259. Marcus & Amber Capone: On Ibogaine, Veteran Suicide, PTSD Treatment & Brain Health

He really struggled when he transitioned into civilian life. I knew that he was grappling with thoughts of suicide, but I felt like Western medicine had no more options for us. Based around suicide in the military, I mean, we've actually lost more military service members to suicide than we have in combat.

We've lost individuals that died by suicide over 150,000 compared to just over 7,000 that were lost in the battlefield. So that number is just staggering. That number is real. If you look at modern medicine's approach, most of what they offer,

people that are in that condition are coping mechanisms. I was prescribed anti-depressants for years.

And we know now that anti-depressants work for maybe 30 to 50 percent of the population.

What do we do for the other 50 percent? What would you say to the audience that's listing to this,

“that would be great ways to baby throw up a flag that someone might need to help?”

Some of the red flags that I could identify in hindsight would be. [MUSIC] Hey guys, welcome back to the ultimate human podcast. I'm your host, human biologist, Gary Brecco, where we go down the road of everything, anti-aging, biohacking,

longevity, and everything in between. And today's only my three third-person shoot podcast. So this is one of those in-between podcasts. But welcome to the podcast, Marcus and Amber Capone. I am so psyched to have you guys on here.

You know, my only regret was in preparation for this podcast.

I watched your documentary. And I wish I had watched that before. I had DJ Shipley on the podcast. Because yeah, I don't think it was out yet, actually. Oh, okay, that would be a good excuse.

Yeah, yeah, okay, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. When did the November 4th that started? Oh, okay, so he was on before in November 4th. Yeah, but let me tell you something. That was an eye-opening documentary for me,

because I think a lot of people, and if you haven't watched in ways and more, you have to watch it. I'm going to put a link in the show notes below. Our wife watched it, I watched it.

Incredibly impactful podcasts. And not just if you are married to someone who's a service member or a former Navy SEAL, but anyone who is struggling with mental illness, addiction, this is just such a life-changing moment for a lot of these people.

But before we talk about the documentary, and there's a lot we're going to unpack today. I wonder if you rewind a little bit and just talk about your journey, what led up to this documentary about eye-opening game? Oh, it's time to be happy to be here for a few hours.

Much is you want. We already talked about him running long on podcasts.

First, Gary, just thank you for having us today.

Super stoked to be on the show. Yeah, I'm excited to get into whatever we're going to go.

“And I know it feels like you're ready to rock, so if you want to.”

Totally honored to be here. I go everything, Marcus, and we've been together for a very long time, almost three decades. So that's why there's a lot of content. But it was after Marcus's service that things started to really unwind

and leading up to his exit from the military, we had spent so much time apart, like up to 300 days a year, that I didn't really know him anymore. There's a lot to that, but all to say that he really struggled when he transitioned out of the military into civilian life.

And I was desperate to help him because I didn't want to lose him. But I felt like Western medicine had no more options for us, because he had tried several things. And he can talk more about how when you try and try and try again, and don't receive a result, he can become very desperate.

So I knew that he was grappling with thoughts of suicide, and I was just willing to try anything. And I did it as much to forgive myself if the worst happened as I did to help him because I didn't think anything would help at that point.

“But, and I think that's what's so important about this documentary is,”

I don't want it to be pigeonholed as this savior of our service members. I wanted to be broad, and so that people that are struggling with psychiatric illness or conditions like depression, crippling anxiety. What this seemed to do was unlock the reasons behind it, which is what I found out found really fascinating about the documentary,

because, you know, if you look at modern medicine's approach, and this is not to dog on modern medicine, most of what they offer, people that are in that condition are coping mechanisms.

Yeah, you've got a heavy backpack on, you can just get stronger.

“We don't know how to take it off, and I think one of the tipping points”

for me watching the documentary was listening to DJ Shipley talk about how he saw a post that you had done with him, and you were just being very vulnerable. We did a PSA, so we had lost a few teammates to suicide in the weeks leading up to the PSA, and I just said, I kind of broke down, and I said, "Is this the next wave of what we're going to witness? We've fought 20 years of combat. If you come home with all your digits and all your toes,

like that's a good thing." Many of us are coming home with hidden wounds of war, and that's, you know, hidden wounds of war, but also some, you know, let's throw in some childhood stuff there, let's throw the wartime stuff where there's trauma, whether it's brain trauma, TBI's through concussions, et cetera, and then let's throw transition in there, and it's very difficult to diagnose a person. And if you go on to go back to Western medicine,

we don't want to dog it here. They want to take a single diagnosis and a single drug,

“and it's very easy for a doctor, but someone like me who has these complex cases or if you want to”

call code morbids, I was prescribed anti-depressants and traditional talk therapy for years,

and we know now that anti-depressants work for maybe 30 to 50 percent of the population.

Yeah. What do we do for the other 50 percent? If we were to resist it, yeah, it's exactly true, resistant. So if we went out on a mission, they said, hey, 50 percent of you are not going to come back. That's not a good number, right? But we're doing that with our current approaches to mental health care, and or brain health now, right? We're kind of moving away from the term mental health, more brain health, because we're starting to see this

as a biological issue. You're not, you know, quote, unquote, a mental issue, and so not everyone, half of us will not respond to these. And so what do we have available? There are some FDA proof treatments now. We'll get into what worked for me. But as I said earlier, before we got in the show, you know, I began was just one of the spokes. There's a lot of spokes to this healing process, right? And there's a hub in the middle, and we just have to have access to

things that are available and for available for us. Right. And we just can't put a box around what has been introduced to us on the 30 or 40 years ago. I call it old technology, but it's really

“that's what it is. Yeah, and you're right, because you know, I come from a data science background.”

And so sometimes you have to take a step back and just look at the outcomes, right? And some of the most alarming statistics I've ever seen in my lifetime, and hopefully I don't misquote these were based around suicide and the military. I mean, we've actually lost more military service members to suicide than we have in combat. Significantly. Like, six or six times as many that is. Yeah. Well, if you do and we're not racing to you. Yeah, you got it. If you actually

do the math over 20 years of combat, where we lost just over 7,000 service members in combat, during that same period of time, there was roughly 20 veterans per day that have died by suicide, but independent reports show that it could be double that or higher, because they're not taking into account. People who have died maybe that aren't registered in VA care or deaths of despair, like overdoses or liver failure, you know, whatever from from home vacation and

cover vacation. So when you actually do those numbers 20 to 44 per day, and it could be over 150,000 lost in the same period of time to suicide when compared to the 7,000 it's staggering, and that's also not taking into account people that are suffering with suicidal ideation or barely white knuckling life. Yeah. So 20 times the amount. So we've lost individuals that died by suicide over 150,000. A lot of individuals are over 150,000 compared to just over 7,000 that were

lost in the battlefield. So that number is just staggering. That's the one that's just, that's the one that's my living out of my seat. It is, and most people don't know that number and every time we say that number, I kind of pause to let people really absorb that. You think about it, you know, we spend the money, we go to war, we do what we believe is right. We lose over 7,000 individuals, we lose over 150,000 to suicide. Like what is happening, right? There's obviously

there'll never be a single answer. Yeah. There's a lot of answers to that. But that number is real.

