Coleman Ruiz: Overcoming Physical & Emotional Challenges

00:00:00.000 | - Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast,

00:00:02.240 | where we discuss science

00:00:03.660 | and science-based tools for everyday life.

00:00:05.840 | I'm Andrew Huberman,

00:00:10.160 | and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology

00:00:13.280 | at Stanford School of Medicine.

00:00:15.360 | My guest today is Coleman Ruiz.

00:00:17.800 | Coleman Ruiz is a former tier one Navy SEAL special operator.

00:00:21.600 | I think it's fair to assume

00:00:22.600 | that most of you have never heard of Coleman Ruiz before.

00:00:25.200 | And in fact, it was part of his former life job description

00:00:28.460 | to be largely covert,

00:00:30.320 | such that only his family and friends

00:00:32.120 | really knew what he did for a living.

00:00:34.080 | He is, however, now living as a civilian.

00:00:36.660 | And the reason I invited Coleman on this podcast

00:00:39.420 | was essentially to tell us his life story,

00:00:42.220 | which of course includes his time in the SEAL teams,

00:00:44.840 | but includes so much more

00:00:46.580 | that I'm certain is of value to everyone.

00:00:48.920 | Today, Coleman shares with you his remarkable journey

00:00:52.240 | from childhood through his teenage years

00:00:54.640 | into the military,

00:00:55.880 | and some of the things that happened

00:00:57.320 | during his time in the military,

00:00:59.020 | which then informed his post-military civilian life,

00:01:02.860 | and what it is to be a father, a husband,

00:01:06.120 | and somebody who has experienced tremendous loss

00:01:08.980 | at various stages of his life,

00:01:10.700 | as well as tremendous triumph.

00:01:12.660 | Indeed, if ever there was a life

00:01:14.300 | that could be framed within the context

00:01:16.020 | of the so-called hero's journey,

00:01:17.860 | it is the life of Coleman Ruiz.

00:01:19.620 | Coleman Ruiz's life is one that embodies focus and pursuit,

00:01:23.620 | family and friends and love,

00:01:25.580 | all the things that we think of

00:01:27.060 | in terms of having a rich life,

00:01:28.980 | but also one that includes many unforeseen tragedies,

00:01:32.900 | many unforeseen challenges, both internal and external.

00:01:36.100 | Coleman also shares with a rare

00:01:37.940 | and extraordinary degree of vulnerability,

00:01:40.060 | the extent to which challenges in life,

00:01:41.980 | both external and internal,

00:01:43.760 | have helped shape him as a human being.

00:01:45.960 | What follows is a discussion that everyone,

00:01:48.340 | male, female, young, or old,

00:01:50.660 | and regardless of position in life,

00:01:52.500 | is sure to derive tremendous benefit from.

00:01:55.380 | Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast

00:01:58.080 | is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.

00:02:00.860 | It is, however, part of my desire and effort

00:02:02.940 | to bring zero cost to consumer information

00:02:04.860 | about science and science-related tools

00:02:06.840 | to the general public.

00:02:08.340 | In keeping with that theme,

00:02:09.420 | I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.

00:02:12.300 | Our first sponsor is BetterHelp.

00:02:14.580 | BetterHelp offers professional therapy

00:02:16.400 | with a licensed therapist carried out entirely online.

00:02:19.500 | I've been doing therapy for over 30 years.

00:02:21.860 | Initially, I started therapy because, well,

00:02:23.940 | I was required to in order to stay in school,

00:02:26.640 | but eventually I just decided to keep doing it

00:02:28.940 | because I found it to be very beneficial.

00:02:30.820 | There are essentially three things

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00:06:03.700 | And now for my conversation with Coleman Ruiz.

00:06:06.860 | Coleman Ruiz, welcome.

00:06:08.540 | - Thank you.

00:06:09.360 | Very excited to see you.

00:06:10.820 | - It's great to have you here.

00:06:13.140 | I'm guessing most people are probably not familiar

00:06:15.780 | with Coleman Ruiz.

00:06:16.660 | So let's start at the beginning.

00:06:19.440 | Where were you born?

00:06:21.940 | What was the context of your home life?

00:06:24.080 | And maybe let's get up to maybe elementary school,

00:06:28.380 | middle school, and whatever top contour

00:06:31.740 | or deep details you want to get into.

00:06:33.460 | - Yeah.

00:06:34.300 | - We're all ears.

00:06:35.460 | - Okay, I'll bring us up to seventh grade,

00:06:36.940 | 'cause I would say that was probably

00:06:39.100 | the first big inflection point in my life.

00:06:41.220 | I grew up in, I was born in New Orleans

00:06:43.260 | in a suburb called New Orleans East, we call it.

00:06:47.420 | And I have an older sister, two younger brothers.

00:06:50.600 | My dad was a welder.

00:06:51.740 | My mom was a dental assistant.

00:06:54.340 | And we had a couple of boxers and dogs.

00:06:58.220 | And we had a very modest, very modest upbringing.

00:07:03.040 | I won't over-dramatize it, but admittedly,

00:07:07.020 | sometimes we got cheese from the lady across the street

00:07:10.060 | who didn't want her welfare cheese.

00:07:11.980 | And it was one of those.

00:07:14.260 | You know, I could tell my parents

00:07:15.420 | were fighting for every nickel.

00:07:16.980 | But it was great.

00:07:19.500 | I mean, my cousin grew up across the street from me.

00:07:21.940 | He's exactly my age.

00:07:23.720 | We had that, at least some of my memory, Andrew, of it was,

00:07:28.720 | it was very pleasant.

00:07:31.820 | I learned later that you forget a lot of things

00:07:33.540 | in your childhood that were unpleasant.

00:07:35.620 | But my initial memories, when I started thinking

00:07:38.100 | about this kind of thing, and, you know,

00:07:40.060 | as you and I have discussed, getting professional help,

00:07:42.340 | and you start to learn a little bit more

00:07:43.820 | about your childhood.

00:07:45.180 | But I remember it being very pleasant.

00:07:46.860 | You know, you've told me about your background

00:07:49.340 | and skateboarding and stuff.

00:07:50.480 | You know, we skateboarded the neighborhood.

00:07:52.100 | BMX was a big thing when we were kids.

00:07:54.180 | It was very much a rat the streets upbringing.

00:07:57.500 | There was a park behind the neighborhood.

00:07:59.000 | We would cut through the fence and go,

00:08:00.700 | you know, this kind of thing.

00:08:01.580 | I played football and baseball,

00:08:03.220 | and very normal in that regard.

00:08:05.580 | Went to the neighborhood school.

00:08:07.780 | And then in sixth grade, I went to what was my high school,

00:08:12.220 | but it went fifth through 12th,

00:08:14.660 | called Holy Cross High School in the lower ninth ward,

00:08:17.940 | which that spot is now vacated because the school,

00:08:21.700 | I went back after Hurricane Katrina,

00:08:23.340 | the whole school had to be moved.

00:08:25.380 | And I went there in seventh grade,

00:08:27.100 | and it was a hellacious start.

00:08:30.020 | I mean, it was detention after detention,

00:08:32.380 | you know, fist fight after fist fight,

00:08:34.420 | and damn near.

00:08:36.780 | - Were you the instigator of those fights?

00:08:39.020 | - Probably some.

00:08:40.880 | I definitely fell in with the wrong crowd initially

00:08:43.820 | in that sixth and seventh grade years.

00:08:45.940 | And I wouldn't say it was so extreme

00:08:50.060 | that like it was complete mayhem,

00:08:51.700 | but I was definitely on, you know,

00:08:54.380 | problem, situation, number, whatever,

00:08:56.420 | when my parents were called in.

00:08:58.600 | And it was kind of the last straw type thing.

00:09:01.460 | And I got cut from baseball.

00:09:04.820 | My grades were fine.

00:09:05.940 | I was always a pretty good student.

00:09:07.540 | It was just teenager shenanigans.

00:09:10.460 | And then I went out for wrestling.

00:09:12.340 | - Can I just pause you for a second?

00:09:13.980 | So on the violence part,

00:09:16.300 | I have a little bit of experience with this,

00:09:19.300 | but violence can come from trying to protect others,

00:09:24.300 | instigating, it can come from the wildness,

00:09:29.800 | just trying to, you know,

00:09:31.300 | see what it feels like, experimentation,

00:09:34.160 | and any number of other things,

00:09:35.460 | all the way to pure sociopathy,

00:09:36.880 | which we know you are not and weren't.

00:09:40.540 | Do you recall feeling something inside that inspired this?

00:09:44.940 | Was it for attention?

00:09:46.660 | Did it feel good afterwards?

00:09:48.820 | Can you recall what it was about?

00:09:52.220 | - I think it was the wildness thing, Andrew, honestly.

00:09:54.780 | It wasn't, I mean, I believe,

00:09:58.380 | I don't have a malicious bone in my body.

00:10:00.500 | Like, we all have that in us.

00:10:02.620 | Obviously, my profession later in the military,

00:10:05.600 | you know, I was able to activate that,

00:10:08.140 | and I feel like I still can,

00:10:09.820 | and I was certainly able to in sports,

00:10:12.520 | which is why that seventh grade year was really pivotal.

00:10:16.060 | But even now, it's funny,

00:10:17.380 | it's even funny you ask about the wildness,

00:10:19.620 | because, let me put it in movie terms.

00:10:23.580 | Like, one of my favorite movie scenes of all time

00:10:25.780 | is in the movie "The Town,"

00:10:27.780 | when Ben Affleck walks in the room.

00:10:29.140 | Jeremy Renner is his partner, essentially,

00:10:32.460 | and he walks in the room and he says,

00:10:34.540 | "We're going to hurt somebody.

00:10:35.880 | "I can't tell you where, and I can't tell you when."

00:10:38.940 | And he pauses, and Jeremy Renner

00:10:40.500 | takes maybe a three-second pause,

00:10:41.860 | and he says, "Whose car are we taking?"

00:10:43.840 | He doesn't even ask.

00:10:45.100 | You know, he's just, they're just wild

00:10:48.260 | and excited about doing something wild.

00:10:50.820 | I don't promote, like, going to hurt somebody, of course.

00:10:52.540 | - Sure, were you the Affleck or the Renner?

00:10:54.900 | Affleck, excuse me, or Renner in that?

00:10:56.820 | - I was, I feel like I was mostly the Renner.

00:11:01.820 | Put it this way, if you have some good idea this afternoon,

00:11:07.620 | like, let's go fucking try this, I'm good, I'm ready.

00:11:12.020 | And I think it's just exciting.

00:11:13.580 | You know, I hate rules, I hate being told what to do.

00:11:17.220 | It's one of the things that was so frustrating

00:11:19.260 | about the military.

00:11:20.340 | The rules are in place for a reason.

00:11:21.660 | They're written in blood, I get all that.

00:11:24.420 | But we're so constrained sometimes,

00:11:26.260 | I think that was just all coming into fruition

00:11:28.540 | that seventh grade year.

00:11:30.260 | And I enjoyed going wild, like, it was just fun.

00:11:33.220 | And frankly, we weren't, these fistfights

00:11:35.860 | and this trouble wasn't like going to get some kid.

00:11:39.340 | Those other kids wanted the wildness too, you know?

00:11:42.300 | And so, but the school didn't want that.

00:11:44.900 | And then I went out for wrestling that year

00:11:48.780 | and I could put it all into the wrestling room

00:11:51.420 | and it was awesome.

00:11:54.580 | - Before we talk about wrestling

00:11:56.140 | and why it was so meaningful as a channel for you,

00:11:59.520 | a little bit of neurobiology or else I wouldn't be

00:12:03.540 | Andrew Huberman, there's a really interesting phenomenon

00:12:06.780 | that one observes in both animals and humans,

00:12:09.900 | which is that somewhere around adolescence,

00:12:12.380 | when the hormone surge begins, but even before that,

00:12:16.260 | there's a phenomenon called dispersal.

00:12:18.900 | It's very different than fighting per se

00:12:21.780 | or sexual activity per se.

00:12:23.700 | It's a literal dispersal from one's home environment

00:12:27.580 | or an animal's a nest in which animals and humans,

00:12:31.780 | and we're animals after all,

00:12:33.700 | start forging new environments in a very,

00:12:36.580 | as you pointed out, chaotic way.

00:12:38.100 | It's not organized, it's a little nuts.

00:12:41.020 | And biologists and neurobiologists in particular

00:12:45.460 | have observed changes in neural circuitry that drive this.

00:12:48.900 | So some of it's hormonal, but a lot of it is the brain

00:12:51.740 | taking all this input that one has been exposed to,

00:12:54.420 | sun, earth, food, others, social interactions,

00:12:58.060 | and starting to essentially throw the different paints,

00:13:01.280 | the different colors of paint together

00:13:02.420 | and just trying things.

00:13:04.340 | Some kids are more prone to this than others.

00:13:07.440 | Certainly has a hormonal component.

00:13:10.540 | Boys and girls tend to do this differently,

00:13:12.380 | but they both do it.

00:13:13.540 | And psychologists and neurobiologists

00:13:16.380 | see this as a fundamental shift in our underlying circuitry.

00:13:19.460 | So just a little bit of food for thought

00:13:22.420 | to put what you just described in context.

00:13:24.420 | With that said, tell us about wrestling.

00:13:27.140 | - I mean, Andrew, in many ways, like I said,

00:13:28.780 | that was the first inflection point.

00:13:30.260 | It was like immediate, I mean, immediate uptake.

00:13:35.260 | Within a week, I knew this was my thing.

00:13:39.500 | Maybe the first practice.

00:13:41.540 | - What do you think it was?

00:13:42.700 | - So when I was younger, my aunt and uncle,

00:13:45.680 | when I was like seven years old,

00:13:47.100 | they started taking me to road races.

00:13:49.320 | And I'm sure, just running races,

00:13:51.540 | one mile and 5K races when I was really small kid.

00:13:54.260 | - For you to run.

00:13:55.100 | - Mm-hmm, to run with them.

00:13:56.260 | They were into the road racing thing

00:13:57.740 | back in the day when it was brand new,

00:13:59.380 | you know, the '80s.

00:14:00.760 | I'm 48, so I was born in '75.

00:14:03.380 | So I was seven, eight years old at the time.

00:14:05.820 | And I was into like, obviously, can I win this race?

00:14:10.300 | I just, the pain of the effort was so comfortable.

00:14:17.100 | And then, this is kind of silly,

00:14:19.400 | but like I won the PT competition

00:14:21.640 | at like the Boy Scouts thing in Audubon Park.

00:14:24.200 | - PT is physical.

00:14:25.040 | - Yeah, physical training, physical training.

00:14:27.200 | And so I won like the, whatever,

00:14:28.880 | when I was young in Boy Scouts or something.

00:14:31.080 | And then it just snowballed.

00:14:33.240 | Then I was just like, the physical activity still today is,

00:14:38.240 | I mean, if someone said,

00:14:39.400 | "What are you really in love with?"

