hard for me to compartmentalize. So while, yes, I do, I love working with those populations. I can only allow myself to do about a quarter of my clients because it just is so much for me. And I thought originally it would be, that's all I would see. But now I'm more of a generalist. So I see a lot of first responders, veterans, and then pretty much everybody else, which I enjoy as well. But it has, with the veterans,

it really has been almost nice to be able to connect with them, especially the ones that are closed off, where they don't want to see a therapist. And oftentimes, with my background of having deployed so often, if it's a GW, global war and terrorism veteran, I can just ask them like, "Well, when are you deployed?" And then they'll mention it. And oftentimes, you know, I might be like,

“"Oh, I remember that base. I remember that gym, or can you remember that a pancake bar?"”

And that, like, "How did they get taken?" And then all of a sudden you see the wall just kind of come down and then they realize, like, you know, I'm one of them. So it helps a lot to build and break down that wall. I mean, I got a quote, I would have been drawn to you when I was doing therapy.

I did what three and a half years, twice a week, and probably should go back. But I was always

looking for somebody that could relate to the experiences that we had. But now, kind of looking back, I think it's, for me, maybe it was better that I didn't because basically what I want to ask is, do you find, how do I say this? Do you find it that, look, a lot of guys from our background that compare services, or that it becomes a competition. And I'm just curious, do you, do you ever feel that when you're, do you feel that? Yeah, if there's like a kind of really hard

“to compare to somebody, like with what you've been through for, in your career path. But I mean,”

it's competitive in nature. It is. And what I've found sometimes, especially when I was with one more wave, which I know will get to the surfing nonprofit, I actually didn't share a lot of my background because I didn't want any of those clients to compare themselves to me because it was all about them. And so in some respects, I might get a little bit of comparison from a client here there, but usually we can find common ground and just, you know, a little bit of joking around

and it just like brings it back down and we're really just the same person. It just happens that I was in the Navy and maybe they're in the Army or the Marine Corps. And but it wasn't up until recently that I started to open up more about my background, especially around when we're wave. Because I didn't want a veteran to be like, well, I don't deserve this because I wasn't a seal or a dev group guy

or a delta or whatever. And my message to them was always like, I don't care. We don't care as an

organization. You served and we're here to heal and you deserve to heal. Wow, that's cool, man. That's cool. We'll get into more of all that stuff towards the end of the interview. But first starters, everybody gets a gift. Awesome. Nice. Yeah, the famous coming bears. Thanks. Definitely tune on these later. Right on, right on. And then I got a Patreon account. It's community that we built and to be honest, so they're the reason that I get to sit down here

with you today. They've been with me since the beginning when I was doing this in the attic of my house. And they've supported us the whole way. So they get the opportunity to ask every guest a question. This is from Ian Lane. When you're sitting in the surf with an amputee or a guy fighting the

darkest kind of PTSD, what's the single most powerful thing you've seen the ocean do that no

amount of traditional therapy or medication has ever matched? Great question, Ian. One experience

“that comes to mind was actually the moment that I felt like the universe was like, you need to”

start this nonprofit. And I was with a young Marine. Here's maybe 25 years old. It lost his leg below the knee. And we were sitting in Delmar and Southern California and it was just beautiful, Southern California day. And he had this huge smile on his face. And I just looked at him thinking, he's smiling because he's beautiful out. And I said that, I was like, wow, it is beautiful out. And he's like, yeah, it is, but that's not why I'm smiling. I'm smiling because when I'm in the ocean,

I'm no longer getting stared at as the guy missing a leg. And when I catch a wave, there's no more pain, even if it's for five, ten seconds. And then I remember watching him, actually catch a wave. And then, you know, then he kind of wipes out at the end and comes up for air. And there's a whole group of guys that are just cheering him on, just like, like, like, hell, you like, fuck, yeah, that was a great wave. And then just seeing this primal smile on this guy,

surfing. But I could tell he was still closed off. And then caught that wave. And it's almost like a lightning bolt. I just want right into him to just like, almost, you know, bring him back to life

“with a smile. And so that is one moment that sticks out to me. I'm sure as I think, I can start,”

I'll come up with a dozen more. And that's the first one that comes to mind. How's it going today?

You know what, I've, that was in 2015. I have lost track of him. That's a great question. I hope he's doing great. I hope he's still surfing. Right on that. Right on. Well, let's get to you. Yeah, sure. You ready? I'm ready. It's going to be a long one. Yeah, where to grow up. So I was born in Lady Brent, South Africa. And I grew up in a small country called the Soutu, which is an African mountain kingdom inside of South Africa. And it was during the apartheid. And so the

Soutu was a home to the African National Congress, which is the faction that Nelson Mandela belonged to. So it was a black-independent free country. My parents, my dad worked for the

World Bank trying to bring clean drinking water to a billion people, part of that in Africa.

And my mom was a school teacher. But the reason why I was born in South Africa, I not was Soutu, is because the hospital was better. And so they drove across, when my mom went to labor, drove across the Masaro Bridge. And there's a story that she likes to tell her, they couldn't even get over because there's a bunch of livestock coming the other way. My dad's just like hawking the horn wanting to get out, fight the herder and my mom's

like getting the car I'm having to get. So anyway, they get to the hospital. And even though the hospital is better, my mom didn't have any medication or any epidural anything for her, just kind of straight up. And they gave my dad a fly sweater because there's flies everywhere.

“So I grew up in Lassutu. And then we moved to, we lived there for five years. Were they American?”

They're American. Yeah, my dad, both my dad's from Irine, Pennsylvania and my mom is from Pittsburgh. And I think it was my dad when he was just a very adventurous guy and my mom just followed him. And she had the adventurer too. And they actually lived in Saudi Arabia before they moved to Lassutu. And then from there, we lived there for, I live there at least for about five years. I think we lived there for about seven. And then moved the Cairo Egypt. You remember it? I don't recall too much

of Lassutu, just because I was young, one to five. But I did have a nanny named Sophia and she was from the Zulu tribe. And my parents both worked. And so during the day, Sophia could spoke really broken English. So she spoke to me in the local like Zulu language. And I would watch cartoons in Afrikaans, which for the listeners is like a Dutch kind of base language in South

“Africa. And then my parents would come home speaking in English. And so my mom being a teacher was”

worried about me because I was piecing together all of these languages and struggling to communicate.

And so she was always worried that I might have to get held back in school. But we would end up

moving out of Lassutu to Cairo Egypt after that. There was a stint in Pennsylvania for a year too. And that but mostly we were in Africa till I was about 10. Holy cow. Yeah. In Cairo you said in Cairo how was that? It was awesome. I loved living in Cairo as a kid. I felt that was like a real home for me. And I went to an international school where there's a lot of it was American curriculum. But there was kids from embassies from all over the world. So

I had a lot of friends that were like French or German is rarely you know from any you name it wherever the country was. Because that school was kind of like a nice, a decent private school to get decent education. So a lot of the embassy people would be there. But what I realized later that instilled in mean was a lot of core components of like how I see the world of not judging people from different countries or languages or cultures and actually embracing it. And I didn't

realize it at the time but that was just the world that lived in. And that would help me later on and the sealed teams working with partner forces or even as a therapist just to not judge somebody if they come in and look different to me or talk different of different values just to see them more is like okay I can look past that. Let me just look at you as a person. That's interesting. Well what was your dad doing? Yeah he was working for an engineering company called Black and

Veage which was based out of Kansas City. But they were doing the water treatment kind of in the same theme of clean drinking water. There's doing a lot of water treatment. One of the largest water treatment programs at the time in the world was in Cairo and that was his company was trying

a school teacher at that school. Only child? No I have a sister Helen. She's about four and half years younger. She was born that year we were in Pennsylvania. She was born in the states but

“we would she'd come with us obviously to Cairo. How was it all about what would you do?”

There's a kid. Yeah I would a lot of standard kid stuff you know riding bicycles or you know BMX's around just like you would in the states, at least in the 80s you know and so we would have these little crews of kids running around and BMX's in this neighborhood called modi and I went to the school Cairo American College and and so we were just riding bikes around. We

would I remember I played baseball. I was always in a baseball and sports and it was a normal

ish childhood but what was unique about it and which I'm very fortunate is for like field trips we would go to the pyramids which is crazy right or we would go to the Cairo museum or some other artifacts so it was very I feel very blessed that at that age you know at 10 years old you're going to the pyramids on field trip and just to be able to grasp the gravity of

“that and just have that life experience was very novel and I feel fortunate.”

Man that's pretty cool so it wasn't it was an Arabic it was an English it was a dangerous over there you brought around it was it was on my whole life in Africa was dangerous when we were in the suitu there's a car bomb that went off on our street we had to have tall security walls with broken glass and you know wet cement to dry with armguards, guard dogs and then when we were in Cairo there was a big riot that broke out between so the army that when you get conscripted

in Egypt to either go to the army or the law enforcement with law enforcement's more of like AK-47 type thing it's not like a beat cop here in the States and so there was a dispute between who was getting paid and all of this and so they broke out into a riot almost like a gunfight and I remember being at school on a tennis court just playing kickball or something like that I was probably six or seven and you could hear a bunch of machine gun fire going off and there was

sporadic machine gun fire those coming all over the place and getting scooped up off the tennis court as a little kid just not knowing what was going on by a teacher and then they put us in this big auditorium called their parents to help get us out and I remember asking a teacher like what is going on and her just saying and when I think back on it's nervous and just saying it's just fireworks it's kind of like the Egyptian Fourth of July and then just thinking like oh okay and then

for the next two weeks we were in lockdown in our apartment in Cairo where they would have hours that you could go get groceries but you had to stay the the state department was telling all the

“American citizens that you have to stay in your apartment and lock down and so this thing comes down”

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build it for them and you don't manage it open the app once hit the button close a glacier downloaded today on the app store and remember privacy isn't paranoia it's protection what what would your parents tell you about my dad who is a veteran of Vietnam veteran I remember him being very calm in all of that I don't know whether it was his past experience in war or whatever it is but I knew my mom was very concerned and that was a big reason why we

ended up moving to the states when I was 10 I think she was just over the the madness of Africa especially in the 80s you know there wasn't obviously internet you know you might call it could be a long distance every now and then to family members but you just didn't know much that was going on you listen to the BBC radio for news and but outside of that we were just in a pocket of the world that was might as well be on the moon and so I think she wanted us to

have an American safe upbringing and my dad wanted to stay over she's I wanted to stay overseas

“I remember that's where all my friends were and everything but I was 10 I didn't know and then”

now we would end up moving to Kansas City Overland Park specifically a suburb of Kansas City Wow that's where I was born really blue sparring so no way I didn't know that small world we used to play blue springs in high school sports wow so I mean were you scared as a kid when that stuff will go down over you know I don't I remember just being exciting I mean there but it was Africa's just wide open I remember even stepping a stopping at a checkpoint we used to go to

this place called Trommel Shake which is on the Sinai Peninsula because there's world-class scuba diving in my parents for scuba divers and so we would drive through the desert and even stopping at one of these checkpoints and I remember a guard who was drunk pulled a gun out

and held it to my sister's head and my dad gunned it basically get off the axe and so there's

all of this like craziness going on yeah right and this is all happening before you know 10

“and younger and so my how I saw the world was interesting at that point and when I think back”

on it like wow that's a lot for a young boy yeah I remember I got beat up by a bunch of Iranian kids because I was American and and I did it was so confused I remember they kind of because they were all at the school but they were older and I remember them kind of surrounding me on my BMX and kicking over the BMX I mean and my dad was so pissed I remember him one go

beautiful their dad's and never happened but yeah so there's like it was interesting it was a

very raw Africa was very raw sounds like you know your dad was a Vietnam vet he was he was he was a tack pea so for the listeners that don't know a guy a radio man that would call an air strikes and he was attached to the first the seventh aircraft so cussers old unit for six months and then he was did six months as an advisor for the South Vietnamese Army where essentially this is an advisor group going out with the South Vietnamese Arvin or Marines or your parents to the

live no my dad passed away in 2014 from a soft-a-geal cancer mostly he from his he struggled with Vietnam his whole life and in drink and I remember also Agent Orange he attributes it to Agent Orange whether it was Agent Orange alcoholism or likely a combination of the two he passed away and but my mom is still alive in my sister as well or you would be pretty close with her dad I was it was a tough upbringing in a sense like all my basic mazos hierarchy of food shelter

you know all that was taking care of but as I mentioned the Vietnam War never left our home

and and I remember the deeper he went into his alcoholism and trauma he in my parents would get divorced but me being his son I always felt a lot like I always felt like he's my dad and so I was always around him and looked up to him but the the war never ended for sure

“and and I think that's where my own passion for mental health started I remember even as a kid”

holding space for my dad as he was drunk and he would just tell these horrible war stories from Vietnam and but still just like knowing that if I wasn't there to hold space for him he had no one else and which is a strange thing to think about when you're like 12 years old and but it would

safe adult yeah just to be a what I had the wherewithal to know that at least if I called them

“that it was safe and that and I remember them asking like it was he hitting you and just”

touching you or anything he wasn't he wasn't he was just really troubled by the war and and so they couldn't do anything not that I wanted them to do anything I just wanted it's an adult that was safe to talk to what if you don't mind what what would it be happening like what because there was no news no what would happen we had a furnished basement and I remember he would go down there and and he would have like a big drink like like vodka maybe soda or something

like that and and he would go down there and I just knew I'm around staring down the stairs and just thinking like I know he's struggling and I know he and my mom were at odds you know obviously that wasn't a great environment for her so they're on the cusp of divorce and and then my sister and my mom had a tight like a connection so it was like them and then it was almost like my dad

“and I and I just remember thinking I'll go down there with my dad even though I I didn't want”

to but I knew he needed it he didn't have anyone else he didn't have a therapist friends things like that it's almost like his trauma had just he just isolated and I would go down and then he would just vent to me about you know air strikes and things that went wrong hung bombs that hit other units or getting shot in his radio all different just in really dark things too and and just knowing like I this is horrible but I know he he I need to just sit here and hear

it so I had like a natural instinct to want to help impact suffering even from a young age shit well what what would you talk to the the hotline people about I would just tell them you know I you know my dad has seen all these things he's kind of out of control like I'm scared and they would ask like the questions of you know as he hitting you or the after mentioned things and I would just say no and they would be like okay you can stay on as long as he'd like and I

remember those social workers would they would stay on and then they would tell me you can always

call back and at one point when my parents did get divorced I remember I was struggling I was maybe 13 in my mom did get me into therapy but it was you know we were middle class didn't in the middle of the divorce didn't have that much money wouldn't say we were you know worried about food or anything like that but once the insurance rounds of maybe ten sessions ran out

“then that was kind of it and honestly I like that age I was just holding it all in and I was just”

mad just pissed at the world and I think that would be part of the what I needed later on in life to get through different selections and buds and all of that was just to ride that anger in that pain would he remember the conversations when it was silver I don't think so or he was ashamed and would just keep drinking I mean there was times to where he would pick me up from sports and and be so drunk that as we're driving home we'd be weaving in and out I remember at 13

yelling just screaming for him to pull over and finally he did and I ended up driving us home and

and I remember being so nervous that because I'd never really driven before I I remember one point

my dad took me to parking lot once just like oh you might get your driver's permit wide open you know like empty Walmart parking lot like let's just kind of do the basics and that was you and it only happened like once maybe and that was my only experienced driving and then I'm on a not a highway but just a busy road and just like shaking on the steering wheel trying to drive us home safely but that was the impact of war like I've been somehow affected by war since the beginnings

you saw it yeah yeah yeah what why did you decide to go into the military it's a good question I even though all that was going off my dad you know he was my hero and and we did connect when he was in drinking and and he would speak of his time in the

military not just in Vietnam and I always looked up to the service aspect of it and and within

our family too we've I've had a family member in every major American war which isn't that

through revolutionary war like my sister is a daughter of the revolution none of it was like the general

or the none of it it was all just a bunch of grunts you know blue collar guys you know I mean

“like what okay I'll serve but I think there was some of that my I was and I was I like the idea”

of the military and I started hearing about special operations and the you know the hardest training in the world whether that's true or not but at least I remember hearing that of like the seal teams and being like wow I want to be able to prove something to someone because I felt like I wasn't anyone especially from some of that trauma and feeling when I moved from Africa to the

states I always felt a little different a little off I mean I was American I did but I didn't

know any of the pop culture stuff because we've been in Africa and that was before the internet so I was a little weird to be honest right I didn't know the basics of American pop culture I would end up being fine and assimilating you know took a little bit of time but I always wanted to just go leave get away I leave to get away from you know kind of my dad in a sense which is ironic but improve that I was worth it I was able to accomplish something and so when I heard about

the seal teams the first was the movie Navy Seals with Charlie Sheen like a lot of guys from our generation right and and it's the first I I saw was like that's kind of interesting and and then I read Dick Morsinko's Rob Warrier and just thought like wow that's really cool and then when I was at Junior in high school my cousin Pete school bell who's actually guest of yours I went to his buds graduation and we because we're first cousins but we have a small family and Pete and I

are different people about alike in a lot of ways and almost like brothers and I went out to his buds graduation and watched them graduate and just saw the camaraderie and hearing the stories and what's ironic is that a lot of those guys that I met when I was in high school I'd become friends with or teammates later on in the teams but I was very I was a that was a profound effect on me when I saw all that and then when I was getting ready to make a decision to whether I was going to go

to like try to like junior college baseball or get a job or go to a local Kansas school none of that really move the needle for me I just was like I'm going to just go for it and ended up joining at 17 with my parents permission how old were you would your parents got divorced I was 13 how did that affect me a lot because then my you know my dad moved out my mom's mom my grandmother moved in and it was just you know it was three women with my sister and then it was me my dad was

had this kind of like shitty apartment and he ended up getting fired from his job because of his alcoholism and PTSD and so I yeah that it affected me big time I was mad I was able to assimilate in school I was kind of a jock I guess I'd play sports but I really wasn't in that the jock crew or whatever I just liked sports and it was good for me because especially like football I could take out a lot of my anger you know in hitting people and and I was also

“swimmer I think I just got out a lot of energy out of me and then I played baseball which was my like”

real love but it affected me and that I believe my self confidence was low and I started probably some struggles with mental health back then but I did I have friends I'm fortunate that I had friends and did fit in but it was a it was a tough when I reflect back on it at the time I didn't know I was struggling but now when I look back on it I knew I was really struggling man I'm sure you were flutter back a lot back on your dad I mean deep do you feel like

why do you think he was still drawn to Africa I think he was drawn to the excitement of Africa I think they moved the needle he could feel like a lot of people struggling to trauma especially veterans where finding something that where you can feel some excitement whether it's

“with you know a hobby or lifestyle I believe he found the rawness of Africa made him feel”

especially in the places we lived where it was kind of kind of out there you know what I was

gonna say yeah I mean push you here a lot about that generation you know never really feel like

they fit in when they got home and then then they had drawn a lot in all that I mean it's

to plants later on he was in PTSD groups for the VA and he would always be like hey well you

come meet the parking lot meet all my buddies we're all a bunch of Vietnam vets and so I would go hang out with them in the parking lot and and he would just like show me off and he was so proud

“because at the time you know it was a seal or a dev group and deployments and I remember one of”

his friends in particular just to showcase the guys he was with introduced himself as magnetists and I was like excuse me magnetists and I'm like no sir's at what's your name he's like it's magnetists and I was like okay and I was like well why why do they call you magnetists and he was a door gunner and a hewie and just had he had the reputation that he'd always get shot down

and so that was this nickname was magnetists and so so so it was like so I'm like you know

when we look commonly at the time I died was living in the Tampa area going to the VA parking lot and whenever I go visit and I would hang out with some of his buddies after they got out of group and hang out with guys like my dad and magnetists and amongst others and and it was even then I remember thinking man I wish there was something more for these guys especially the Vietnam generation because a PTSD diagnosis wasn't given or even existed until 1980 so a lot of these

guys especially from that generation which I know this is known or if people don't you know they were frowned upon that generation of veterans of what they did and what that unpopular war and then when they came back there was not much for them as far as treatment to include that PTSD diagnosis and so the majority of them just all just drank and which a lot of our generation did to perhaps not as much but that's all those guys had and and then so what I was seeing

that parking lot was a lot of guys that were coming in recovery that were going all they had was

“that group and each other which I remember even noticing it then when I was you know my”

early 30s late 20s yeah where were you and you're early were you over a dev group yeah I would have been over a dev group but what's going through your head I mean when you're witnessing this I'm thinking is that going to be me that's is that going to be my friends because I started to especially at that stage the wars were turning into something that they they weren't it was no longer afghan invasion and some sometimes when I'd visit it was post at the bin Laden raid

right so it's like why are we still in afghanistan and I rocked to it was you know we start getting all the information that there was lies about you know why we went to war so in my mind I was like oh this is like that's my generations version of of that is like their versions of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution and so I just I started noticing some of that and then worrying but however I would just compartmentalize it so I was probably falling into the same loop as a lot of those guys

“were just compartmentalizing like I'll get to it but I remember noticing like is this going to be”

myself and my friends or generation of veterans I remember noticing it then in that parking lot so just um I bet there's a lot of kids that are going through what you want through as a kid yeah right now yeah from the geewod what advice would you have for a kid that's got an old man that's dealing with that I love that you ask that question the advice I would have to those kids that they're listening one you're not alone two there's help rates okay to reach out for

help and especially you know young boys that from our generation before it was always like if you

fall down and skin your knee like suck it up don't cry don't show any emotion and I would tell those kids in any man that's listening that like that doesn't work you know it's okay to show emotion it's okay to ask for help because if you just push it down all it's going to do is harden and calcify and then you're just going to be a hard person and you're not going to be your ability to experience love and hope and laughter and enjoy is going to start going down and so

and also the people around you your future kids wife friends all of that too so asking for help getting into exercise getting into community whatever that might be and an avoiding if you can leaning into things like you know drinking as best you can I get it there's a lot of you know probably pressure from like teenage kids and all of that I understand that however that leads to nowhere and that you can find a lot of that in nature and sports and community

in friendships and that it's in the behaviors and habits that start then could compound later on and also that your dad's or mom who are veterans from those wars that you want that