It means statistically speaking, you have a greater chance of dying by suicide entering the military than you do of dying in combat. Correct. And that is, and multiples. And that's where I think sometimes the data becomes very sobering. You know, we do this at in Maha action committee, I chair Bobby Kennedy's Maha action committee, just taking the sober look at

fattest, most disease-ridden nation in the world, record as our military-age men and women don't qualify for military service to the poor health. You start looking at yourself. Then you say, okay, what we're doing is not working, right? And this isn't the blame game, it doesn't make you anti-science, but what it just says is we need to open the door for two, some alternatives. And was this kind of where that journey began with a wife trying to save her marriage and her husband? Because she loves you.

“And I love her. And I think that Navy SEALs probably epitomize the generation of men that are just”

supposed to suck it up. And I think they also epitomize the mentality of most men just suck it up. I mean, you're not, you're not con your buddy and tell them, I feel so vulnerable when I'm thinking about thinking my own life. We're not good for asking for help. Yeah, that's right. We don't, we don't want to show weakness by saying, hey, I need help with this. Whatever, it could literally be honest. It could be anything. I got this, I'll figure it out. But there's only so many things

we can figure out on her. We have a saying the SEAL teams, we have this buddy check. You're always

with your buddy. From day one at Buds, you never go any, you never go six feet outside of your buddy. From the day you start to the day you graduate, including underwater when you're diving, you actually have a landard that's attached to you. So if you and I were dive buddies, I would have the clipped on landard a rope and you'd have it clipped on. We would never be six one six feet apart. More than six feet apart underwater. And there's a very anti-COVID.

It's anti-COVID. Yeah, the anti-social distancing. Maybe it should have been six feet. It should have been six feet. It could have been six feet. 100%. No matter what. Six one, it can't. But that's the idea, right? You have this buddy. Now, but all of a sudden, now you're not supposed to rely on that buddy when you're struggling

“internally and you're dealing with, you know, if you want to call it, you know, the demons,”

the darkness, the pain, the depression, the suffering. You can figure it out on your own. I think we just have to get out of that mindset because who can really do things just by yourself on your own? Right? You've built the ultimate human. Have you done this solely by yourself? Would you have an amazing team that's behind you and that's doing this and doing that? All by myself. They just sit here and all of a sudden. She's actually not on the computer.

I know. I'm just looking at probably the scrolling, right? They're inscurring.

But we always need individuals and help. And I've had, luckily, I've had a Guardian

Angel that has been my soon buddy for so many years from the day we've met. And it took me a while initially, Amber says it, well, where we like to white knuckle life, meaning just like we just want to hang on and we're really good at pain, right? We almost like thrive through pain. But sometimes that pain is not good for your spouse, your children, your friends, your co-worker, or for you, them. And if you don't fix us, everything else doesn't get fixed. We can't put on your own

“oxygen mask first. And so I think we're getting better at that. I think you're doing is literally”

saving so many human lives, Gary. And we're trying to, you know, you are. You're doing is opening up just people's minds to different ways to look at taking care of themselves and taking care of others. And we have a trouble admitting it, but we are also saving people's lives. We're not just saving the individual. We're saving the families and we're saving generations because if I can take care of my kids, and we raise them in a way where they're good, honest, hardworking individuals,

and they're good people, then they're going to pass that along to their children and to their children. It definitely stopped trauma cycles for our family and reduced generational suffering. And I think that's one of the things that I've witnessed is our community, the sealed community, has a very high threshold for suffering, almost embrace suffering or need suffering for fuel

and I think that a lot of the spouses too are very used to handling a million things and being

really tough. And for me, I realized that it didn't matter how tough I was. We were inadvertently bringing our kids along on this insanity quest. You know, it just felt like it didn't matter how tough we were. It was impacting them and it would impact generation. So back to your original question where you said we put out this PSA. Marcus did somewhat unwillingly film a video with me, where, you know, really it was just when Vets was getting off the ground and we needed to start

sharing the message, start raising funds. And so we did this video that DJ and Patsy saw and not really is the essence of the video. The basis of the video was this radical vulnerability, which was

Amber's right usually 98% of the time and the 2% I always, you know, yeah, I just said,

“Amber, we should, we need to get this message out better. And I said, I think we should do, you know,”

let's let's do a video, let's do a post. Let's just talk about if someone's struggling that they're not alone. We've been there, we've had friends that have been there, been to the edge, call a buddy, check on them, or raise your hand and go ask for help. And that was the whole premise beside behind the public service announcement. And it wound up the DJ's wife picked up the phone. They were, they were watching it one night late and bed and

DJ, you know, DJ will tell you this. We'll try not to say anything that no one else has come public with. But he just said, as we have many times, just started bawling because he said, everything that I was talking about was exactly what he was experiencing. And he thought he was the only one in the world, right? You know, he's a tough son of a bitch, an amazing human, that was dealing with this. Yeah. And in a similar story is when I went to one of the first times,

I went to see a psychiatrist on the West Coast, and I was struggling, I was still an active duty.

I went in there, and I sat down with him, and I said, you know, here's what I'm dealing with,

and I don't know why. And I said, you know, I'm sorry, I'm sure you don't get this. And he said, Marcus, just stop right there. You're over the 200th seal that has come into talk to me in the last couple of weeks. Like, there is something significantly going on. He goes, I'm not sure what it is. He's like, I'm sure you guys just have PTSD, like that makes sense, right? He has been a war, he goes, but you're not the only one. And it kind of gave me a little bit of relief knowing that,

okay, I wasn't the only one out there. I think it was probably not a couple of 200 in a couple of weeks, just, well, okay, maybe he's going to a couple of months. A couple of years, maybe not. Are you judging me? No, I just think that the think God Sage is not on this podcast because she

“was the only thing. The point to that, maybe it was a couple of years, there were many more that”

came in talk about the exact, and it was the exact same things. It was like anger, depression, anxiety, anxiety attacks. I can't stand in line at Starbucks. Sleepingish is the sleeping issues, the headaches. It was just kind of everything across the board, very similar. And so when you hear someone talk about that, like I did on the PSA, and you're in the receiving and listening, you kind of just break down and go, oh my goodness, like what he's talking about is like he could almost see inside

me, and that even next him, I'm 3,000 miles away. And and, and D.A. J. had heard about it and Patsy reached out, but so many people heard that PSA, and I'm sure the company people D.J. has saved now, right? Just through him going through his own healing process and talking about it in individuals which have him all the time, right? Yes, he's a great or it. Now, did you and D.J. know each other before? We did. We served together at 1610. We served together at that dev group,

and then like everybody else, they go off their ways when they transition. He started a very successful business. I went into finance, and we kind of reconnected after so many years and started talking about some of this stuff. Yeah, and now we're doing kind of some work. You know what's really interesting is, is this dub tails perfectly with, you know, my career in the mortality space, because one of the things that we knew was that if you wanted to cut a human

being's life expectancy in half, and I mean in half, at any age, you would put them in isolation. And this is where we get broken heart syndrome, right? Doing a couple's in a married 40, 50, 60 years, one spouse passes. We know what happens to the other spouse, right? And what would

happen there? That was the first time in half, I century that they were put in isolation.