00:14:40.600 | It's that.

00:14:41.660 | And so when I walked into the wrestling room,

00:14:44.280 | it was so extreme compared to anything else

00:14:46.720 | I had ever done.

00:14:48.120 | Football, baseball, whatever.

00:14:49.280 | I never really liked any of those sports.

00:14:50.840 | I played them all, but I didn't like them.

00:14:54.400 | And always, my dad wrestled in high school and college.

00:14:58.000 | And we were, you know, always rough and tumble

00:15:02.360 | in that regard.

00:15:03.320 | And I even have a couple of buddies in the teams,

00:15:06.480 | you know, who obviously were college wrestlers.

00:15:08.080 | There's a lot of wrestlers in the teams.

00:15:09.480 | And people would always joke about how we're so handsy.

00:15:13.180 | You know, our hands are always on each other.

00:15:15.120 | And that was just a thing for us.

00:15:17.720 | Like, I loved the close contact.

00:15:19.720 | I loved the fight of it.

00:15:21.760 | What I really love about combat sports,

00:15:23.900 | 'cause I boxed in high school between wrestling seasons,

00:15:26.700 | was the respect.

00:15:29.480 | - Tell me more about that.

00:15:32.000 | - You just don't have, there are some, of course.

00:15:35.600 | Like, you can see guys hyping it up and doing their thing

00:15:37.960 | in UFC these days, and that's totally fine.

00:15:40.780 | But for the most part, if you have fighters of any type,

00:15:45.440 | like in a setting, when they don't have to do, you know,

00:15:48.860 | the stuff for TV and whatnot, they respect each other.

00:15:53.340 | Because, and they respect the effort.

00:15:55.820 | And because you know what it takes.

00:15:59.020 | And you know how hard it is to face another man

00:16:02.220 | in the middle of a mat with no equipment,

00:16:05.440 | and nowhere to run, and no timeouts, and no one to tap in.

00:16:10.140 | That's extreme, you know?

00:16:12.140 | And it may not seem like high school wrestling is extreme,

00:16:14.620 | but as you just mentioned, something about, you know,

00:16:17.740 | development when you're 14 and you're facing another,

00:16:21.700 | like, that's the first time.

00:16:23.500 | Is someone trying to take your life?

00:16:24.660 | No, they're not, but it feels that way.

00:16:27.380 | And then you go and you put in all these hours of training,

00:16:31.100 | and you don't eat during the week,

00:16:32.980 | and you run stadiums, or you run levies,

00:16:35.780 | and, you know, fireman's carries, and all of it,

00:16:39.940 | while you're not eating and making weight,

00:16:41.580 | and you're in the sauna.

00:16:42.500 | And it's just a very tough thing to do, combat sports.

00:16:46.420 | And I love the respect that it engenders

00:16:48.940 | between the people who do it.

00:16:51.420 | - I think it was Sam Sheridan who wrote "A Fighter's Heart."

00:16:55.180 | An excellent book.

00:16:56.060 | And for anyone, male or female, any age,

00:16:59.340 | who's interested in the human spirit,

00:17:02.940 | I recommend "A Fighter's Heart,"

00:17:04.380 | because it's about the different fight sports,

00:17:06.700 | but it's really about the path of self-discovery

00:17:11.700 | that occurs in various martial arts.

00:17:14.740 | And as you said, like,

00:17:15.580 | especially boxing is very gentlemanly.

00:17:17.020 | You touch gloves, you start, you know,

00:17:19.020 | then the bell goes off, you go to your corner.

00:17:21.340 | Like it's, you know, sometimes people lose it,

00:17:23.420 | bite off people's ears and things like that.

00:17:25.580 | But for the most part, the sport is very structured.

00:17:29.460 | As you were doing this, what was happening with school?

00:17:34.460 | Did it help your academic studies?

00:17:37.140 | Did it keep them more or less the same?

00:17:38.700 | And how did your family and your peer group

00:17:41.540 | view what you were doing?

00:17:42.660 | Were you considered strange for liking wrestling so much?

00:17:46.100 | I mean, you're dieting, right?

00:17:48.300 | You're a young male dieting

00:17:50.260 | for purpose of sport and performance.

00:17:52.660 | You're sitting in saunas,

00:17:53.500 | you're running wrapped in plastic bags, all this.

00:17:56.060 | Like, I mean, a good friend of ours

00:17:58.260 | who was also in the SEAL teams once said to me,

00:18:00.580 | he said, "You know, wrestlers are different."

00:18:02.300 | And I think he meant "different" in quotes.

00:18:04.220 | - Yeah, I think that's true.

00:18:05.860 | You know, school, my grades immediately went up.

00:18:09.380 | Andrew was like, "Oh my gosh, the discipline of all of it."

00:18:13.660 | My grades were always better in wrestling season

00:18:16.940 | than out of wrestling season.

00:18:18.140 | - Interesting.

00:18:18.980 | - Like when I was cut loose out of the structure,

00:18:21.340 | then it wasn't good.

00:18:23.300 | And, you know, between seventh and eighth grade

00:18:25.820 | and all that, I didn't have any crazy shenanigans going on.

00:18:27.700 | I wasn't gonna get kicked out of school, whatever.

00:18:29.260 | I was doing normal stuff for the age, but-

00:18:31.460 | - So the fight stopped.

00:18:32.940 | - Totally, totally.

00:18:34.500 | 'Cause I could put it into the wrestling space, you know?

00:18:38.540 | And I think, I grew up obviously in New Orleans,

00:18:41.180 | and I think, you know, down there,

00:18:44.140 | it's baseball, football, basketball.

00:18:45.620 | Wrestling is not.

00:18:46.580 | I mean, I was lucky to wrestle in college at all

00:18:48.700 | because it wasn't like Iowa was looking to recruit me.

00:18:51.980 | You know, they have plenty of people to recruit

00:18:53.660 | and they don't need any Louisiana wrestlers.

00:18:55.840 | Although Daniel Cormier grew up, like, north of the lake.

00:18:58.740 | He was four years younger.

00:19:00.460 | I was telling this to somebody.

00:19:01.540 | We don't know each other.

00:19:02.620 | I'd love to meet him.

00:19:03.900 | Super impressive athlete.

00:19:05.820 | We heard that, hey, there's some kid up in the North Shore,

00:19:10.820 | I think is where he grew up, whooping everybody's ass.

00:19:14.380 | And his name is Daniel Cormier.

00:19:15.460 | And then, you know, obviously the rest is history.

00:19:17.500 | But the sport is not big in Louisiana,

00:19:19.160 | which is all to say that we were kind of a unicorn.

00:19:23.100 | We had, it was very odd at my high school specifically,

00:19:26.500 | we had one coach, his son, either national runner-up.

00:19:30.660 | His name was Willie Gatson.

00:19:31.740 | Willie passed away.

00:19:33.740 | I think his son ended up at Iowa State.

00:19:35.540 | And within the last five or six years

00:19:36.940 | was either a national champ or a runner-up.

00:19:38.980 | Willie, when I was in eighth grade, Andrew,

00:19:40.980 | Willie was at my high school.

00:19:42.680 | Like, I have no idea how Willie Gatson

00:19:44.900 | ended up in New Orleans,

00:19:45.800 | but we ended up with this cluster of wrestlers

00:19:49.540 | at that time with the right coaching.

00:19:52.220 | And a few kids were going to junior college

00:19:53.980 | and coming back and wrestling in college and coming back.

00:19:56.360 | And there were three or four guys,

00:19:59.660 | I remember specifically in eighth grade,

00:20:01.260 | 'cause I started, at least in the junior high ranks,

00:20:03.160 | I started to take off my second year.

00:20:06.220 | These guys would abuse me in the wrestling room.

00:20:09.260 | They were seniors in high school.

00:20:10.420 | I was 112 pounds or 132 pounds my freshman year.

00:20:14.140 | And they would just, in my eighth grade year,

00:20:15.580 | and they would just abuse me.

00:20:16.540 | - Define abuse.

00:20:17.680 | - In all the legal, normal wrestling ways.

00:20:19.940 | Like, there's the, wrestling gets broken up,

00:20:23.620 | obviously, by weight.

00:20:24.460 | You got the heavyweights on one end of the room,

00:20:25.900 | the lightweights on the other end of the room,

00:20:27.280 | and the young kids stay with the young kids

00:20:28.720 | for the most part.

00:20:30.280 | And a few of these guys would drag me down

00:20:32.160 | to the varsity end,

00:20:33.100 | and I would wrestle with the middleweights,

00:20:34.440 | and they would beat the shit out of me.

00:20:37.160 | And eventually you get to the point where you're like,

00:20:41.040 | "Fuck this, I had enough."

00:20:43.000 | You know, and that's when sort of things started to turn.

00:20:45.960 | But I think that wrestlers are different.

00:20:48.640 | And my peer group,

00:20:50.660 | one or two of my really good friends wrestled,

00:20:53.280 | but most of them played other sports.

00:20:54.920 | And so, but in every sense of the word,

00:20:59.440 | life got better for me because of that sport.

00:21:02.200 | It changed my life.

00:21:03.760 | - So you wrestled all through high school?

00:21:05.040 | - Oh yeah, yeah.

00:21:06.080 | - At that point, were you discovering relationships, girls?

00:21:10.300 | Were you partying?

00:21:13.360 | Were you a drinker, used drugs?

00:21:15.260 | - No drugs.

00:21:16.680 | I mean, it's New Orleans, right?

00:21:17.920 | It's like one of the things that was tough.

00:21:20.440 | I'm glad I got out of the city, frankly,

00:21:21.900 | because it was party time outside the season.

00:21:24.760 | Yeah, girls, girlfriends, normal stuff in that regard.

00:21:28.680 | Lots of drinking, lots of ratting the streets,

00:21:32.120 | you know, in those days in the '90s.

00:21:34.640 | - But you kept it inside the lane lines.

00:21:36.440 | - Oh, totally.

00:21:37.280 | - It sounds like no drunk driving, no arrests.

00:21:39.560 | - We did a little bit of that,

00:21:40.520 | but nothing crazy in that regard.

00:21:42.960 | I think I understood the consequences

00:21:44.520 | and I really cared about my career.

00:21:46.560 | I really wanted to wrestle in college.

00:21:48.160 | My grades were excellent.

00:21:49.640 | My SAT score's not so much,

00:21:51.800 | but I started winning really fast.

00:21:55.600 | And, you know, my last two years in high school,

00:21:57.680 | I was 89 and O, and I almost won my sophomore year.

00:22:01.960 | So I was runner up in the state my sophomore year.

00:22:05.920 | I always joke with the boys,

00:22:08.280 | all my boys are way better athletes

00:22:09.720 | than I ever could think about being.

00:22:10.920 | - Your sons?

00:22:11.740 | - Yeah, yeah.

00:22:12.580 | But in eighth grade, I made varsity

00:22:15.800 | and it was like, was it eighth grade?

00:22:17.440 | Yeah, and I lost like 75% of the matches, you know,

00:22:21.760 | but you just grind it out

00:22:23.040 | and it's how I got into the Naval Academy,

00:22:24.960 | which is a whole nother story, but.

00:22:26.840 | - So let's talk about that.

00:22:27.720 | So you finished high school.

00:22:29.380 | You head to the Naval Academy.

00:22:32.080 | Why the Naval Academy?

00:22:33.760 | - There's actually a crazy story behind this,

00:22:35.820 | which maybe we'll circle back to, but,

00:22:37.720 | the summer, gosh, I had forgotten

00:22:43.800 | that this started in seventh grade too.

00:22:45.720 | The summer between my seventh and eighth grade year,

00:22:48.080 | my grandfather was too young to join the Navy

00:22:53.080 | and he wanted to go to the Naval Academy

00:22:55.600 | during World War II.

00:22:56.760 | And he lied to the recruiter

00:22:58.520 | and he got into the Merchant Marines.

00:23:00.360 | His, I'm pretty sure, first cousin,

00:23:03.820 | my uncle and my cousins are like first cousins once removed.

00:23:07.640 | My uncle, Jim Therrell,

00:23:08.880 | was at a family reunion in Mississippi,

00:23:11.000 | which we were at.

00:23:13.200 | And he didn't mention the Naval Academy.

00:23:15.440 | Family reunion ends, they all go home.

00:23:18.220 | And he starts sending me Naval Academy paraphernalia.

00:23:20.780 | I knew nothing about the military.

00:23:23.220 | And I just thought about it, you know,

00:23:26.660 | and he would send me stuff.

00:23:27.820 | You know, you didn't, we didn't have the internet, right?

00:23:29.700 | He's sending these booklets.

00:23:31.140 | - And you don't like authority.

00:23:32.780 | - No.

00:23:33.620 | - I have not been in the military,

00:23:35.500 | but I've done some work with y'all.

00:23:37.380 | And there's a lot of hierarchy and authority.

00:23:41.780 | - Yeah, that's true.

00:23:43.900 | The truth, Andrew, is like, it was just,

00:23:45.120 | it just seemed exciting.

00:23:46.460 | I wasn't really thinking about the implications

00:23:48.140 | as 18 year olds, you know, it looked very exciting to me.

00:23:51.720 | And having gotten some professional help

00:23:55.140 | in the intervening years,

00:23:56.060 | what I really think was a big part of it

00:23:58.980 | was my parents got divorced my senior year in high school

00:24:01.580 | and the family unit just blew up, right?

00:24:06.180 | And so it also represented an escape, you know,

00:24:10.860 | get out and go get your life out of the New Orleans

00:24:14.500 | and just go, just go do something.

00:24:16.620 | - Were you a part of that,

00:24:18.060 | that obviously you were a part of the family

00:24:21.860 | that got divorced.

00:24:23.380 | Was it chaotic?

00:24:24.740 | Was it controlled?

00:24:26.300 | You and I are the exact same age.

00:24:27.480 | We're both 48, born in '75.

00:24:29.880 | Back then it was a lot less common for people being,

00:24:34.040 | they called them broken homes back then.

00:24:35.740 | - Yeah, that's right.

00:24:36.580 | - You know, nowadays I don't think they call it that.

00:24:39.020 | Everyone just cites the statistic that, you know,

00:24:41.060 | more than half of marriages end in divorce

00:24:43.060 | as if it perhaps to normalize it,

00:24:45.820 | but that's more than half.

00:24:47.120 | Do you recall feeling distraught about that

00:24:51.580 | or was it just kind of the natural consequence

00:24:53.660 | of something you had observed a long time?

00:24:55.300 | You're like, oh, that kind of makes sense.

00:24:56.580 | - No, it was a shock to me.

00:24:57.900 | It wasn't a shock to my older sister.

00:24:59.740 | I just remember, this was the thought at the time.

00:25:07.980 | This was like seared in my brain.

00:25:10.320 | This has nothing to do with me.

00:25:12.860 | That wasn't like some sophisticated view.