I still feel his spirit and how proud he is of me it's just complex but just to know that even though

“their parents might be you know drunk or yelling at them abusive at the core that's basically”

them just reflecting their pain and it's on them to be able to do what they can do with themselves of just all the after mentioned things of reaching out to get help and friends and try to avoid substances if you can yeah I'd like to add um this might sound kind of cheesy but I would add maybe watch this episode or something like this with with your old man or with your mom because sometimes it takes something like this to for them to come to the realization of what's really going

on you know and how it's impacting their kids and this is the way to do it where you don't actually

have to tell them anything absolutely I'm glad you said that because I I do think that would be a great thing to do for what you just mentioned where it must it will be hard for that parent to share all of that just like it was for my dad however to be able to sit down and watch it in the

“maybe be ready for a question or two or a I can relate to that I think that you're spot along”

with that back you yeah do you think that you did you join the military for you or did you join the military for your dad hmm I think I a little bit of both I think I joined it for me to prove that I was worth something however a lot of that stemmed from the experience with my dad I also did want to make him proud I know he I remember when I at 17 needed asked him for his permission like hey the recruiter needs you to sign this and him to saying like are you sure like

he was like I don't know if that's a good idea you know maybe can you at least wait you know go to college for a year get a job for a year travel whatever just do something so when you join you're like 1920 you're as opposed to 1718 I kept pressing him though and he did sign and so

“I think part of me was one is him to be proud of me but there was also a part of me wanting to prove”

to myself that I could do something worthwhile and I would imagine a lot of guys from our community especially when I was in the team so a lot of guys had similar type situations where they just wanted to prove something because they were coming from some challenges at home so long answer I think it is a little bit of both yeah how do your mom feel about it my mom was scared she didn't like the idea and didn't want to also and she was saying the same thing like why don't you just go to

college or get a job or whatever it is and but I was determined and since my cousin had already was in the sealed teams I would imagine she just thought she knew we were close she just thought like well

I'm gonna do the best I can to tell him I don't want him to go just yet but I think she finally

kind of succumb to just like okay I'll sign it and I didn't go to boot camp at 1719 I'm going to 18 but I got the paperwork signed in 17 and so I don't think she was supportive but in the whole time even when I would deploy I knew it would stress her out on all my deployments but I was just on my own personal mission and I did put her through a lot with all the deployments in my sister as I reflect back on it. Do you feel like your dad was proud of you right off the bat

just not son of the papers he was yeah and he knew what you were going to do. Yes he knew that yeah he knew I wanted to be a seal what year was this would have been in 97 I joined the Navy in 98 I went to boot camp in 98 but if either late 97 or maybe it was early 98 is when I was still 17 is when I signed up damn yeah I would tell my younger self probably to listen to my friends if I were to go back and be like bro just yeah all those things like college travel get a job whatever

just like live a little bit of life it's not the seal teams is not going anywhere and of course of what would later transpire with 9/11 if you know there's going to be enough to go around but yeah I just was that I was just focused like I wanted I had to get out of there not that there was like I had to get out there's a little dramatic but it was like that was I was focused on wanting to prove that I was that I was worth something yeah so what do we go from error so I before before I joined

our shift off to boot camp I from Egypt I stayed in touch with a really close friend of mine who

so in the summers who would come back and live essentially with his as grandparents home but

in Kansas City but we would we're like best friends and so we'd spend all summers together and then I would I'd get in I'd have jobs I worked at like a pizza shop in the mall or I've remote lot standard kid stuff I worked at a gym and I would save up all my money and I visited him once my sophomore year so I flew back to Cairo my sophomore year and hung out for like a month and then my senior year I flew back out too to as to their graduation right before I went to Egypt

I'm sorry before I went to the Navy and we ended up actually climbing a pyramid while we had done that

“yeah we did yeah we we I remember and it's illegal you know to do you're not supposed to do”

that because people die falling off those pyramids trying to climb them all the time but we were just punk kids and we I remember arrived our way there's guards around there with AK47s and you know nothing a little bit of cash can't solve so we we'd ride the guards to kind of look the other way and I remember there's a group of us and it was if it wasn't a full moon it was pretty close to a full moon and we the way you climb the pyramids at least how we did you go up the apex or like the

edge of it and each stone is about four feet each tall and it's limestone so it kind of is crumbly but you don't almost do like a muscle up right so you like push yourself up and the pyramid we climbed was keyops and it's about 440 feet I might get checked here but roughly around 440 feet and so there's a lot of those like muscle ups going up all the way up the edge and I remember seeing at night almost climbing into the moon and on one side you have Cairo one of the

largest cities in the world with the Nile going right by it and the others the Sahara desert that's just been illuminated the sand illuminated by the moonlight so is this surreal experience yeah

“and climbing up but I remember how dangerous it was because chunks of this limestone you're climbing”

off and there would be like boom boom boom like right past and just thinking like we didn't have any like climbing gear helmets should I like running shoes on and like a t-shirt and like like pants or whatever but like yeah but we had the guts of like and maybe the nightivity of you know a teenager to just go for it and I remember being at the top of the pyramid which is about half the size of the studio or so and and just standing and watching everything

and just being like this is unreal but we did that and then we ended up climbing that pyramid with a family friend of one of the guys who owned a home in Denhaig and Holland and so after Egypt we went to Holland for about a month and then I flew back to the states and a month later started boot camp right on yeah so you got all the way to the top of that damn thing yeah I would

not recommend it and it's illegal so you can control but I would not recommend it most important

suddenly from a safety standpoint like if you ask me today like let's do it I'd be like bro I will be happy drinking a cup of coffee just enjoying the scenery right from the ground level maybe I'll hop on a camel I don't know you know that you're gonna foot a lot if I who knows you ever think about how those things were built I do and especially when you're staying I don't have you ever been to the pyramids I've been to Cairo I've never been to the pyramids yeah I mean

I'd recommend it I mean of course the touristy thing but just from a life experience yeah I have thought by expressing your standing at the base and looking up at it you're just like how the fun to they do this and of course you know there's the there's a lot of theories of how but I could not help to think that I don't know if man can pull this off even then like this is epic to you know I can't think of another word for it it's like this is unreal especially

“being thousands of years old like I just what about you what do you think on the pyramids?”

Man I don't know I mean there's two there's two things that kind of resonate with me but maybe I'm no physicist either sure you know Chris Beck yeah Chris Beck says I'm gonna butcher this but he he was saying I think they're built on they're like right on top of a fault line I didn't know that interested I think they're right on top of a fault line or something and there's there's like a bed of crystals or something so that he says that the ground may all we

the ground may always be vibrating and and the way I kind of understood it and he's

whatever Chris is out there but he's also smart yeah and you know it's kind of like if you put a subwoofer under a table and get it vibrating you can kind of you know things will just start moving without even having to touch it right because the vibration right and so I think he was kind of saying that that may have been happening where where the ground is vibrating or whatever

the other thing and I haven't interviewed this guy yet I'm sure somebody will go get him now but

yeah there is another guy who is out there saying that maybe they were molded on top of each other so they would take these forms you know kind of like like they would cast interesting blocks on top of each other yeah that's yeah that's the I don't think they got them up there with sticks yeah I but exactly and that many of them I just you know it's like one thing if it was just something kind of basic but something that epic and how precise they

they were with each other I mean it's off by they're not off they're like precisely planted it's crazy but then there's all the tunnels and yes as a choice we've actually been in them on

tors version of it and it you always talk about claustrophobia I mean I'm not a very claustrophobic

person but I felt it in there and I was like okay this is kind of imagine being some like a couple thousand years ago with like a torch crawling around in there it's just like okay yeah that's I'm good on that I'll do that once are you an alien you believe in aliens I do you believe in aliens I just can't imagine they're not being something else out there it's just so vast but I wouldn't say I'm like full blown conspiracy like I'm up late at night but I do feel that there's there's

probably something out there what about you I don't think there is yeah okay yeah I mean I'm really I did a lot of a lot of done a lot of episodes on it but I just I don't think there is sure

“I think it's just us that could be possible to but I mean I don't have an experience where I'm like”

absolutely that's that it's my thought is just more of it's so vast perhaps yeah so let's get back to see you join the Navy what did you do what yeah go straight to Buds or no I went to so join the Navy in 98 and then went to radioman A school and so for the listeners it's a essentially needed a job

that to go in those days and the seal team is to be able to go to this seal team so a job basically

I got trained in ship communications so satellite communications high frequency communications and the beginnings of some like computer IT type stuff and that particular job would end up being an IT called IT in the Navy but I went through radioman A school and then checked into Buds in a January february of 99 when I was 18 and then that started the Buds seal journey how's uh it was hard you know some guys are all like have bravado like it wasn't as hard as I thought but for me I was like

I was pretty hard you know and also it was hard I believed for being that young you know it was

“1819 and Buds and we also young and Buds yeah I think the same age yeah I'd same I joined it”

signed the papers a 17 and then I was in Buds at 18 yeah yeah so the same thing and I remember being really intimidated by you know actually seeing a seal instructor and just being like oh that's a seal whoa that's one of the instructors and then being around I probably a lot of the same story that I guys tell is you know guys are like division one athletes or just these guys that could be on the cover of fitness magazine and and then just looking at them and just be like I

don't look like that I can't run like that or say no what am I doing I do not and I'm still like the you know the equivalent of a freshman in college you type guy you know so and and I came in with kind of low self esteem anyway and so seeing that just thinking like wow all these guys are like adornuses I don't know if I belong here uh and then really intimidated by everything but I just

“kept showing up I think I was a very average bud student and but I just I think just kept showing”

up and I just did the advice that one instructor said which isn't just it's set off and it's just make it to the next meal right so for the listeners it's just if something's overwhelming and I I use this today in my everyday life and I use with my clients as a therapist that if things feel so overwhelmed and you can't do it just make it to the next meal like really truncated down to something you can do and if you can't make it to the next meal just make it to the top of the hour

or if you can't make it to top of the hour just make it five more minutes and and that's just what I did I just did what they told me I remember one instructor saying that just be like okay and then I just started using that and then next thing you know um I just kind of kept progressing through buds where was your cousin at when you got there he was at seal team eight and um and

seal team eight and at the time you know that was like course of all and all that was going on

“so that was like the place to be so I remember being jealous they're like oh my gosh she's actually”

doing the thing you guys keep it on touch yeah yeah we were and in those days you know it was letters I didn't have a slot there's no cell phones so I have you know quarters and and pay phones calling cards like old school but yeah we did keep in touch and he would um he was a source of support for me of just like writing me encouraging letters and things like that and um I think he even visited buds once for some reason he was out there and um and then I got some some heat from the instructors

when they kind of found out I was related to a seal I was trying to keep that underrated no they didn't really know could be a different last name and but I remember a couple of them put it together and this one guy is Frick Arino and Alberto was a great guy great guy great instructor very very tough but very fair and I remember him giving me a little extra love in a good way though like as far as a little extra attention but it wasn't bad you'd leaked out for me too I make a thousand decisions

a day running the Sean Ryan show calls interviews production everything is a decision so when I train I don't want to walk around and build a workout from scratch I want to know exactly what I'm doing

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functional fitness whether you train at home or in the gym and your progress is tracked automatically so the app remembers your weights reps and sets that's the value for me ladder removes the guesswork I'm not deciding what to do next I'm not guessing on reps or progression I just follow the plan and focus on putting in the work remove the guesswork with ladder and get a real coach in your ear telling you exactly what to do for every workout no thinking everything planned for you

if you have an iPhone head to ladder dot fit slash us or us and take a quick quiz to find your perfect ladder plan use my link and get a free seven day trial with no credit card and

$10 off your first month if you join what's the best piece of advice p gave you while you were in there

“I remember him saying kind of what I was already saying like you'll see guys that are”

you know elite athletes and don't worry about any of that just worry about you worry about contributing to your boat crew and and not falling be you know just your team player just the stuff that we're all taught you know it's show up early leave late do the right thing when nobody's looking I remember him telling me those things before I even got the buds and so when I was hearing them again it was like oh I have heard this before and so I just and now they think about it

a lot of those those things have stayed with me as I would continue to seal teams and even as I went back to grad school even to be like am I supposed to be doing this in my forties you know like all the other students are like 23 years old but they're really smart what am I doing with my life but it allowed me to like anything hard in my life it allowed me to just kind of stick to those basics right on how was hell week for you hell week sucks I remember the night prior we had

and maybe it was this way for you guys I don't I don't know but we had ordered a bunch of Domino's

pizzas because for some reason we always got Domino's pizza I don't know why but I remember it was

stale and we were watching some movies maybe it was Braveheart or something like that there's some on VHS and I remember not even like knowing I had my own pizza like a medium pepperoni pizza and thinking like I need the calories of this because hell weeks about to kick off tonight and I was so nervous I could barely eat it like I felt sick and then just being struggling be like you need the fucking calories and so I didn't I only got maybe a few pieces down and I couldn't

hold it down and then hell we started and it was it was tough hype of thermia like most guys a bunch of chafine felt like it would never end but I just kept using those analogies of just make it the next meal make it to pick a palm tree on with the boat on your head and you're running around just make it to that and then okay you got to that okay now make it to you see a beach a car in a parking lot on the beach like just make it to that red car and I think just really

is unique not that other selections don't have cold water of course they do but specifically

by that's a big thing and thinking that was the main mental game especially in surf tortures and all of that we're all you're doing is sitting there for the listeners that don't know you just interlock your arms with your buddies and you lay in the water and until your body temperature just goes down and then they'll at some point bring you out try to warm you up or check you to see if you have hype at thermia but there's a lot of time in your own head just being frozen and that's

“where a lot of guys quit as you know and I remember that was the big mental game for me especially”

as a teenager that was tough especially seeing the big athletes the guys the donness type guys I was talking about like then they start rolling off and quitting and then it's like man I got a feed quit what am I doing I was a problem this time last year you know this guy was like you know division one champion and last year you know like what is going on and then just thinking like we'll do just keep going just make it to the next meal just at some point this evolution will end

and you're doing it and I remember like looking to my like left and right and seeing guys that were my friends is thinking like okay like Tom's doing it I can do it like okay I know you know and if Robin can do it I can do it and it just I know it sounds so basic but that's what got me through but it sucked I'm definitely one of those guys that isn't saying like it wasn't that bad I'm one of the guys that was like yeah it was horrible it is crazy bad like I don't I don't like injecting my

own experiences into the episodes but like I was like a buck forty five maybe going in I've wrestled one forty senior year in high school and I remember like showing up and I'm like holy shit like these are fucking men yeah that's what I just got here under my armpits like two weeks

“that's what you might do in there you know that the men thing I agree it was like I remember”

thinking that you like these are men I'm like a boy I'd like to think of my man but I'm yeah I'm just getting her in my armpits and you're seeing a quit you're like how the fuck am I still here yeah and it is it's like it seems like a whole other life ago but it's it's just it's it's it's uh it's really interesting you know to see who makes it after the after it's all over and who's gone and it's it's pretty wild it really is isn't it you know I don't know if you get it

anymore but every now and then I'll get somebody will ask me like you were a seal oh yeah they're like for how long I'll be like twenty years and they're like really like they imagine I'm supposed to look like the rock or something you know I mean I'm like I'm sorry to let you down I guess I've been letting out everybody this whole time just some average Joe you know I'll get people be like yeah it's like I could just like be next to you in the grocery store and then I have no idea and I'm

like uh thanks yeah I do go to the grocery store maybe we'll cross paths yeah well you don't look like the CPA I thought you'd be like oh man but uh oh any did you have any hangups I did

when I I got rolled in I was rolled in second phase and for the listeners it's like the dive phase

and it's kind of one of the hell we can first phase is the big crucible obviously and second phase it's called the pool week um essentially a lot of drills and test underwater with scuba tanks and I I remember I failed ditch and dawn and so for the listeners all that is is you you jump in and there's a sequence you're in the pool and you take your tanks off your weight belt all these things in a certain it has to be in the way they teach it and I was so intimidated and as I

reflect back on it probably because I was a teenager and it was so intimidated by everything and

“it wasn't that hard when I think back on it it was just some basic steps no reason I should have”

but I just kept messing it up and I failed it and I was um did I remember thinking like I might be booted out of here I've already been through hell week in everything but um I was rolled and I just did a lot I just kept practicing that that sequence they had these um when I was rolled back these balls of wood tanks scuba tanks and I remember after the day I would just rep out I don't know like 50 100 as long until I got tied forever just reped out the sequence as every single day and then

when I went back through I just passed everything first time so it there was a set back though

I was not sure if I was thankfully they rolled me and didn't boot me on but yeah a lot of guys I mean I wish I it's definitely more of a glorious thing in that world if you're getting booted

make it to that oh yeah what class were you I started with 225 and finished with 226 right on right what class for you

close so where did you go where did you want to go yeah so I wanted to go to the little creek uh because my cousin was there and also well he had just was and I can't remember if he was still there I was in the process of going to the academy but it was and that essentially was right around he was still there and and at the time course of all Bosnia all of that was like going on and that was like where the action was and so in the seal teams that was like that's where you wanted to go and

I remember putting in my dream sheet for the listeners like they give you the opportunity to list what seal teams you go to whether it's little creek or San Diego or perhaps Hawaii and I picked

“all little creek 824 I think is what I put and then they gave me seal team 3 which is in San Diego”

which I wasn't mad about I was just like oh man that means I can't um going to Bosnia is out of

the question and you know doing you know being a team with my cousins out of the question it wasn't I was mad I was just like oh bummer but it was certainly needs the navy where the navy is like yeah cool story you want to go there you're young and single we're going to throw you wherever we need you and I went to seal team 3 which was a blessing in disguise at the time because when I checked into seal team 3 there was a platoon delta platoon that was looking for new

guys and the platoon chief would end up being one of my biggest mentors a guy by the amount of Todd Sharber I don't know if you've ever known Todd or not but he had been a dev group guy from Red Squadron and had just left and was now a platoon chief and I remember they were looking for new guys in myself and a close friend of mine Mark Carter were asked like we were just a young guy so like we did that's all we need the young guys whatever just get a fresh body in here

and we screamed and that screen we interviewed for this platoon and I remember good interview for the platoon yeah yeah but this is before in those days like what do you mean they're looking for new guys yeah so a great question so at the time they're what SQT was in a thing so we're waiting for STT sealed tactical training and so we were just like in this pool of guys and this platoon somebody had gotten in trouble I think and they're like we need a new body to fill that spot

and so they picked Mark and I to interview us before STT started so the only training we had was buds at the time which is a very unique kind of era in the seal it doesn't happen as you know now but for the listeners it doesn't happen like that now it's a lot more organized but I remember going into the platoon hut and they're just asking basic questions just to get a feel for this guy be a good fit for the platoon and I remember one of the questions that they were like

you know like where you from you know what interests you like about the seal teams what would you like to do on the seal teams this and that very basic because we were just there's not much I remember them saying like you're not bringing anything to the platoon except your youth

“I remember that specifically like so you're gonna be probably a 60 gunner carrying heavy stuff”

and you have a problem with that I remember thinking like no make sure I hit the squat rack actually oh yeah no I'll do whatever but what what how I ended up getting picked up over Mark was they asked us what our hobbies were and my hobby was I played guitar ever since I was like 12 it took lessons and played in like garage bands whatever it was in that career as a hobbyist though and Todd the platoon chief was like oh I just picked up guitar I could you give lessons in tune

my guitar and I said yeah easy and he was like okay and I guess when Mark came in they asked him like hey what is your I'm not making us up what is your hobby and he said oh rollerblading so so I remember telling me that I'm like you rollerblading he's like I don't know I kind of freaked out I just didn't want to say this was a rollerblading so anyway they're like oh cool at least like Alex

“can give the platoon chief a guitar lesson in tune as a guitar so that's how I got picked up in that”

holy shit no yeah so thankfully anybody but a rollerblading yeah yeah they're like oh my god real you played bro and I remember him doing he just kind of freaked out and said something

and so yeah that's how I got into my first platoon yeah totally just like just starting at a race just

tell me just like me on you're totally like I was embarrassing you might need to go over like seal team five I don't know if we have room for seal team three totally I remember you're just seeing your ass down totally I remember thinking like I said that like I love you Mark we were roommates and close friends but I was like thank God dude like he was a sharp guy I have no doubt

and then went to STT which was the precursor SQT for the listeners and all that is just more advanced training worth land warfare CQB diving and things like that so the platoon was starting and work up well still in STT and then rolled back in with the platoon and we were an arg platoon what that meant was we were assigned to the the mu or the Marine Corps on a ship that was going to

have this really cool pre 9/11 deployment where we were gonna like basically join the Navy

see the worlds we were going to Hawaii and then Guam and Okinawa Thailand Australia all these things and and then the last portion of it we were going to Bahrain for the last three months in doing VBSS or visit board search and seizure which is essentially for the listeners it's just ship takedowns and what was going on was there was an oil embargo on Saddam Hussein and Iraq post the Gulf War and they were smuggling oil and so all those sealed that sealed team 3 was doing