And I think a lot of the root of the skyrocketing rates or suicide is there, there's the feel so isolated, right? Like a huge exercise. I'm the only one. You're the only one, you know, we're the only ones. And so we just suffer in silence until literally can't take it any longer. And Gary, the other thing is to a very common practice when guys get out of the military, whatever branch, right? You know, my community, the the civil community, but every branch,

we like to kind of run, turn our back, and like do our own thing. Again, we don't want help. I don't want to talk to the guys. I mean, I separated for the guys for years, just because I didn't, you know, kind of you feel ashamed a little bit. You're not doing well. You don't want to let any we know. It's the isolation. Yes, we'll guys wind up moving to like Montana, Idaho, these places, like up in the mountains, by themselves, and they cut off from the world.

“And as we know, those are the worst thing that you can do, right? Community is really everything.”

Connection. Right. You know, it used to kind of be hippy, hippy, hippy to talk about that.

this hippy shit. He's like, yeah, that's hippy shit to give a word about that. He said that

“Maddie Roberts said it in the movie. Yeah, but it is a little bit like that initially, but it's”

very real. We need people. We need our partner. Like, I, I was able to be away from Amber at 300 days a year. And I had the guys and we were doing our thing. But now, like if I go away for like one or two days, like, it kills me. Yeah. One of the family with my life, I'm like a little baby. Yeah, I'm so attached to her. So crazy. 100%. And so safety point. We need our, I couldn't imagine Amber not being here. Yeah. And so we don't love our kids being out of the house. But what we do love

is, you know, we have our, we have our businesses, we have our charity. We get to travel together for everything. If we go so good, Amber, you know, speaking at Harvard tomorrow, I get to go with her and hang out and I'll work for my laptop. I'll do my calls. But we get to be together. So we make you little vacations. Well, that's that's so good. If you know me, you know I don't recommend anything I haven't personally tested. That's not a marketing line. That's just how I operate. I've been on

the road my entire career. Different time zones, brutal schedules, no margin for days off. And so I'm constantly testing what actually works in my own body. Any de was something I keep coming back to. It's the molecule your cells used to produce energy and repair and it declines faster than most people realize. When I found symbiotic as liposomal NAD, the absorption technology is what got my

attention. I tested it. I felt it. And it's been in my bag ever since. I'm always evolving what I

put in my body and this one has stayed on the list. I'm genuinely excited for you to experience it. This is the standard we hold every product to before it even reaches you. Now let's get back to the ultimate human podcast. But I think the big, big overlying theme that I want to make sure doesn't get masked on this is like this is not just your main to PTSD from wartime or to navy seals or service members. Like your case is so much more common. You know that the situation albeit maybe

from a different source. But I mean the the byproduct is the same. And so there's somebody that's listening to this or I was a love one that's listening to this that it's like well um you know my my husband or my wife wasn't in the service but it's that it's that isolation. It's and it's and I'm sure that when you unpack this on the Ibogaine journey which I really want to talk about and I want to broaden the topic but when you unpack this on the Ibogaine journey you realize

it maybe it wasn't just specifically things that you witnessed in combat which I think everyone

“pinpoints as that's what caused it and and that's isolated to just those kinds of guys right”

that witnessed these horrific events or you know it just in the interviews it reminded me of that question that they asked where and they're like how many drinks do you have a week one to two three to five seven to nine but they were talking about how many times was your life in peril. How many times were you actually at risk of being maimed or killed and they got the 51 or more and he was like yeah 51 or more. I'm at that goose bumps. You're talking about like the

pH Q9 right like some of these symptom rating scales. Yeah yeah but it was it was in the movie.

Look at the goose bumps and I was like 51 or more like I've never truly thought that I was going

to lose my life like death was imminent ever so mine zero but someone that's had this 51 or more times that was just that mode. It's my zone to me it's it is and you know we talk a lot about

“the PTSD label because I think it's I think it can be overused and Amber's done a good job I think”

of explaining this where guys I worked with we I mean we wanted to go overseas right like we wanted to fight for our country we wanted to do the things that we had trained for for 300 days a year while we were gone so I think I still really struggled and I know many of the guys do it's like was it do we do I really have PTSD or is it some of the stuff we experienced when we were children maybe it was definitely some of the blast exposure like there's a lot of data now showing that

again tug out mental health versus you know moving into brain health you know maybe our circuits have been jacked up a little bit and some of those parts of the brain or I got trauma 100 perceited my you know sub-concussive blows we talk about mild TBI potentially worse than just say having a single concussion and these are reflecting themselves through depression anxiety panic attacks it actually drinking or substance you know other substance use disorder so yeah

what would you say you know having been so close to somebody that went through this like what are some of the warning signs that are not so obvious obvious if someone has a rampant

reclusive withdrawn like what would you say to the audience that's listening to this that would be great ways to be me throw up a flag that that someone might need to help generally speaking I would say everyone that comes to our program for example wants to get unstuck they want to feel again they want to live again they want to be excited for something or feel like they belong to something and so some of the red flags that I could identify in hindsight

would be yeah becoming more isolated be in Marcus's always been a performer since I met him when

he was 20 years old he was very goal oriented very active and those things really dissipated he no longer set goals or surf played golf you know things that used to I don't even like passion for life yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah like simple simple things you don't have passion for anything I didn't want to get out of bed I mean I had definitely diagnosed clinical depression where for days I did not want to do anything I didn't want to speak to anybody I would turn my

phone off I wouldn't answer text messages I might have like over 600 on my phone right now well that's that's for different reasons thank you we know I call backwards guys it's not very personal anybody out there listen but you know I really didn't have all the things and

“that's what happens when you get into these dark places where you just don't want to do anything”

and yeah all the things that I really enjoyed just kind of went away so then how did the solution become I became yeah for you I almost want to say by accident but I don't think anything happens by accident anymore yeah we we've all starting to see that maybe this is all in motion for reason it was what was presented to us so we had a friend who was in a similar let's say going through a similar journey as I was in terms of many years of of combat actually many more years of combat

than I had and was just struggling with the same exact things that I was so you know depression anxiety rage and you know he had talked about suicide and he had found I began through his best friend who was a doctor and said you know I was at a conference and I talked to this doc who thought maybe this would be helpful to veterans that was struggling with at the time this is like 2017

“so he didn't know he just figures PTSD I believe at the time maybe maybe traumatic brain injury”

mild traumatic brain injury and of course the doctor who is a seal I say his name

sure yeah so doctor Kirk Parsley who's a just a call in the sleep doctor yeah he's an incredible

individual he actually left the military because he couldn't practice what you preach why like for him these guys you know testosterone levels are 300 at 25 years old or 30 years old that there's an issue there right he needs hormone replacement therapy yeah right so all these things some meditation maybe breath work or some meditation sounds weird right the the graveyards as he called them didn't want to listen to him so he left and just started his own practice because he said

I want to help these guys I want to help my brothers and he got out and he's doing it now really successful Kirk and thank you if you're listening out there doc but doc got him