00:25:15.780 | It was mostly, fuck this, I'm not dealing with this.

00:25:18.500 | I have my own life.

00:25:19.900 | They're going to have to do what they're going to do,

00:25:21.440 | meaning my parents.

00:25:22.380 | I'm getting the hell out of here.

00:25:23.780 | - Not a bad mindset for a kid at that stage.

00:25:26.520 | If it had been four years younger,

00:25:27.780 | that might not be the best mindset,

00:25:29.060 | but as you're heading off to college,

00:25:31.020 | that's a reasonably healthy mindset,

00:25:33.380 | as opposed to getting enmeshed in the,

00:25:35.380 | what happened and this and that.

00:25:37.300 | Can I ask you, at that stage,

00:25:39.020 | so you're 17, 18 years old at that point.

00:25:41.900 | Were you journaling at that point?

00:25:43.460 | - No.

00:25:44.300 | - No, no journaling, no introspective work.

00:25:46.780 | - Zero.

00:25:47.620 | - No school psychologists.

00:25:48.760 | No thinking about or talking about your feelings.

00:25:51.500 | It's wrestling, Naval Academy, social things, school, SATs.

00:25:56.500 | Like very standard.

00:25:58.300 | We're almost like talking like a superficial list

00:26:00.540 | of like what happens at the end of high school in 1992.

00:26:03.340 | - And Andrew, it's the word superficial,

00:26:05.660 | and I carried this forward for years,

00:26:08.120 | which I'm sure we'll talk about here in a second.

00:26:11.360 | Those binary focus areas,

00:26:14.840 | like I was literally just going after them at full steam,

00:26:20.960 | stronger, faster, more intensity with zero introspection,

00:26:25.840 | no excavation of 'cause of the psychology of anything.

00:26:29.320 | Just full steam ahead, like let's go.

00:26:31.760 | - No meditation, no breath work.

00:26:33.320 | - Zero.

00:26:34.160 | Which was not adaptive in the long run.

00:26:39.440 | And we'll get to how that played out in the long run.

00:26:42.560 | But nonetheless, you got into the Naval Academy.

00:26:46.520 | - Didn't first.

00:26:47.480 | - Okay.

00:26:48.320 | - So I applied.

00:26:49.160 | I get, you know, my uncle's doing all this stuff.

00:26:51.240 | Anyway, I applied and I didn't,

00:26:53.720 | I still have the letter of the thanks,

00:26:54.920 | but no thanks, you know, you're not qualified.

00:26:56.880 | - How'd that hit you?

00:26:57.920 | - At the time, it hit me kind of like everything I did

00:27:01.720 | when that age, when it didn't work out.

00:27:03.800 | Admittedly, Andrew, it was like,

00:27:07.720 | there's gotta be a way around this.

00:27:10.760 | Like, shit has to work out.

00:27:12.760 | But it feels terrible, right?

00:27:14.400 | Like, you have a moment of what do we do?

00:27:17.280 | And my kids have heard the story a million times.

00:27:21.360 | My wife was a blue chip swimming recruit for Navy.

00:27:24.520 | And so she was into the Naval Academy

00:27:26.440 | when she was at the beginning

00:27:27.400 | of her senior year of high school, right?

00:27:29.960 | - What's a blue chip?

00:27:31.160 | - I mean, in my understanding,

00:27:32.360 | a blue chip is like you are at the very top of the list

00:27:35.080 | and the coaches put you straight into the admission cycle

00:27:37.800 | saying, "Nobody else gets in until this person does first."

00:27:40.320 | - So they wanted her, they didn't want you.

00:27:42.200 | - Not only was she a blue chip and I was,

00:27:44.000 | and I got the no, I guess,

00:27:48.600 | well, the wrestling coach called me

00:27:50.400 | a couple of weeks after my no, which is now in May.

00:27:52.720 | I'm about to graduate from high school.

00:27:53.960 | I'm not accepted anywhere.

00:27:56.040 | - You only applied one place.

00:27:57.840 | - Actually two, which you may bust out laughing

00:28:00.800 | when I tell you what the other one is,

00:28:02.400 | because no internet.

00:28:03.760 | I got a mailer in a pamphlet from Stanford,

00:28:07.200 | the wrestling coach.

00:28:08.920 | I didn't know what Stanford was.

00:28:10.840 | I had no idea that the college was even prestigious.

00:28:14.240 | I didn't know they had a wrestling team.

00:28:16.080 | I filled out the application and wrote the letter thing

00:28:19.360 | and I sent it into Stanford.

00:28:20.520 | Of course, never heard back from them,

00:28:21.960 | but I applied to two places,

00:28:23.360 | Stanford and the US Naval Academy.

00:28:25.040 | - Well, for those that follow wrestling-

00:28:27.240 | - I didn't get into either.

00:28:28.200 | - Right, that's a great story.

00:28:29.840 | And I'll just briefly mention that a few years ago,

00:28:32.160 | there almost wasn't a wrestling team at Stanford.

00:28:34.320 | They had plans to cut the wrestling team

00:28:36.600 | despite having a NCAA champion at Stanford.

00:28:40.280 | But the power of people gathering and petitioning works

00:28:44.440 | and wrestling and a few other sports

00:28:46.880 | that were being cut from the curriculum were spared.

00:28:51.440 | - It's amazing.

00:28:52.280 | - Or rescued.

00:28:53.120 | - So happy to see that.

00:28:54.000 | - Yeah, so Stanford does have a wrestling team.

00:28:57.320 | - So the coach, back to how I ended up getting in,

00:29:02.020 | I appreciated my college coach called

00:29:04.440 | and he said, "I'm recruiting.

00:29:05.760 | I have one more spot at the prep school,

00:29:07.580 | which is in Newport, Rhode Island.

00:29:09.480 | I'm recruiting another kid from Pennsylvania.

00:29:12.280 | If he takes that spot, then I don't have anything left."

00:29:15.040 | And we were exploring going to prep school

00:29:18.240 | and stuff like that, oblique ways to get in.

00:29:19.940 | And he called me sometime in May,

00:29:22.120 | like right around graduation and said,

00:29:24.080 | "Can you be in Newport in July?"

00:29:25.520 | That kid went to, I think he went to Lehigh.

00:29:28.560 | And I went to the prep school.

00:29:30.560 | - In Newport, Rhode Island.

00:29:31.640 | - Yeah, in Newport for a year.

00:29:32.840 | - I've been there.

00:29:33.680 | It's a nice place.

00:29:34.520 | - Yeah, it's great.

00:29:35.340 | - Yeah.

00:29:36.180 | - And so you wrestle for, I mean, you do school.

00:29:37.440 | You know, you're in, West Point has a prep school

00:29:40.520 | and Colorado Springs has a prep school.

00:29:41.920 | And so we joked that my wife was first person

00:29:45.080 | in our class accepted and I was last,

00:29:46.920 | which is highly possible actually.

00:29:50.260 | - I'd like to take a brief break

00:29:52.660 | and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1.

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00:29:57.120 | about how I've been taking AG1 once or twice a day,

00:29:59.800 | every day since 2012.

00:30:01.520 | And indeed that's true.

00:30:02.960 | I started taking AG1 and I still take AG1

00:30:05.240 | once or twice a day because it gives me vitamins

00:30:07.880 | and minerals that I might not be getting enough of

00:30:09.800 | from whole foods that I eat,

00:30:11.440 | as well as adaptogens and micronutrients.

00:30:14.360 | And those adaptogens and micronutrients are really critical

00:30:16.720 | because even though I strive to eat most of my foods

00:30:19.360 | from unprocessed or minimally processed whole foods,

00:30:22.280 | it's often hard to do so, especially when I'm traveling

00:30:24.560 | and especially when I'm busy.

00:30:26.200 | So by drinking a packet of AG1 in the morning

00:30:28.440 | and oftentimes also again in the afternoon or evening,

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00:30:54.660 | towards one specific outcome,

00:30:56.220 | like sleeping better or being more alert,

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00:31:22.820 | So you're in Newport.

00:31:25.120 | Does that have a portal to the Naval Academy?

00:31:28.320 | - Yeah, if you graduate prep school,

00:31:29.640 | you're straight into the Naval Academy.

00:31:31.440 | Like they fully expect you to be there the next year.

00:31:33.440 | - When junior year rolled around

00:31:35.200 | and senior year rolled around of high school,

00:31:39.040 | didn't anyone pull you aside and say,

00:31:40.640 | "Hey, you might wanna like apply to a few other places.

00:31:44.680 | You might wanna consider what you do

00:31:47.100 | if this doesn't work out."

00:31:48.280 | What did they assume you were gonna do?

00:31:49.320 | They just head into the city of New Orleans and bus tables?

00:31:54.200 | - Zero guidance, Andrew, really, like from my high school.

00:31:57.080 | And I think the ecosystem I was in,

00:32:02.080 | like people just didn't really know how to do that.

00:32:05.700 | You know, how to apply to schools.

00:32:07.040 | I mean, my parents obviously helped

00:32:08.760 | when I applied to the Naval Academy.

00:32:10.560 | But when I look at the system that kids go through now

00:32:14.520 | to go, you know, their process

00:32:16.080 | to find the best college experience,

00:32:18.280 | I never had one conversation with a guidance counselor

00:32:22.080 | about what to do.

00:32:24.340 | I just didn't.

00:32:25.620 | I mean, I just got very lucky.

00:32:26.820 | A few people, my high school wrestling coach intervened,

00:32:30.900 | I think at some point,

00:32:32.020 | and called the Naval Academy to speak to the coach

00:32:34.180 | to say, "You should give this kid a chance."

00:32:35.400 | But he didn't, they didn't know who he was, you know?

00:32:38.580 | I'm so lucky and so fortunate that I ended up

00:32:41.740 | where I ended up.

00:32:42.760 | It's why I took it so seriously.

00:32:45.340 | Like the focus with which I applied my time

00:32:51.740 | in high school, I took that to 10X degree

00:32:55.060 | when I got to Newport, because I knew this was my chance.

00:32:58.660 | - There's something magical to that.

00:32:59.940 | I can relate to that.

00:33:00.780 | So you're in Newport, and describe what a day was like.

00:33:05.420 | Is it all wrestling?

00:33:06.460 | You're taking general education classes

00:33:09.200 | like one does in the first two years of university?

00:33:11.500 | - Yep, so the way the prep school is set up

00:33:14.060 | for the Naval Academy is they're basically teaching you

00:33:15.880 | the first semester of the Naval Academy.

00:33:17.780 | So you take calculus, physics, chemistry,

00:33:21.540 | I think you take an English class, et cetera.

00:33:23.980 | And you go through like a pretty hellacious

00:33:27.200 | first couple of weeks, 'cause you're away from the flagpole

00:33:30.500 | where no one can hear you scream.

00:33:31.820 | You know, you're up in Newport,

00:33:32.740 | you're not in Annapolis where everyone's watching.

00:33:35.160 | And you do a couple hellacious weeks for an 18-year-old

00:33:37.820 | who's never been in the military before.

00:33:39.460 | - So you're in the military, technically,

00:33:41.380 | if you go to this school.

00:33:42.220 | - You're actually enlisted in the Navy.

00:33:43.700 | - Okay, so they own you to some extent.

00:33:46.220 | - Yeah, yeah, they do.

00:33:48.060 | And then you do--

00:33:49.420 | - You're wearing uniforms, you're jogging in the morning,

00:33:51.580 | you're doing salutes and marching.

00:33:53.300 | - Yep, the whole nine.

00:33:54.140 | - And bugling, they're doing taps in the evening.

00:33:56.820 | - Yep, all of it.

00:33:57.660 | - Got it.

00:33:58.500 | - Yep, and you live, there's 300 people at the prep school.

00:34:01.060 | It's distributed basically amongst folks

00:34:04.220 | coming from the fleet.

00:34:05.060 | So guys who did four or five years in the military somewhere

00:34:07.060 | and they're coming into the Naval Academy from the fleet.

00:34:09.980 | And then athletes and then sort of a mixture

00:34:12.660 | of other folks who need a little extra school, right?

00:34:14.740 | And so, and then you do a full school year.

00:34:16.500 | You're competing.

00:34:17.580 | It's basically a red shirt year.

00:34:19.780 | That's not a red shirt year.

00:34:21.420 | I competed up and down the East Coast

00:34:22.940 | against all the other prep schools

00:34:25.020 | and you finish that year in May.

00:34:27.820 | And then you're done with the preps.

00:34:29.620 | The prep year is fine.

00:34:30.900 | It's a little bit of a shock when you're 18, but it's fine.

00:34:34.860 | - Always been curious about these military schools

00:34:36.980 | and the people that go to them

00:34:37.980 | and what happens to people there.

00:34:39.900 | Did you have any sense of patriotism

00:34:42.300 | prior to arriving at this prep school?

00:34:44.940 | And did that sense of patriotism,

00:34:47.420 | you know, I'm talking like love of country,

00:34:49.620 | understanding the history of our country

00:34:53.740 | and its position in the international landscape,

00:34:56.220 | are you thinking about that stuff?

00:34:57.220 | Are they feeding you that?

00:34:58.740 | Or is it really like wrestling, get through the march,

00:35:01.380 | shower up, go to the next thing?

00:35:02.860 | Is it very like plug and chug?

00:35:04.860 | - No, no, the feeding of, and I really appreciated this,

00:35:08.340 | the feeding of those concepts starts when you get there.

00:35:11.380 | But I was deer in the headlights.

00:35:13.740 | And you're like, I didn't think about my life

00:35:17.500 | in this way at all when I was headed there.

00:35:20.020 | I mean, what you get very early,

00:35:22.820 | because the school very quickly starts to bring

00:35:27.380 | really high level accomplished people,

00:35:30.180 | colonels, admirals, whatever generals

00:35:31.900 | to expose you to this people.

00:35:33.940 | I do remember sitting there within weeks,

00:35:37.020 | like this is way bigger than I thought it was

00:35:41.660 | in terms of how serious this situation is, you know?

00:35:46.660 | And how serious this ecosystem of people take this,

00:35:50.900 | because I didn't have, my dad wasn't an admiral.

00:35:54.100 | He was a welder in New Orleans, you know,

00:35:55.900 | I didn't understand the bigness of it.

00:35:58.260 | - One of the reasons I ask this is that various times

00:36:00.740 | throughout my life, I've had this experience

00:36:02.180 | of like seeing people close to me doing incredible work.

00:36:05.180 | You know, like when I was a postdoc at Stanford,

00:36:06.660 | I had Nobel prize was given that one week

00:36:09.780 | to the guy next door to me.

00:36:12.180 | So you see him in the morning

00:36:13.100 | and like you're hearing it on the radio.

00:36:14.420 | And obviously I didn't have that kind of stature

00:36:18.260 | or talent in science.

00:36:19.140 | I think I'm a good scientist,

00:36:20.380 | but good enough to get tenure at Stanford.