“I think somebody ordered maybe 8 and 5 did a little bit but mostly it was the sealed team 3 mission”

because that was our area of operation we were taking down those ships none of it was like some crazy gunfights but that was the thing at that time like my buddies would be like dude you're at selecting 3 going to Bahrain to do ship takedowns like they were envious and I was proud and stoked to actually do a real world mission that was I just wanted to do one and I equated to like a

if you're a professional baseball player playing baseball your whole life and never playing a game

and just wanting to prove yourself on one game even if that mission as a seal was kind of not that big of a deal but I wanted to at least do one mission this is pre not 11 so that was like the the platoon before before we left that was like the adventure that was that was exactly what I signed up for to be able to do that you know just an adventure let's rewind real quick or did your dad go to your build's graduation he did how was he was really proud I remember him

even being like in like almost like tears like holding back tears and I remember him saying like over and over again how proud he was of me almost to the point where I was on repeat like I

“get it that I'd like thank you I get it I get it but now when I think back on it I bet he”

he was proud and he knew kind of what had happened in my upbringing too he just didn't have the vocabulary or the ability to be able to share that but I think it came out when I saw how

proud he was at Buds graduation but that felt good yeah it did it did and the whole it was never

like with my dad that I hated him or anything like that it was more of like I knew he was struggling and together we'd been through a lot together because of Vietnam man that's gold or here yeah so back to tame theory yeah so back to theme three so pre-911 so we I remember you know we left and we went Hawaii which was incredibly you know we did that whole thing and we found ourselves in Darwin Australia which is a northern town of Australia and we had done some training up there

I think the Marines had also broken off and done some training and our next thing was we're going to go to East Timor which is an island chain just north of Australia and they had this big civil war that had gone through and we were going to go through there with a humanitarian mission of just dropping off medical supplies and food and I think some of the construction CD type guys might fix up some buildings basically just do something to help this country that was on the

on the schedule but then we were out we had just done training we were in Darwin and we were at this

“I'll never forget at this restaurant bar called Rock Strift and as we're sitting there we started”

getting words that we needed to hurry up and get back to the ship something had happened and you know we were all mad here we were on shore leave sailors on shore leave finally getting to like you know we'd been training this whole time finally getting to like let loose a little bit and then even guys like are you sure do we need to send everybody just sending like Alex in the new guys back there he can figure it out we'll tell him where we're at he can come back and tell us if we

need to go back and certainly I'm like yeah sure I'll do whatever you need me to do but um I remember the word was coming out like no everyone needs to go back like all the Marines everybody so to get three ships back filled with Marines and sailors I have no idea and the thousands of people who were just scattered across this town like we need to get you all back it's an emergency and which I didn't the day was September 11th and um but we had no idea and I remember just thinking

we go back to the ship and I remember walking to the galley of um the ship I was assigned to the LPD

ate the USS Dubuque at the time it was one of the oldest ships in the Navy and it's since been

“decommissioned but I remember walking into the galley which is the cafeteria for the listeners and”

seeing on these TVs um the twin towers and uh we're on fire and um and watching another plane hit and then just thinking like just so dumbfounded like what is like most people like what is how that must be an accidents like air traffic control who knows or maybe a pilot was dying by suicide I don't know and then sure enough more and more Marines were coming in the tower start falling I remember even watching a guy punch the wall and the on ships are metal you know

likely breaking his hand I have no idea but you know and just seeing all of this emotion especially from all these Marines and sailors a lot of them coming in from partying so they were half in the bag and then just like watching it and just all of us just crowded in this galley on this ship watching this almost like what is happening and then the next day we got where they're not allowed to get off the ship like we're something this has been an attack especially with the Pentagon and

and all of that and so we they kept the East team were mission going because we were still kind of in the what are we gonna do as a country what's happening and so we did an of going to East team or did that humanitarian thing which was interesting nothing to like move the needle we just help people that was only a couple days and then we were steaming for the

“Pakistan the coast of Pakistan to support the invasion of Afghanistan yeah and I remember calling”

right before my platoon right before we went into Pakistan actually my platoon was part of a small base at jacocacocabad Pakistan and we had the afsoc 53s which were a sea star mission they were stationed there and sometimes there was a afsoc 130 and we were security for these birds that were flying around dropping off medivacking or dropping off supplies to the ODAs that were doing

the invasion with the northern alliance but I remember before we went in I was I finally they

turned off I forgot what the term was on a ship or you don't have any communication but we weren't allowed out of any communication with anybody at that point and so finally they're like okay for all the guys getting ready the seal platoon that's getting ready to go in will allow you a phone call or a couple of phone calls and I remember calling my mom and I didn't I wasn't able to say anything other than you know I love you and all of that and then calling my dad

and and trying to play it cool like I just can't talk there's like I know what you're doing and I was like yeah and he kept saying I wish I was with you and your team so I could help you call in airstrikes like this old man like and he meant it like I have no doubt in my mind if he was able to get teleported there he would throw an on kid and gone in and and helped us but

“I always remember that there was like this warrior spirit was still alive in him and but telling”

him you know I love you and and I don't know when we'll be able to contact you and but we flew into Jacobad and then we were doing some of that sea star type stuff nothing crazy the war was with the ODA's pushing the northern alliance you know the Taliban out and then we went with the Marines into an area called camp rhino which was an old hunting camp outside of Kandahar and we staged out of that and started doing mechanized reconnaissance with humbese below the city of Kandahar as

it was falling I would love to say that we got into some like really cool missions and airstrikes and this and that but the reality was that didn't happen but I was so proud to be a part of you know a small spoke of the wheel of progress of that invasion of it I was somewhat part of it and I just

especially as a young guy I was 21 first deployment only 21 I was only 21 on the Afghan invasion and

and there wasn't many guys who protect our protect were part of the Afghan invasion you know it's most like I said mostly ODA's special operations per military guys and and the Marines a little bit of the Marines from the mu that I was on but that was very limited and so I felt honored to be on that and at that time we had we thought maybe the war would be over that's it like you know that was 2002 maybe it would be over we had no idea that it would draw out to what it was man it old hunting camp

yeah I got some old hunting camp and hunting I don't know something I don't know I mean a lot of them I didn't rumors so I don't know but it was this old camp from Mula Omar the leader of the Taliban actually is Gekko this is outside of Gekko it was not Gekko I know exactly we're talking about it was another one so the camp arrived was further out and it was just this

and the seal teams at the time we didn't have any grommability training at all there was like

“no hom v's are there's nothing and I remember we had these hom v's are turned over by”

seal team eight actually they had done a couple small things and that they had somehow acquired them from some CDs or somehow and so I remember not even my platoon chief asked me like hey you're

going to be one of the drivers have you ever driven on nods and I was like no I've never driven on

nods well you can do that people do that and he was like oh my gosh yes so he made myself and all the other drivers because we didn't have a workup on it just do laps around the airfields at night just the laps and laps changing tires on night vision and we had done a lot of like foot patrolling and stuff like that prior on night vision but it was not the modern units that we would that would happen you know with technology this was pre 9/11 you know this is just at 9/11

so you know things like lasers and all that were still kind of starting out suppressors all of the things right this we were some of the tactics were you know from Vietnam even which is kind of crazy to think about the only real action in the seal teams I'm sure you know this

but you know it's like Grenada Panama and those were very short lived you know experiences

and I don't mean to minimize the guys that were in those but it wasn't like a prolonged campaigns were tactics and and technologies could evolve with input from the operator it was just boom short and quick so yeah the the guys who invaded in 01 their gear their depth of knowledge was way different than 10 years later by far like light years yeah it was a whole different military

“yeah wow interesting yeah what do we go from here so that ended I remember and then at the”

time the seal teams were doing this like force 21 where they were creating a new seal team on each coast so on the west coast it was seal team 7 and on the east coast seal team 10 and because of that restructuring seal team 3 had a short work up so I came back to just a six month work

up before I deployed again but my platoon chief Todd I remember him telling me like hey man

and him coming from dev group there's something interesting about him where he was just a better shot than everybody better tactically than everybody he was fit he just he had confidence not that other guys in the seal teams didn't have all those attributes but he was my mentor so I saw that it was like I want to be like that I didn't know much about the development group other than the real warrior and especially being on the west coast teams there wasn't that many

you know guys coming from dev group out there you know so it was most of the guys stayed on the east coast and so I didn't know much about the development group but he was telling me he's like I think you should scream and and I thought like okay yeah maybe in like five more years or other

“couple of platoons and yeah sure and he's like no I think you should scream now and I was young”

and I was like okay and then you know get back from that deployment and then he tells me hey I talked to the training chief from green team or from selection and they're actually looking to try something new where in the past to go to dev group historically you know you were maybe mid to late 20s you'd done at least five years in the seal teams and and then that way that was like older guys older quote unquote you know and that's what I thought so like I'll tell

I'm not like that yet I'd like to be he's like well they're trying to get it to where they are getting a young guy in there they want to try a test where there's a younger guy that comes in so then that way when he makes it through selection at let's say 23 those extra years are spent learning their tactics and their techniques and you're getting mentored by them and not and not the seal teams and that so they're kind of after it and one of them asked me

any potential guys that might be good for that and I mentioned your name would you be into it and then I had this imposter syndrome kind of come up and just thought well I can't say no to my mentor and if he sees something in me that I don't I do trust him so I just thought okay yeah I'll give it a shot and then I so I'd screened at 22 and I remember the the cadre I say in that like hey we're trying this out on you it's probably not going to work you know but we want to just see

what happens it because it might change the way that we do selection where if you come in you'll be the youngest guy we've we've ever put through selection but if you do make it that might open the door for more younger guys so that they can spend you know do limited time on the seal teams and then if they're younger and then come over so that they can just kind of hang out being a newer guy for a long time so that then one day they become an assault team leader they've maximized their

potential they've got a bunch of reps in and I remember just thinking like that was a way above my head of time I was like okay I'll give it my best shot and thankfully I got picked up

so we went to Guam and we were training there and everything was going great we also had a bunch of other cool trips lined up like Thailand Australia again all of these like cool places to go just if we weren't going to be enough Afghanistan at least there's these cool exercises and but then at the time the Iraq war was starting to gain a little bit of traction and we got recon solidated in Kuwait with seal team three so the all seal team three minus

one platoon all recon solidated for the invasion so we left Guam to get ready for that

it was our first mission was to take down the oil fields and the southern peninsula of

Bozera which is the southern part of Iraq and something called the Alfa peninsula and what it was was these big oil fields and then also these oil rigs that were off the coast a pumping stations essentially where ships could come up and get dumped a bunch of oil and move on and so it took all of seal team three was going to take this down with the British 40th commando and so we were doing these big workups and as far as I know it was the first time a seal team

had had together had done a mission since then perhaps it's happened but I know at least in 2000 and three that was the first time that like the full seal team had done something together

and my platoon we were on the oil field and we were essentially going to land on a Air Force 53

we had a DPV or Desert Patrol vehicle which was essentially a doom buggy that had a bunch of machine guns on it that was very the engine was very underpowered kind of a legacy type thing but it fit really well into a helicopter and so that was going to be the vehicle was going to block a position and my team was going to be a blocking position as the 40th commando took down

“the oil fields on the workup though in the Quady Desert I remember part of my job was the”

point man of the platoon as soon as the helicopter landed I was going to release a cargo strap for the DPV to roll off and I have my hands on the cargo strap and then as this is just training as the helicopters there starts to brown out and then it starts to like kind of tilt and then the rotors start hitting the ground and we just crash and the tail snap stuff and I remember I had the my hand on the cargo strap and as I got flung back to the guy behind me I released the cargo

strap and then I had my feet on the frame of the DPV as it's almost like launching at me like a dog on a taunt leash just like wanting to kill me that sort of felt like and my feet were on the frame and then it finally just settled and you could just smell all this fuel and everything in the air and the dust was settling and then we thankfully got out of the helicopter and nobody was killed guys were banged up a little bit but that was before the war that war started and then

during that time we're living in the desert at Quady I'll all y'all slim airbase and then finally

“the zero hour or the moment of an invasion approached and I remember we were flying in on the 53s”

and then just feeling the almost excitement like another invasion right like wow we are invading

this is crazy I never thought we I didn't think we would actually do it I thought it was going to

be a standard military hurry up and wait train train train and then all the sudden like okay comment down politically we've we've figured this thing out but there we were and they were pre assault fires were going on in this oil fields from Toma cruise missiles to AC 130s and I remember when we finally landed and being the point man I was you know I released that cargo strap the DPV rolled off and I took my first step on Iraqi soil and right as I took my step I saw a vehicle

a technical and Iraqi technical and an A10 shoot a maverick right into it so like first step boom that was like welcome to Iraq oh yeah that night we went winchester on an AC 130 just what's all that means for the listeners is AC with there's a big cargo plane with a bunch of like a cannon and all sorts of munitions on it and very good for close air support and it shot all of its ammunition and just that different Iraqi targets but we flew back from that mission and I

let me back up as that was going on steel steel team through is also taking down these oil platforms these oil out in the ocean and this pump station also that was right on the beach so there is a lot of coordination that was going on but all of it was successful I remember we had gotten back in my master chief of steel team three brought in all the guys that had screened for dev group

“who had orders because I had this was in March and green team was starting I believe in April”

of like so it's really close like just a few weeks out and he pulled this all in and and I

he put a little extra effort in this and he said all right guys here's the thing you have a choice

you can fly back now because you have orders back to the states and you can start green team I already talked to the green team cadre they understand if you want to go with steel team three with us as we drive with the Marines to Baghdad you'll orders can be postponed a year like they get it like they understand that of course you'd want to be on the invasion like like though they'll hold the spot for you but it's going to be up to you guys and I just need to

know and answer right now because if we start driving to Baghdad and you change your mind good fucking luck like I'm not pulling any strings to get you out of there you I need you and I remember him asking the four of us and I was the only guy that was single and I was like let's go to fucking Baghdad that's what I was at but the the other guys were married and all that

“and I remember them being like well I don't know and then I remember that master chief saying”

also here's the thing I don't believe these wars I reckon I've danced in our going anywhere

which was different than what most guys were thinking at the time and he said if you want to hang around and keep fighting into these wars you're going to want to be at a J-Sawk squadron and so my recommendation is that even though I need all of you guys to be with us on the drive to Baghdad professionally I would recommend that you just go to the command but do whatever you want and let me know by the end of the day and then at that point all the other guys were like they wanted to go

back and I was like okay I'm going to take his advice I'm going to just roll the dice and hopefully I make it so tough to social yeah it was it was and so we boarded on I remember of they were

climb like freedom flights where you just basically chartered civilian plane flying back to the

“states and I flew back I didn't have own much I had a small storage unit with a little you haul”

trailer I loaded up my truck and drove across country and started green team within I don't know a couple weeks a week maybe and that's when that chapter ended and the dev group chapter started all done let's take a break case you haven't noticed I take preparedness seriously and water is one of the first things I look at not just emergency water but the water my family is drinking every single day a federal study found

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anywhere else join the Patreon community today and get access to the full experience Art Alex from the break get ready to get into green team yeah um I you know it's interesting going from the west coast to the east coast and I didn't really know anyone out there but I

for development group and and being the at the time at least the the youngest guide at least

“attempted and I also found myself just like I was in Buds feeling almost intimidated I am”

posture syndrome around you know these instructors a lot of the instructors were you know guys that were the top of their game super talented and even thinking of myself like wow I don't know if I belong here looking at some of the other guys that students who were had more time in the seal teams had these big reputations and just thinking like how did I end up here but then just going back to that same mentality of just just make it to the next meal or make it to the next

evolution or the next house run and when I went through I would say I was maybe an average at best student but but I just kind of kept kicking the can down the roads and passing different evolutions and it was about it the one I went through was in those days it was about seven months but I was also there's a couple of years where they had seals were part of the mobility also

“so you went through all the assault section part of it and then you went through mobility meaning”

you would learn more ground mobility stuff and then also the boats and drive the boats but it was only for like two years where guys had both it was in 2002 and 2003 when I went through 2003 so the green team was about ten months long because of that because I almost had both green teams it was brutal and yeah however I'm so glad I had that foundation of mobility whether it was like waterborne or ground mobility because that was needed in when I would become

a salt team leader I'd a better understanding of all of mobility assets but also ground mobility and specifically Afghanistan up in the mountain just getting more knowledge in that realm really gave me a real depth of knowledge as an operator but I asked so we went through ten

months of that and then you were you were 23 when you went to green team yeah you were basically a

case study I was a case study yes at the time so were you the only how much younger were you than the other I would say the next youngest guy was probably 26 or 7 and yeah I was 23 and I just turned 23 also and what's one deployment oh yeah technically two because that's second deployment it was short it was just six months so yeah basically one and a half is what I would say but yeah not much so I'd limited experience and was young and struggled with imposters and I had all

those things kind of like buzzing around where I was like oh man and then thinking you know you go to a selection like that and it's like okay if you don't make it we're a lot of guys don't but then I would you know in those days I would go to Little Creek which was fine with me but I that wasn't I didn't move from San Diego to go to Little Creek but I would have just I knew I'm like okay if I don't make it I'm just gonna go to a sealed team whatever it was and just

do some more time there and enough time to hopefully get a chance to come back that was my my backup plan not that I was relying on a backup plan but I I was just committed I was like this is what I want to do I want to be the best assaulter that I can possibly be and that's the place I want to go so what is what is day one of training like I'm able to it was definitely going back in the way back Michigan while back but I recall as a PT it was you know push-ups that

was pull-ups swim run and and those the only they would say those they're giving you the answer to the test that's only time you'll get it in green team of this is what you're going to need

“these are you need to do X amount of pull-ups like perfect like those are the answers to the test”

and so and for me you know I was in Iraq or Kuwait trying my best to stay in shape but there wasn't a pool there there wasn't you couldn't really run a lot of the running was on a treadmill and and then I had to move so it wasn't like it was hard to stay in like peak shape but I was

young so I did have youth on my side and was able to pass all that so the first day is more of like

that purity or that that work out that test and then it was if I recall just more administrative type stuff so like day one was kind of the workout are the PT test and then the in some administrative stuff but then you were the real crux or crucible of that selection was in CQB or close quarters battle or for the listeners shooting inside of lifefire inside of rooms like you might see like a SWAT team doing TV or something like that's what we were doing because it was

a national mission hostage rescue unit between a development group and CAG or the army's

be a true subject matter expert or perform at the level of that within the rooms of shooting

close to each other lifefire and so essentially you would really need to be given a technique that you had to do perfectly the way they want it done not the way they did it at SILTEEN three or SILTEEN two or whatever team you came from you had to do the way they wanted it and if you didn't then likely you would get rolled out or dismissed from the course and shooting so it's very CQB shooting it was very hard where Buds was you know trying to get hypothermic it's horrible

physically and mentally but this was more of a performance like hey we get it you're not going to

“quit because you've been through Buds but we're going to make it hard but you have to be have the”

aptitude to be able to meet these standards within the kill house and on the range

I mean was that how a parent was that right off the bat right off the bat because that we went to

a train facility out in Mississippi and we went out there and that was like the bit you're out there for over a month and it was just right off the bat and it was so precise like if you're your barrel as you're moving your barrel and you you come close within like 12 inches or a blow to like 10 inches you get a safety violation and all these instructors were so keen and zeroed in on every little movement that if you didn't do every little technique perfectly you

would get a safety violation or some sort of infraction and if you compiled this this training record of all of these they would likely let you go and it wasn't that you weren't a good guy it was that you just didn't meet the performance what if you're not pushing the limits if you're not

“putting if you're trying to play a two safe I mean oh yeah they would get you to and they would”

call you out on it they would notice it and then they would force you to the front and then you would get a lot of the attention of the instructors so they actually preferred a guy that was just whatever I'm going to go for it every time I'm just going to be aggressive and if I mess up I mess up they preferred that over a guy trying to play it really safe and kind of hide in the back because they just saw that is kind of for lack of a better term of avoidance I don't want to say

these were cowardice but like like hey you're we want you up there if you're going to fail fail big is kind of what what it was and so I just did what they told me and you know I was like okay I'll just do what you tell me just like I did with the buzz instructor was saying just make

it to the next meal just like okay I'll just do what you tell me and so I just would always

try to be the number one man so for the listeners that's like the first guy that goes into a room I was always trying to just do what they told me to do just be aggressive and leave it all out on the field and thankfully I mean sure I made mistakes and there's times I didn't think I think everybody's gone to a selection is like I'm not sure if I'm gonna make it today I know at least for me there was days I did not know if I was gonna make it I even had one of the instructors tell

me that what's like like bro you're right on the edge just thinking like I know I know I know and but you know it's just I equated to a quarterback at a big game who throws an interception where it's like you throw the interception you have two choices you can either get all in your head and be like I can't believe I did that I made that mistake or you can just say well fuck it I'm gonna learn from that and I'm just gonna I gotta get back in there I'm still the

quarterback of my own life this game is still ongoing and so I just kind of applied that kind of mentality too it where if I did mess up it's like already through an interception though let me know if I'm dismissed and if not I'm just gonna keep going and you know using the

“analogy keep throwing footballs and and I that's what I did and thankfully I didn't make enough”

mistakes to get dismissed did you get to the point where you just I don't want to say didn't give a fuck but I mean I don't know how was or that yelling you know yeah there's a lot of yelling have to get to a point where I would think you would have to get to a point where that you're just not even listening anymore that's true yes anyways it's almost like you have to in my opinion kind of like quiet the noise a little bit don't get me wrong like you I'm listening to instruction

and all of that but there was a lot of yelling because they would try to create a lot of chaos to really make you stressed out and the why is you know it's not just the movements but the shots have to be perfectly placed there's no like if you run in and you're really fast at shooting they don't give a fuck if how fast you shoot as long as the rounds are perfect they'd rather it be like boom boom and like keyhole between the eyes then just some guy coming in just

blasting a bunch of rounds and so there was so much chaos that they would try to create because of it's a national mission to hostage rescue unit so it's it's mimicking maybe the chaos of combat or the stress of like a high level mission where maybe it's just not hostage rescue

whatever it is it's like the big missions like they need guys that can handle that and they're