“after talking to his quack doctor about I began he said hey maybe maybe you should try this”

maybe should go to Mexico it's legal down there and it can help according to him well it did I mean that first seal it the first seal doctor personally helped one other scene okay now do you remember there's a scene in the film with a gun and an empty bottle of whiskey okay so a little bit more context on that scene I had gone to bed and I woke up middle of the night and I heard men's voices Marcus wasn't in bed and I tiptoed down the hall and this guy was in

our house and I thought maybe he'd had a fight with his wife and he needed Marcus but what really happened was he knew Marcus was in a bad spot with this gun and empty bottle of whiskey and he came to help him that's the only reason that he knew Marcus was struggling because we would

have never said that we were needing help otherwise so when he came back from Mexico after having

this experience his wife reached out to me and said this could help Marcus and I approached it was

you know the most medically advanced country in the world nothing I can get in Mexico you know that that I can't find here and that's the point where I'd been on years of anti-depressants yeah other mood stabilizers I've been to I think five brain clinics up until that point well that that was the point you started going to brain clinics because we knew he needed something he had been on you know several different anti-depressants he was very reluctant for many years to

you go on pharmaceuticals finally relented and then sort of went on this pendulum swing of

zombie monsters on the monster like it it was just there was nothing um present about him no in between

“no in between yeah and two switches you know on and off that's how was it so we knew that wasn't”

working you knew talk therapy wasn't working you asked me what were some of the red flags I actually was noticing red flags that were unrelated to PTSD if you will yet that was his primary diagnosis and one of the things that I remember vividly was him trying to put Christmas tree lights on a tree and he couldn't he couldn't figure out where they stopped where they started where you know they plugged into the wall how they plugged in together this was

like a neurological issue and another instance he was like wide-eyed sweating profusely trying to get out the door for a flight and he couldn't like figure out how to pack everything it was like he couldn't figure out how you know he wanted to and he just it was pitiful yeah so I thought

“this is a brain thing more than it is an emotional thing yet he's being treated solely with talk”

therapy and anti-depressants and wondering why he can't get better like this feels wrong this feels there's more to this story now my dad happens to be a football coach we met because my dad

recruited him to play for him and my dad always downplayed concussions but one of his friends

in the sales team to take in his life and his wife had his brain autopsy and it came back that he had interface astroglyle scarring and what I'd heard to be stage one CTE chronic traumatic it's a property and so I started doing this research and realizing that there's a linkage between you know some of these issues he was clearly experiencing and repeated had trauma Marcus not only had 15 years of taco football he had 13 years working with explosives as a

breacher and so I started to realize maybe my dad you know maybe I should look beyond what my dad had to say about concussions and I became terrified because it felt like it felt like a terminal diagnosis like there was no solution there was not even a diagnosis let alone a treatment or a cure and so I thought we've got to get him off of these pharmaceuticals and into more innovative things yeah there's another part to the story that I won't get into now but I had gone down this

rabbit hole of advocating for our son who experienced a significant plethora of illness is and that really everything he's gone really it but I was I had begun to pull back layers I had begun to advocate for my child and I was ready to do the same for my husband I was at least not going to go down without a fight and so I just started putting the pieces together and thinking we've got to have a different approach we've got to at least try and so I had gotten Marcus

into a clinic in California there's doing some you know imaging and more functional medicine type treatments he was also doing hyperbaric oxygen and magnetic therapy on the brain and that was really all I had left because he said no to eye-begin so I was like okay well let me trial these other more you know forward thinking approaches and those really didn't help in fact in some ways I think it made him worse and so it was just through sheer divine intervention that I re-approach

him about I began and I did it in a way that I'd never done it before just love and grace

and I ditched the gelt and condemnation and shame that I had used previously and I really just committed to meeting him where it was at so we were doing you know what we're doing a lot of this yeah of course of course in the more one side you know you kind of get what you receive so the

“more one side gives the other side gives and so in amber I think fell more to receive mode and”

allowed me to kind of meet her halfway our relationship got better and I started to listen because initially when I first thought about I began it was a pure ego thing like I'm you know

to Catholic all boys Catholic high school this is weird this is this is him shit yeah but so then I

started to do my own research and the more you start going down the rabbit hole of the research these things have been around for thousands of years and in the last hundred years they've actually have some research around it and individuals we're getting better we're not talking about small percentages like large percentages of individuals who utilize these in the proper way get better and so the more I researched the more I felt comfortable knowing oh wait a minute this is not a drug

this is a this is a medicine this is a treatment that could potentially heal whatever I'm dealing

“with and that's what allowed me to be a little bit more relaxed and accepting and say okay you know this”

is something that I would absolutely look into I'm a little bit like you probably if you tell me it's gonna make me a bigger stronger faster smarter you know hurt less like I'll try it so let's you know I'm gonna give you that you should and so in a roundabout long way when did we have answering your question it was that's how we got to I begin because yeah it could have been another medicine right it could have been something else but that was the one that this individual

turned his whole life around with and so you trust your brother right you trust your friend yeah and so I said you know I'll give us a shot I mean some some of the most the people that I

hold in the highest regard the respect the most have done this and I've never had a negative

comment come back about it some of the experiences are vastly different but the outcome seems to be all very similar I then and the underlying theme is I now understand why I am the way I am and I think that's a that's a huge relief right when you can identify finally identify the villain it's like it's like having a flu you know for half of your life and then a doctor says oh you have influenced a you can take this and it will kill influence a it's like at least you know what it

was you know what it is and what I found really fascinating was how different everyone's journey was I mean similar contacts but very different journeys it's subjective yeah right because we're subjective I'm different excuse me I'm different from you yeah genetically we look different we're different

“from Amber we're going to have different experiences yeah that's what you know and you know it's a”

childhood trauma that's it from is it from your career is it from it's a previous marriage is it from you know how you're raised you know what your life experiences from repeated had trauma good there there's so many things that put people in this position and they find themselves exactly where you were where they went all through the conventional route and I think the inability for conventional medicine to help a lot of people in this position is much bigger than we think

but people feel stuck in the system because there's not an alternative and certainly not one that their health insurance will pay for and that kind of traps them into a certain vertical that's a big deal yeah so hold on the thing we can talk about when I was talking about commercialization yeah you know that's we you know what what is one of these journeys cost out of pocket we are special pricing for the veterans that we support through our program but someone that is doing

self pay would spend between $8500 and $10,000 okay no and you compare that I mean I began is actually used mostly for addiction disruption when you compare that to a 30 day inpatient stay with you know the abysmal success rates it's really a drop in the bucket and it's a drop in the bucket to give someone their entire life back because it does have this really innate ability to provide a different perspective or concept of you know why you know these these struggles exist and

then it's doing something really incredible on a physiological level as well which you also saw