00:36:23.060 | But then there are levels within the game.

00:36:25.420 | But there is something very special to the experience

00:36:28.340 | of having people close to you physically

00:36:30.820 | and in the same ecosystem as you described it,

00:36:33.700 | achieving amazing things.

00:36:34.740 | I also saw this in skateboarding.

00:36:35.940 | I mean, there were a lot of, let's just say,

00:36:39.460 | failures to integrate with normal life.

00:36:44.020 | But there are also some guys that I grew up with

00:36:45.900 | who started companies and set world records

00:36:48.180 | and had their pro models.

00:36:49.420 | And then if you zoom out from that and you go,

00:36:51.260 | wait, I'm in this community,

00:36:53.340 | it changes one's self view about what's possible.

00:36:56.100 | So I think that's what you're describing.

00:36:58.780 | And I think it's such an important thing

00:37:00.100 | for people to experience at some point,

00:37:02.260 | even if the goal isn't to be at kind of world scale,

00:37:05.460 | you know, for people to realize that the town they grew up

00:37:07.500 | in, the family they grew up in, that context can expand.

00:37:11.780 | And so do you recall being at this prep school

00:37:14.900 | and kind of third personing yourself and thinking like,

00:37:17.620 | well, I'm Coleman Ruiz, I'm from New Orleans.

00:37:19.940 | I went from this to this to this,

00:37:21.540 | the way you've been describing it.

00:37:23.140 | And I'm here and they're like,

00:37:25.380 | I'm around some incredibly impressive people and I'm here.

00:37:28.220 | Like once you make that recognition that you're there,

00:37:31.500 | a whole bunch of things can open up.

00:37:33.180 | - No, I actually came at it from the opposite way.

00:37:36.500 | And this has been a hard thing for me my whole life.

00:37:38.380 | And I have to watch out for this perspective,

00:37:41.860 | is I felt like every day I had to wake up

00:37:46.860 | and earn my place there.

00:37:49.100 | I was never good enough for myself ever.

00:37:51.300 | So next day up is a restart to prove myself again

00:37:57.260 | on whatever standard I'm picking that day, right?

00:37:59.820 | Looking back on it, I realize it was somewhat arbitrary

00:38:04.460 | because it was just day by day.

00:38:06.620 | I didn't think I'm Coleman Ruiz, I made it here.

00:38:09.140 | Look, I'm part of this.

00:38:10.660 | I was afraid, like Mike Tyson talks about

00:38:14.340 | being afraid every time.

00:38:15.460 | I was afraid every day.

00:38:17.140 | And I fought for like a position in this place every day.

00:38:23.060 | Now that was adaptive in some regard, right?

00:38:27.980 | - Very.

00:38:28.820 | - Because to me it was, let's go.

00:38:32.900 | Like today's another new day and it's 100% all in, full go.

00:38:37.740 | I hope everybody's ready.

00:38:38.980 | - Do you ever recall falling asleep at night

00:38:41.420 | and thinking like, well, like--

00:38:43.860 | - I had a good day.

00:38:44.700 | - I had a good day, or I'm scared,

00:38:46.880 | they're gonna discover I can't keep up.

00:38:50.380 | - Totally. - Or I can't keep up.

00:38:51.780 | - All the time. - So a lot of fear.

00:38:53.340 | I mean-- - Yeah.

00:38:54.180 | - Yeah, a lot of fear. - All the time.

00:38:56.060 | And some of it I do, I genuinely know

00:38:59.220 | and believe in Andrew that it was well-intentioned.

00:39:01.020 | Like I wanted to do a good job for the group,

00:39:03.380 | whatever group I was in, my platoon, my squad,

00:39:06.020 | in the case of the prep school.

00:39:07.660 | You know, that first experience.

00:39:09.300 | I mean, I was talking about this with my wife the other day

00:39:14.340 | just 'cause stories come up.

00:39:15.740 | You know, we had a 25th reunion at the Naval Academy

00:39:17.860 | and this kind of thing.

00:39:18.980 | And I was a really good runner for my group in high school,

00:39:23.980 | like the people I was around.

00:39:26.180 | I ran cross country when I was younger.

00:39:27.580 | And anyway, I did, I suppose I'm going the other direction,

00:39:31.380 | I sort of did have some level of confidence in my ability.

00:39:34.900 | And then I got there

00:39:35.740 | and like all these college cross country runners,

00:39:37.580 | like my son is now, just crushing me.

00:39:40.700 | And I think sadly, because it was just sort of in me,

00:39:44.460 | that fed my fear.

00:39:46.020 | Like shit, I thought I was better than this.

00:39:48.580 | Clearly I suck.

00:39:49.860 | I have to get to their level.

00:39:51.820 | So I did have a very well-intentioned excitement around,

00:39:56.660 | just do a good job with the people you're around.

00:39:59.340 | There's something fun to that and wild,

00:40:01.180 | you know, as we spoke about.

00:40:02.580 | But I was operating out of fear for decades.

00:40:07.600 | - But there was a,

00:40:09.540 | I need to get to their level statement in there.

00:40:11.740 | It wasn't, I can't keep up.

00:40:13.860 | I better find a different path.

00:40:15.700 | - No, no, no, no.

00:40:17.140 | I knew I could get to their level with enough work.

00:40:20.420 | - Was that something that your father or your mother

00:40:25.220 | or both had instilled in you that-

00:40:26.740 | - Oh, for sure, yeah.

00:40:28.420 | And my high school wrestling coach was,

00:40:30.380 | let's call it maybe from the old school.

00:40:34.080 | If you worked hard enough, you could get there.

00:40:38.020 | - So this is the essence of growth mindset

00:40:39.700 | long before Charles Dweck coined the phrase

00:40:42.260 | to growth mindset.

00:40:43.180 | It's there, I'm not there yet.

00:40:44.980 | - When I first read her book,

00:40:46.020 | like when people teach us to shit when we were kids.

00:40:49.160 | - Yeah, well, some of us got it, some of us didn't.

00:40:52.460 | And it can be very context dependent, right?

00:40:55.940 | I mean, I think that's one of the more important

00:40:57.300 | and often overlooked aspects of Carol's work

00:40:59.220 | and Ali Crum's work is that we can develop growth mindset

00:41:01.660 | in one domain of life, but then another domain of life,

00:41:04.600 | we get kicked in the teeth once and we're like,

00:41:06.900 | I can't do that.

00:41:07.720 | There's a carve out where I can't function.

00:41:09.860 | Some people do that, some people don't.

00:41:11.660 | And we don't understand enough about it

00:41:14.420 | to understand whether or not it's a global circuit,

00:41:18.220 | and there's a lot of context.

00:41:19.860 | But okay, so you're hanging in there at least,

00:41:24.180 | you're surrounded by some very impressive people.

00:41:25.860 | There's a lot of structure.

00:41:27.780 | So we're a long way from the pre-wrestling days.

00:41:31.460 | - Oh yeah.

00:41:32.300 | - Yeah, this is the opposite of chaos.

00:41:34.540 | - Totally.

00:41:35.380 | - This is structure.

00:41:36.380 | - Yeah, you're told what to do every five minutes

00:41:37.980 | more or less.

00:41:39.300 | - And this is scary feelings, fear is a scary feeling,

00:41:43.020 | but you're channeling it.

00:41:45.740 | And you said the unit of the day became important.

00:41:48.660 | It's like, what can I do today?

00:41:50.140 | You're not thinking about the week,

00:41:51.260 | you're not thinking about the season,

00:41:52.480 | you're not thinking about becoming some war hero

00:41:55.620 | down the line, you're just 24 hours.

00:41:59.580 | - Do the next day.

00:42:00.420 | - Yeah, how was your self-care at that point?

00:42:02.140 | Or is that built into the system?

00:42:03.660 | - It's not built into the system and it was zero.

00:42:07.120 | I mean, it really was Andrew, like it was the old school.

00:42:10.140 | We were not doing anything sophisticated back then.

00:42:16.820 | I mean, there was no, we stretched.

00:42:19.400 | And in the grand scheme of things,

00:42:22.720 | it's gonna sound weird because there still is a lot of

00:42:26.700 | primal nature to combat sports.

00:42:31.180 | But in the grand scheme of things,

00:42:32.880 | we were probably on the upper end of sophisticated,

00:42:35.420 | like wrestlers jump rope, they stretch, they do aerobics.

00:42:39.020 | Been in a sauna since 1993.

00:42:44.380 | It's like not purposeful,

00:42:46.020 | not to cut weight in a garbage bag,

00:42:48.060 | but there is some level of balancing out your training.

00:42:53.060 | Wrestlers like to swim during the season

00:42:56.260 | because you're getting out of that hot room.

00:42:57.900 | Like you end up accidentally doing some of these things,

00:43:01.020 | but there was no self-care.

00:43:02.460 | - So you eventually go to the Naval Academy.

00:43:05.900 | - '94.

00:43:06.720 | - The actual Naval Academy,

00:43:08.260 | and that's where you met your wife.

00:43:09.540 | - Yep, in '96, my sophomore year.

00:43:12.100 | - So when you get there,

00:43:13.580 | what's different than the prep school?

00:43:15.900 | - First of all, it's big in the macro,

00:43:20.900 | not just geographically big

00:43:22.300 | or footprint square footage-wise, it's big.

00:43:25.140 | The concept is big.

00:43:26.460 | The superintendent of the school is a three-star Admiral.

00:43:31.500 | You hear about his career, you're 19 years old, you meet.

00:43:34.960 | So there's two incredibly important people in my life.

00:43:42.060 | In those early years at the Naval Academy,

00:43:45.100 | a guy named Doug Zembeck, who's dead now,

00:43:50.740 | who most people of my service time will know who he is.

00:43:55.740 | When I was on my recruiting trip to the Naval Academy

00:44:02.460 | and I was in high school, this is complete accident.

00:44:04.980 | Doug was a sophomore.

00:44:06.700 | We call them youngsters at the Naval Academy.

00:44:08.140 | He was a sophomore, and we're the same weight class.

00:44:11.460 | So coach matched us up because it was my recruiting visit.

00:44:15.680 | And my first, this is back to being wild,

00:44:19.600 | literally my first night on the grounds

00:44:21.660 | of the Naval Academy, I'm sleeping on Doug Zembeck's floor

00:44:25.260 | of his room with his other two roommates.

00:44:27.980 | And sometime around three or 4 a.m., I get woken up.

00:44:32.580 | It's like a bomb goes off.

00:44:35.140 | There's, a bomb didn't go off,

00:44:36.620 | but there's 12 other gorillas in the room, all wrestlers,

00:44:40.460 | maybe one or two other guys.

00:44:42.380 | And Doug is hustling.

00:44:46.300 | I don't know any of these people, Andrew.

00:44:47.900 | Like I just met Doug the previous evening.

00:44:49.900 | We just flew into town.

00:44:51.120 | He wakes me up.

00:44:53.380 | He's hustling me to get my shoes on.

00:44:55.140 | Again, I'm just this high school kid.

00:44:57.420 | And then within two to three minutes,

00:45:00.500 | all 15 of these gorillas bolt out of the room

00:45:04.420 | and Doug grabs me and I'm just following them, right?

00:45:07.420 | So we race out of Bancroft Hall.

00:45:09.020 | It's maybe four in the morning, 3.34 in the morning.

00:45:11.620 | We race out of Bancroft Hall, the barracks.

00:45:13.200 | We run across the parking lot into Lejeune Hall.

00:45:15.540 | And Lejeune Hall is the swimming facility

00:45:19.400 | and the wrestling room.

00:45:20.540 | That's it.

00:45:22.540 | That's the only thing that's in there, right?

00:45:24.340 | The doors, we run up to Lejeune Hall.

00:45:26.380 | The doors of Lejeune Hall are locked

00:45:29.180 | with a chain on the outside.

00:45:30.900 | And one of our, Doug pulls on the chain

00:45:34.220 | so that the doors open enough at the top

00:45:36.540 | that the 142-pounder can climb up

00:45:38.620 | and get inside that little gap in the doors

00:45:41.260 | and run over and open one of the doors that isn't chained.

00:45:43.740 | - This is what you'll later do professionally.

00:45:45.540 | - I still have, exactly.

00:45:46.820 | And what I frankly did as a kid, like back in the day.

00:45:49.520 | And so I'm terrified 'cause I don't know what's coming.

00:45:53.700 | - You don't bother to ask, what are we doing?

00:45:55.300 | - There's no time.

00:45:56.380 | There's just no time.

00:45:57.260 | Like these guys are, to me, they're full-blown war heroes.

00:46:00.420 | They're not, they're college kids, but I'm 17.

00:46:04.220 | They're 21, all these wrestlers.

00:46:06.580 | I'm hoping I'm gonna come here and be their teammate.

00:46:09.700 | We run into Lejeune Hall, go to the second story.

00:46:12.880 | We climb up the utility ladder where Public Works goes

00:46:16.700 | to get in the ceiling above

00:46:19.100 | the white foamy ceiling tile things.

00:46:22.820 | So we're now on the catwalk

00:46:24.380 | where the HVAC guys would be working.

00:46:27.660 | And I'm starting to get a sense of what's coming.

00:46:30.100 | We go a couple of feet down the catwalk, everyone stops.

00:46:35.900 | Someone reaches over the catwalk

00:46:39.540 | and pulls one chalky ceiling tile out.

00:46:43.900 | So now you can look over the edge of the catwalk

00:46:46.740 | and see right through the ceiling into the diving well.

00:46:51.020 | Remember the diving well has a 10 meter platform.

00:46:53.540 | And then we're another, I don't wanna over-exaggerate this.

00:46:57.100 | We have to be another 20 feet into the ceiling.

00:47:00.580 | - So you're above the diving board.

00:47:02.580 | - Oh, we're way above the diving board.

00:47:04.700 | We're five feet above the ceiling,

00:47:06.180 | which is 20 feet above the 10 meter.

00:47:08.380 | - Got it.

00:47:09.220 | - Right, and so, and now I've realized what's happening.

00:47:14.220 | And two or three wrestlers,

00:47:18.100 | you climb over the catwalk, get, you know, backwards,

00:47:21.240 | get your hands all the way down

00:47:22.260 | and then very lower yourself in a reverse pull-up

00:47:24.580 | so you don't kick the ceiling tile.

00:47:27.700 | And three or four guys go and you can hear 'em

00:47:30.620 | hit the water after what is a terrifyingly long time

00:47:34.700 | when you're, you know, my age.

00:47:36.180 | - Just in the dark.

00:47:37.540 | - Oh, yeah.

00:47:38.760 | No one's supposed to be in there.

00:47:40.420 | And then one of the guys looks over.

00:47:43.820 | When you're a recruit, you're called a drag.

00:47:46.380 | And they're like, "Drag, you're up."