“testing you for it there and and it was very hard like that's another one where some guys might say”

I wasn't that bad to me I was like that was really hard like I I did not know if I was going to make it but I was young too and I did get a little extra attention because I was young and most of it was I really wish I wouldn't have gotten but I couldn't avoid it but I do think and I don't know this for sure but at the same time for the from the cadre because I would one day become an instructor that as long as he's making the standard yeah we're giving him a lot of shit and

just like really ratcheting it up but he is young and he is like showing up and meeting the standard so I think it got to a certain point where they're like all right we can back off him a little bit like he's he might he might he might be here for like make it so they they backed off a little bit do you think that the I mean did you get the impression that a lot of people didn't want you there because you were so young do you think maybe they thought you didn't deserve to be there

because yeah you were so young there was I got the vibe from a couple instructors where they didn't think that you know I was going against tradition you know you needed to hack you know your time in the sealed teams you needed to do at least five years and then you know you tack on buds and all that so you're likely have been in the navy seven eight nine years to be like the most junior guy in the class and here I was with a lot less than that maybe five years four

years four and a few years and so there's some old guard that didn't like it and I'm like that's

“not how it was for me and my friends that's what makes the best assaulters so why are we”

messing with this guy over here why are we even entertaining this yeah sure he's not a bad guy this one imagining but you know like make him go back to a sealed team whatever for a few more years and come back and then we'll pay attention but there was a couple instructors that I could tell they did care they're like whatever like if he's shown up and and like he's here right now we see the vision of what released attempting to do here because if he graduates or

makes it through selection at 23 then he has you know so many more years like as I was mentioning before we're he can get mentored by the guys and more reps and all of that and just hang out so that one day you know he can really maximize his true potential so there was some more forward thinking guys but just like in any organization there was some old school guys that made sure that I knew that in some ways it wasn't that welcome that I was there but they they did

treat me like a man it was just like to there are more thinking like just not yet Alex like it's not that we don't want you here it's just that you're here little too early but then I just kept going and just passing stuff and I wouldn't say with flying colors at all but meeting the standard and then before I knew it it's slowly the end was getting closer how many guys did you start with that's a great question those classes were smaller in those days I would say we started

with maybe like 35 and probably our 30 and finished with like I don't know 22 or something like that the iteration rates would get worse the years after me when the classes got bigger but and to be honest like I don't know because I got split and they took half of the enlisted

“seals and put them in the mobility pipeline so you're in a salt mobility so out of I think”

it 21 enlisted seals and 10 of us were in like a lottery basically they're like all right here's

the class like okay this guy is going just a salt this guy's going grommability and then back and forth so I happen to be in that grommability group and so there was 10 of us if I recall so maybe I don't know we the classes after would be like 50% attrition I don't think ours was as high but we also didn't have as large of a class right think some of the other classes were 60 something guys so you went I'm going to bounce around a little bit so you go straight to bread

I went to gray red but because I had been through the assault selection I was also considered an assaulter so I had like a red squadron patch I was thinking you were you were you weren't support you were no no no I was considered you know I yarded in which basically for listeners

when you get there and those days you'd drink a yard of beer in front of everybody to basically

say like welcome you know you get almost like hazed in if you ever say hazed initiated and there's a better way and yeah so I but I was I would do a lot of the house runs with red squadron but then sometimes I would break away to do training of driving boats or grommability and but I was still doing all the deployments as either an assaulter as an assaulter for the next is because the other path is a little bit different right yeah the most gray yes

what a gray red gray whatever it's different it's different green team it is yeah before those two years of 2002 and 2003 the before that it was seals would drive boats a dev group

version but so then they wouldn't be considered an assaulter but those there's two years that I was in qualified me to do both but then they stopped doing that after my class and then the sweat took over driving boats a dev group got you I know it's like a little like nuanced but yeah that's just kind of one of those days what about your classmates well I mean what do they think about you being being five six years young they they loved it and I remember a lot of those

guys because I was just you know I fit in really well with the guys still have really close friends

“with a lot of them and I think that they were supportive of it it's just but they're also worried”

about their own self of passing so I never got any negativity from any of the classmates it was

more of I mean I certainly was the young guy and I'm sure you know my prefrontal cortex wasn't even developed out of my brain when I think back on it so I I think that I was accepted and I just felt like one of the guys like the class made me just feel like I could have been instead of 2333 but it was I think the old guard of the instructors that kind of had an extra eye out like let's keep an eye on this guy because it was a test but even them the most hardcore guys were fair to me

it wasn't like they made up a safety violation to get me out or anything it was just maybe a extra attention like an extra tire drag or maybe you know I don't know just a little extra yellow

getting yelled at or something the extra love I mean so so you were the you were basically the

guy that opened the gates for everybody yeah because in my generation but I didn't screen I didn't

“go over there but in my generation is when I think they started running two green teams of year us”

and everybody with two platoons was like yeah okay I'm going over I'm going to try to I'm going to screen I'm going to go over there so you were the one then yes yeah because of that that allowed just to what you were saying that allowed for younger guys other guys after me were 23 yeah other guys after me they tried like one platoon or or two plino where it's like a shorter time at the seal as long as their mastery so their sealed teams were okay with it

but yeah that was the big when that that showed okay that can happen then that opened up the door for for more guys to come and a more junior yeah what do you think looking back do you think if you were if you were in a leadership position I'd be able to what do you think I think it was the right call yeah I think it was the right call I'm glad they did it I'm

“for the right guy I think and I wouldn't say I was like super mature I wasn't immature I was just”

like right where I needed to be I think for the right guy it is worth a gamble because of what I was mentioning before we're instead of doing another let's say four years of seal team I had four years of just being a junior guy as an assaulter and getting qualifications and just getting more house runs more time on the range of the way they wanted it done so and missions most importantly especially in that era so I was able so when I got into a leadership

position later on I had a lot more tours than at the command at least then a lot of previous assault team leaders so I was truly peaking at my my potential so I would say with the right guy that is that was the right call I would say if I was the guy that was picking these guys that were 23 or young that it it's okay to say notice some guys even though they could be the right fit let them grow up a little bit more in the sealed teams it just depends it's it's almost like

it just picked the right guy but I do believe that that is a good thing and some people might disagree with me on that which is fine but it's coming from my experience I I felt like it set me up professionally to contribute to the squadrons better by getting there earlier what did you notice different about the culture at Rescutter yeah I they were hardcore I remember it was everything was about the house runs everything was about shooting we were just training our asses off all the time

everything ended in the kill house whether we were going to jump you do a jump into something patrol and kill house oh swimming over the beach you know kill house um gram mobility kill everything was just ended in just CQB so and that was something that I personally like loved I loved assaulting I loved shooting inside of buildings I loved the hostage rescue it just spoke my language and I was mentored by so many incredible operators that like it truly allowed me to

come into my own but the mentality at Red Squadron was very intense and they kind of had that

at least in those days of to the other squadrons had their own low personalities but Reds was always

is you know to be determined but at least that was the mentality so still team through is great great place to kind of grow up and great people great mentality but Red Squadron was just like this whole the energy of it was just like train hard you know get their early leave late train train

“like we're gonna train harder than everybody and at least in those days that's I believe we did”

I wouldn't say we were better I just say that was the mentality it's just hardcore you notice it's a immediate difference so from team through to the yes absolutely and what I noticed too was now you have an assault team leader who's perhaps a subject matter expert and has been

there for a while and then the second guy in charge in that team and then on and it goes down the line

and you're getting mentored by these guys that that are that and so now I have a ton of mentors that are telling me what to do in different ways to do it and then now you're at a J-Sock unit so there's a ton of funding to get the top gear in the world you can bring in world class like let's say shooting instructors or skydive instructors so the the budget was great for that and then also because it's the machine of J-Sock we were getting a lot more mission so you're actually

able to employ those skills overseas and so that and then that built a confidence like a true

“confidence I believe like gun like a gun fighter confidence to where it wasn't just like I think”

I can do that it's like no I'm I'm fucking ready like let's go but yeah so that mental not that sealed team three wasn't a bunch of warriors and great guys they are but it was just it really wasn't almost like a step up at least in my experience to where it's like like taking down a stadium right like taking down a football stadium it's like who does that but those units it's like gentle problem you know like and then I'm gonna be in a junior guy and be like what do you mean

no problem and then but then seeing these guys being able to do it and then just be like I want to be like that one day I might not be there right now but I've at least seen it done well and then yeah and so I felt like it was where I wanted to be and the timing for me however you might look one look looks at it I believe I was very fortunate because I got there after that both invasions in O3 and then was in red squadron from O3 until 2014 and I so I

deployed every year to Iraq Afghanistan or some other locations at combat every year at least once from O1 to 13 so it was just this grind and learning on the go and the evolution of tactics and techniques and also technology is you were like read the forefront of it of those wars so they along answered your simple question was it was just that to me it was the place to be for tactics for mentorship and for missions

were you treated like just like everybody else what you got in well no so the first year I got there

“yeah no definitely not first year I got there I remember I had this this mentor Lulangless”

who was killed in extortion unfortunately but he was a big mentor of mine and I remember him saying he's my first team leader like hey you're not allowed to talk in a debrief so basically at the end of a house run like if you even if you have something good to say tell it to me because you're so junior and young you probably know what the fuck you're talking about so tell me I'll be the filter and then I'll bring it up so don't say anything I was like you have Roger

that Lou and then he's like I know by the way take the trash out and don't say anything for the first year and I was like no problem and so it was like but I appreciated that humility of it because it wasn't like wow I made it to the selection it was like cool story so as everyone else just shut up and listen and absorb stuff and so yeah and also as junior too I was probably the

young guy at Red Squadron you know for probably four years old right so I was always like a new

batch of new guys would come in and I was still the youngest and then another batch and next year still the youngest and so but as that was going on my confidence and was going up in my reps and experience was going up so I could see what their vision was to give it its shot on young guy like myself because now I'm like let's say 26 and a 27 and finally somebody's more junior than me gets to Red Squadron and I've already have a lot of experience and I'm like now I'm kind

of the guy that's mentoring that guy in a way where I'm mentoring guys that are older than me only because I've been there longer. Holy shit you were the youngest guy there for

four or three to probably like three years yeah yeah I'm always listening to something

on the road working out walking around the house traveling whatever it is and what I like about Amazon music is it puts music podcasts and audiobooks all in one app so now with Amazon music

audiobooks which makes it easy to keep something good going no matter what you're doing I've been listening to project Hail Mary and that's the kind of audiobook that really works in this format hearing the story and the narrator's voice pulls you in differently you get the pacing, detention the personality of the characters and it makes it easy to stay locked in whether you're driving, training or knocking things out around the house with Amazon music you get music, podcast and audio

books all in one app try it today but what is that like but like seeing people that are have been around longer than you show up yeah especially after you've been there three or four

“years yeah I know I was I remember I ended up being an LPO what a true LPO leading pedi officer”

for the listeners it's just kind of like a small leadership role basically in charge of like making sure guys take out the trash and that vehicles are topped off with gasoline it's nothing that let's be real something that crazy but it was a small leadership position and I remember there was guys getting to the squadron who are older and who are chiefs and and I just had made it e6 and I was in charge of them because I had tenure at the squadron so and I remember some of those

guys having issues with somebody like me you know because they had higher rank and all of that but I had the tenure and then me at that point having the confidence to be like let's not let this be an issue with you because it's not an issue with me like you're working for me you know so now I'm like in this like I'm starting to like fall into my own a little bit but it was interesting and

some of the guys that didn't care but there's always ego you know that in this field like there's

always ego and some high performance how does they even get it expressed I mean it's it's yeah who do they take issue with like they have a charge of me yeah it's been her four five years you showed up yeah and the thing was you know you get to and those roles two and leadership especially at that unit like you're also proving it by your performance so you're on the you're still shoot even though you're in a leadership role you're still shoot you're supposed to be

at the standard and so some guys had an issue with it some didn't at the same time that's was on them not on me and but it wasn't too many there's a couple in particular that I think that it's some issues with it because they had so much tenure and their normal skills are the white side

“skills teams that it slowly went away because at a certain point it's like you have to get over it”

yeah yeah one of the in that era one of the big experiences for me when I was really young was in 2005 and what had been going on in J sock historically you have the two big units of Delta Force or the Army and Dev Groups he'll team six and there was this really bad

inner service rivalry going on and there's always inner service stuff right guys just talking

a little shit back and forth which is fine but it was stuff that I believe I don't know but went back maybe the 90s some like weird headbudding rivalry going on it wasn't very healthy and general make crystal at the time was in charge of J sock and he'd basically told us like hey you guys are more like than you're different this is getting ridiculous we're going to start doing exchanges and so we were sending teams from each unit each squadrons or each other and the

work up for a little bit and then deploy which I thought was really helpful because we are so like it was just one guy happens to be the Navy one guys in the army you see a guy on nods at night and they look exactly the same and they're both world-class gunfighters you know American warriors right there's nothing but praise for the army counterparts and for our own guys a lot of sacrifice for everyone but I found myself on in '05 there was Delta Squadron that was in a very

kinetic deployment and they requested more forces from Dev Group because we already had a team with them about 70 guys and they're like hey do you have any extra guys you can just shoot over because we from Afghanistan we just need young just assaulters we don't need anybody that's in charge but we're taking a lot of casualties and so unfortunately myself Matt Bissinett who is on one of your previous podcast and another guy we're sent over because all we were just shooters

“and I remember flying over this was maybe the first three weeks of deployment so we flew from”

Afghanistan over to Iraq and I was assigned to a troop Delta troop those in Ramadi and I was really nervous because I was only on my second to play with Red so I was still a junior and and I hadn't done the work up with them where the our team that was deployed with them had already gone down to Fort Bragg and worked up I knew that basically what their tactics and techniques were very similar but a little bit nuanced different and I just knew like likely I'd be hitting the

ground right into an operation which is what happened but I had never worked up with them so I'm

young nervous still dealing with imposter syndrome and I remember landing on the airfield in

what time but the sun was down and and this big guy with a beard comes up and he was like are you

Alex and I was like yeah and he was like I'm Bob Horrigan and I'm gonna be your shooting buddy and we're gonna be friends and I was like okay so this guy and I didn't know at the time but Bob was kind of a larger than life figure at Delta and he had already been a team leader and he was coming to do his last tour before he retired he had 19 years in I believe and it was like one last pump before he went home so he was just kind of an assaulter not in a leadership position but he

was a breacher and I remember him saying like do you breach explosive breach and I said yeah I do and he's like okay we're the team breachers of our assault team I'm gonna just show you the little he's like I know it's the same but a little different let me just show you how we do it

and between Bob and I we became really close friends and I to this day I'm so appreciative of Bob

because I felt like he noticed me just flying in like that and him being like you're with me

“we're gonna be friends and I'll show you everything you need to know and we became close friends and”

every night he would be the in those days we were just explosive breaching the shit out of everything in those days and from tactics standpoint we were doing a it's a hostage rescue there was not any of this other styles of clearance that would come later that we're safer it was just boom like really aggressive running into buildings so did dev group at the time we all did that and so we would explosive breach and every night we would do at least three four plus breaches

explosive breaches a night and Bob and I would swap off as the team breacher so one night maybe I would place the the explosive charge on the door Bob would be my security guard that charge would go the next time Bob would place the charge and I would cover for him and so we would do that you know sometimes one opinite sometimes three operations a night and we were in Ramadi and then also out west in Alessad and Alkheim specifically in that era that's

the really hot area of the Iraq war in that time and we were just grinding it out during that time Bob and I became closer and closer friends and then one night we were out and we landed out in Alkheim and you could feel there's something different in the air and what we were doing was we were going to hit Alkheim before the Marines pushed through almost to try to destabilize the city with taking out high value targets so in the Marines moved through

we kind of disoriented the enemy and so we're foot patrolling in and you could feel this energy

“there's something going on something going on I was about to happen and I remember we went we're on”

this street who's at night and it was one team was going to hit a house across the street and they're putting a charge on a metal gate so they're going to blow the gate running below the front door running and we were going to do the same thing on the street over and so it was Bob's turn to breach randomly on this night and he had his charge out and I was like okay cool I'm right next to you we're going to blow the gate and then we're going to run off I'll be the first guy up so holding

security and you'll have the charge and then you'll pull the charge on and blow it and and so that's what we were going to do we like I said we did this tons of times before and I remember I'm

standing right next to him like ready to go just like we did a million times before and I'm

laying but Tom and Bob looked at me and he just says get back and I was like get back okay he was my mentor was like sure so I stepped back a few steps maybe I was like crowding him whatever and then he like looks at me like get back and I was like okay and so I took a few more steps

“back and then I remember he drops his gun it's just slung and he just starts maneuvering his hand like”

this like get the fuck back and is almost I can still see his nods juggling a little bit as he's saying that and I'm like okay like what did I do wrong I'm sure I'll hear about later you know after the off but I this like okay and so I started moving back and then now I see I'm right next to this charge from the other team that was going to blow this gate so I'm standing right in front of it and I'm thinking okay I have to I can't eat this charge I'm gonna get hurt so I kept going back

even further to get out of the way of that charge so now there's maybe 20 yards maybe 15 yards between Bob and me I did know when that gate blew that one of the other team members was going to fill my spot it just like pick up basketball but I didn't want that because he's my shooting buddy so I just knew I'm like okay as soon as he's go I'm gonna sprint up as fast as I can to be Bob's security guy so the charges go Bob starts to run into the courtyard I'm sprinting as fast as I can

to be a security guard our security guy but Mike McNulty another assaulter slipped right in to where because he was closer to Bob and as his security guard and as all of us are sprinting

lights going on but inside was all dark and we were on night vision and I'm out running up and kind of flicking my helmet up to see under my nods and there was Bob and Mike in front of me and another assaulter as the four of us are running up and as Bob and Mike entered the door

or for the enter the door Bob says it's oh he just yells open basically saying like I'm not

gonna throw the charges throws his charge to the side to be just like run in and there was a two bell fed machine guns waiting for them and and just unloaded on our train as we were running in and you could feel the bullets going right past you're like the velocity of the bullet it's going past I even had glass in my face from a piece of window that that I caught in the face and both Bob and Mike were fell into the into the room or into the threshold of the door

and the rest of us just kind of like pie it off to the side to get out of the way of this volley of intense machine gun fire coming out of because it's so close and then so then we're

starting to pie in the doors and there's like a little bit of gunfire going through the windows

we're taking some fire from rooftop and then Mike gets out they pull Mike out and then one of one of the bravest things that I've seen is one of the assaulters sees Bob in the threat this door that just took two belt fed machine guns that were just unloaded and you could he could see Bob's leg and he just pie it pie it exposed himself into the truly the heart of darkness grabbed his foot and yanked him out and just to get his body out and so I remember as they pull

Bob out and I saw what had happened to him that I had a moment of just losing my mind and I went like berserker essentially and just saw red that you know they had killed not just Mike who I cared for a lot but Bob my mentor and somebody I really cared about and and then I was I remember we were all like we want payback to the you know like we want to get back in there and how it which tactically it would make sense okay we got everybody out let's just pull back calling an

air strike and kill the guys in there but we decided we wanted payback and this was in a different era some people might be like you guys should have done x y and z however this is before combat

“clearance and methodical all these things so we were all I believe seen red I don't want to speak”

for the other guys but I know for me and so we took down that hot house and we started off with something called the thermo barric hangar nade that we threw into the house which for the listeners that particular grenade it doesn't throw pieces of fragmentation or hot metal everywhere it uses

overpressure technology basically like overpressurized the building to collapse it or to just

overpressurized anybody in the building so one of those was throwing in and I was sitting at a wall right next to it and it went off and I was going to be the one man into the building I remember standing up after it went off and I'd been concussed by being so close to this grenade and did appear wet almost as stumbling as I was running through the front door and as I went with the guys behind me it wasn't just me it was this whole team it was very brave that night and I

“remember going through the front door and it was a marble floor and just slipping over all of the”

blood that had been in that and that threshold of the door and feeling so vulnerable where I'm can cust I'm slipping all over this marble floor. Bob's blood yeah Bob and Mike's and and that was something I would have years later even flashbacks of I'd see white marble floors and hotels and just see almost like the shiny like blood going right down it but but back to to that night I remember going in and as we were clearing room by room there was sandbag bunkers within each room

and we were just clearing it with hand grenades and and as that was happening the bad guys came out the back and the rangers our block of position ended up finishing them but when that night ended we were still going that was just we had to continue to route out all of these networks that night and I remember using all my breaching charges and it was a big night of fighting and then not knowing what happened to Bob and Mike and I figured certainly Bob but I wasn't sure about Mike

but when we got back you know we were a lot of us covered in blood and I mean we were told of

“what happened with Bob that they'd both passed and then I remember you know those guys were larger”

than life and even though I was on an exchange guy especially Bob I was just shattered by it and so is everybody else but it was this campaigns ongoing here's an ambient taken ambient because you have to get back up and we're going back out tomorrow and that's exactly what happened yeah but it's

meditation Bob still comes up for me the spirit of him I don't know how or why but he's always there

I can even feel him here today I feel that he and I recently and one of those experiences he showed up to me and I asked him like why would you not let me die with you and and he said that's because