“on this film with the Stanford study yeah you know it was really I think what the film”

does really really well is it takes the context of what you're saying and it puts it in a visual way your animators to the credible job it's just you know listening to the voiceovers of DJ for example just walking through the different points in his life and how he would tie something that happened as a child I remember talking about the incident where you know he's moving the lawn and his father who was this big imposing figure came he he he he he busted the lawn bar

run and ever wrote and the dad came sprinting at him and he just went into a rage and he picked his lawn bar up and literally just smashed it over his heads to bits and the fear that he felt and the rage that he saw in his dad's face he felt it as if he was still the 10-year-old version of himself and then he was able to immediately draw forward like 25 years and see that he

through his his daughter and he was like whoa is that you get into these when you get into the

experience you witness potentially some of these incidences from different perspectives first

person's second person and you can feel potentially the pain that you're causing someone so for instance I had a judgment experience during my my experience that I was constantly judged and and everything is like hyper you know it just you know compounds everything that's going on like you're very aware you're so aware you're there and I was judging Amber on the kids and I was like this weird thing that was going on it seemed like an eternity and I was judging and judging and

judging but I was doing the judging and then all of a sudden the perspective completely shifted and I was judging myself and so and and then that went on and I was feeling like the pain and the rage of this person I was feeling the pain of my rage judging me and I was getting judged as I was watching myself judge them and I could feel it and it hurt and I just said

that's it I will never do that again like I don't ever want Amber or our children

“to feel that pain that I'm experiencing right now in judgment because that's what they must be”

experiencing right so I was feeling that and I came out so I'll never do that again. What kind of super intelligent does that make a wild I mean I don't even report to understand it I mean we don't either trust you know I don't have any of that but I mean that we've only scratched the surface of the power of the mind you know I mean you know they say we only just represent our brain capacity but I think we've only scratched the the surface of the mind but

it's really fascinating is you're actually using the best vehicle which is your own mind to heal the vehicle that's damaged which is your own mind I mean what better resource than to tap into your own innate ability to heal yourself and that's a carry and you do it every day right you're right you you you you do use supplements and nutraceuticals and things but there's supplements right they're not yeah right but the things you're doing are healing the body from the inside

“and that's what this does it's um some doctors say it takes what this is what therapy is trying to”

get to right talk therapy different cognitive behavior therapies trying to get to the root cause trying to get in your mind and figure it out and have you see it I begin does that in a few hours so you have to be prepared right so what you're trying to work on with a therapist for five or 10 years which you that judge when it's you probably would have taken you five to ten years right now he's coming in to the substance update I'm going to tell you I'm perfect there

but think about trying to do that for five to ten years except solving it in six to eight hours yeah and that's the beauty of it and that's the difficult part I think that science or or you know PhDs will have trouble wrapping their heads around where we're just saying well we just want to see the mechanisms actually core brain is it working on but there's just

other underlying things that are happening that make these subjective experiences so powerful

and so healing so like changing and and how long did you go down with him I didn't but I did go down the day after okay and I had a complete freak out on the plane what have we done you know you're so desperate to save the person you love also didn't think it would work because so many things had you know yeah on my way to Mexico to see my husband after a psychedelic trip like is this really where we are I can imagine what you're thinking it was terrifying and everything started

to come undone in my mind like what if we done this is it if I see him I'm going to know it immediately if it worked if it didn't even be devastated and I've got nothing left luckily when I saw him I knew I immediately hadn't worked and the first thing he said to me was this is it this is exactly what his former teammates needed there was a lot we had to do feeling his countenance was back he I had known him since before he was a seal and the things I

loved most about him had disappeared so when I saw him again it was like immediate exactly the way

“I remember you see a glow on individuals I mean we see it now you know thousands of individuals”

over that we've seen on a Monday that go through treatment and come out on a Friday on a Monday they just look you know some of them are gone they're not even looking at you right because they can they're just they're really you know broken in some ways or just hurting or searching their eyes might be dark they're not talkative they're not happy they're not making jokes yeah DJ's

looked when the eyes I know you could just see it and and we taught we call the glow effect you can

“see the individuals almost literally looks like they have like heat radiating from them their skin”

looks like it they just well their spirit has just been like they just reversed aged by 10 years you just look good and healthy and your eyes are open and you're happy and so you go on a Friday say a group of five to six veterans that we we give grant scholarships to you know in the van maybe no one's talking to each other on Friday they're telling jokes and they're changing numbers and they can't wait to see their wife and their kids and like go do the things that they want to

do it's a dramatic change it's just awesome just a witness that's amazing yeah and Sean's a

part of this uh philanthropy too right because it is in ambush you and chipley and everyone yes yeah Sean you know and again we can speak about it because Sean is you know he's talked about it on his show and he says he was in a similar place right for years he didn't feel yeah um he was just kind of just whitenuckling it and going through it and absorbing the pain of everything thinking like this is normal and you know he said you know he was right after his experience he was out on a bench

overlooking just like looking out at the ocean he said man I I haven't done this in 15 years he's like I haven't just stopped and looked and just been present and realized how like awesome life isn't earth is in the water and just being outside and seeing green grass and blue sky like these are the things that you know they call it on awakening it kind of wakes you up to you know I people say wow I didn't realize the apple was so red or avocado was so green or oranges smell so good wow and

that is not like one person that is everybody that is amazing if your energy is low during the day the problem usually started the night before sleep affects focus mood metabolism literally

everything and most people never learn how to properly support it our free sleep challenges April 29th

and 30th and it's designed to teach the basics of better sleep in a way that's realistic and easy to apply if learning how to sleep better feels like the right place to start we'd love to have you join our challenge on April 29th now let's get back to the ultimate human podcast so so what would you say to you know families that are struggling with similar situations i'm not this I would say think outside the box and that's one thing about our community is we take care of one

another and we're talking to think outside the box now Marcus is a really great soldier and that he did go to his appointments and he did take his medicines but when he got off of pharmaceuticals

“going into uh can you feel favorite yeah yeah yeah yeah you have to titrate and that's back”

and be for individuals literally we've had some that been on them for 15 or 20 years imagine titrating off of that or coming off in cold we of course some individuals are telling your VA doc hey I'm going to titrate off you can go try to explain to a doctor that you're going to give you this kind of to it in silence yeah yeah so he he hasn't been back on them so you know that sort of unconventional we're going to just try this really helped open up a life that I can only dream about I was just

trying to keep him alive but didn't realize that he hadn't actually been living and so you know the the connection that we have and all the life that we're creating now the people that we've been able to help through the work that we do would say the same it's one thing to have a pulse it's another thing to live yeah and that started the kind of the idea around vets you know when Amber saw me we embraced we cried I didn't even say I'm better she can just see

I just said literally the first words were this is exactly what the guy's need like we have to

figure out a way to help them someone paid for my treatment um and I knew that these are expensive treatments and it's not covering their insurance like you were talking about because they're not FDA approved yet here it's we're working on that but I wanted to pay for somebody right I I wanted to get somebody that opportunity to heal like I did because I was in such a dark place and I said man if there's so many individuals that I know it have very close friends

that were in the exact same spot and if they can't afford treatment well what's going to happen

“to them and so that's what was that was the idea around how do we do this and how do we pay it”

forward yeah so what does life look for you guys like for you guys now outside of a game like what what are you building together what are your goals what's the path you on there's there's a lot happening yeah and this is there's a lot and that supplement bag right there you know we should talk about that too that's I gotta clear everything yeah and I brought that as just a funny you know as a funny joke I figured you'd get a kick out of it like the garbage oh that stuff's

and received our 501c3 charity status in 2019 and just from day one I mean it was just