00:47:49.060 | And I'm lowering myself, Andrew,

00:47:51.460 | and I kick the adjacent ceiling tile

00:47:53.820 | and it hits the dive tank

00:47:56.780 | and it turns into pancake batter

00:47:58.260 | and goes to the bottom of the pool.

00:47:59.820 | - Oh, my.

00:48:00.740 | - And one of my teammates is like, "You motherfucker."

00:48:04.740 | One of my future teammates, you know, he's going nuts.

00:48:07.900 | I drop, I live, and this is back to Doug.

00:48:12.900 | I come up, Doug clearly goes behind me,

00:48:16.540 | but I don't hear him.

00:48:17.720 | And one or two guys are going nuts.

00:48:20.500 | You high school piece of shit.

00:48:21.500 | Like, you're gonna go down to the 15 feet

00:48:22.940 | and pick it all up.

00:48:23.780 | And Doug comes up and he just blasts everybody.

00:48:27.820 | He's our responsibility.

00:48:30.860 | This is not his fault.

00:48:32.140 | We brought him here.

00:48:33.760 | Like, just totally backs me up.

00:48:35.400 | And then the rest of the visit happens.

00:48:41.520 | I end up there.

00:48:42.700 | Doug's now a senior.

00:48:43.620 | I'm a freshman.

00:48:44.460 | And he's just the legend.

00:48:50.060 | He was all American.

00:48:51.540 | And to this day, Andrew,

00:48:54.100 | you need to hear this loud and clear.

00:48:55.260 | Like, for all the people you and I both know

00:48:57.080 | and the people I've been around,

00:48:58.540 | no other human in my life have I met

00:49:02.740 | with his physical and mental toughness, not even close.

00:49:05.660 | The guy was born in the wrong century,

00:49:07.820 | is the way I'd describe him.

00:49:09.980 | And he was like my mentor and he was my guy, you know?

00:49:14.980 | And he was killed in '07.

00:49:20.780 | - Marie, we'll talk about Doug.

00:49:23.820 | You've written about him.

00:49:24.900 | - Yeah, he's unbelievable.

00:49:25.940 | - So I feel like I know him a little bit, thanks to you.

00:49:28.540 | We'll get around to that for sure.

00:49:31.100 | I think people are getting a sense of where we're headed.

00:49:32.820 | - So to answer your question about like that,

00:49:36.060 | the bigness of the Naval Academy,

00:49:37.660 | that's how it started for me.

00:49:38.800 | Like, everything was just on steroids.

00:49:41.100 | You know, all these kinds of people.

00:49:42.900 | - I get the impression, at least up until now,

00:49:46.360 | that you just go with what's right in front of you.

00:49:50.880 | - 100%.

00:49:51.840 | - Like, there isn't a lot of pause and reflect.

00:49:55.320 | Although, your rudder is not haphazard.

00:50:00.320 | It's not random.

00:50:02.280 | - No.

00:50:03.120 | - Well, yeah, I can say right now,

00:50:04.240 | you and I are as similar as we may be in certain respects.

00:50:08.600 | Like, we're very different in this way.

00:50:11.080 | Like, there isn't like a foraging.

00:50:13.640 | You know, in biology, we call them random walks.

00:50:15.720 | You know, a lot of organization that comes out of biology

00:50:18.480 | is through random walks, like animal or human,

00:50:21.040 | like finds a node and moves.

00:50:22.720 | And life is like this.

00:50:23.720 | Steve Jobs talked about not being able to connect the dots,

00:50:26.280 | except in retrospect, and I subscribe to that.

00:50:29.080 | And his life was a bit of a random walk,

00:50:30.600 | but that we're guided by some central beam of uniqueness.

00:50:34.660 | Robert Greene, when he was on the podcast,

00:50:36.520 | talks about that.

00:50:37.560 | Your beam is more narrow, it seems.

00:50:41.640 | And the propeller behind that beam is high RPM.

00:50:46.640 | That's very clear.

00:50:48.120 | And what I'm not hearing here is like,

00:50:51.120 | yeah, you know, at one point I paused

00:50:53.560 | and wondered whether or not I wanted to, you know,

00:50:55.800 | be here wrestling in the Naval Academy,

00:50:57.640 | or even like what I might do when I get out.

00:51:01.560 | Am I gonna work for an investment firm?

00:51:02.880 | What am I gonna do?

00:51:03.860 | Your horizon, it seems to be about 24 hours at that point.

00:51:08.860 | - Yeah, I hope not anymore, but at that point.

00:51:10.320 | - No, at that point, at that point.

00:51:11.600 | I mean, I'm no psychologist,

00:51:13.400 | but it just seems like you're,

00:51:17.500 | it's not like you're playing checkers,

00:51:19.240 | but you're optimizing for a fairly short horizon.

00:51:24.240 | - There's no question that's right.

00:51:26.300 | And the other part that was probably

00:51:28.100 | the most important to me, Andrew,

00:51:29.400 | was the person or the group.

00:51:32.920 | Because this is gonna sound very arrogant,

00:51:36.620 | but when I got to, I'm going to this prep school,

00:51:40.200 | I'm going to the Naval Academy.

00:51:41.120 | I think on day one, I'm gonna literally meet

00:51:43.440 | the cream of the crop in the country.

00:51:45.720 | And that was not the case.

00:51:47.080 | And it was not the case at the Naval Academy.

00:51:48.600 | And frankly, it wasn't the case in the teams either.

00:51:50.640 | Like, I'm not saying I'm better than anybody,

00:51:52.160 | but I thought every single person,

00:51:54.420 | when I got to the Naval Academy,

00:51:56.180 | was gonna be entirely focused on whatever our mission was.

00:52:00.320 | And I didn't even know what my mission was there, right?

00:52:02.120 | I just knew I was gonna be told what Wright looks like.

00:52:06.640 | And Doug, not only did I meet him in high school

00:52:09.800 | and have the luck of having him as a teammate and a mentor,

00:52:14.240 | for me, he is what Wright looked like.

00:52:16.520 | So a focused beam and a propeller running at high RPM

00:52:21.240 | with the right, quote unquote, swim buddy, so to speak,

00:52:24.840 | was literally all I cared about.

00:52:26.960 | That was it.

00:52:27.920 | Everything else was white noise.

00:52:29.680 | - Were there other interests at the time?

00:52:31.200 | I mean, presumably you listened to music

00:52:32.780 | every once in a while, but-

00:52:34.080 | - I mean, I would, whatever.

00:52:35.200 | - But didn't fall in love with it?

00:52:36.840 | Didn't feel the need to pursue anything else,

00:52:38.960 | learn an instrument, do anything else?

00:52:40.560 | It was that narrow beam.

00:52:45.160 | - So you met your wife in '96?

00:52:49.160 | - Sophomore year at the Naval Academy, yeah.

00:52:51.800 | - And was she as driven?

00:52:53.720 | Is she as driven?

00:52:54.760 | I mean, she's obviously a very talented swimmer,

00:52:57.240 | presumably works hard as well.

00:52:58.800 | It's kind of interesting.

00:53:01.120 | I didn't realize until a few years ago

00:53:04.520 | that the both of you were military.

00:53:07.520 | - Yeah, she definitely just different, different driven,

00:53:11.000 | way smarter, way more,

00:53:14.400 | you know, it's obviously not one-to-one for men and women,

00:53:16.880 | but way more successful by gradient standards.

00:53:21.640 | She's in the Navy Hall of Fame.

00:53:22.800 | She was Patriot League swimming champ.

00:53:24.280 | She was on junior national triathlon team

00:53:26.520 | when she was 20, I think.

00:53:28.880 | Really talented in every regard.

00:53:33.600 | Ninth in our class, I think.

00:53:37.400 | First female graduate, number one female graduate, our class.

00:53:41.160 | - Tell me more about that.

00:53:42.000 | How's that work?

00:53:43.080 | - You have a, I don't even know exactly how the grading,

00:53:45.280 | first of all, her grades are,

00:53:46.440 | her academic success is just remarkable.

00:53:50.200 | And then you get a military grade

00:53:52.280 | and you get a physical grade, not for your athletics,

00:53:54.640 | I don't think, but it's like your PRT scores,

00:53:57.080 | which is your physical readiness test,

00:53:58.360 | all this military stuff you do.

00:54:00.120 | You get this other cluster of a grade

00:54:02.120 | that goes along with your academic grades.

00:54:04.320 | And she was number nine in the class

00:54:08.960 | and the first female graduate based on that

00:54:11.240 | cluster of grading.

00:54:13.120 | And I mean, she's an amazing person.

00:54:16.760 | - Was her success in academics and swimming,

00:54:20.120 | was that part of what drew you to her?

00:54:22.040 | No.

00:54:24.160 | - No, no, she was just nice and, you know.

00:54:27.720 | I didn't really care about the achievement.

00:54:30.000 | It certainly sounds like I care about achievement

00:54:32.360 | 'cause of the narrow focus, but it wasn't really that.

00:54:36.200 | You know, she was just really normal

00:54:38.520 | in a group of a lot of abnormal people, frankly.

00:54:41.240 | Like there's some kooks at these schools, you know.

00:54:44.000 | And I'm probably in that category, I don't know,

00:54:47.000 | but everybody's just really different there.

00:54:49.920 | You have this athlete group, you have, I mean,

00:54:52.480 | you know, Andrew, I mean, you went to Stanford.

00:54:54.800 | I mean, some of the, you know,

00:54:56.920 | the group of Naval Academy in West Point,

00:54:59.560 | like these schools who produce

00:55:01.120 | like the Rhodes Scholar level person,

00:55:03.160 | like that cluster of group, like at Navy,

00:55:05.960 | I remember, they're super impressive.

00:55:09.080 | I mean, and then there's the rest of us like doing our best,

00:55:11.360 | getting pretty good grades and stuff,

00:55:12.720 | but there's very different groups inside, you know,

00:55:16.200 | the school.

00:55:17.040 | - Yeah, yeah, I looked at some of my colleagues,

00:55:18.480 | like a former guest on this podcast, Allie Crum.

00:55:21.520 | You know, she's incredible scientist,

00:55:23.760 | was a division one gymnast

00:55:26.920 | and is a licensed clinical psychologist.

00:55:29.920 | Also maintains a healthy relationship

00:55:32.720 | with children in the home.

00:55:34.000 | Like, I just go, who are these people?

00:55:36.240 | You know, I mean, you know, every once in a while,

00:55:38.280 | we talk about the person with the quote unquote extra gear,

00:55:41.200 | you know, like some people just seem to have that extra gear

00:55:43.320 | and I don't want to take anything away from Allie

00:55:45.000 | or anyone else's incredible work ethic

00:55:48.520 | that goes with what people perceive as an extra gear.

00:55:50.840 | Who knows if they have an extra gear or not.

00:55:52.840 | I always just want to know what their parents did.

00:55:55.840 | And it turns out Allie's parents,

00:55:57.120 | I hope I have this right,

00:55:58.240 | but recollection of this is that her mother

00:56:03.080 | ran a theater group

00:56:05.120 | and her father was a martial arts teacher.

00:56:07.560 | So, you know, there's nothing that speaks

00:56:09.560 | to academics per se.

00:56:11.600 | And I find that really important to me and to highlight

00:56:14.560 | because I think people hearing this conversation

00:56:16.600 | and hear about people like Allie's

00:56:18.760 | and other examples like that,

00:56:20.440 | you think, oh yeah, you got to come from an academic family

00:56:22.720 | to end up at a top tier institution

00:56:25.480 | or to win a Nobel prize.

00:56:27.080 | In fact, there are so many exceptions to that.

00:56:29.160 | Or you have to be a natural athlete

00:56:32.960 | or be born with some genetic gift

00:56:35.440 | or some extra gear, as it were, in order to succeed.

00:56:40.440 | But I think so much of success

00:56:42.160 | is the thing that you seem to operationalize really quickly,

00:56:45.280 | which is to really focus on that 24 hour horizon

00:56:50.040 | and where one has seen failure to just keep going.

00:56:53.720 | I mean, a big part of it is just to keep going,

00:56:55.800 | but also to make sure that you're continuing to go

00:56:58.280 | in a direction that is adaptive and functional.

00:57:02.640 | Because imagine had you not found wrestling

00:57:05.600 | and you had gotten into some group

00:57:09.200 | where the metrics of success were around dealing weed

00:57:14.200 | or doing something, which back then was highly illegal,

00:57:16.720 | now is varying levels of legality,

00:57:19.360 | but where the points came back for effort

00:57:23.120 | in domains of life that could take you down into the gutter.

00:57:25.520 | And you see this.

00:57:26.520 | So I'm convinced that the work ethic

00:57:28.640 | is the fundamental piece, but there has to be that rudder.

00:57:31.240 | And your rudder has to be pointed in the right direction.

00:57:33.480 | So along those lines, you meet Bridget.

00:57:35.480 | - Yeah.

00:57:36.320 | - And was it instantaneous?

00:57:38.600 | - No, we kind of had a friendship first.

00:57:40.960 | I felt like at least, we've discussed this.

00:57:42.800 | I mean, I instantaneously enjoyed her company.

00:57:45.280 | So I met Bridget in February of sophomore year.

00:57:48.760 | I was on the campus of Naval Academy, it's called The Yard.

00:57:52.160 | I was on The Yard all winter

00:57:53.880 | because the wrestling season is the shittiest time ever.

00:57:56.920 | It crosses over the holidays.

00:57:58.040 | You have to make weight during Thanksgiving.

00:57:59.440 | You have to make weight during Christmas.

00:58:02.240 | We were on campus, on The Yard,

00:58:05.360 | and it was easily waist deep snow.

00:58:08.640 | And we were doing two a day practices.

00:58:10.360 | Everybody else is home on vacation.

00:58:12.120 | That winter, I considered leaving

00:58:17.040 | and thank goodness for no cell phones and stuff,

00:58:19.600 | because I didn't know how to leave.

00:58:21.880 | It was like-

00:58:22.720 | - You considered leaving like leaving the Naval Academy.

00:58:24.400 | - I was just, but it didn't have anything to do

00:58:25.800 | with the Naval Academy, really.

00:58:27.280 | It had everything to do with that moment.

00:58:29.480 | I was miserable.

00:58:30.600 | Like I was making, I wrestled 190 my freshman year

00:58:34.320 | and Doug graduated.

00:58:36.320 | He was the 177 pounder.

00:58:37.680 | So sophomore year, I dropped into his spot.

00:58:39.400 | I went down to 177.

00:58:41.560 | Fighting weight for me is like 193.

00:58:44.720 | But back then, Andrew, I'm lifting a lot.

00:58:49.000 | I was 210 to 215 in the off season

00:58:52.600 | and I cut to 177 sophomore year.

00:58:55.360 | And I was just generally miserable.

00:58:57.600 | And if it was easy to leave, I probably would have.

00:59:01.880 | And then I met Bridget in February

00:59:04.320 | and I was like, "Fuck it, I'll stay."