“you have worked to do you need to help show people a healing path there's so much there's so much”

pain and suffering you have to show people how to heal and because I had struggled with survival skill for so much because of that because Mike took my spot because I didn't die with Bob that it I finally got some healing from that realizing like okay I'll do the best I can I don't know what

that means but I'll just keep basically it wasn't my time is what Bob was saying I'd more work to

do but I feel his spirit when I'm down I can feel it in my heart that he's like pushing me like just keep going I think you're doing it man yeah thanks man yeah yeah it's when I'm where there's times I'm like worried that I'm letting him down but then I can feel him coming back and and just like giving me shit like calm down get over yourself just get the fuck back in there and keep doing it like get out of your head you have a mission to do why do you feel like you're

letting him down that times I think you know that imposter syndrome stuff where now that I've gotten out and now I work in a lot of different areas of mental health I just hope that I can it's almost like Bob I feel like Bob saved me so that I can do this and and I want to make sure that I'm

“upholding his honor infulfilling that mission because of how important he was to me and and I think”

that's why every now that I just get in my own head of you know that maybe I'm not doing it enough but then I realize it's almost Bob saying like do it's a marathon on a sprint you can't just like boil the ocean just keep going just keep trying to do good in the world yeah do you think you knew it was on the other side of that door yeah I do because I don't know why there's no reason why he would turn around and tell me to keep moving back there was no there wasn't a tactical

reason for it I don't recall doing anything that he would have been mad like I just really don't there was something off you could feel it when we landed in the helicopter is that something dark

“was about to happen you could feel it when we were placing charges on the gates I could feel it”

you know I could almost sense like it's something was about to go down and but when he kept telling me I there's no repeatedly not just like hey bro like give me some space it was like and especially when he was like stop dropped his rifle had a reaching charges hand and was like motioning for me to back like get the fuck back and so I feel like he knew something was happening I don't know for sure but in my gut I don't know why he would have acted like that I can't come up with

another reason why he would do that it was just so unlike him to do that how many times did you guys breach doors together before the roof out 50 probably yeah I would say I don't know maybe give or take 10 on that so at least around 50 easy and those days we were just breaching so much and going out every night but later I was mentioned like one to three times so it was and there's

always explosive breaching and every time we went out there might be multiple breaches in that

on that operation because maybe it's we hit one it's like oh we hit the neighbor he's next door you know or or the guy's saying like yeah this is the wrong house but there's a whole cell ID cell down the road I can lead you there and it's like okay let's go check it out breaching charge boom so yeah we had done probably I'm just trying to number 50 I'd say wow yeah well would you say it on today and I love them that I appreciate his mentorship all the way from

picking me up from the HLZ right off the bat not allowing me to feel like I didn't belong of just him saying you're my shooting buddy we're gonna be friends right the the moment

big brother really and he was larger than life to be honest it wasn't just a guy it was a guy

with a really great reputation really great sensey humor yeah yeah if he was here I was you know I

“miss him and I appreciate everything he did for me and I believe continues to do for me like”

the spirit of him I can sense it do you feel like you're up piece with it I feel like I'm getting there especially after the recent experiences of of sensing him and all of that I I'm getting to a better place of it I mean that was over 20 years ago 21 years ago you know I have that it on the calendar and I get I send myself reminders like a week out

you know and then like six days out just to remind myself of the days coming so that gets easier

every time to where it happens and I'm able just to kind of sit with it it's not a surprise but yeah it's just as the years go on it's just now starting to lose some of its momentum because I'm becoming at more peace with it because of the messages I was getting from Bob

“that I have a job to do how did those messages come and play medicine he sat down in front of me”

and and just told me that and yeah mostly in play medicine and just letting me know like came in there's more work to do there's a lot of suffering going on in this world but yeah mostly play medicine but in meditation too I've had it and there'll be times even when something tough comes up whether it's him or the guy's from extortion I will and I'll ask for their support like I'm really struggling right now can you guys help me

and like recently went through a divorce that type of a thing and and I can feel them just be like we've got you do you know essentially like emotionally we'll pick you up from the airport and you're our shooting buddy yeah man I'm sorry thank you I feel also with the healing just glad that I knew guys like Bob and Mike and a bunch other friends that passed in those wars feel better off knowing them

but because of what an impact they had on me it was it has been tough but I can't imagine my life without knowing those guys yeah

it's not the first first run that she lost and combat there was and a couple years later

and the guy was mentioning Mark Carter on the roller blades he and I were old roommates and stayed friends and he was killed in Iraq and then it just started you know more more roommates or friends just started compiling after that and it just just as that was going on on my combat tours were increasing and and I was either getting hurt or friends were getting hurt or wounded as that was going on my drinking started it's almost like you could follow it

as the intensity and trauma started going up the drinking started going up with it and then within the culture as I'm sure you know and the the military specifically the sealed teams are part of your special operations that's just part of it is you know you have that there's no other way to really off gas anything it's not like I mean I guess you could there's other ways but

“that's just the culture of it that's what you do and I found my star self-starting to pick up a bad”

habit of drinking too much and numbing my pain with alcohol probably I would say it started to become a thing around 2008 or so but it was building up to that and then it would just end up getting worse as the years went on what is the day do I yeah June 17th was the the night that Bob and micro killed 2005 do you do one of the specific on June 17th I do I started a tradition with any friends where I take a Chinese lantern which you can just buy on Amazon

and I'll take a Sharpie and I'll just write a message to the guys whether if it's Bob and Mike on June 17th our extortion I'll just write messages and then I'll I'll go and I'll have like a moment either I'll either have a friend with me or I'll do it solo sometimes I like tonight solo and I'll just sit with it for a moment and then launch the lantern and then just from an a therapy sense it's called experiential that technique but just like watching it

launch off and when I started that not to jump around but I really my best friend Rob Reeves

fun time and then he said I want to do something for Nate Hardy and Mike Cook a couple other

“seals that had been killed the friends of ours and in this like crazy madness he went and bought”

a couple Chinese lanterns and and we actually launched them almost to of a form of like memorize or memorializing them and part me and and because of that and then Rob would end up being killed in extortion a year and a half later and because of that I do that for all of those guys all those those dates I do it as a tip of the hat to Rob also but it also feels good that I'm almost like writing them a message and Sharpie and launching it I don't know it just feels nice and I would

encourage anyone who's struggling with grief of how to handle it I would encourage maybe

explain something like that Chinese lantern or even writing something down and just burning it in a fire pit or you're sank even but it's helped me at least maybe not for everyone but for me it's helped a lot to just deal with the grief how long I've been doing that I've been doing that for probably the last eight years yeah and it's interesting because yeah you can buy him in like ten packs on Amazon not that anybody's looking for a deal but it's just easy just a couple

“clicks at your door and and I think I'll continue to do that and I just can't imagine not doing that”

it only takes a few minutes but it's worth it the day of a family I have my my mom in my sister

my cousin Pete and that's pretty much it so I just have a small family no did he oh pardon me did Bob yeah he did he had a wife um my kind of kids yeah they had wives of a lot of those yeah everybody Bob and Mike actually were both identical twins what yeah they were identical no no they they had identical twins pardon me oh it's pardon me yeah but Bob had his own identical twin and Mike so the randomness of that and I went down to Fort Bragg to the Delta compound

tell Pam our specs to their memorial service there and I remember seeing both of their brothers there and they look exactly like them and and I remember just thinking like wow what the chances of of that happening yeah stranger than fiction almost but there's yeah it is tough to think of the ripple effect of you know it's one thing you know they went out like warriors truly in a hell of gunfire both of them running to the gunfire um a warrior's death but at the same time

it is the ripple effect of the families and all that I can't imagine what it must be like for them did you notice any differences between Delta and a group yeah there there was some nuanced things here and there like tactics and stuff like that but um the mentality was very similar and I feel like those exchange programs are those that era did a great job because later on we'd cross paths in Iraq when I was in my red squadron troop and the Delta troop would be there

and I know everybody they're right because I was like friends with them so this whole like kind of asshole sniffing type thing going out like comparing kind of went away and it was more of like um because we're more alike than we were different that way if maybe one of the breachers and our team would be like hey do you know the breacher over there so we can kind of I just want to know how they do things where a sniper once talked with sniper it'd be easy to just connect them but to

answer a question you know both of those units have all the money you could need so they have

“the best technology the best instruction the mentality both hardcore warriors I believe”

some of America's top you know the only difference I can see is on the navy side we're obviously the maritime unit so we're doing a lot of you know a maritime type stuff where the army's mostly focused not that they don't have some aspects of that but that's the big thing that's different outside of that though like I mean I know a lot of people want to hear some kind of like crazy comparison but having done not just that exchange but more operations with them later on I personally

have nothing but respect for all of those guys and and I don't know if there's too much of a difference to be honest and it's not just that but you know the other units that I was working with was a range of regiment just to give a shout out to them I've been in dragout fights with all three

certainly of course steel teams and SF you know it's just like this at the end of the day there

“is differences with everyone but the but we're all more alike than we are different I believe”

yeah did you ever do a maritime up over there no I didn't when the captain Phillips thing was going down I was actually a green team cadre instructor and I remember when it was starting to happen I ran up to my master because I was a tandem a tandem master and I knew they

always needed tandem masters that jump in whatever intel people or whatever and so I ran up there

with all my stuff and I asked him I was like don't worry pretty much like I'm here like I got my tandem rig I'm ready to go and I remember he just looked at me Jim looked right at me goes Alex don't worry we're going to be just fine without you like I need you down in training go back down to training I was like put but he's like trust me we don't need you and I was like I

“know you don't need me I'm just trying to get on as many as like whatever fine oh man”

we didn't talk about your first deployment at all first deployment at red yeah yeah we were I was a part of in a mega team which omega for the listeners it was essentially J-Sox special operations guys that were attached to CIA paramilitary and the reason why we were attached to them was because within the agency they don't have the ability to call in air strikes or metavac or medical helicopters if there's somebody gets wounded or killed and so we would be

assigned to them and and I was in this outpost called schgin Afghanistan which was in Pactica province right on the border of Pakistan really bad area you know getting rocketed or pretty much every day and it was right on I mean we were right at the bottom of base of a mountain which

was in Pakistan and the Taliban just launched rockets out of all day but that was my my first

deployment was in Afghanistan at over with red squadron and we actually had a couple of the army

“guys for this on that exchange that's what you guys I was contract and for J-R-S I was yeah”

would see the omega is that dang alley guys oh yeah I was wonderful the fuck yeah so did we yeah yeah we and we would I I did when there and I did one in Jalalabad I was yeah I was usually somehow affiliated with majority of them whether you know sometimes you'd be in those or you'd be in a strike force which would just meant that you're in a team of seals that were it's just you guys hitting targets or you'd rotate in as an omega rear more of an advisor so yeah I enjoyed those

that was you know oh four men technology was still making its you know improving but it was still not what it was very old school when I think back on it and but I loved that it was like wide open it was like cowboy country and as a young seal and operator it was like it was just

very cool and I and the experience to do that was it was great and for my first deployment was very

cool too but yeah then that second one was with the army and then just many more after that two of them over the first time he killed somebody yes I was that I know for sure I was there was we call this squirter which just meant a guy ran off of a target that we were targeting and he went into some bushes and this is an Iraq and I mean I'd shot my guy a ton of times that people and probably my rounds hit a guy while somebody else was shooting was the first time I know

and we the ISR so for the listeners an airplane was shooting a infrared laser at this bush saying like this is where this guy ran to and so we're like okay let's go get him and it was at night and a field and we had a military working dog named Spike who is also killed later on awesome dog and so we're kind of online my team of about five guys are so towards this bush and I just but there's this wind that was going back and forth so the dog needs the scent

but when it's windy like that it's really hard for it to kind of really get down to where this guy might be and we're getting closer and closer to this bush and we ask the ISR basically the airplane A to the kill that that sensor because it's kind of disorienting the closer you get to the bush so he killed it and we're kind of like looking and it doesn't look like there's anybody in there

see it because we don't have thermals in those days and unbeknownst to me there was in the bush there was a guy with a pistol pointing it right right at me and we're maybe just three or four feet

away from each other I can't see anything under my night vision and then finally Spike catches the

the scent and then like a missile just jumps right in and I could feel his body even like hitting me as as he hits this guy and I drops the gun or the gun and that's when I engage him and killed them

“um that was the the first of you know doesn't that feel that was I remember when it happened”

getting a jolt of adrenaline and um and then also I'm I'm happy with that when I'm not happy like a I'm a silica psychopath but like I'm happy that basically Spike saved my life and that I was able to to engage that guy because without Spike it could have been a very different situation so it was almost like a killer be killed so that adrenaline just really dumped and then it was and yeah afterwards like kind of thinking like wow I can't believe like that I actually

killed some like I know before I mentioned I know shot a bunch of people would never just like that

yeah but as time went on and as more operations went on and more killing went on this funny thing about like the human psyche it would just become like less and less and it would just be and then even as I would notice as more operations were happening my heart rate everything would just be more like just chill like just very even if bullets were flying don't get me wrong there's times where I would be amped up unless and I wasn't scared

at times but with the more reps it got to the point where it was more machine like it was more

tactics it was more to the point where I thought like almost felt bad for the enemy like you're

“not going to be like killing me which sounds arrogant but that's how we felt at the time as long”

as my feet were on the ground with my kid on and my buddies I just didn't feel I mean I knew there's a bunch of chance that I could easily get killed like many guys did but I just over time started feeling more and more confident with it which is as I reflect back on it kind of a weird place to be right that you're becoming more confident at killing and but that was just a world that that we lived in you know you talk about some of your friends coming back to

visit you and plan medicine yeah visit the other happen does it ever happen does the other happen does the oh the people that you've killed they ever visit you they do um yes I I've had when my symptoms of PTSD I was really struggling and I still do I have one where I once had to shoot a man really close and it must have hit something in between his eyes where it just came out like a

“hose and I would have I remember walking even in like shopping malls or just and just seeing”

that somebody approached me and look at me almost shoot me with blood out of there in between their eyes so things like that night mirrors night terrors regret you know sometimes you know we were dealing with a lot of suicide bombers and so lots of times you know people would run up to us and collect themselves off with a suicide vest or sometimes but what that would result in is the next time you see someone that is like reaching around their waist or whatever you might be

quicker on the on the trigger so there is and then that would lead to maybe a shot you wish you enough taken so there was just a lot of the as those wars grinded on and on and on the enemy got smarter it just got darker and those wars and it got to the point where I was like what the fuck are we doing over here and just because they just kept dragging on but to answer question yeah I struggled and sometimes I still do with people that I've killed especially as an assault or

a lot of that was very up close inside of rooms like gunfights within rooms and so it was you know when that's happening you're getting chunks of people's you know brain on your gear or your or skull or whatever it's just up close and personal it's brutal and something I wish us as humans wouldn't do to each other now that I look back on it but it's just because of the toll that it takes on on the human spirit you know just on myself my mental health I don't want that for for a

younger version of me who might be in the military unless it's like our countries getting attacked

of like we did all of that for what and so and I think that really is a negative for my own mental

health it'd be different if it was it was worth it but now it's more of like scratching you're kind of like what were we doing and you know we gave this generation of guys not only whether there's their lives or their physical you know like their bodies and all that but it's also their mental health because it is like what are we doing almost like my father's generation of Vietnam saying the same thing what did you arrive there at that mentality and probably 2011

so you were still on oh I was definitely and I was still in a salt team there's after the bin Laden raid is when I started feeling that way because it was like okay we got the guy

al Qaeda's out of Afghanistan yeah sure there's like some trickling in from time to time

“but it and I knew I saw what's happening in Iraq and I just I remember being a team leader and just”

you know we would get given these operations that were very dangerous and really truff areas like let's say in eastern Afghanistan and Konaar and things like that in the Cornwall and thinking like as a leader like some of my guys might get killed or wounded yeah we trained hard but it is war so is it worth it though you know I remember even as a team leader leaving on deployment and we'd have barbecues and my guys and my team their wives would tell

me like we we promised me that you'll bring back so it's like my husband and then just looking out them in line and just saying of course but in my mind being like the pressure you know of like the leader like I can't promise that and then thinking like then fast forward to the after mentioned type of missions I was talking about where it's like what are what are we doing like yeah that's gonna yeah we are the unit we are but I'm not trying to be gunshot but what are

we doing and that's when it started for me and that's also when my mental health started spiraling was I'm after the bin Laden rate like suicidal ideation and all sorts of things which was not good you know especially when you're a leader you know I mean looks like we're gear on up for one right now yeah you know we'll kind of advise you out for the guys because they they're very aware of what's going on there's no confusion anymore no they know this isn't for us no it's not

“I would just tell them I know what you have to do I know if you get asked to do something you”

have to do it however just know the consequences of what you're gonna do if the war gets to a point where things start getting dark and they do in combat or guys start getting feeding into the darkness it's not worth it just back off if you don't need to take the shot don't take the shot don't if you start feeling the bloodlust which is a thing and the guys were listening some people might not understand but some people will who are listening probably the guys are talking

about about the bloodlust don't feed into the bloodlust not for a war like that or if our country was being attacked maybe that's one thing but you will pay the fucking price if you've feed into the bloodlust for a you know a war that is just unjust that's my main advice for them and to be in my main mission especially for men especially for veterans is to be okay to reach off from mental health like it is worth it it's you deserve it in the sooner you can start getting

into that the better and the less yourself your family are gonna feel the impacts of it thanks for sharing that yeah don't take a break sure yeah look I am really picky when it comes to gear if I'm gonna use something every single day it has to actually perform and do what it says it's gonna do it can't just look good in a product photo

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privacy isn't paranoia it's protection take your privacy back download glacier today art Alex back for the break I had a good lunch sure did let's get into Neptune spear all right let's do it one did that come across you guys radar yeah in 2011 we had just gotten back from at least my true pet just gotten back from afghanistan and we just gotten off a leave and we went into the team room and all the sudden they asked for

all at the time I was a team leader all of the team leaders and they ran off a list team

leaders and two ICs so the second and charge of each team so the pretty much the most senior guys

are the more senior guys we wanted to see all in this office and one of this office and we knew something might be going on but we just gotten back from deployment so probably who knows it would be the some other squadrons were more likely gonna do something if we had to go out and do it but they mentioned that we had been chosen to do a mission and they didn't mention what it was but that we would be briefed on it later on and we all thought at the time the airb spring was going on in

Libya and it was rear bombing Libya and we thought it probably is something to do with Libya and not sure what that meant but so we went in they told us that and they keep it to ourselves like

“this was a very you know secret thing and so we ended driving down to another undisclosed base”

and I remember as we walked into this base seen a bunch of very high ranking people and the military and intelligence communities and knowing who they were and I'm talking like the high ranking people and thinking oh this is something big this is not maybe something in Libya like director yeah yeah very high yeah and like at moment Raven was there and yeah people from the agency like high ranking and that point I thought okay if there's something going on and we sat down

and the analyst started briefing us that essentially we think we know our song with one is living and when she said that I remember feeling because we had chased him for so long or chased his network for so long and obviously came up with nothing and I felt like almost puking just to have a human moment yeah a human moment of like I mean I'd like to say that it was like you know fuck yeah let's go get him and it was but it was also like whoa like we think we have him

and they went on and said we he's in a lot of about a bad Pakistan which is closer to India than it was Afghanistan so very deep in the Pakistan and they mentioned that we the Pakistan will not know about this operation and that we have to keep it very close-lipped and they went on and they talked about the dangers of it as far as surface to air missiles anti aircraft guns F-16s that the Pakistanis had and that we would be flying once again deep in Afghanistan right

on the border of India where they are having historical border skirmishes so they're on a heightened alert there and so it was going to be very dangerous to be a little flying there the likelihood of being shot down was I wouldn't say high but it was a possibility for sure and so there were briefness up on that and we didn't know for sure if he was there now the analyst said said oh he's

“there 100 percent and I remember thinking just from my experience that you just never say 100”

percent it's like you jinx it and I thought to myself like they don't know what they're talking

about you know there's no way anything is 100 percent maybe it's a high chance but I don't believe

that's 100 percent regardless we started doing some training on some mockups meaning they built essentially the compound the wall around the compound instead of a 20 foot high concrete center block wall was chain length fence which will come back to bite us in the uh later

know what it was like on the inside but at that unit or any of those types of units it's not that

“big of a deal of what's inside we just knew we'll figure it on the inside but it was the big”

movements of how we're going to take down the target contingencies and things like that that we need to to work out real quick yeah how many of you guys were there on the brief there was 23 of us plus those are 23 operators we're going to be on it we had a couple if I recall two to four alternates that would get briefed in so if one of the 23 guys got hurt in training or had a family emergency could it make it there was a pool of alternates that would go in there so I would say

and we had some support from intelligence to communications things like that so I mean I'd say

maybe 35 people total who's picking these guys that's a good question so it was picked from the

top from our squadron picked us and at the time one of the operators brought a great question which I don't disagree with was why do we not just pick one one of our three troops because with in each troop it's already designed to be self-contained we're now you're kind of cherry picking them we're experiencing guys so when it came to basic things like who's the breacher it's like oh let's figure out who the breacher is or it's the most simple things of who's going to grab the

vans to take us to the range and you know within a troop or a platoon or whatever people just know like oh that's so-and-so responsibility but we didn't have any of that and also there wasn't like it was

weird to work out the hierarchy so we were working through our own stuff but it was not it was told

to us who was going to be on it why didn't I just use a group I don't know I think their thought was this is the highest risk and profile mission um at least in the global war in terror perhaps um let's just say global and terror and so we don't want to mess it up so we want to pick the most senior guys I'm not saying I entirely agree with that if they just kept it with the unit but at the same time I wasn't about to complain about it right I was going to stick up my hand and be like because