“Amber and I and we're working seven you know it's like building a business so seven days a week”

all hours in the night it's why I have over 600 text messages on red and we've been doing that for years and working with Stanford and Ohio State and Hopkins and just studies and policy work at the state and federal level and that's just going we have a full team at vets and Amber

could talk more about that she's a CEO I'd share the board there with some amazing individuals

that help just kind of keep it on track and then the success we had there at vets I was approached by you know entrepreneurial individuals one in particular grant for standing who's just an amazing human he dropped out of Brown his freshman year to build a to fix health care because he had it's like 15th knee surgery and it just kept getting worse and 15th knee surgery just yeah and this guy is like you know men's a smart just brilliant and just tried to solve the problem

through technology and communication better communication with doctors and he built a business called rally health and they they partner with united and the rest is history of course and now he approached and just said dude the work you're doing with veterans is like incredible I love to support that work but as an entrepreneur how do we do this for the private sector and so we started it we founded a company called Tara Mind I'm the founder and CEO along with grant

and we figured out a way to take individuals who are struggling that don't respond to anti-depressants and introduce them to advanced mental health care through FDA approved treatments right wow TMS Saint protocol through IV ketamine and we do that through um employee benefit plan so we're selling this to like you know the Google's of the world and Walmart's in the labor

unions right and so these are the groups that are just taking what we initially never even thought about

just starting out with veterans and now taking it to the private sector and so that and we're doing that all through data everything's driven by data so you know we're identifying individuals through AI through other you know kind of fragmented data sets yeah making sense of all that data through kind of longitudinal structure data and then we're showing these companies like hey you have all these individuals that been on anti-depressants for years they're not getting better

you're wasting money right let's focus on these individuals let's get them to the right treatments so they're also powder gigs I mean potentially some of them a hundred percent they're the ones that end up in the ER they end up on disabilities so we're getting themselves right and eventually of course you know our vision of course is like well on the monitor we're getting to biomarkers what's the right treatment for the right person at the right time so that's that's

our my commercial business to our mind and so we have vets I have to our mind what else you know I know you want to talk about a few other things that we have while we're not working 24 hours a day yeah I thought I was busy so I talk about this I mean we you know we have a lot going on we do have a lot going on so Mark is that I have been in build mode and that has that has kept this trap behind a laptop for the majority of the last eight years so there's nothing like building

I don't care what anybody says about being a business with your spouse best thing I best decision I remember best decision we love it we don't ever fight yeah we agree on everything

“and you know shitty day at the office and have a great day at home that's why I think it's”

a great business from you know from your price private life yeah yeah it hasn't always been

roses but it's definitely been very gratifying and I feel that it really is you know my life calling marks is life calling and together we hope to break free from the laptop in 2022 the film has heightened the awareness around this topic but really just broad mental health beyond the veteran community and so we're actually launching a podcast this all right yeah later thank you right yeah we did we've been we've been 10 we have two more we had to work through some

some legal stuff that we've done so we'll shoot those two more in the next few weeks but talk about what are we going to what are we doing what do we help to accomplish and through Dallas I'd love to to check on there I just invited myself onto the podcast please we'll have to check we'll have to

“check team to make sure that you have to go through the DD process yeah yeah we would be honored”

but no the idea is really just to continue speaking to this topic and bringing hope to people that they really can transform their lives Marcus came home from a driving school defensive driving school very early on in his seal career I think that the lesson he shared with me pertains to life and not only what we've done in our continuing to do but to anyone and basically what he said

telephone pole on the side of a road because that's what they're staring at when they start to spiral

“out of control to spin out of control so a person over compensates two or three times to steer”

towards the pole when they have so much open room to just make one adjustment and you pass the pole now maybe you're right but we over compensate because we're staring at that thing and we actually

drive to the thing so I told Amber this now she's an amazing metaphor it's a I realized during

our spiral that I was becoming so focused on the proverbial tree that I didn't realize I was surrounded by an open field of possibility and where did I want to steer so regardless of how crazy things had gotten in our personal life I was just intent on steering towards where I wanted to end up realizing that I had an entire field and anyone can do that great metaphor so it's just the you know just being in the business of encouraging people to transform their lives and drive

where they want to go and focus too much on the problem yeah Andrew Andrew human does a good job talking about he's been talking about it recently about how individuals just they get stuck in the loop and part of this is mental health but the loop is just you keep thinking about the bad thing that's happening and I got to raise money or my kids doing instead of driving to the open place to say hey let's let's let's get out of this loop right let's move to the open space the

open space being healing whatever that is or whatever you're going on and I think that's just a

“such a good metaphor for really everything yeah that's what the podcast will touch on that's so awesome”

in relation to guys doing doing amazing what the podcast so what else what else yeah well we are

working on a buck we've been working on that for a little while right now you've been approached by so many people to write a book and just like you know books are it's a lot tougher than people think it's tough and it's also from our community from the steel community although there has been a lot of books written it's a bit it was a bit shonder even still a bit shonder and I think there's a way to do in a way not to do it and I think right done a good job I've definitely done a good job

because I don't love the spotlight decent at speaking and getting out there and doing it but you can do it in a way where it's not about you and there's so many individuals that out there

and they write about me me me this and I did this and I did that and I've been to war and I never

wanted to do that and so we put off a book forever because that's not what we wanted to do but what we've realized is the more we talk and the more we get out there the more people here are story and it gives them hope and so the better there might be a chapter about the steel teams in the book because people do want to hear that and that stuff is exciting but that's not what the book is about it's really about our life and our healing and where we started and it'll be a chapter if there's eight

chapters it'll be a chapter probably on college life and growing up and maybe some about the steel teams would just be more about what Amran I are doing now and our lessons learned and how do we pay that forward how do we help individuals how do we help couples stay together how do we help children deal with you know potentially they're dad not being in the military away at work but maybe being a banker who's gone you know right hours a week right so it's extremely relatable

and so we're super excited about that and that's we're working with some relationships folks yeah yeah that's that's amazing so let's see what we got in the bag oh man yeah so so um Gary I I thought it'd be a great idea because we travel literally we live in Dallas but we're probably there not even half the amount of time yeah and Amber bought me these packing cubes for my clothes but I wanted to packing all my stuff. I'm going to bring this to show you your wife's not the

overpatter in this relationship he's going to get a kick out of my travel stuff and he's going to also say eight of some of this stuff and native some of it just think it would be hilarious because like you said on the road it's hard sometimes to get a good meal I do this yeah so do that Marcus is very committed to showing up for himself every day he's very disciplined he's very interesting. This is just they got a very navy seal vibe to just already you know right so like

“I mean if you want to if you want to go through the stuff here right so of course we need like”

some of the best beef jerky you could find I found this on a flight once and I was like oh god I got perfect as I get a huge fan we're gonna get that a 10 yeah I got some nuts you may tell me yep yep give that 10 as well that's awesome who doesn't need their electrolytes like I got a my electrolytes every morning I have to have creatin because you know creatin we're finding I was really good for you very good for you yeah of course you know free range like

um actually the CEO that I found her momentum and just gave me some stuff so I have to you know