00:59:06.880 | She's better than this place anyway.

00:59:08.680 | - Having followed my high school girlfriend off to college

00:59:12.640 | and not gone to college when I got there,

00:59:14.080 | I just lived in the parking lot outside her dorm room.

00:59:16.920 | I can relate.

00:59:17.760 | I probably wouldn't be sitting here today

00:59:20.880 | were it not for Eleni.

00:59:23.920 | I'd like to take a quick break

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00:59:41.840 | And that's in large part

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00:59:44.720 | of cold water exposure are big increases in adrenaline,

00:59:48.520 | also called epinephrine, and dopamine.

00:59:50.520 | So while some people do cold water plunging

00:59:52.280 | in pursuit of increasing metabolism

00:59:54.320 | or reducing inflammation,

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01:00:00.480 | in alertness and feelings of wellbeing,

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01:00:07.440 | I've been using a plunge for several years now,

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01:00:52.320 | - So at what point did you decide

01:00:54.660 | you wanted to aim for the SEAL teams?

01:00:57.860 | - It's a great question.

01:00:58.700 | I mean, things, you know, as compared to,

01:01:01.640 | at a gunnery sergeant in the Marine Corps at prep school,

01:01:07.160 | who I thought, these are back to the first people

01:01:09.440 | you meet in this environment, Gunny Flynn.

01:01:12.400 | And he was great, like he was super hard on us,

01:01:15.340 | but I obviously kind of love that.

01:01:16.960 | And I thought I was gonna go into the Marine Corps,

01:01:18.760 | and Doug wanted to go into the Marine Corps.

01:01:20.840 | I'm a freshman at the Naval Academy.

01:01:22.160 | He's my wrestling partner.

01:01:23.600 | Doug could literally tell me to jump off of a building.

01:01:25.760 | As long as he came with me, I'd do it, no problem,

01:01:27.760 | and enjoy it all the way down.

01:01:29.520 | Doug was going into the Marine Corps.

01:01:30.860 | I thought I was gonna go into the Marine Corps.

01:01:33.360 | And I did a summer training in Quantico

01:01:35.940 | between freshman and sophomore year.

01:01:38.320 | And it was okay.

01:01:39.520 | It was good, but I didn't love it.

01:01:41.580 | And I met a couple other guys who were gonna compete

01:01:45.440 | for spots in the SEAL teams who were years ahead of me.

01:01:47.220 | But to answer your question, junior year,

01:01:50.460 | you can sign up and say,

01:01:52.960 | "I wanna start competing for a billet."

01:01:55.280 | We had 16 spots in my class.

01:01:57.640 | I think there's 32 spots these days.

01:01:59.680 | You know, the force has grown since 9/11, obviously.

01:02:03.880 | And I wanna say maybe 150 or so people,

01:02:09.540 | they put you through this weekend,

01:02:12.440 | overnight, two-day, hell two-day things at Navy.

01:02:16.620 | Some people quit.

01:02:17.660 | I don't know how many go to what we used to call mini-BUD/S

01:02:20.520 | in the summer between junior and senior year.

01:02:22.420 | You go out to Coronado and BUD/S instructors,

01:02:24.760 | they still have it.

01:02:25.600 | It's called something different.

01:02:26.960 | You spend two weeks at the BUD/S compound

01:02:30.720 | and they run you through a mini-program.

01:02:32.400 | - And say BUD/S for the,

01:02:33.560 | some folks listening to this won't know the acronym.

01:02:36.480 | - The acronym is Basic Underwater Demolition SEAL School.

01:02:40.240 | That's our school in Coronado.

01:02:41.080 | - It's a screening process for who gets in, who doesn't.

01:02:43.440 | - Yeah, and when you're at the Naval Academy,

01:02:46.200 | it's obviously different than guys coming

01:02:47.800 | into the enlisted ranks.

01:02:48.640 | You have this pool of people,

01:02:50.080 | 150-ish guys say they wanna go.

01:02:52.340 | Sometime junior year, they run you through this weekend,

01:02:55.240 | pretty hard, at Navy,

01:02:56.860 | 'cause we have SEALs stationed at the Naval Academy.

01:02:59.660 | And then, I'm just gonna guess, that goes from 150 to 80.

01:03:03.380 | Maybe 80 guys go to the summer program in Coronado

01:03:08.320 | when you're still a midshipman at the Naval Academy.

01:03:11.040 | I've never, maybe people have quit mini-BUD/S, I don't know.

01:03:15.240 | But I don't know if I really saw anybody quit

01:03:17.440 | the two weeks we were out in Coronado.

01:03:19.560 | And then you get graded on your performance and stuff.

01:03:23.160 | And then you come back for senior year,

01:03:25.300 | and you go through a series of interviews

01:03:26.560 | with a bunch of SEALs who come out and do interviews,

01:03:29.600 | and you don't really know what you're doing.

01:03:32.640 | And then they select down, I don't wanna, again, overdo it,

01:03:35.800 | but it's probably seven, I don't know,

01:03:39.640 | maybe 50 or 60 qualified guys.

01:03:42.560 | They select you down to 16.

01:03:45.200 | And so, to answer your question

01:03:46.960 | about when I got interested was,

01:03:48.420 | when I knew I didn't wanna go in the Marine Corps,

01:03:50.480 | I never, ever had the Top Gun fever thing.

01:03:54.040 | I wasn't interested in flying.

01:03:56.600 | I just wasn't interested in anything else,

01:03:58.280 | but something super physical.

01:04:00.620 | And that seemed like the next best thing.

01:04:04.600 | And because I grew up in New Orleans

01:04:06.160 | and spent a lot of time in the water,

01:04:07.880 | that wasn't intimidating.

01:04:09.140 | That screens a lot of people out, obviously.

01:04:12.060 | Yeah, and got selected in the group of 16,

01:04:14.440 | and was at Bud's after graduation,

01:04:17.680 | a couple of months after graduation.

01:04:20.320 | - There's been a lot put out into the world around Bud's.

01:04:23.880 | People have seen the log carrying, and the boat carrying,

01:04:26.400 | and the screaming of the instructors,

01:04:30.360 | and the running, and the clasped arms in the water,

01:04:35.360 | and hell week, no sleep, and on and on.

01:04:40.160 | It's obviously tough.

01:04:41.280 | It calls 85% of the people that go out there

01:04:44.240 | thinking that they are the absolute last person

01:04:47.040 | who would ever quit, ring the bell so to speak.

01:04:49.400 | You obviously got through.

01:04:53.220 | A while back, you mentioned to me three things

01:04:56.740 | that you think predict whether or not

01:04:59.180 | somebody's gonna get through Bud's.

01:05:00.520 | And before you tell us what these are,

01:05:02.840 | I just will just tell people that yes, of course,

01:05:06.640 | you made it through Bud's successfully

01:05:08.360 | and went into the teams.

01:05:09.840 | Very successful career in the teams.

01:05:12.920 | But you've also been a Bud's instructor.

01:05:14.280 | So you've been on the other side of the equation too.

01:05:18.360 | What are those three things?

01:05:20.520 | - Yeah, this was, as you know, this was very anecdotal,

01:05:23.340 | but it lined up.

01:05:24.420 | When I was back there in '05 as an instructor,

01:05:29.160 | I feel like, we're not scientists, right?

01:05:30.680 | But I feel like we tried every correlating data poll

01:05:35.680 | that we could pull from pull-ups, to run times,

01:05:38.440 | to you name it, to regions of the country

01:05:40.320 | that people grow up near water.

01:05:42.460 | At least back then, nothing correlated.

01:05:46.040 | And so I was a first phase OIC officer in charge.

01:05:50.720 | And so our team in first phase,

01:05:52.640 | we can talk about what that is in detail if you want to,

01:05:54.520 | but first phase is in charge of Hell Week.

01:05:56.520 | You know, Hell Week's in the first two months of training.

01:05:58.600 | And a couple of the guys said all this bullshit

01:06:02.120 | about this can get you through, that can get you through.

01:06:04.980 | I bet that every single person we talked to

01:06:08.840 | out here on the Grindr has one of these three things.

01:06:11.720 | They were a varsity athlete in high school or college,

01:06:14.080 | their parents are divorced,

01:06:15.400 | or they got suspended from school.

01:06:17.160 | I guarantee it.

01:06:18.480 | And we would walk around the Grindr and ask.

01:06:22.440 | And I mean, you know, this isn't gonna pass

01:06:25.600 | an independent review board, but it's gotta be 90 to 95%.

01:06:29.440 | - So that's incredible because, you know,

01:06:31.240 | so much has been made of BUD/S and Hell Week.

01:06:34.520 | And just to just fill in a few of the blanks

01:06:36.840 | for those that aren't familiar,

01:06:37.920 | Hell Week is what, it's five nights, no sleep.

01:06:40.720 | You get an hour or a couple minutes on one day,

01:06:43.440 | but you're basically in constant movement for about a week.

01:06:46.000 | - You are.

01:06:46.840 | - And that's when most people voluntarily ring the bell.

01:06:50.200 | - And most of them do it before Wednesday.

01:06:52.240 | - Okay.

01:06:53.080 | And I know it's got chaotic components,

01:06:55.480 | guns going off, blasts.

01:06:56.760 | It's got hard work, boring components,

01:06:59.480 | people trying to make it through it

01:07:02.320 | who have no sense of how long the run is gonna last

01:07:04.520 | or what's gonna happen.

01:07:05.960 | And you hear all this stuff like, okay,

01:07:07.360 | you just don't quit or you just go meal-to-meal.

01:07:10.600 | But what you just described is really interesting.

01:07:13.160 | Let's break those three things down

01:07:15.560 | because playing a varsity sport has certain elements.

01:07:19.640 | Having divorced parents has certain elements

01:07:24.480 | and getting suspended in school has certain elements.

01:07:27.360 | Let's start with divorced parents first.

01:07:33.120 | As varsity sport, I think we can probably just quickly say,

01:07:36.640 | okay, there's structure.

01:07:37.760 | You have to listen to somebody.

01:07:38.880 | You have to be able to push yourself.

01:07:40.080 | You have to have some level of physical competence.

01:07:42.160 | - Coachable.

01:07:43.000 | - Coachable, mental competence, work with others.

01:07:45.080 | So there's something there, right?

01:07:46.800 | And you presumably have to go through junior varsity

01:07:49.760 | to get there.

01:07:50.600 | So there's some oomph and required in any event.

01:07:54.920 | But the divorced parents pieces was surprising to me.

01:07:58.040 | Still is.

01:07:58.960 | What, you have divorced parents.

01:08:01.200 | So do I.

01:08:02.040 | Divorces occur for any number of different reasons.

01:08:04.840 | - What in the world do you think is the consequence of,

01:08:07.840 | or of a divorced household that would predict so well,

01:08:15.520 | at least in this back of the envelope measurement

01:08:17.680 | that you made, but as an instructor,

01:08:19.920 | that people would get through

01:08:21.040 | this excruciatingly difficult period of time?

01:08:24.120 | - For me, it was one thing specifically.

01:08:28.240 | I felt like I was alone if I didn't have the team.

01:08:33.320 | So I don't know what it would be for other people,

01:08:35.760 | but I was like, if I don't have this team,

01:08:37.920 | then what team do I have?

01:08:40.360 | So I'm not leaving.

01:08:43.440 | You could crank up the cold and misery

01:08:46.760 | as high as you fucking want, but I'm not leaving.

01:08:51.240 | - Yeah, that hits deep.

01:08:52.360 | I didn't do buds.

01:08:54.240 | I didn't even know what the SEAL teams were,

01:08:56.440 | but I certainly know the feeling of looking outside

01:09:00.880 | of the household for a sense of family and belonging

01:09:04.960 | and the feeling that like, I'd much rather,

01:09:08.280 | like from almost from a place of joy,

01:09:09.720 | like I'd much rather die for these people,

01:09:12.480 | hopefully not with these people,

01:09:13.840 | but much rather die trying to save others

01:09:16.920 | and to do well in that than to quit.

01:09:21.080 | - Yeah.

01:09:21.920 | - Yeah, that's a powerful thing

01:09:24.640 | that you just shine light on.

01:09:26.120 | I don't think of the hundreds of interviews

01:09:29.560 | with team guys, ex team guys, buds, instructors, et cetera,

01:09:32.120 | that are out there.

01:09:32.960 | I don't think anyone's ever highlighted that.

01:09:34.080 | - I don't think I was aware of it then, Andrew,

01:09:36.040 | but I just, again, it's in retrospect.

01:09:39.680 | - Well, the retrospect is in large part

01:09:41.520 | what we're here for.

01:09:42.520 | To go a little deeper on that,

01:09:45.000 | I think that a lot of people have challenging homes.

01:09:48.400 | The parents aren't necessarily divorced.

01:09:49.920 | And we're talking, of course,

01:09:51.560 | about trying to understand the human spirit,

01:09:57.960 | certainly not accomplishments per se,

01:09:59.680 | but the human spirit.

01:10:00.880 | So I think that a lot of people, especially nowadays,

01:10:03.720 | they look to their home life.

01:10:05.800 | And if, God willing, they had a great home life,

01:10:09.040 | that is the basis.

01:10:10.440 | It's the touchstone for them that they can return to.

01:10:13.240 | But for a lot of people,

01:10:15.200 | even people who go home for the holidays

01:10:17.320 | or who touch in with their parents,

01:10:19.680 | whether or not they're divorced or not,

01:10:20.920 | that they don't feel like that family unit

01:10:22.880 | is really a solid thing.

01:10:24.720 | Maybe they're in a place, I see this a lot,

01:10:26.880 | where they're the parent.

01:10:28.000 | They had to grow up taking care of the parents.

01:10:30.080 | I see that a lot on both the male side and the female side.

01:10:33.440 | I see that.

01:10:34.280 | So you're saying that one strong predictor

01:10:39.800 | of getting through is a feeling of people want,

01:10:43.040 | essentially making it their almost biological identity

01:10:47.880 | to get through.

01:10:48.880 | - It was certainly the case for me.

01:10:50.120 | I mean, when I got, again,

01:10:52.160 | I don't really like to overdo these things

01:10:53.680 | because it tends to feed the mythos a little.

01:10:56.440 | But when I got to Bud's, Andrew,

01:11:01.040 | when I got to the Naval Academy,

01:11:02.160 | I had a very strong sense of this is my chance.

01:11:04.560 | And you develop over the years

01:11:07.200 | and you spend time thinking about this and having mentors.

01:11:09.080 | When I got there, that was very much my first time of,

01:11:13.040 | you better bring the nastiest shit on the planet

01:11:19.160 | because I'm not leaving here.

01:11:21.440 | Like, it's just not, I'm just not going.

01:11:24.200 | And there's a Navy bit to it too.

01:11:27.320 | Like, I didn't want to do anything else in the Navy.

01:11:29.520 | So back to fear, I was afraid I would get stuck

01:11:33.280 | doing a job I didn't like.