“they might be like all right cool Alex like uh yeah if you want to do it that way you're going to be”

on the back of team whatever so uh what would you have done a troop oh we've done a troop I would have picked one of the troops I would have probably known if I was the squadron match if and this is an a knock on that squadron match if at all because I don't know what he was dealing with or whatever but I would have picked probably the most proficient the strongest of my three troops and I probably would have picked it but um yeah that's what I would have likely done I worked out regardless

but um just because of all of the who's who it was a bunch of team leaders so it was kind of like who's in charge of the team leaders um like is there a senior one or and then there's just a lot of excess bandwidth that went into figuring things out that was already figured out within a troop that had been established so they we started our training well put that raised a lot of questions to them why are you crazy people are getting pulled out of the teams yeah and then it was hard

because they told us this information and it and everybody not just from the squad or other squad are like well what are the red squadron guys up to you it with internally it's like and so you're getting hit from every angle from and you just have to be like no I can't talk about it like

“I know for me I was not gonna be the guy that that gave it up I remember even at the time I was”

single uh and going out in Virginia Beach and having buddies hit me up like hey let's go out to whatever you know like chicks oyster bar whatever and uh insane no I can't go out I'm not going out because I know like it's gonna like I don't want to be out one of my buddies is going to be like here's a shot at Tequila like let's do it and then like hey so what's been going on with X Y and Z so I remember thinking of myself like I will not go out because I don't even want to put myself in that

situation um to where I might say something so I just stayed in my house just like watching movies like young single guy right on a Friday night like I'm just gonna watch a movie and um how old are you 31 at the time yeah I had just uh got in my team as an assault team leader and uh I was at the top of my game operationally at that time and so yeah so we start planning for it the role that I had was uh so in the compound the primary entrance was actually the back door of this primary building

and that's where they felt that been modding in his careers were in his son were living and um and there's a not there's a couple other small buildings but our role my job was to essentially with my team we would have loved to have not been this aggressive but we did not have the time or the fuel to do it so we had to fly our helicopter right to the right in front of that back door kick out a fast rope which to the listeners a fast rope is essentially a fireman's pull

and so we were gonna fly right there with one sniper overlooking the compound just in case

“the guy came out with an AK and then through the fast rope fast rope down and then my team was”

to essentially go right up the middle of their compound and so that was our role another team was supposed to fast rope on top of the roof and we were gonna meet in the middle and then there was another element that went off to the side too there's another career another small building to take that out and so that was all supposed to happen simultaneously once again we would have loved to have been able to like land way out and some field and sneak up that would have been great but we just

did not have the fuel one of the main things was we had to accomplish this mission within 38 minutes because we didn't have the fuel to do it so if we did not get out in 38 minutes we were told you're gonna have to just allow them all up and and just fight off until that's it or you become a political prisoner what's talked about that also is in the military there's for people who don't know there's things called speed balls or essentially bags full of ammunition

extra ammunition breaching charges medical equipment and that's usually your take on a mission especially if you knew there's a chance that you might have to allow them all up and so you

would kick out these bags so that you could have a ton of ammunition but the problem is we couldn't

take those because of the weight restrictions because we're so deep in the Pakistan to burn fuel so and they would even asking guys like hey are there is there even weapons and stuff that you guys can ditch and I was crazy looking back on over the time I was like I can ditch my pistol

“because I might not need that of course I needed it but I was like I could ditch that and I remember”

thinking all I had was four magazines did you ditch it I did and all I had was four I remember my load out it was four magazines so like three across my chest one of my four sixteen my rifle I had a frag grenade a thermo barricang grenade an internal charge and that was it it was just a streamlined as a god because we just did not have the weight and I remember even thinking like

well maybe I'll sneak in a magazine or two nobody will know the difference I literally thought

that I would I'll probably say here in a minute but I just we didn't have the weight and so the alamo up thing was a death sentence essentially that it's like we just will not have no matter how good of shots we are we just will run out of ammunition if we don't make it past 38 minutes or if we if we stay longer than 38 minutes so we started so that was a big factor also each helicopter was had the ability to do the whole mission by itself meaning there was a high

“chance that one of them was going to get shot down on the insertion into a bottle bed by the”

Pakistani Air Force and so instead of a normal mission would be okay if a helicopter gets shot down or has engine problems whatever the other one will divert and now the new mission is to recover those guys and figure that out but on this particular mission it was that goes down we are going we are already committed that will figure that out later but that other helicopters going straight for it and that other helicopter had the ability to take to do everything it's obviously with half the

guys but we were already committed so some of the things that they were looking to do is to be all together the intelligence from the building but also to take biometrics from the body of bin Laden meaning taking tissue samples and things like that and we also had to plan for a safe room meaning for the listeners sometimes what you get in a high ranking people there might be almost like a safe like a closet that is fortified that somebody might lock themselves in

so if we ran into that that was going to be a time restraint so how do we get through that so there was some breaching charges and things like that that we had but each helicopter had their own in case they had to run into that another factor that we had to worry about was how do we actually take it down in the speed that we need to of course we want to take it down fast however when you take things down fast you're increasing the chance of a guy getting wounded because you're not

you're slowing I mean you're not going slow you're going fast so if a guy does get wounded and wasn't that we were worried about myself or one of the guys worried about like I might get wounded it was kind of it's a very strong possibility but it was the speed that it would take to if a guy does get wounded one of the guys now we have to render him aid now we have to get him on a stretcher now we have to now it's just time time time starts taking so it's like okay how do we

kind of do a hybrid of what we're going fast but kind of cheating a few like extra slow moments here and there to buy down risk to getting wounded not that we're worried about being wounded but because of the timeline other factors was how do we retrieve all of the intelligence as fast as we can because likely the target will go down and now we're thinking it's likely going to be a

little things these little planning things that we're trying to work out and then we and we just keep wrapping it out and we're going through different contingencies what if one helicopter

“crashes which is of an important thing because that's what would happen but it's like what if one”

crashes what do we do what if you know they hop in a vehicle and it drives down the street as we're inserting does one helicopter go after it and the other take down the building there's all these things that we had to work through and so we keep training keep training for if I recall is about

two and a half weeks or so we went to some different sites but one major factor was on that first

mockup was the chain length fence um for the helicopter would come in the chain length fence that was mimicking the 20 foot high cinder block wall so I'll come back to why that is important here in a minute but so we kept wrapping it out and then finally we deploy and I'm still not thinking that it's going to happen it's just like now this is two balzy of a call for the president to make because we're essentially invading a sovereign country without them knowing to potentially go after

a guy who's potentially there right and and if something happens that team is going to be like I mentioned either dead or political prisoners so that's going to be a whole flagmire to worry about politically so I person was like I still don't know if this is going to happen of course I'm taking

it serious like that yes this is going to happen but the back of my mind I'm thinking I doubt it

so we still end up everything is going and we deploy to Afghanistan and and once we got there and we're still just kind of getting ready and we're still playing this hole not telling everybody what we're doing and we kind of had this cover story of well we got surge back over because there's a big campaign coming up that was kind of our story uh so if we saw somebody in the childhood that because we had just my troop had just been in Afghanistan in that same base maybe

six weeks prior maybe five weeks prior so we were had to work through a cover story of like somebody like the guy who works in the chow haul or one of the range replatunes that are there that you know you might know these guys and they're like what are you guys doing back and our story was like well we're here because there's I don't know or there's some big campaign I'd rather be back on leave or whatever so we kind of had to play that game until the final one thing a caveat

then we'll bring back to well we were briefing the president Obama at the time asked our planners well what happens you guys keep talking about these F-16s what if the guys are flying back after the mission and the Pakistani scramble their F-16s to shoot down the helicopters

“what are you guys going to do about that and um the military I think and I'm just assuming”

they didn't want to come up with too drastic of plans because they wanted the mission to go or like they did not believe that it would get approved so our bosses were kind of like well you know we're going to just love to figure it out however president Obama to his credit did say I want a couple flights of F-15s or whatever it is whatever fighter jets we have that will shoot down the Pakistani F-16s if they're coming after our guys I will take a hit on it and I remember

we're hearing that and just being like that is balsy like like hats off to them that through all of that he could have easily just said well okay the military guys are saying they're going to just pet a little metal on the helicopters and fly out of their hopefully they get away from the F-16s but he had the gumption to just be like I'm not going to let our guys if we're sending our guys in to do that and they've in their flying back they're not going to get shot down by F-16s

so we're going to have our F-15s or whatever you guys decide in the military whatever's a blood best platform to shoot down their airplanes so fast forwarding back to the night of the raid and you know we were getting how long how much time a student before the raid happened that we found out yeah I would say from brief that's a great question maybe I might be off but it feels like under a month maybe under a month yeah because we we train for

maybe two and a half or weeks and then we blew out to Afghanistan and we were there if I recall maybe like seven eight days before we finally launched I mean I might be off a dare to but

“it that's what it feels like that's why I recall that it was under a month that we got the”

information where we thought we were going to do something in Libya and then all the sudden here we are flying to Afghanistan going after the most wanted man in the world and as we were sitting there I remember thinking to myself you know my role was as I mentioned to take the team my team right up the middle of the compound and then also I was in charge of all the intelligence gathered and I was like my secondary role and I'm going into it I knew

we knew as the higher up you got and I'll kite it wasn't always the case but the higher up you got

the more fanatical things got so you would run into more suicide vests or s-fests more houseborn

we're likely going to be running into that and so knowing that that like our role of going right up the middle like that was going to be at least in my mind that was going to be a time that was going to be a real deciding factor if somebody's going to run out with a suicide vests or a houseborn IED and just blow us up right there and as for me as the assault team leader

which usually you wouldn't do this but I thought I would be the first one in the door because

I would like and not it's just not me Alex West but a lot of those guys would on the same thing that if anybody is going to run into a s-fast it's going to be the guy leading it and because I know the guys behind me would or just as qualified they could have easily picked up where I left off but I just thought if I'm going to I'm not going to tell somebody to do that unless I'm going to do it so as we on I remember we finally get the the go like it's going to be a go you guys are

start kidding up and I remember you guys don't when you got that we were if I recall we had just had some food maybe it was the equivalent of I would say maybe 8 p.m. local time so we had just had

dinner we were kind of hanging out we knew that it was in this window of time because of the

elume cycle are the moon cycle that it was likely going to be in this window of time and if we missed it and didn't launch that we were either going to have to wait for the next elume cycle and so we'd have to stay in Afghanistan for nearly 30 days or likely around that or it was you were just going to get sent home and this whole thing would fizzle out so it was kind of like on the edge of it could have been any one of those three things that could have happened equally

“I believe at least but the intelligence people kept saying no he is there 100% and then I had that”

same old thing of like yeah I don't know if anything's 100% but I mean I appreciate your intensity

and your confidence I just don't believe it but finally they came and they said it's a go

get your kit on and so we started kidding up and I remember we got on the helicopters and I remember still thinking there's no way like this is just another spin and then they started cranking the engines and I just thought okay like that's interesting but I'm still not convinced and then all of a sudden we started taxing and I started hearing some radio calls and then all of a sudden we started to take off and I just remember thinking we'll all be dead like we are

doing this thing and then what would it was an hour and a half flight and I remember which is a lot of time to sit in your head and think about what's about to happen because what was going to happen within an hour and a half a few things was going to happen you were either going to get the man and get out of there you were going to get stuck there in Alamo up and die you and all of your friends you're going to get stuck there and become a political prisoner and those

were like the three outcomes that could have happened from that and so as we're flying in I'm just

“remember thinking like okay and then feeling the pressure of it just to be human about it you know”

I have a human nervous system we had human so it's like even though yeah we were the team we had the resume all of the confidence to do it I still was having these human emotions of just like the weight of it because if one let's say it was like the super blow can imagine if I'm an FL player it's like wow the super rules coming like a lot of people are watching this is the pinnacle of my career it's at the end of the day you throw a bunch of interruptions and lose the game you're okay

it's not that big of a deal on this one it was if we mess up not only are we dead but we're also making our our unit our military our country new yorkers all of these people are we're going to let them down so it's the gravity of fucking payback that was on our shoulders that we were fortunate enough to get picked for to be able to deliver that for the American people and New Yorkers and so that

“weights on us it was just overwhelming as we're flying in and I remember just thinking about that”

and as I close my eyes and visualize New Yorkers jumping out of the twin towers and just thinking like we have to have payback and then also thinking like oh my gosh the weight of this is crazy and then the closer we started you know the another 20 minutes would pass another 20 minutes and I remember just feeling overwhelmed and getting into like just taking deep breath almost of just like I need a content there's a lot going on here and then just I remember looking out the window of the helicopter

and seeing a bunch of the topography reminded me of like East County San Diego and just thinking okay that looks familiar and then just starting to do some mental reps in my head of like okay the reality is this is not that hard of a target it I mean you've done way harder your unit is done way harder all the guys around you are the best that you've ever served with so you you guys will you will

not getting out but you'll pull it off and I just kept doing more deep breath and visualizing it

and finally started to like calm myself down because that was an hour and a half of just thinking about

“what if what if and then as the closer we get I remember we're three minutes out we opened up the”

the helodores and we unlocked our undone our de-rings so for the listeners lots of guys would carry a runner on their belts that could clip into a de-ring of the helicopter so that if the helicopter pulled off to the side you would not could flung out of the helicopter but we had all on clip those because we were getting close because we were about to faster up you don't want to faster up with that in because you won't go anywhere so we all on clip I'm holding onto the back kit

of one of my operator friends who's going to be the guy who throws the fast rope and I'm holding on to him I'm looking around at all the guys hearing some communications calls and then I'm hearing one minute out and I start to see the town and I can feel just it was like cool like spring breeze type thing I had a long sleeve cammy top on and that's it I could feel a little little cold nothing crazy and I'm holding on to him and I'm just completely dialed in like as dialed in as as I've ever

“been and then I just remember we fly finally 30 seconds out and then all of a sudden we fly right”

in front and I can see the compound what we have done rehears so many times so I'm holding one of the operators you know another snipers got his gun pointed towards the main building and as we start to hold station right there what had happened was the when we're doing the chain length fence the rotor wash from the helicopters would go through through the chain length fence and also this night the temperature was a little bit hotter than expected which would be a one little micro factor here

but when we got in there and they had these 20 foot high walls that rotor wash would hit the walls and come back up almost like an vacuum towards the helicopter so it had nowhere to go all that hot rotor wash would come off and it destabilized the helicopter and spun us in a very violent 45 degree dive while we were right there so in one moment I see the building I'm holding on to my buddy's kit and the next minute the whole world goes 45 degrees and spins yeah right in

the most like it's second one of the operation right where like 10 seconds earlier it was like

okay don't fuck this up do this and that okay got it got it okay feeling confident too okay the whole world is spinning and we're diving into the into the earth thankfully the pilot being world class was able to bury the nose of the helicopter into the ground while the rest of the helicopter the tail was on a on the 25 foot wall so it was almost like a 45 degree angle of the helicopter with its nose buried in the ground we impacted I'm a nose to me at the time

it hernied a disk in my back along with a bunch of the other guys on the helicopter a very common injury we all had was guys had hernied a disk but you weren't feeling it because you were

“your adrenaline was through the roof I remember though holding on to my buddies kit though so we”

impact and we're starting to teeter back and forth and I remember from you know being a previous helicopter crash but also training like hey let the rotors settle before you jump out so I'm thinking myself just let the rotors settle and I'm holding on to my look over to look at the rest of the helicopter imagining that a lot of our guys got flung out of the helicopter but I wanted to get some situational awareness of where everybody was at and the moment I turned

my head the guy that I was holding on to I let up just ever so slightly and he just bolted out the door and he was a big guy and I remember looking at him and thinking he's dead because I feel us you could see the rotors kind of doing this thing like his head's going to get locked off and he just kept running right through it and I was just like well all of the time I can't leave him so then I jumped right after him and some of the other guys and so I follow him just trying

to keep my head as low as possible and then we just get out of the rotor wash and as we're running

for this next gate one thing I reflected on later was I never stopped to turn around to look at the

helicopter ever again because my mentality was if there's guys killed or wounded that does not matter right now which is something I would have never done on a previous operation it was America needs us if it's just the two of us to start this operation and to kick the sink off then the two of us are going to be what America needs right now like I cannot even spend one second looking at what's going on back there and so we just kept running that guy came up blue one of the gates and

then we ran up I came up and I cleared there's like this little almost chicken shed type thing

I ran up to it and the rest of my team was behind me and as I mentioned before I knew I wanted to

“be the first guy in and I saw one of the couriers poke his head down the wall at me and I shot him”

through the left eye and when I saw him though fall into his room and I just thought like he's going to clap himself off so I went against a lot of our SOPs because there's a bunch of open doors and I just thought he's going to blow himself up I'm going to chase after him and I just ran sprinted down the hallway to go run after him across these open doors which is kind of dangerous in a way because you don't want to split yourself and the other guys if there's a bad guy in those

but I thought the the risk was this guy blowing himself up which not only would it let's say

killer wound my team but it would completely throw the mission off we would never get out in 38 minutes

so I took the chance to sprint down the hallway after him as I went into the hallway into his room he was crouch over around his waist and I'm worried about the suicide vest and I go to take a shot and his wife jumps on him like a human shield and I remember I take one shot hit him and I go to take a second and her arm goes right in front of my barrel and I shoot through her forearm into her husband's body but on bananas to me at the time somehow the round must have ricocheted

in there and while she was being a human shield on him she took around and both were killed and she was pregnant and had the baby right there holy shit and had the baby yes gave birth right there it all happened right there like he was in one moment I unfortunately you know I killed him while doing that she was killed as a human shield

and then she must have been in her third trimester she was very pregnant and then when she

“died I believe just like released the baby and that all happened right there so I had that helicopter”

crash ran up and those like next like 20 seconds were just extreme and then I remember when that happened and I look over and there's a small little eight-year-old girl just standing there staring at me holding a stuffed animal with pig tails and I remember just seeing that and I'm I know we had just crashed a helicopter that I'm I'm walking dead because unbeknownst to me I didn't not know that our QRF are for the listeners quick reactionary force are backup guys from our squadron

are our command we're in a 47 a helicopter that was screaming for us as fast as it could go but that wasn't we didn't know that at the time we thought I thought okay we're we're walking dead we just crash we're not gonna get out of here I did not know backup was coming like that because of the F-16s and all of that but back to that little girl I knew I was walking dead but in all the chaos I'm even hearing another team that's getting in a gunfight and the background

I know that they're in contact also with one of the other couriers I hear that and I had the wear with on the moment to just take a knee and just put my hand on her shoulder and just tell her how sorry it was and and then just snap back and do it and just thought okay I've got a job to do and then went back out and helped clear the rest of the bottom floor but while doing that

“I remember seeing the steel door that was going leading up the stairs and at that moment I knew”

he was there I knew I'm like there's no way somebody puts a door like that going up to the you know up there stairs and so at that point the same breacher you know I was he's starting to put this a charge on there and we're putting on and I remember saying like put on the big a type of charge which I won't disclose but our biggest charge was like put on the biggest one we need to blow the fuck out of this place because we're we are walking dead and we're not we're going to

finish this and get this guy no matter what it takes because the American people in New Yorker is dependent on us so we throw on this massive charge on the door and as that's happening well the other helicopter was supposed to land as I mentioned prior land on the top of the roof but because of contingencies because we crashed they did the right thing to buy down risk

and landed in a field basically a lot housing lot right next door they lynched it's a

plot of land they landed and those guys started getting out started running towards where we were at so they're finally starting to get there but as the team there I'm coordinating with them hey don't come in yet we're about to blow this big charge you're going to run right into it so coordinating them to make sure that they don't come running into it I'm making sure all the other team got our assaulters are out of the way and there was one moment where I tucked back into

into the room where I'd killed that family and that little girl was to where

moment where I was like we're dead there's no way we're getting the fuck out of here

“send it boom and then at that point the rest of the guys came in they filled in behind this”

point man started going up the encountered Khalid which was the sun with an AK47 which is a horrible situation to be in where you're going upstairs while a guy has an AK47 but he was engaged and killed and then we started making our way up and then one of the guys saw the man engaged bin Laden and then and then the rest of that those guys went up to that room to finish him off

I was on the second floor clear the rest of that and then immediately I wasn't as I mentioned

in charge of all the intelligence gathering so I went right into the mode of like seeing what we had and just thinking this is a a goldmine like we have to get as much out of this as possible I hear more shots upstairs killing bin Laden I wouldn't know at the time but they whatever those guys finished him off and then at that point it's just grabbing as much stuff as we can I'm also thinking of myself like we're still like okay well is this okay we're going to grab

this stuff and try to get out of here what's going on I just get an update that our QRF is coming to pick us up so we there's a chance we might get out of here I hear the Geronimo call which was essentially the call sign saying that we had gotten bin Laden and I thought to myself like wow we actually pulled it off like thank God we did I still am not sure we're going to get out of here but at least we did this and and then at that point they start my mastery of comes over and says like

all right the group I was in which is the chalk or for the listeners that that's just a term

for the helicopter basically the group of guys that I was in like hey you guys are going to be out

on this next helicopter and then they started prepping the other helicopter they're going to blow it very I mean we didn't have much time we were doing the best we could do to blow that helicopter so that the Pakistanis wouldn't get it it was all over the news of course or whatever but we did the best we could on the time constraints we had and then at that point the the helicopter comes in we grabbed

“the body bin Laden's body and I remember it was one of the guys grabbing him and who we were running”

so fast to try to get out of there that I remember my heart rate must have been like 180 feet some like just dragging his body I'm covered in like laptops and a bunch of intelligence and all of my gear and we're just running out to this essentially this lot that our helicopter came in we threw the body in we jumped on top of I jumped on top of them amongst the other guys we flew off they blew the the helicopter and then the QRF helicopter came in and pulled out the rest of the

guys as we start flying back I just remember I just kept getting bin Laden's elbow in my ribs the whole time and I remember thinking like this is the scariest man on earth he's just an old man brittle no muscle on him and his elbows in my side and it won't it's like I couldn't get comfortable and and we keep flying however I know we're way behind 38 minutes I'm not sure what we're going to do it was kind of beyond the what I was more worried of the inside of the building

our leadership was working on you know the big picture stuff of logistics of getting us out and as we're flying out we had something called a forward area refuel point or farf all that means for the listeners is that we had gone into Pakistan in a field and put a fuel bladder and there and made a makeshift gas station because we did not have enough fuel to get out of Pakistan