“take some of that cool great friends I got a little bit of fiber in here sometimes this gives”

me a little bit of a deli eight but that is and this is just pure fiber yeah I get some pure fiber I'll just have some call it done in there okay again some of these things you might say Marcus though that shit away you're not sure about that brand yeah it's got some dairy some some but it's a very well dairy digestive dairy digest it's kind of vitamins here uh roaderye I got uh omega threes I have more digestive enzymes cook you 10 I take all this stuff for my

liver I've had some high liver enzymes connect like over the couple years and milk this will scrape for the liver you know so I've like got some stuff that I can just kind of clean out the liver you pick one all form of cook you 10 if you recognize this product that's a great one that is a must it is a two tab you know we're at home we have our home system that we have and it and it adds hydrogen to the water it's great I got some vitamin D D3 with K2 which is also

amazing and and in fat because it is a fat soluble vitamin so I don't know this brand but

here's to be well-strived we can work on the brands yeah I do take a low dose just have a little bit of thicker blood so um regular therapeutic phobotomy is really good for that too just regular regular blood dumps yeah very good for that to have some bone broth for the road so I actually just a powdered bone broth how to bone broth and love that it looks like you haven't dug into this in a little while it's looking a little rough okay I don't think they gave you that

when you get out of the service yeah yeah that's like an MRE yeah yeah every there's sentimental value to that oh and then I take uh I have two different types of methylene blue I have a liquid kind of extra yeah at the house I don't want to take the liquid on the road so I have these yeah these still turn my urine colors so yeah at least it's you can't get away with peeing on the toilette see that's the problem that's my white busting every time because I used to be

able to didn't deny it but now if it's blue so anyway oh didn't I thought you'd get a kick out of this though that is awesome well go through and tighten anything up that needs to be tightened up burberine I'm a huge fan of burberine uh actually outperforms met form and as a glucophage and some some some studies um great for blood sugar control yeah yeah that's great I love that you have a survival meal pack that you've taken with you too because if you're going on commercial

flights I mean the garbage that they feed you on airplanes hey do you want these matches and and crackers no I don't actually actually get mad at me because I also sometimes I'm like I don't need to hot towel either just like we're good yeah really that water ice coffee on airlines is just

absolutely hideous oh my god i mean if you actually knew what they made that out of first of all it's all

just straight tap water um but um and and and the coffee is is really uh garbage but it's mainly like you know they're making this all we're just unfiltered tap water and um you know I tell people if you know a few things that you can do to sort of pile hack your life but the the first

“moment that you have any kind of disposable income um the first thing you should do is”

water filtration right I mean there's we're about 65% water um and if you look at the amount of toxicity that comes through the water supply you know not just fluoride which is uh categorizes and neurotoxin but um chlorine fluoride it's called PFA's these polyfluorocles um trace pharmaceuticals microplastics you know all of this stuff in something that is um not immediately

toxic doesn't mean that it's necessarily harmful it sounds like a scare tactic but the truth is

we're just trying to get around the the the system um but water filtration's huge so um you know the the nice thing is in airports now you can't carry bottled water with you on them on the plane you can get it on the other side of the security um but I'm seeing more glass bottled water choices and most of them have the filtered refillable stations yeah so if you just throw a aluminum bottle in your bag and then fill it up before you get on your flight I mean some of those

containers will hold almost a liter of fluid I mean that's perfect you know while you're on a

“flight I might eat uh the only thing I might add to that would be some um like a mineral salt like”

like uh like a bohawk gold I've heard you talk about that yeah um which is would you replace the electrolyte with that or you because those electrolytes are heavily focused on um the big ones that that that are the consumer knows about potassium magnesium sodium which are certainly electrolytes and you certainly need those um but you really need 91 trace you make trace minerals you know our soils have been so depleted you know a lot of a lot of the challenges that we have are mineral

efficiencies um and mineral deficiencies manifests themselves in all kinds of ways brittle bones osteopeenia osteoporosis migraines really interesting study in the why while eternal of headaches

Baha and so now that we're here again I'm you know first thing in the morning it's the first thing

I'm gonna do is take I get them throughout the day okay I get them pretty regularly yeah so okay so

“you know just remember that um pain uh cannot come from the brain right so even though it feels like”

the migraine is coming from your brain that's not possible because the brain has no pain receptors so it actually can't generate a pain signal so even though you feel like the pain is coming from the brain it's not um it's coming from the covering of the brain called the dura um and that's where it's fraught with pain receptors the dura hates two things it hates being stretched and it hates being contracted and what determines whether or not it's doing that is is the sodium

gradient the cosmetic gradient great um study in the widely journal of headaches for anybody that wants to doubt that just by adding mineral salt to your water you can bury off them fix migraines

go read that study um was it in first correlation between sodium um and migraines you know it's just

given the body the raw material it needs to do its job so what is your supplement pack luck like is it like doesn't look like that Gary I she's got like to the mine looks similar to your cell and I have I have stolen her classroom which she just found out today oh really I'm uh I'm busy of being all in and what I'm all into and I feel like building that has really shifted my focus away from myself it's something that I also hope to work on this here like you take pretty good

care of yourself so I do but admittedly more for vanity purposes than we all drive you love walking

“together yeah yeah yeah yeah I think it's gonna ask you like what what do you what do you really”

have because you know I built a business with my spouse as well and by the grace of God it was successful um so I know what that struggle is like and um there's no separating your business from your personal life so if you're starting a business they just spouse just know that you're going down that road if you want protein to build lean muscle but without the caloric impact or need

to cut you need perfect amino it's pure essential amino acids the building blocks of proteins

in a precise form and ratio that allows for near 100% utilization in building lean muscle and no caloric impact so we build protein six times as much as way but without the excess body fat we normally get during bulking this is the new era of protein supplementation and it's real if you want to build lean muscle without having to cut you need perfect amino now let's get back to the ultimate human podcast but you know I I think I've learned that the best relationships in my

opinion are the ones that have gone through everything that's meant to tear them apart but they're still together it's like two imperfect people that just refuse to give up on each other you know and at no point it did hit the bliss point right but you know there's nothing better than succeeding together all right that is the I think one of the greatest gifts for any any marriage any couple is to is to have the the winds and and the losses you know going through those together and

one of the things that I think Sage and I learned was we read a great book called Rocket Fuel I don't know if you've ever heard of it very simple book but it's it was um it's a quick read but it talks about a integrator and a visionary and the importance of having both because I'm very much of a visionary but I also create so much dust right and and I and I throw up so many ideas and she's very practical very organized very regimented and without and so

we would butt heads all the time in the business very similar do you guys need to read this book if you're married is that nine it just took it to a ten rock if you don't take 15% of everything comes out of it but but this is called rocket fuel so just a simple book and what it did it literally reframed the way we looked at each other right I saw so much value in what she was providing and she saw so much value and what I was providing because she was like you know what I

can't make the phone ring I can't make people walk through the door and I was like I can't pay the bills we would be absolutely broke or our credit would be in the app oh we didn't read that yeah and it it made me realize the synergistic value of both of us rather than just my independent value about for bringing in all the business and coming up with all the ideas and I was like