01:11:35.160 | But there's some, people are not wrong about Bud's.

01:11:38.720 | There's some very difficult days

01:11:40.680 | where you do start to wonder, like, is this really worth it?

01:11:44.440 | And I never once thought about quitting.

01:11:50.360 | It never crossed my mind because I just had

01:11:53.200 | these other things that I really had to do

01:11:55.280 | for myself and my life,

01:11:56.640 | or else I felt like I was going to have nothing.

01:11:59.600 | And so, again, I don't think operating out of fear

01:12:03.320 | is particularly adaptive, but sometimes it,

01:12:06.520 | you know, the bit in your teeth is useful.

01:12:08.760 | - Yeah, certainly in my own life,

01:12:11.440 | I could say, you know, getting real scared about being 19

01:12:14.560 | and essentially realizing I'm not good at anything.

01:12:17.360 | I'm not good at anything.

01:12:19.280 | And I was terrible at a lot of things.

01:12:20.800 | And some of those things were taking me down

01:12:22.200 | a dangerous path.

01:12:23.120 | That was the fear, I'm grateful for the fear piece.

01:12:26.160 | It would, it scruffed me.

01:12:28.880 | And let's talk about the suspended in school.

01:12:32.680 | - Yep.

01:12:33.520 | - First of all, that implies getting caught.

01:12:36.480 | - Yes.

01:12:38.000 | - Not just misbehaving, but getting caught.

01:12:40.160 | Yeah, what do you think that's about?

01:12:42.080 | So we're really talking about a sense of rebellion

01:12:44.120 | against authority or the system

01:12:46.360 | that one finds themselves in.

01:12:48.240 | - Which is super important for our line of work.

01:12:50.200 | Like for me, again, I can only speak for myself.

01:12:52.840 | For me, it was the wild fuck you factor.

01:12:56.120 | Like you have to,

01:12:57.560 | there's just a nasty reality of the work we had to do.

01:13:01.720 | You know, I was in from '98 until 2011.

01:13:04.840 | - In the SEAL teams.

01:13:05.680 | - In the SEAL teams from '98 until 2011.

01:13:08.480 | Everybody knows what was happening between 9/11 and then.

01:13:11.320 | It's not that it didn't stop happening.

01:13:14.280 | I know, you know, from my own experience,

01:13:16.080 | from '03 through 2010 was extremely intense.

01:13:21.080 | Obviously the military has rules and we need rules

01:13:29.240 | and you follow the laws of armed conflict

01:13:31.360 | and you follow the rules of engagement.

01:13:32.720 | There's no question about that ever.

01:13:35.360 | But the shit that happens to you out in the field for real

01:13:41.520 | does not follow any pattern.

01:13:44.200 | And so if you are a complete, you know,

01:13:49.080 | non-suspended from school rule follower,

01:13:51.720 | I'm not saying you won't be successful.

01:13:53.000 | I'm sure plenty of people are.

01:13:55.000 | But in our line of work, if you ask people,

01:13:57.000 | most of them had a weird streak as they were coming up.

01:14:00.840 | Like they have a little bit of a side eye

01:14:03.640 | when somebody tells them this is how stuff is.

01:14:06.080 | Like, hmm, maybe it's like that, but you don't know that.

01:14:10.120 | And where it really became clear for me, Andrew,

01:14:13.400 | was like at every stage in your development,

01:14:16.040 | you're still looking for what right looks like.

01:14:18.160 | And when I was a, I'm now a Naval Academy graduate,

01:14:20.840 | not that that means anything special, but I'm smart enough.

01:14:24.840 | I'm now in my twenties, I'm at BUD/S

01:14:27.040 | and I have this recollection later,

01:14:31.160 | like people are always telling stories about the teams.

01:14:34.000 | And when you're a new student at BUD/S,

01:14:36.160 | you kind of believe everything the instructors tell you

01:14:38.840 | because it's pretty impressive shit.

01:14:40.880 | And then you find out later when you,

01:14:42.320 | when I checked into SEAL Team 3,

01:14:44.240 | you actually start to understand the arc of the job.

01:14:47.680 | It's like, all these guys were telling training stories.

01:14:51.440 | Those weren't real combat stories.

01:14:52.880 | Those, they never said that that was a story from training.

01:14:56.960 | And so my point is like,

01:14:59.320 | what you hope guys are getting it now,

01:15:05.360 | but what we didn't get a lot of

01:15:06.920 | was the real story in a sense.

01:15:09.800 | Meaning, I will say definitively,

01:15:12.160 | my first combat deployment was '03 when we invaded Iraq.

01:15:14.680 | I was a platoon commander when we invaded Iraq.

01:15:17.160 | And I remember within a week of being in that situation,

01:15:21.280 | thinking not one single instructor had the experience

01:15:25.440 | to mentor and coach me on this, not one.

01:15:27.560 | And so you have to go back to that wild,

01:15:32.560 | suspended, fuck you factor mindset.

01:15:35.880 | Like all your silly rules about how the military works,

01:15:39.920 | none of that shit's happening out here.

01:15:42.040 | Like all this other stuff is happening

01:15:44.080 | that doesn't have anything to do with your training manuals

01:15:47.200 | except for the things you don't violate,

01:15:50.320 | which is to your best of your ability, stuff happens,

01:15:53.400 | but the rules of engagement and the laws of armed conflict,

01:15:56.080 | everything else is a toss up.

01:15:58.000 | The tactics aren't, that's not a toss up,

01:16:00.680 | but you know what I mean?

01:16:01.520 | Like the environment is completely chaotic.

01:16:05.280 | - It's a new sport.

01:16:07.760 | - It's a brand new sport that no one coached you on.

01:16:10.800 | - And it's high risk, high consequence

01:16:13.240 | for you and your teammates, but also for the other side.

01:16:17.080 | - I mean, every 15 seconds is a new consequential decision.

01:16:22.040 | - Yeah, 'cause you obviously don't want to kill civilians

01:16:25.680 | on the other side either.

01:16:27.040 | - Of course not.

01:16:27.880 | - So you obviously get through buds.

01:16:32.880 | You probably weren't surprised given your mindset,

01:16:37.240 | probably weren't surprised.

01:16:38.080 | - No, I wasn't surprised.

01:16:39.560 | At this point, I'm maybe building a little self-confidence

01:16:42.320 | and just operate out of fear.

01:16:43.680 | - But happy, presumably.

01:16:45.720 | - Oh yeah, yeah.

01:16:46.640 | - And I feel obligated to ask,

01:16:50.880 | well, I'm just curious to ask that you've been in a system

01:16:54.240 | of military for a long time.

01:16:55.480 | Is there a bigger pull of patriotism there

01:16:59.560 | or that's just, it's there,

01:17:01.280 | but I mean, are you thinking about country

01:17:03.680 | or are you thinking about team?

01:17:05.400 | You think about the day.

01:17:06.760 | - Yeah, I mean, at this point,

01:17:09.000 | I'm fully indoctrinated in a sense.

01:17:11.320 | The Naval Academy really does give you a sense of,

01:17:13.680 | again, bigness and you meet people from World War II

01:17:16.800 | and Vietnam and an amazing guy,

01:17:20.560 | which we can cover later.

01:17:23.560 | I wasn't around when he was coming up,

01:17:25.160 | but Colonel John Ripley is a guy

01:17:26.520 | who won the Navy Cross in Vietnam.

01:17:28.880 | The book, "The Bridge at Dong Ha" is about him.

01:17:33.080 | He knew my, this is back to my uncle, Jim,

01:17:35.720 | who introduced, he and my uncle Jim were buddies

01:17:38.640 | and I met him, he's since passed away.

01:17:42.000 | I met Colonel Ripley when I was a plebe

01:17:44.480 | at the Naval Academy.

01:17:46.080 | I work with one of his sons now, friend, teammate, mentor.

01:17:51.080 | He's a great guy.

01:17:52.160 | Colonel Ripley, he's a legend.

01:17:57.240 | Like this guy's a Navy Cross winner,

01:17:58.640 | should've won the Congressional Medal of Honor

01:18:00.120 | by all accounts.

01:18:01.800 | If you read the book, "The Bridge at Dong Ha,"

01:18:03.720 | you are gonna have no ability to understand

01:18:07.240 | why he's not dead.

01:18:08.880 | And these are the kind of people you meet.

01:18:11.360 | So back to the patriotism thing,

01:18:13.440 | by the time I was in the teams,

01:18:15.280 | I knew where I was sort of in this ecosystem.

01:18:19.960 | Admittedly though, what I didn't really have, Andrew,

01:18:23.480 | because it, I mean, I love the country, of course,

01:18:26.200 | but it wasn't, again, I didn't grow up with a dad

01:18:29.360 | who was like, this was always in our house

01:18:32.120 | or it just wasn't that big of a thing.

01:18:34.360 | This came for me after 9/11, obviously.

01:18:38.120 | But yes, the patriotism and the importance of the jobs there

01:18:41.000 | but when I remember checking into SEAL Team 3,

01:18:43.840 | what emerged very quickly for me

01:18:47.440 | because we had Vietnam vets in the training cell

01:18:49.600 | at SEAL Team 3 and just some amazing people,

01:18:52.960 | what I realized right away was,

01:18:55.720 | okay, playtime is completely over.

01:18:59.720 | And that was very useful, like early lesson,

01:19:02.280 | not that anyone was fucking around in buds,

01:19:04.360 | like you know it's serious,

01:19:05.880 | but you meet a guy like Master Chief Martin

01:19:07.760 | who's got a hundred combat missions from Vietnam,

01:19:09.520 | he's about to retire.

01:19:10.920 | He was like the third person I met

01:19:12.560 | when I checked into the team

01:19:14.680 | and you suddenly are like a kid again

01:19:16.480 | where there's just no fucking around.

01:19:19.600 | - So you're in the teams, presumably liking the work.

01:19:26.080 | - Loved it.

01:19:27.360 | - Loving the team component.

01:19:29.040 | It's hard, it's unpredictable

01:19:31.000 | and that's part of the fun.

01:19:35.000 | - It's amazing, yeah.

01:19:36.520 | The job's amazing.

01:19:37.480 | - You do a number of different deployments

01:19:41.680 | and at some point you get called to try out

01:19:45.000 | for the Tier 1 division within the SEAL Teams.

01:19:50.000 | Maybe just explain a little bit of what Tier 1 means

01:19:54.480 | and we don't wanna speak in code here

01:19:56.840 | but we just gotta inform people

01:19:58.680 | that there are levels within the teams

01:20:00.800 | and that, yeah, tell us what Tier 1 is.

01:20:04.160 | - Yeah, well, I'll just refer to it,

01:20:05.880 | Special Mission Unit, it's probably the easiest.

01:20:08.640 | We have a bunch of teams on the East and West Coast

01:20:10.200 | as a lot of people know nowadays,

01:20:11.640 | this shit was not public knowledge years ago.

01:20:13.840 | - Yeah, so you've got these different units

01:20:17.280 | within the SEAL Teams.

01:20:19.160 | - Yeah, so you have to raise your hand.

01:20:21.960 | You know, I was 10 years in, Andrew,

01:20:23.960 | I had been platoon commander during the invasion of Iraq.

01:20:27.320 | We came to Monterey, I went to school,

01:20:28.640 | I went back to be a budget instructor.

01:20:29.840 | It was 10 years, I felt like it was time to take my shot.

01:20:34.280 | It's a little risky because it's hard to make it through,

01:20:38.080 | you know, Green Team and stuff at the Special Mission Unit.

01:20:41.280 | It's a nine-month advanced training program.

01:20:44.160 | You're 10 years into your career, you're not 22 anymore.

01:20:46.840 | - And not everyone gets called to Green Team.

01:20:48.560 | Not everyone can go.

01:20:49.400 | You can't say, "I wanna go, I wanna try out."

01:20:51.520 | - You can say you wanna try out

01:20:52.920 | and you do a pre-screener.

01:20:54.680 | So the command training staff,

01:20:56.520 | I'll call it the command for purposes of this conversation

01:20:58.680 | 'cause I'm familiar with that term for us.

01:21:00.800 | The command training staff comes out,

01:21:02.440 | they put you through all this stuff.

01:21:03.800 | Some of it's psychological, some of it's physiological.

01:21:06.200 | I don't think we did a blood test, but they checked.

01:21:08.480 | The trainers checked everything on me,

01:21:11.120 | which I thought, this is actually a description

01:21:13.600 | of why the unit's Tier 1.

01:21:15.000 | I was, even in the pre-screening,

01:21:17.760 | it was the first time, the way I joke about it

01:21:19.920 | is like I really felt like I was doing

01:21:21.440 | what was in the brochure.

01:21:23.160 | Like it was real varsity stuff.

01:21:25.280 | - I'm presaging a later conversation that we'll get to,

01:21:29.720 | but at this point, have you ever sat down

01:21:32.320 | with a psychologist and done a therapy session?

01:21:34.200 | - That was no therapy, but I sat down with a psychologist

01:21:37.040 | 'cause they put us through the battery,

01:21:38.400 | the Neo-PIR, the RAVEN, stuff like that.

01:21:40.760 | - They're asking you, how do you sleep at night?

01:21:42.120 | How do you feel? - All of it, yeah.

01:21:43.280 | - What do you dream about?

01:21:44.240 | - How much do you drink?

01:21:45.080 | And you say, "Two beers a week," and--

01:21:47.200 | - And you're lying at that point.

01:21:48.560 | - I was lying. - Yeah.

01:21:49.440 | But now it might be two beers a week.

01:21:50.760 | Now it's zero. - Zero, right.

01:21:52.520 | - But yeah, so it was good screening process.

01:21:56.080 | I was like, oh shit, these guys are not messing around.

01:21:58.280 | This is exactly what I wanted to do.

01:22:00.440 | And the physical tests ramp up,

01:22:03.060 | and coincidentally, I worked for him later,

01:22:06.320 | still friends with him now.

01:22:07.820 | On my interview board was Britt Slabinski,

01:22:10.000 | who won the Congressional Medal of Honor.

01:22:11.560 | Britt was on my interview board, and he's a great guy.

01:22:15.320 | And so yeah, then you just wait.

01:22:17.200 | And if you get picked up, you go out to the East Coast,

01:22:21.400 | and you're really rolling the dice,

01:22:22.480 | because I was on the West Coast.

01:22:24.240 | You move your whole family, sell your house,

01:22:25.800 | you may not have to sell your house, but we did.

01:22:27.720 | And you move, and you're gonna do

01:22:30.120 | a nine-month advanced training program at the command

01:22:34.280 | just to get into a tactical unit,

01:22:37.240 | which we call squadrons.

01:22:38.560 | And the best way, tactically,

01:22:40.840 | for me to describe the difference,

01:22:42.200 | and look, my time at Team 3 was amazing.

01:22:44.240 | I'm not diminishing it.