“but as we're flying to that that farf we're flying in and I remember there's light started flashing”

in the cockpit and then the crew came back and said hey make sure you're clipped in those earrings again because we might go back in we might crash this and I remember thinking whoa third things coming threes you know this would be my third helicopter crash second in that day and and so I just remember thinking like wow okay and we finally made it though on fumes landed got out I was told to go on the 47 just for weight reasons myself and another guy

we got back into the helicopters and then started flying for Pakistan unbeknownst to us the Pakistanis had started to scramble their F-16s and we had our F-15s that were just standing by right on the border to shoot them down and so as we're flying back I remember when we finally

crossed over into Afghanistan the pilot came on the radio and said I thought you guys would never

thank you to hear this but we're back in Afghanistan you know if that'd be that happy to hear this

fist pump being and like hitting each other up on the on the bird on the 47 hours on as we finally flew in like we actually pulled it off we still had to get there but it was like wow we're finally back in Afghanistan we land and you know get all of our stuff out and it's a Jalalabad Afghanistan and pull it all out and then unbeknownst to me one of our guys got out and he had been shot in his

bolt cutters and at fragged his traps million dollar wound thank God but everybody also

a little banged up from the helicopter crash but we were all in one piece and from there we flew to

“Bagram which was the main Air Force base there and I remember as we walked in there was just like”

the whole world's intelligence communities that are waiting for us and I remember just being because I was in charge of it and and asking them to basically back the fuck off because we still have like you know guys love their gear on everybody wanted a piece of it which they were fine with but I just remember thinking like we we aren't even organized right now we're all in like somebody's like soccer you know bag you know we've got a bunch of hard drives in there that we pulled off target or pillow case

or what we just weren't organized and we didn't have time so finally we we laid everything out and we started the turnover of all of the intelligence at the time they laid the body out and there's this has been said before but one of the guys was the same height as been

locked in so they made them lay down just to make sure okay is the right height because we never

take measure one of the yeah so that was going on there taking samples from him he had been shot in the face so it's hard to really get a match but they did take a bunch of his DNA and it came

“back as a positive on him we went in and we did our debrief and then we I remember after the debrief”

was over and everything was turned over I was in my camis my camouflage uniform still still sweaty and I remember somebody saying the president is going to make an announcement and we're just standing there in this hanger on this TV and just watching president Obama come down and just tell the American people that you know we had taken up in law and and it was at that moment it really hit me because before that I was just an operator mode but then I finally seen the president say that in

the word those words coming out of his mouth and as someone who was you know on the invasion of afghanistan to then be on that mission and just like that my whole life like a lot of us veterans you know had fought this thing from that generation and so it was like I can not believe

“we pulled that off and I remember going back and you know finally taking a shower and I'm walking”

back from a shower trailer and then just thinking to myself like still like I cannot believe we pulled this off I don't know is that I can't believe I was fortunate to be on that mission and we and we were alive and then we hopped on a plane and we flew straight to Virginia Beach in a sea 17 within air refueling it was about 17 hours straight and then as we landed and open the door and our command was there just cheering us on but that's pretty much like the way you're

an ocean yeah I feel so fortunate to have been a part of it to be a small part of that and one thing I want to say is it wasn't just you know the 23 guys in interpreter it was the years of the intelligence community working their ass off for years it was the helicopter cruise it was the mechanics it was all the people that contributed to everything it was not just those 23 guys in an interpreter it was the nation and that I'm so proud that we were able to pay back for the American

people and New Yorkers man I hope that was a little feeling yeah I even now when I sometimes forget about it every now and then and then it'll cross my mind and now just it's so nice to be

able to be like wow I was just a small part of this incredible experience you know and it wasn't

just it was the ability to you know as I said as we're flying in imagining New Yorkers jumping out of the twin towers you know and then and being fortunate to do something about it yeah it was an incredible experience and feeling did you make the president I did we did let's see here I can't remember the amount of time but shortly after we flew to Fort Campbell we're the president and vice president Biden at the time we're addressing the 101st airborne and they had us in a

separate kind of private room that he came in and you know he we were able to meet him

Obama I such a I've heard this from other people but maybe it took me meeting him such an

“intelligent well-spoken guy a lot of charisma and swagger and he just thanked us and told us he was”

proud of us and that America was proud of us and it felt very genuine by the way it wasn't like a in my opinion it wasn't some sort of political stunt or whatever you could tell he was really proud and to be honest I'm surprised and that he actually had the guts to do it because that was such a gutsy call because we did not really know as 100% and then to line up the F-15's and all of that like that would have all written on him if we wouldn't have gotten out of there and

all him out up and we're all killed their political prisoners that would have politically been horrible so to just go for it I give him respect for that yeah what did you say to the little girl I told her in that moment that I was so sorry and I have and I've struggled with that with her ever since the fact that that happens I've seen her in my own healing and like plant medicine and she's visited me and and I've even told her and those experience I don't know if she's still

alive or not but her spirit I can feel it and it's more of a you know your father was a soldier and I was a soldier and we met essentially on the battlefield that I'm sorry that your family got caught in between it and there's no way that her and I would have ever met any other circumstances we're from two different worlds but in a way it was almost like she was a a a victim a child

“who was a victim of war almost as I was from my father and Vietnam and I think that should be a”

cautionary tell for future wars not that been lawed and didn't deserve it but it's just for there's that story that I have there's stories like that from a lot of veterans that have to experience that didn't carry that in what's tough about that is I'm so proud of that mission but it came at a human cost and a human toll that here I am years later still struggling with having that happen in front of that little girl who didn't deserve that however

yeah I don't know how to heal or I mean I'm trying to heal from it but it's just one of those things where just because it was a massive payback it that I still feel it I still feel the the weight of that room in particular yeah yeah what was the day after like we I remember one of my body picked me up from the ocean at the airport the military airport and took me out to

“get some dinner like a steak dinner I think and a drink and I remember that was enough for me”

like I was in about like go party or anything I was just so tired and so I basically slept a lot

and my back was really hurting me from the crash and going into medical and I think the next few days were more of like getting evaluated for injuries and a lot of afteraction so there's a lot of you know it was getting flown up to DC quite a bit to do afteraction stuff but it was a lot of that and then when that dust settled after a couple weeks at a unit like that is like okay get over it we're getting back in there you've got house house runs you've got trips you

guys start planning for x y and z the worst not over it was the like shown back at the shown back up at the squadron it was great you know I mean we were so proud the squadron was proud you know other squadrons were you know professionally kind of like Mary if we would have done it

we would have never crashed the helicopter you know some of the shit talking here and there

like you know too shy that's not that's pretty funny but I just think um yeah guys were so proud and and so as I you know there was just it was nice to be able to have that but it was in that world short lived because as we you know got back into the swing at things I'm gonna jump around a little bit here but gold squadron deployed a little bit later that summer

because I was a selection instructor and my best friend Rob Reeves we would always talk about

“man we can never get on a mission together we've been serving together for so long we were roommates”

for a long time and you know we just like is rolling it on a mission together and so when in between selection schedules there's a gap of time I went over with the gold squadron two troop so that I could just you know get a state current as an instructor but also to be able to do a missions with Rob and I ended up getting hurt up in the mountains on that deployment coming back early and was an instructor but then after the been law dinner aid when they deployed again

they were providing a quick reactionary force or backup for an element that needed help and as they flew in their call sign was extortion 17 and their whole troop of guys was flying in and we're shot down and killed and so for which devastated the NSW community of course as you know and also a dev group community because you know talking in one moment you know your friends with all these guys in the next moment a whole troop of guys is killed so you have 12 to 20

phone numbers in your phone that every single one of them is dead and so you go from the highs

of the been loud and raid may second to August it's where the extortion was shot down you know

so just a few months later and just the high the highest of highs and the lowest of lows

“and when that happened I remember the command just went into full on mode of just like let's get”

these casual the officers out like it was mayhem they did a great job hats off to the command but that amount of death toll was the highest amount of loss of the afghan or the global warrant error and then the highest amount of casualties in the seal history so when that happened we started going to a bunch of funerals and I went to robbs and then I was getting ready to go to one of my really other close friends Heath Robinson he had me in his will as a pal bear

and I was getting ready to do that and it was to my team like Alex and you take your team and go back overseas to help backfill the guys and so I couldn't even do that and a lot it wasn't just me a lot of guys were in that same boat and so we blew out to go back overseas it's a backfill to troop yeah as we we couldn't even bury them you know or be pulp errors or give ulogies because we needed to be back out there to to keep the fight going and that experience on that

era and command just devastated everybody and that spun me out uh with my own mental health which was already on on edge for how many combat deployments I had done in my own childhood stuff to now you have a ton of your best friends were just killed in an instant and you can't even

“more than them because you have to go back overseas and then that's when I started really spiraling at that point”

man I'm sorry dude I appreciate a man yeah yeah yeah it's just uh and you can't replace

two troop you those guys were so experienced and talented and obviously it just as people incredible

you can replace them in the military right you can have you can fill those spots but you just you can't replace that especially at that type of unit you just can't replace them any guys like that yeah and but life went on unfortunately I mean it didn't really go on with the morning but it was like okay back overseas and then kept deploying and then on my last deployment I was deployed as we were going to salt a strike force team basically I was in a salt team leader

and we were just hitting targets in eastern Afghanistan and the wheels were really coming off for me it was almost like I just couldn't take it anymore and also the fact that that happened where they were all killed and that and I didn't know what we were doing and the afghan were at that point like what were we doing we'd already killed the modding we'd driven the majority of all kind of out of Afghanistan and now we're fighting the Taliban and so it's like what are we doing and

they're asking you know us or me to lead my assault team and these on these raids which I was happy to do I wasn't backing down but I was also having all of their wives telling me they bring back my husband and it was for something that I did not believe in however being in that leadership position you had to keep going and it was during that time that my as I mentioned my mental health was starting to spiral I was like being really outspoken when I normally wouldn't have

dude you're right like calm down it was just coming out that way and then and I started

“getting suicidal ideation going on and then I remember where it culminated I was sitting in my room”

in Trilaw about Afghanistan and I remember how just sitting there with my 416 my assault rifle on my lap and I'm looking at it and I'm just thinking I just want to end it and then I'm taking it and I'm like pulling the gun putting it like do I go to the forehead do I go to the mouth like how do I finish it I just have to finish it I'm in so much pain and then I'm thinking of the irony of this particular rifle that I had killed dozens of combatants with that this was also going

to be the rifle that was going to take my own life and I'm in this dark, dark place and I'm just talking myself up do it no don't do it do it don't do it don't do it wrapping it wrapping it shoot don't do it wrap it do it maybe I shouldn't use my rifle maybe my pistol what if I don't want my buddies to have to clean up all my stuff maybe I should shoot myself in the chest all of these things were going on in my head wrap wrap and then as that's happening it's getting

closer I could feel it like I'm almost there I'm going to do it and then all this sudden boom boom and the siren start going and the Taliban is attacking our base and in that moment I snapped out of it it was like I have to man a position on the wall as a team leader and grab my kit

and ran to the wall where I had to meet our j-tak to basically start if we needed to call

an airstrikes to fight off the Taliban so then I man the wall and I remember thinking to myself the irony of in that moment of all moments right that I could have been doing that that we got to talk about the Taliban essentially the Taliban saved my life by attacking the base holy shit yeah yeah I would continue to you know be struggling and thankfully that was my last tour I came back from that and I was earmarked to continue on to work up the pipeline to get in a

higher forms of leadership within the command and I went to a traumatic brain injury clinic called the National Entrepid Center of Excellence or NICO which is in Bethesda and that's when I got in there and they started doing a bunch of brain scans and saw you know scar tissue in my brain from traumatic brain injury and was diagnosed with you know major depressive disorder PTSD suicidal ideation all these things and then I just started thinking like I am I don't know if I'm going to

make it I literally did not know if I if I would make it and then I kept going back to what I did in Buds or green team or selection was like just make it to the next meal just that old saying like I don't know if I can do that and it's like okay I can't do that I can't make it a lunch I don't know if I can do this life do this is life I can't know if I can do it so okay make it five more minutes just five more minutes and they're like okay cool 10 more minutes

“that's how bad I was struggling and I made the decision at that point like I can't continue to”

serve I can't keep deploying I'd done 15 combat deployments in a row and I was like I have to get out of here and so I took orders I requested and went out to the West Coast to San Diego for my last few years to just work in school houses or training commands I remember I was offered the ability to medically retire and I thought about it but I was at and when that happened I was maybe at 17 18 years and I and there's nothing wrong with it but to me I was like you know

I'm just I'm doing a little bit better not a lot better but I'm you know now I'm in therapy and at the time I was on medication and I was like surfing more all these things like okay I can I just make it another six months like I kind of want to finish what I started to hit the 20 year mark I'm right there am I going to regret that and during that time is when I my psychiatrist had said hey I know you're a surfer there's this surf clinic at the naval

hospital I mean what they do is they take all of these injured or wounded veterans active duty

“and they take them out surfing in Delmar and San Diego I think it'd be important for you Alex”

to just go and volunteer help get these guys in maybe give them the sort whatever it is like I'm glad he did he was like do you need to do something and so um and so I started volunteering at the the surf clinic and it was just that like helping veterans get in and out of the water basic surf lessons and they were just using surfing as a form of therapy and as I was there is when I started to recognize that there was nothing modified in these boards for amputees

in my mind I was always a very at this knack for innovation and creativity when I was at the

I was just always into innovating just naturally not anymore less than anybody but just like I was

“driven by it and so I remember looking at some of these boards and thinking like I wonder if you”

could put a handle on there for a guy missing an arm or maybe you could reinforce this part of the surfboard so that when a prosthetic goes into it it doesn't break the board and then I started noticing and I thought like maybe I should do something about is there an organization that does that maybe I'll volunteer for them and there wasn't and then I remember seeing a lot of these veterans would have missing legs they would take their wetsuit and do an overhand knot in the leg and then

cut it and I remember thinking that doesn't look like that's fucked up like that guy lost his leg like we can do better than an overhand knot and then I remember thinking I want to start a nonprofit that can modify these surfboards for these guys and gals and and not just that but wetsuits all of this stuff and and then finally that's when I had that moment I shared earlier rose with that young marine who was happy to be surfing you know a beautiful day and how he had

“mentioned you know when I'm surfing there's no more pain and nobody staring at me is the guy missing”

a leg and it was that moment I was like I'm gonna start a nonprofit I don't know how I don't know anybody the only people I know are in the military so I drove home and I stopped at the time there's a boarder's bookshop and I walked in and it looked at this nonprofit section and I'm staring at it I'm all excited like I'm gonna start an nonprofit and I'm looking at these

books and I start pulling them out and it's like the who's who and the most incredible

nonprofits in the world you know what I'm looking at I'm like okay that's I'm just looking to do some small like that feels a little overwhelming I don't know anything like you know people who have like MBAs or whatever they've dedicated their whole life I'm just like okay and I'm I'm starting to get discouraged and then I catch a book the corner of my eye the bottom of the shelf is just a little yellow book and I pull it out and it's how to start a nonprofit for

“dummies and I just thought well damn I'm not gonna go home empty handed I'm at least going to”

take this nonprofit for dummies book so then I took it home and that night with a cup of coffee started one more wave which is a nonprofit that I found in 2015 that makes custom shapes surfboards for wounded or injured veterans and we also have community and so what started what I thought would just be a border to for the naval hospital slowly started to get more traction because I was still active duty and had my own stuff going on but by doing that it was actually therapy for me

also because I was now helping I was introducing this therapeutic modality to other active duty or veterans who are struggling and it was the same modality that helps me or helped me and so another you know we did our first board and then our second and then it started to gain some traction and then Starbucks did a documentary on us and it really took off and then now we've done more adaptive surfboards than any organization in the world and we have

we have members four members on TMUSA, two world champions that ride one of the waveboards yeah and we have eight chapters around the country from Hawaii to California, Florida, North Carolina, New York we have all these chapters at every third Saturday surf together well the time zones are a little bit different right from Hawaii to let's say the East Coast but every third Saturday every month you'll get three to four hundred people surfing on that third Saturday at one

or way of and we also have apps that help facilitate four to six surf per day and and we've given out eight hundred grants at twenty five hundred dollars a piece so what started with nonprofit for

dummies is now you know something that is like morphed into something that I would have never

thought would happen a lot of times people think like you're the founder to do envision this this like crazy vision and I'm the first person be like no no way I did not envision this I thought it would be a couple boards that that's like sustainable like maybe one event here and there okay and then a couple boards that feels good but it was almost like that organization was like bro like that's not what's gonna happen like either catch up or get out because this thing is launching

and so um so yeah so I that's I'm there is a guy that runs it right now his name is Rob Garnett he's a retired seal close friend of mine and one of um is perfect for this right now I'm the chairman of the board so I'm not as in on that daily activities but Rob is grinding it day and day out and it would not be the same organization without him along with the rest of the team so while yeah maybe I'm the one that founded it it took a village and a skies like Rob or the ones

that are making it happen on a daily basis wow dude damn yeah and what um we do too it's a little bit different that I'm proud of a lot in the beginning lots of time you know people were like you

it doesn't feel right I mean not that there's nothing wrong with just seal stuff but I felt like

“seals get a lot and when we do um and then you know people like well then just do soft that's easy”

it's easy to raise money for soft and then I thought back to the parking lot in Tampa with my dad and magnet S and those guys were not soft they're just veterans and I just at that moment I thought no this is for veterans I don't care if you were seal team six delta force I don't care I don't

care if if you turn to wrench and you never left you know you uh air force base in North Dakota

I don't care if you signed up to serve our country you are eligible for a one more wave grant as long as you meet some certain criteria and we even started getting into it I didn't realize it that there was a lot of veterans from the geawatt who were getting traumatic brain injuries some IEDs and what was happening is while they were active duty before we started rapping or you know understanding TBI's a lot of these veterans in the early stages of the geawatt were now having

angry outbursts because of their TBI and so maybe they were getting in fights or they were you know

“self numbing with alcohol and getting a DUI and now they're getting kicked out but now they're”

getting kicked out of administration you know separated and now they're not getting VA benefits so guys who were TBI's were now not getting to the VA and a lot of nonprofits were like we're not going to touch guys with a 10 foot pull unless you have a honorable discharge and I started hearing some of these stories and talking to some of these guys and they were like head down shaking like I don't deserve this or that and it was that moment I was just like I don't give I don't

fucking care what is it telling me more about your story and then they would talk about it and be like nobody's helping you and it's like no and it's like and you got blown up in an ID and for money and nobody's helping you and they're like well no and they kind of got to the thing of like well I don't know if I deserve it I got other than honorable like yeah but the symptoms of TBI are like angry outbursts and you know it's self numbing and all of this and it was that

moment I our board said we were going to accept other than honorable and even disonable as long as we go through what happened and just and as long as you're honest with us and it doesn't

have to be you know basically likely you will get a grant from us we will not leave you hanging

and I'm very proud about that that we started doing that in the early days I know other nonprofits are getting on board with some of that but I just am very proud in those days where it was like no not the flashy just the soft guys it was everybody and it was like tell me more about your TBI and why you got booty down to the military okay you're on our tribe now solid work man thanks wow holy shit

there's this one veteran who I'd like to talk about just for a moment as names Jose Martinez in Jose um stepped on an ID and Afghanistan is a triple APT and he is my absolute hero because Jose is on a member of Team USA and he is a world champion adopted server and he charges bigger waves than I've ever charged and he has the biggest smile he've ever seen and he has the most stoked for life with anybody I've ever met and um and it was if it was guys like that

where if I would have if we as an organization would have just stuck with the soft I would have never

been exposed to people like that and another seal Dan Kenos and who is a Olympian Paralympian seal stepped on land in my last both legs above the knee and he's surfing double overhead waves and Indonesia you know so it's like I actually I could go on and on and just start going down the

“list but once I start I won't stop so it's just um it's amazing what and I think a lot of it”

what surfing does and what I would encourage any listener to to find therapy it doesn't have to be surfing it's anything that helps you get into something called the flow state meaning essentially it way I see it as a clinician that anxiety hangs out in the future right when we start thinking about I need to do this or that this is coming up that's where anxiety hangs out depression hangs out in the past what I should have done I've shame about that I can't believe I

said that to my wife or my husband or whatever it's like and there's like depression it pulls at you and our nervous system is kind of tapped into that and getting pulled back and forth with all of that what happens in flow state or catching a wave was surfing I'll be it let's say it's five seconds to catch a wave it actually puts us in a state of flow where nothing else is going on except being in the present and being in the moment of writing that wave to where it gives

that nervous system a break and I get it it's just for five seconds but what if you catch 10 waves that's 50 seconds and what if you do that three or four times a week and then now you start going out and out and you get into a practice of it now you build in community also that are cheering you on on all those waves now if it's not surfing I would encourage somebody to find

mountain biking whatever it is fly fishing which we were talking about earlier right it's all

“of that stuff to where you're in an act of doing something where you have to be fully present”

with it because that is giving that nervous system a break and allowing us not to hang out in the past or the future that's your thing Alex will say quick break yeah we'll come back we'll we'll get into what you're doing now a lot of people want to talk about tradecraft how to hide how to conceal yourself

how to escape how to evade but here's the thing the true professional

that's not the guy that's always on the run it's the guy who never shows up on the map to begin with this brings me to my next point your phone is talking it's talking through apps you may or may not use a lot of them you probably never use talking to servers that you've never even heard of that are telling them where you've been where you are what you buy and all kinds of other information that you don't

want out and that's where glacier comes in with secure DNS you hit a button

close the app you never have to open it ever again that's concealment

spend a long time building this app almost a year it's the perfect app to conceal yourself you can get it on the Apple App Store or you can go to the glacier app