“all you have to do is send the checks you know and and you know I oversimplified what she did she”

oversimplified what I did to his great book I don't get any marriage advice but I will toss that one out

strengths and weaknesses yeah and at one point realizing that we were in such a score keeping contest oh god that's exactly what we were doing yeah and such like this like push pull we're headed towards the same finish line we have the same goals in minds but we were finding each other all the way there and it's like if we just got behind one another yeah and really celebrated and

“leaned into those strengths and weaknesses how much more impactful could we be and I think that's”

where we're at now we're each other's biggest fan signing we really compliment each other I mean I tell him every day how perfect she is and how amazing she is and you know I just I can't well tell now I got it on tape and on video is the one for sure yeah it's funny we did exactly the

same thing because what I found we would do is we would always kind of want to prove the other one

wrong so if we had an idea and she said no and I did it anyway and it failed then she would hold it against me if it succeeded I would hold it against her and then what I realized was if we were just to these together then what happens is the wins you celebrate together and the losses are sort of outside the castle walls yeah because you both made the decision to take us a step forward and one direction or another if it doesn't work there's no finger pointing because you both

agreed on it so now that becomes something that's it's it's not a bone of contention anymore because I didn't decide to do it and you said no or you decided yes you know it's it and then when you make a decision and it works out then you both celebrate the victory so you end up only celebrating the wins and the losses are kind of outside the castle walls instead of in there really poison everything else and it was such a simple thing for us but it made it massive

difference in how we operated together and it also was the tipping point for our business just

“God I believe that I do and I appreciate sharing that I think too the work that you're doing”

is so important is just so fundamentally important the work that we're doing is helping give people their lives back same for you guys and I think that there's just this innate responsibility and sort of answering the call I don't feel like we stumbled into this I feel like we are you know on a on a divinely appointed mission that it's such an honor to serve so we might as well serve you know together yeah well I'm listen I think what started as you know a wife

silent struggles and a husband's silent struggles you have had the courage to you know what out there in the public domain and and be vulnerable which led to this documentary which is an

incredible documentary I mean I'll be outside didn't expect it to be as good as it was oh thanks and

it was it was it was well narrated it was well rated it was entertaining I found myself being very curious about you know what was gonna happen I've identified with each of the of the parties it made me it should more light on the discussion that I have a DJ ship Lee which was one of our top podcasts I only wish I like I said I wish it had come out earlier before I'd been on the pub with him or had him on the pod but what I what I really found was how applicable it is

to everyone even though it was the seals you know I think men in general want to suffer in silence and I think a lot of wives will very often hit that wall and they'll leave before yeah if you know and the solution could be two steps away right here on the 98 yard line and maybe you only need to move two more yards yeah you know and the fact that you guys did it and succeeded and you can see how many people it's inspired you know not the least of which of the characters in the

documentary it's an absolute must watch for anyone because they're the people that are not struggling that know someone who's struggling and there's a people that are struggling because I don't think anyone watching this podcast now does not know single person in their sphere of their life we said all times you're that mental health brain health doesn't discriminate yeah it's either you or it is one degree of separation yeah starting to find that out I if I'm speaking to a room I

“always say a raise your hand if it's yeah if it's not you that's why you don't raise your hand yeah yeah yeah”

but it's when you raise a pressure it's almost at least half the individuals you have more raise your hand say oh yeah I know somebody you see them my child or my spouse or if you yeah and that's how you really move the needle so congratulations to you both thank you

um so you know I I always wind up my podcast by asking my guests the same question I'll ask it

to this question but what does it mean to you to be an old bit of human and you're gonna ask this question and I actually got asked it on a podcast now look that we that's not fair that's my question yeah I struggle yeah um well I'll try not to struggle and I thought I had a good answer last night but I'm gonna I'll talk through it because it has to do with curiosity and I think being curious is one of the one of the biggest attributes that we can we can have as individuals as human

“beings and why I think curiosity is so important is because we're stuck in our ways we're stuck in our”

old ways we never change we never evolve we never innovate we never progress and if I was stuck in my

ways I would have never gotten better and I would have listened to the doctors that I've always been told for many years when I was a child that if you just listen to your doctor and you do this this way that you're supposed to get better and as a good soldier I wasn't getting you know I was doing everything I was supposed to do but I wasn't getting better so for me being curious and wanting to get better and thinking unconventionally and trying to solve the problem through

curiosity is what enabled me and Amber to be what we're at today so I think curiosity is the first

thing is an ultimate human always be curious as a lifelong learner I think we should just never stop

and for me and Amber you know we are have that type a personality I always say a close friend of ours always say send it and I love that because I struggle with the term balance and I don't I think it's very difficult to be balanced where you're trying to succeed and excel in life

“and so if you're getting into something if you want to be a good student you want to be a good”

podcaster you want to be a good seal a good banker a good teacher you have to send it you have to go all in you have to right and especially early on in life you have to make sacrifice man right and it it it's earlier on in life it's easier to sacrifice because you can make mistakes you may not have the family you may be able to focus on yourself a little bit more as you get older you can have some balance use your network use your influence that way

you got to send it you got to go all in and it's the only way to get things on you know hard work determination all that stuff is very real and so for me that's what it means means to be an ultimate human and how am I all right well Marcus told me that this was coming so I have I have given it a bit of thought and there are a couple of things actually that I didn't say in the podcast that I would like to touch on in terms of being an ultimate human but my real answer

is going to follow these two things number one is that when I approached Marcus in love because I had given myself love and grace and really by the grace of God had ditched the resentment that had built up over years he responded so I think there's so much power and love and as humans we need to feel that I think that real strength is in vulnerability so you know

“when you say like big Navy SEALs are on camera being so raw and honest that's why this is resonating”

with people because it's it really is the the most organic form of strength but I think that what really I feel it is to be an ultimate human is to consider this we think that we're human beings in search of spiritual experiences but we're really spiritual beings having human experiences I think and so I think to be an ultimate human you really have to tap into that spiritual feeling of love and and and this radical vulnerability mm-hmm yeah I think that's where true connection is made

you know and connection and community we know I won the fundamental necessities to a long healthy happy life so it's a great answer thank you guys both for coming on the podcast

Jerry I thank you amazing thank you this is gonna this is gonna touch a lot of lives I will put

this in the show notes links to their contact where does my audience find you guys if they want to find you so the components dot com the components very simple easy yeah we grab that domain name we make sure oh you got the components dot com we sure did wow as far as I want to show how many people we're doing yeah we had threatened few people yeah it's some payoff but hey you're

and we didn't talk much about vets but we are sponsoring veterans five or six per week every week

wow who are going to Mexico to receive the same opportunity that Marcus did and we're having

in a tremendous success so the organization really is the lifeblood of the film and of our

“lives so that's solutions dot org yeah it's really important to talk about that we you know”

we we live and live and die by philanthropy and and are the our mission at vets continues on by

individuals that are willing to partner with us to support us and so you know if individuals

“want to get involved as Amber mentioned you know you know looking to what we're doing”

and and reach out oh yeah my audience definitely yeah yeah so Marcus and Amber thank you guys so much for kind of you know this is great yeah thank you and until next time guys that's just sites