“dot-top remember privacy isn't paranoia it's protection the glacier app”

looking for another way to support the shonorion show head to shonorion show dot-com and check out the latest drops from vigilance elite we just release new gear including this beautiful moisture-wicking VE performance hat and SRS campfire mugs and you guessed it vigilance elite gummy bears oh shit every purchase directly supports the show and helps us continue bringing you

independent conversations without compromise visit shonorionshow dot-com and grab yours today we're getting ready to get into what you're doing now but first I got a hot question for it

“you're ready yep out of 15 deployments take about about off the table and the other ones”

that you talked about what's the one mission you've never been asked about that you still think

about today hmm okay that's a great question and there is an operation called operation Ned Mac and Afghanistan and essentially what it was we were following this is circa 2010 and we were following this group of Taliban about 30 of them into this compound all with weapons and we were going to bomb it but at the time the rules of engagement wouldn't allow us to do that because they saw women in children in that compound just a handful of them let's say 46

however there's 30 dudes with our you know peek has and RPGs and all of that so we they sent us in after them and we went in with our side by sides which were in the back of 47 helicopters and drove in forever than foot patrol then and essentially put an L ambush on this compound and then because we knew if we went toe to toe with them some of our guys were definitely going to get killed or wounded so we set up this ambush on them up in the mountains

in eastern Afghanistan and we knew what the Taliban often did when they'd hear helicopters in those valleys they would just run because they knew if they all went in different directions they were essentially we could only go after so many of them so you had let's say a one in 30 chance that we would pick you to go after but we knowing that we knew like our well they're going to run but they're inside the buildings so we set up this L ambush and as like a ruse or a

fake out we brought in a helicopter and empty helicopter close to the valley to make a lot of noise and then they started to get out and run out and and then we waited for all of them to

well I was like it was all as like and so there's only maybe 22 of us that were that you know shot all these guys and so then we had to now work our way through you know get to them so we started bounding through almost like a land warfare like bounding through it air strikes coming in kind of danger close and then we got in and as I was happening one of our guys who got shot in the sideplate clearing one of the buildings but he was fine thinking it is but my role was taking my

element to clear out these trenches and with hang grenades and so we're throwing hang grenades into

“these trenches and I remember at one point I got a little cocky and there's just like bunker”

from this trench that went in there mind you you know there's already been like 30 EKIA I've shot all of my pistol rounds because I was and I've shot only one magazine left in my rifle and I'm down to one frag grenade so I'm like pretty much use all of my munitions but I saw this and I'm like I don't want to crawl into that bunker but I do want to throw a grenade in it and so I'm getting two cocky and I'm kind of standing over it and I have my cover guy that's holding

for me and I'm like all right I'm going to throw this grenade and let's roll out get out of the way and he's like okay and I pull the m67 for a grenade and I try to get I got cocky because I try to

“get the perfect angle and not just throw it in but like I'm going to get it perfect and I drop it in”

perfectly and I turn to to run and I slip and I start sliding down into the hole of the bunker with the hand grenade so I'm like I can feel it like rolling on my I can feel it rolling on my shin they hang grenade with the pin pulled and I was like holy shit and started crawling my way out

and then finally got out of the bunker that which was like a hole that I'd crawled out of

and just got out just in time for it to be like whoa almost completely blew myself up and yeah so we so that one yeah operation did not that was a good one here's the follow-up what was your favorite weapon and what did your kid consist of during your time at Seal Tames and that's a great question my favorite weapon you know we we got the H&K 416's and that was all the hot ticket for a long time at least in that era but I love I had this cult m4 that had

a floated barrel and a trigger job on it and it was just completely dialed in and it was about

a pound and a half lighter than the H&K and I always was like why are we going away from this

the rifle it's awesome and but whatever we did and so I would say I know it's a kind of a generic answer but my old floated barrel m4 cult m4 right on yeah why got you something awesome you want to see it of course oh oh whoa I mean so I got a buddy over at SIG this name is Jason you heard of them yeah I heard of him yeah yeah he's a good dude yeah he's a big fan of yours so I know that HK 416's pretty badass but this is pretty light

what and yeah so this is a five five six MCX spear short barrel it comes with the optic comes with the magnifier it's got a foldable butt stock which I need to break in and then I got some buddies over at silence or shot and so silence or shot through and it's a presser and awesome company they take they they donate to second amendment causes and and yeah and six fucking awesome company too oh man and Jason's an awesome dude yeah thank you Jason

thank you sig so yeah this is amazing thank you John I know it's been a while

wow heard it's been a while since you've shot it has been a while we want to get back into it so

“that's the beautiful oh thanks lighter right yeah that's why I wish I had this amazing”

well now you do yeah yeah yeah this is amazing wow thank you you're welcome thank you're welcome yeah I have well get for you too I love getting it's just another crazy just a little one more wave he sure didn't hat that maybe that's cool this is tricked out no this is awesome yeah it's just

oh man I love the graphic yeah that's awesome yeah thank you absolutely thank you that's nothing

“like aware this proudly you sure oh shoot this probably man wow thank you amazing you're welcome”

that is one beautiful weapon six awesome dude yeah they uh let me just tell you I got a friend that works over in this in the sheriff's apartment at a neighbor in county yeah the hickman county sure familiar with it yeah definitely and uh they're they're they don't have a lot of funding for the sheriff's department and um a good friend of mine works over there and uh he he used to work here you know and they moved over there and uh he was

telling me about the rifles they've got and oh it's just mixed match sounds like 2025 your old rifles

and uh he was telling me about it and he was like I'm gonna try to he just took over the SWAT team or isn't charge all the weapons over there whatever and um he was telling me this I just started getting fucking angry oh yeah it's like how how could we be you know there's a lot of method over there yeah those guys are dealing with a lot and it's like the last thing you guys need to be worried about is the reliability of your fucking primary weapon system when you're doing

drug raids and shit so I just I went home and I was thinking about it I was like you know what

man I'm gonna fucking buy all these get I was like how many rifles are there yeah he's like

it's about 30 guys yeah and I was like fuck it I'm just gonna buy them all that's a brand new kid up that way they don't have to worry about that shit and um so I called Jason and I was like hey do you guys have any like old stock laying around that I can just pick up for at cost or anything and he was like let me uh give me a couple days I'll get back with you and I said yeah we have um I'm

“gonna butcher this but it wasn't old stock and I goes we're gonna get um he goes we'll give you the I think”

it's the MB 400 pro or something uh short barrel rifle with the optic flashlight all that stuff will give it to you at cost and I was like perfect yeah awesome and then a couple weeks went by and I was like hey um if you're gonna give it to me at cost it can I get some suppressors it cost you for these guys and he was like yeah he's like no problem he's like we'll do that too and then a couple more weeks went by and uh he was just uh hey don't even worry I was like where do I

send the check so don't even worry about oh wait got it really yeah and uh so they just outfitted that entire sheriff's barmo with bread new we're good for things and good for you for reaching out too that to be all it's be willing to do it thanks man good for sig i mean it's just it's fucking good company you know and and they make great shit they really do uh so I can't what to like yeah that thing's beautiful thank you what you think of that thank you sig yeah but um i

love it already but he can get into a flow stay with that i have no doubt we're just talking about flow stay right but so you're a therapist now yeah yes shram um after so i was training talking about law enforcement i was at a local company here in Nashville i was when i retired i was running the uh SWAT team training program a tactical program of that company for teams federal state and local teams around the country and and i loved working with cops and and helping communities

“that way but i got to the point where i thought am i gonna i think there's something else i want to do”

and life and so i stepped away from that and i uh became a therapist essentially i went to grad school let me back up before i uh you know i resigned from that company and i was trying to figure out what i wanted to do with my life after that i knew it wasn't going to be a tactical training not there's anything wrong with it again but it was just what else is there can i reinvent myself somehow and like who am i outside of slinging assault rifle type thing and uh however i was still

struggling so bad with my mental health that i went to i'm not to jump ahead too much but went and i got some plant medicine treatment for the i began out of the country and uh and five of me of dmt and when i came out of the the dmt experience my uh therapist was sitting there my

you're going to do you're going to be at the therapist a clinician that is able uh you know for veterans

“and and i saw that as i came out of a shoes glowing that thought okay that's a little”

interesting but that was during covid this was 2020 March let's say 12th or 13th so covid was just kicking off and we almost barely got out of the country to get back to the states and when i got back i had some other little short jobs lined up they all went away little contract tactical jobs just to make some money they all went away because of covid and so i was just sitting there

jobless not even able to get a job because it was like their first you know a few months of covid

nobody knew what's going on and and i just kept thinking myself am i gonna listen to that message to become a therapist and so i did and started applying and got into grad school and finished and now yeah i work as a therapist here in Nashville and um my you know a generalist technically meaning i help treat people with all different diagnosis but i have a special interest with trauma from my background but also um that's just i i'm drawing towards it and um yeah so i've just

i use a lot of different modalities like EMDR clinical hypnosis i really like trauma as i said i thought i would completely be all veterans and first responders however as i was mentioning earlier on on our break i'm one of our breaks that i thought i would only be for veterans and

first responders however i'm so close to them and and when they're talking about their struggles

it's a lot for me to deal with something called counter transfer and so i have about 25% of my

“clients are that and then the the rest are just a general population or you know society which i think”

is a really healthy balance for me even though i wish i could do more for veterans but with my other work i'm able to scratch that edge for veterans and first responders but in the therapy office it's kind of as a generalist for most people to include veterans and first responders i mean when you want to school to do this did you start to understand yourself yes absolutely did i think and that was part of the main thing too was i wanted to really learn what my traumas and

my mental health was about and i went so deep into it almost obsessive because i i realized i knew i was really struggling um the ideations suicidal ideations all of that and i i did not know you know if i was going to make it essentially and so going down that path of therapy i really was able to be a student of not just others but myself and i believe that that is for anyone listening if they're struggling i'm not saying you have to be a therapist but if you're struggling

that bad where you're having suicidal ideations you have to take your mental health and put as much effort into it as you would have done anything that you're passionate about for example if you're in the military if it was a you know be a seal or a pilot or whatever it is or if you're a let's say a musician or whatever the job is that you're passionate about you have to take as much effort and put it into your mental health because it deserves that you deserve that and

it can't just be a all just kind of kind of banded fix this it's like if you want this to extinguish

“this pain you have to be all in and that's what i was doing with um grad school to become a therapist”

so it was to help others but a lot of it was to help me just like one more wave was to help others

but a lot of it was to help me too because being able to help others um it's always helped me

interesting you know like i mean i think i can't remember if i mentioned it on a breaker in here but just uh i did three and a half years at therapy yeah twice a week i should probably start again but for different reasons but that's kind of i just noticed by here on myself talk to somebody i would work my own problems out yeah really without that much input yeah and uh

i learned a lot from it although it's how i gear my entire interview oh this is i just listen yeah it's interesting to see like some of the men and women that come in here that you can see and work their own problems out in their head as are sitting here i can imagine going through their stories yeah but you see that all the time all the time and for me as a therapist you know sometimes why go sorry go okay so what they

and to be a human right there's all of these really cool was bang techniques and uh and things

that you can do which is great a lot of them evidence based but sometimes the most important thing

you can do is just to be present with someone and just to allow them to just share their stuff to what you are just mentioning they're kind of working it out and making sense of it or you know giving a narrative and it's just to be kind of present and allowing your allowing them to be heard can sometimes be the most effective therapeutic tool why why does it work like that i mean we'll sit there and think about the same shit over an over a fucking loop yeah thousands of times

and then you vocalize it yeah one or two times and things start clicking i think i'm sorry what's going on why does that happen i have a couple of thoughts on it i think one i think it's an energy exchange i feel like what happens with pain and and struggle is it's it's energy that needs

“to be like released and that's why and if it doesn't get released by let's say talking it could be”

talking it could be through EMDR another technique it could be through exercise whatever it is

like things need to get moved and if they don't as i was kind of mentioning before it'll just get pushed down especially men you know the wool just push it down push it down push it down compartmentalize it and it may come out where let's say you had too much to drink and now you've lashed out at your partner and then the shame spiral follows that like i can't believe i did that the next day and then it's leaves a more issues but the thing is if we keep pushing it down

another thing could be that it just went as i was saying earlier the hard ends and calcifies and then you just become a hard bit or person and tough to be around so now you're not any good yourself to your partner to your kids and all of that so i think by talking it just allows some of that to release kind of bleeds it down a little bit by a little bit that's kind of how i see it um it is interesting though right like there's a form of therapy called narrative therapy

which is essentially is just that that's a form where you allow that person to tell that story and as a therapist you kind of jump in and just be like hey can you tell me more about that part or you kind of keep people within the you know the lanes if they start to you know go off on a tangent like wait let's talk a little bit more about this like can we get back to that you're almost like just helping them share their story by keeping it on topic which can be very effective

“which is like man you have to go to grad school but yeah sometimes i'm like i know right exactly”

did i have to but there the reality is that's like one of many techniques and what's interesting

is the therapist what you're doing what i do the style i practice it's kind of called eclectic which just means i take from a lot of different therapies and tailor it to the client so i'm not just like one approach it's more of like i've okay shon is he likes to do that narrative thing like yeah that's beneficial for him so i'm gonna avoid some other things and i might introduce something else but what's interesting is the therapist what i love about it is you're kind

of like it's very cognitive like you're thinking like okay like shon really likes this let me just kind of pull this and oh he doesn't like that okay cool me throw this in there and so it's trying to help people with just it's just you and the person and that's what's unique about it it's like there's not anybody in there with a video camera to like double check and give you feedback it's more of like feeling the energy of the other person and it can be very therapeutic but some

“people too sometimes are just not ready for therapy also and that's what i would encourage them”

to lean into community actually i encourage everybody to lean into community but and that's like it one more way for example our chapters are so effective because there's a community of people especially for veterans because when we were all we're in our platoon, squads, teams with everyone to call it and then you get out and you're no longer in that you're not no longer in a community with shared experiences and language so it's just if someone isn't getting therapy

getting into you know your your community or whatever that might be for them you know it could be volunteering at a church it could be you know volunteering for your kids you know sports to whatever it is getting involved with people because a big side effect of depression or trauma is isolation that's one of the the things that we often I used to do a lot to sometimes I still do it and I have to keep an eye out for it how do you you one guy how how how do you pick and choose

who you're gonna work with yeah right now the people will find me like let's say on online I would ever might be and then I'll do a screening call with them because I want to make sure I'm a good fit for them too and let's say it's somebody who I don't culturally relate to whatever might be yeah of course I will be happy to help them but I might know someone that who I'm a therapist friend with or associated with who deals with as a specialty with that culture let's just say and

I might tell them like this might not be a good fit for me but however I have the I know someone who would be perfect for you so that's kind of part of my job too is helping find fits but but I'll

okay that sounds good and then we'll come in even on that first session I'll tell the client

“hey this is kind of like we're feeling each other out here if at any point at the end of this”

if you don't feel like this is a good fit just let me know it's all good right and but let me know what you do want and I'm sure within my network I can find someone for you and I would encourage anybody listening to this too that if you find yourself with a therapist and you feel like it's getting nowhere be your own advocate you know it's okay to tell that therapist like I'm not feeling it can you help help me find someone else you it's all day long it's your mental health

it's your resources and that therapist if they're a good therapist should know that and likely

they'll be like okay I was kind of feeling that too let's get you someone else how long have you been

sober or or off booze a six and a half years six and a half years six and a half years best thing I did that was the big catalyst for me with my own mental health once I was able to get off that everything I'll start it falling into place how are you how did you get off that I got off of it in 2019 I was at a fundraiser and I was drinking and I just one of my close friends pulled me aside and said I'm worried about you and and I trust him I mean he's one of my best friends in the

“world and that's why I believe him but I continue to go big that night and and and then next day”

woke up with a horrible hangover and felt something was really off in my head I don't know what it was I felt like like I was getting I was getting back into the suicidal ideation I just felt off felt dangerous and it was that that moment where I was like I know I have to save my own life if I keep going I'm going to attempt suicide and so then that same friend kept coming back to me afterwards and was like we need to get out of the country and you I began and I was like whoa

I began I kind of heard I've heard another friend went and did it I'm like what do you mean and why and he's like well it's illegal in the states but a lot of veterans are starting to do this because the current system is just not working with citropic medications and at the time I had a great same therapist she's awesome and she was helping me through if it wasn't for her I wouldn't even probably gotten to that point and he just kept saying man I'm worried about you I really don't know

I feel like if I'm not saying this to you that you're going to do something yourself and I'm going to regret it for us my life who is this Greg Andrews I don't know he's a seal yeah awesome friends and we had ton of deployments together and and so I said yes I guess I don't know what I have no other choice and so I stopped drinking said yes to that got into a that's sponsored me through a program mission within at the time it was down at Costa Rica and we went down there and I was just

thinking I remember flying anything what am I doing I'm flying in a prop plane landing on a dirt air strip that looks like Pablo Escobar was going to be running drugs out of it like literally like flying in and I'm just like what am I doing and I just resigned from my job as a tactical instructor and I was listless and I'm like I don't know what I'm doing and then I went in and it completely

“changed my life to be able I haven't and that helped me I believe I'd already been off booze”

for a few months at that point two three months but but I was still having the cravings and things like that from it it was just kind of a struggle because I've been trying to get off of booze several times before like I'd do 30 days on 30 days off or I would do be able to get off

for a couple months and then whatever it was just this endless cycle and then finally when I did

I began it was like a light switch I got off and I have not craved alcohol sense and and I attributed to I began I mean I'm still in therapy with the same therapy she helps me with a lot of this stuff I have been to some meetings from time to time but I feel like it was the I began that really got me off of the alcohol and another reason why the I began is so effective for opioid use disorder and things like that is from the addiction properties but that it was that that really

helped me kick the alcohol that's the second time the second time I met you was at what Tennessee what was at the house yeah yeah for the Hope Treatment Act at the Capitol for tennis scenes for I began which I can't thank you enough for being there because we were to let the audience know an ambassador for tennis scenes for I began and tennis in Americans for I began essentially trying to get the clinical trials of I began studied to pass FDA approvals so we hope I believe in in our

opioid use disorder but also alcohol PTSD traumatic brain injury and potentially

“things like Parkinson's and dementia however we don't know you know it's anecdotal there's some”

studies that have come out but that is true that's yeah when we met it was you know fighting for that to get a clinical trials approved here in the state of Tennessee which is one of the 12 states that we're trying to make that happen and without your help I don't know if we could have gotten passed that committee as we were kind of talking about earlier and we can get it or not but just the how tough it was especially here in the south to get clinical trials of a psychedelic

past but yeah the team really worked hard to get that done and I appreciate this is that you

brought in because I'm not sure if we could have pushed it across the line without you we were stuck

at that subcommittee while I'm in you guys did all the work man how did you could you meet Ricky I'm that Ricky for the listeners Ricky Harris is a ambassador for Americans for I began it kind of heads up the tennis scenes for I began I met her through a mutual friend who just she asked me here would you like to help with this and share your stories of veteran and how it is impacted you know your life so that we can try to get some of this stuff passed

at the state capital and I thought I was like absolutely I'm very passionate about it fits in line with my my my my why essentially is to impact human suffering and so it fit right in I was like yes I've been waiting for this and so we started going to the capital and advocating for the Hope Treatment Act and and I was yeah and Ricky's awesome like her the her she is a force in nature and very sharp woman and it wasn't for her also I don't know if any of this would have

gotten past yeah actually sharp you know she's sharp lady yeah no doubt about it but it did pass though right it did pass yeah and then right after that the larger organization of Americans for I began Brian Hubbard who's the CEO and Governor Rick Perry that they helped drive the executive order from the president to sign in to allow for an easier way to study psychedelics so there's been a lot from that there's been a ripple effect that has come from

it and we just have to as an organization keep pushing it because there's this okay we have all this momentum let's not let it get to stale let's keep pushing it for at least the clinical trials and let science show what we think is is possible so that it can get FDA approved so it's not just a bunch of veterans that are having to travel out of the country to get treatment it I mean to me and like what about the average Joe and Jane that don't have the connection to do that like

and what if they're struggling let's say with opioid use disorder like can we because that is

“systemic that is generational there's so much suffering with that and and that's why it's important”

for the clinical trials where let's let science not just my opinion or of it so yeah yeah I have a cupboard a lot of ground here if it's the teams I do I do miss the teams I mean there's time of course I think of the highlight real of like all the good times and I forget the low light real of just being freezing but I do I'm proud of my service but I feel that that was a chapter of my life that will allow me to do what I'm doing now like I couldn't be the therapist I am

now without I've been a seal first or I couldn't have worked in advocacy or even sitting here in

front of you without first of done some of that to help you know to impact suffering so I just yes I miss the teams but yeah yeah I miss it I'm kind of onward though from a lot of what about you I don't miss it anymore yeah yeah I don't I hear you but I didn't have your career either so well yeah I mean there's times I definitely don't too let's just be real there's like

“I like you know what it's like cold and rainy on I'm glad sometimes I think I could be on a boat”

bobbing around in the Atlantic Ocean right now with a dry suit on let's see sick yeah no it took it took me a long time it took me a long time but I have a hundred percent moved on I'm doing my best work now yeah so you're a lot of good works thank you you're impacting my suffering too thank you yeah doing my best yeah but well man it was not a serious one thank you for the opportunity thank you thank you thank you no matter where you're watching the Sean Ryan show

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