01:22:45.600 | But let me just use free fall, military free fall,

01:22:48.120 | for anybody who's even done civilian free fall.

01:22:51.480 | - It's jumping airplanes. - Jumping.

01:22:53.520 | So if we go to the drop zone, and we go jumping,

01:22:56.400 | FAA regulations have you jump at 12,999 feet,

01:22:59.640 | 'cause as soon as you go above 13,000,

01:23:01.400 | you have to use supplemental oxygen,

01:23:02.800 | which is not a huge deal,

01:23:03.720 | but it's a pain in the ass for the airplane to have it.

01:23:06.240 | And so 99% of all your jumps,

01:23:10.640 | well, at any standard drop zone,

01:23:12.560 | your civilian jumps are gonna be below 13 grand.

01:23:14.780 | For all of our jumping at SEAL Team 3 is below 13 grand.

01:23:19.400 | It just makes the training more efficient.

01:23:21.200 | And you'll jump during the daytime,

01:23:22.920 | maybe a little night jumping.

01:23:24.520 | You'll probably have some lights for safety.

01:23:26.720 | And if you look out of the airplane,

01:23:31.060 | you would be able to see the orange T on the drop zone.

01:23:34.200 | All right, that's your standard jump profile.

01:23:36.000 | Maybe you'll jump with some weight.

01:23:38.240 | You'll certainly jump with your weapon,

01:23:40.520 | probably your helmet, but not all your jumps,

01:23:42.600 | 'cause you're bringing guys from zero

01:23:44.760 | to be able to do tactical military free fall as a group.

01:23:48.060 | When you go to the command,

01:23:51.760 | your jumps are from 25,000 feet.

01:23:56.760 | You do 30 minutes of pre-breathing on oxygen,

01:23:59.300 | helmet, night vision, zero lights,

01:24:02.200 | an attack board that has your navigation system on it,

01:24:05.960 | 100 pounds of gear, your weapon, your oxygen,

01:24:09.100 | all your shit, and 45 dudes piled up in a C-17.

01:24:14.560 | And you drop miles away from the drop zone

01:24:17.760 | because your over ground speed at 25,000 feet

01:24:20.320 | is hauling ass because of the wind.

01:24:22.320 | And if you take your hands out of your gloves

01:24:23.560 | at 25,000 feet, it's curtains.

01:24:25.480 | Like you're not gonna be able to use your fingers

01:24:27.080 | 'cause it's so cold.

01:24:28.080 | And you jump from way away, obviously,

01:24:31.840 | and all your jump is completely blacked out.

01:24:34.400 | Everybody turns IR lights on,

01:24:36.520 | their helmets and their infrared lights

01:24:38.360 | so you can see through night vision.

01:24:40.160 | And you gotta fly that canopy multiple, multiple miles

01:24:43.840 | and land everybody on a drop zone.

01:24:45.840 | That's, if you take every tactical thing we do

01:24:48.920 | and expand the same way you would expand free fall,

01:24:54.500 | that's the difference at the command.

01:24:56.240 | Which is, look, I was, I wanna own this.

01:24:59.180 | When I was at team three, because you think about this,

01:25:02.040 | I had many, many moments where I was thinking,

01:25:04.140 | oh, fuck it, man, those guys aren't that much different.

01:25:08.040 | Like we're super high end, right?

01:25:11.040 | And we are.

01:25:13.400 | And then when I got there, I was like,

01:25:15.880 | this is another level.

01:25:18.440 | - What percentage of people that go to green team

01:25:20.360 | get through and get sort of--

01:25:23.600 | - I think I had 65 in my class.

01:25:26.860 | You don't drop that many.

01:25:28.040 | Maybe 10 guys didn't make it or something, maybe 15-ish.

01:25:32.720 | - So then you were, why do they call it tier one?

01:25:36.360 | - No idea.

01:25:37.780 | It must have some official reason.

01:25:39.720 | 'Cause if you go into like real documentation,

01:25:43.240 | Andrew, like there's echelons in,

01:25:46.480 | this command is echelon this,

01:25:49.120 | this command is echelon this.

01:25:50.480 | In the military, Congress sets end strength numbers.

01:25:54.020 | It says the Navy, you get, at the one time,

01:25:58.680 | 'cause it took some class,

01:25:59.920 | the Navy had like 355,000 people.

01:26:03.040 | And that's the Navy's end strength.

01:26:04.600 | And they have to distribute those numbers

01:26:05.880 | across everybody in the Navy.

01:26:07.280 | So I don't know why it's called tier one,

01:26:10.120 | but I think it has a reason.

01:26:13.120 | - So you got through, you were accepted,

01:26:16.060 | and then you're doing very different sorts of things

01:26:18.840 | than you were doing previously.

01:26:20.000 | - Very.

01:26:20.960 | - So my understanding is

01:26:22.400 | this is largely counter-terrorist work.

01:26:25.300 | So all the work in the military and SEAL teams

01:26:29.760 | is high risk, high consequence,

01:26:31.700 | but now it's special operations, as the name implies,

01:26:40.080 | where things have to be worked out on a case-by-case basis.

01:26:45.080 | It's highly unusual.

01:26:46.400 | It was unusual before,

01:26:47.320 | but now it's highly unusual circumstances.

01:26:49.500 | What was it like to be there?

01:26:52.960 | Did you like that family?

01:26:55.400 | - I loved it.

01:26:56.240 | It was the best place to work.

01:26:59.640 | - And this is 2000?

01:27:02.120 | - This is '06 through 2011 for me.

01:27:05.160 | - Okay, so it's post 9/11 through 2011.

01:27:08.400 | - Yep. - Okay.

01:27:09.640 | So I'm sure a lot happened,

01:27:12.720 | and most of which we can't and won't discuss,

01:27:15.920 | and that's not what's important here,

01:27:18.680 | but clearly you met and worked

01:27:22.640 | with some amazing individuals.

01:27:24.160 | I happen to know, because we've spoken before,

01:27:28.140 | and we have some common friends in that arena,

01:27:32.400 | that you had both the privilege of doing this work

01:27:35.880 | in this really important wartime,

01:27:37.860 | but also the unfortunate experience of being close to

01:27:42.860 | and working with quite a lot of people that were killed.

01:27:47.460 | - Yep.

01:27:48.300 | - How many?

01:27:50.600 | - So, I mean, I don't know why I did this

01:27:53.200 | or why anyone does it.

01:27:54.560 | It's way over 40,

01:27:57.220 | but I try not to over-affiliate myself

01:28:01.200 | with a larger group than I actually knew.

01:28:03.340 | But the people that I personally knew, Andrew,

01:28:06.680 | it's exactly 40.

01:28:08.060 | - And we could spend probably weeks

01:28:12.560 | detailing how impressive each and every one of those people

01:28:17.560 | was in their individual cases.

01:28:20.580 | This is perhaps an opportunity to put a call out.

01:28:23.820 | There's a wonderful book, I think an important book,

01:28:26.980 | that isn't so well-known in the array

01:28:30.020 | of quote-unquote military and SEAL books,

01:28:33.660 | which is the book about Adam Brown, a fearless book.

01:28:36.780 | I heard they're gonna make it into a movie.

01:28:38.800 | But what I like about the book

01:28:41.620 | is actually has very little to do with the SEAL team.

01:28:44.300 | - Totally, that's the best thing.

01:28:45.640 | - Is that Adam had a serious, serious problem with addiction

01:28:50.640 | that he masked at times,

01:28:53.420 | and it came back to pull him under various times

01:28:55.980 | while he was in the teams.

01:28:57.140 | And I know you worked with Adam and you're close.

01:28:59.900 | - He was on my green team, yeah.

01:29:00.940 | - Yeah, so that's a great book

01:29:02.760 | for anyone that wants a different sort of book.

01:29:05.620 | It's really about addiction and family

01:29:07.420 | and his discovery of the path out of all that.

01:29:10.820 | - His tenacity is incredible.

01:29:12.460 | - It was an awesome, awesome book.

01:29:14.760 | Human, about an awesome, awesome human.

01:29:17.420 | So you do those years.

01:29:21.040 | And then what happens when 40 people close to you die?

01:29:32.500 | I have to imagine involves that

01:29:34.340 | you get pretty good, unfortunately,

01:29:37.360 | at taking what each and every one of those is a tragedy

01:29:42.360 | and just continuing.

01:29:45.020 | So let's just talk about that for a bit, if you're willing.

01:29:48.900 | So guys are getting shot and blown up

01:29:52.380 | and you're close with them to say the least.

01:29:56.180 | And what was your role in the aftermath?

01:30:00.420 | Like, what do you do?

01:30:02.900 | You go to a funeral, you toast a few beers,

01:30:07.700 | and then you go back to work?

01:30:09.260 | - I mean, that's kind of,

01:30:13.160 | in the most simplistic terms, Andrew,

01:30:15.620 | that is exactly what happens.

01:30:17.360 | There's obviously a lot more that goes on,

01:30:24.500 | but if you script the diary, so to speak,

01:30:29.360 | it wasn't a funeral every three months,

01:30:32.160 | but on average, if I average it out,

01:30:34.880 | 'cause I've done this in excavating the last few years,

01:30:39.880 | we were at a funeral or memorial effectively every 90 days

01:30:44.240 | and in that time period.

01:30:47.800 | But it wasn't obviously that simple.

01:30:53.240 | Like for me and our family,

01:30:57.600 | Doug was my first super close teammate killed

01:31:00.160 | and it wasn't in the teams, right?

01:31:01.240 | I'm now at the command.

01:31:03.740 | I was back from Afghanistan, from Kandahar.

01:31:06.400 | This is way before the Marines built up

01:31:09.160 | a hundred kilometers west of Kandahar.

01:31:10.760 | We were operating six of us with like 180 Afghans,

01:31:15.760 | kind of the wild west back then.

01:31:19.560 | And Doug was killed that summer of '07.

01:31:23.880 | And I got a phone call from a friend.

01:31:26.520 | I was standing in my kitchen in Virginia Beach

01:31:28.840 | and it was like,

01:31:30.760 | like the whole scaffolding of the world was just gone.

01:31:38.240 | Because at that age, and here I am, like I'm some kid.

01:31:43.640 | I was in my thirties, but I'm thinking,

01:31:47.080 | you know, things get more and more serious as you go,

01:31:51.840 | like at that time.

01:31:53.120 | But when Doug was killed

01:31:54.440 | and I was a pallbearer in his funeral.

01:31:57.840 | And, you know, we came up to Annapolis.

01:31:59.720 | He was living in Annapolis 'cause he was working.

01:32:01.640 | It's now been publicly released, which is nice for Pam

01:32:04.560 | because she can talk about it more.

01:32:05.880 | He was working at the agency.

01:32:07.320 | And when after his funeral and just the days around that,

01:32:13.400 | and then I go back to work.

01:32:15.520 | And what I mentioned earlier about Doug

01:32:18.600 | and what I knew about him just as an operator,

01:32:21.200 | he had been a company commander in Fallujah.

01:32:22.920 | He was on the front page of the LA Times.

01:32:25.000 | Like Tony Perry is a reporter in San Diego.

01:32:27.640 | He was in Fallujah following Doug.

01:32:29.600 | The guy was, and Doug is not like a public people.

01:32:33.720 | People were just attracted to him to tell his story.

01:32:37.120 | I have so many stories that I heard later from his bosses,

01:32:40.120 | his regimental commander, you know,

01:32:42.280 | told stories about his unit in Fallujah,

01:32:44.880 | his Sergeant Major and his amazing guy.

01:32:47.000 | I've talked to him about like what went on in Fallujah.

01:32:49.240 | Doug's just a fucking legend.

01:32:50.760 | I mean, he was awesome.

01:32:53.080 | And the dominant thought after his funeral was,

01:32:57.640 | if things, it's not that you don't think they're serious.

01:33:00.600 | And I mean, just about life, Andrew.

01:33:02.440 | It wasn't just about combat action and hard deployments.

01:33:04.880 | It was about if Doug can be killed,

01:33:08.360 | all fucking bets are off.

01:33:09.840 | They're all off.

01:33:11.920 | Like if I didn't respect the rules before

01:33:14.240 | and didn't think society was particularly ordered

01:33:17.400 | in a way that I respected, you know,

01:33:20.000 | shit that I think is made up.

01:33:21.560 | I knew when Doug was killed that it's all fucking made up.

01:33:26.560 | Like he was supposed to be the immortal one.

01:33:31.560 | And if he's not, none of us are.

01:33:36.000 | Like everything has to be reevaluated.

01:33:39.400 | You know, how old was I?

01:33:40.240 | I was 32.

01:33:41.560 | - And you've got kids at this point.

01:33:43.720 | - Mm-hmm, yeah, yep.

01:33:45.160 | Yeah, Ollie wasn't born yet, my youngest.

01:33:48.360 | - 'Cause you now have three boys.

01:33:50.040 | - Yep, three boys, 21, 18, and 14.

01:33:52.680 | And the older two were born.

01:33:56.320 | My middle son was two at the time.

01:34:00.080 | - And did it occur to you at the point when Doug was killed

01:34:04.200 | or maybe some other point that, you know,

01:34:05.560 | at some point you could die?

01:34:07.000 | - Oh, I mean, that's what I mean, Andrew.

01:34:08.600 | Like I, you know, personal work and therapy afterwards,

01:34:12.880 | it was then that I started looking over my shoulder,

01:34:16.240 | just in general.

01:34:17.280 | Like everything was suddenly,

01:34:18.840 | like has to be watched with a vigilant eye.

01:34:24.760 | - Something that close friends,

01:34:28.480 | close male friends of mine have told me,

01:34:30.600 | these are friends that are married with kids.

01:34:34.440 | And I've heard this from people that were in the military

01:34:36.760 | and as well as those that weren't,

01:34:39.240 | was that it was very important to them

01:34:41.360 | to marry somebody who, were they to die,

01:34:46.720 | they knew their kids would be well taken care of.

01:34:50.440 | - Oh, that one's not even, there's no question about that.

01:34:53.000 | - Yeah, so that was like a primary criteria.

01:34:58.000 | And I think in your line of work, I mean,

01:34:59.520 | that must be especially important

01:35:01.240 | because the probability of dying is,

01:35:04.920 | well, let's face it, is much higher.

01:35:06.560 | As my sister who doesn't like sharks once told me,

01:35:10.160 | she said, you know, the best way to not get eaten by a shark

01:35:11.760 | is never go in the ocean.

01:35:13.080 | You know, there is a way to limiting probabilities.

01:35:15.560 | She'll swim in the ocean a little bit,

01:35:17.480 | but the point being that when you're in the military

01:35:19.480 | and your shoot, move and communicate

01:35:23.120 | is a big part of the job description.

01:35:25.280 | And the enemy is also taught to shoot, move and communicate

01:35:29.560 | that there's a decent probability that you could die.

01:35:32.640 | So did you ever think, okay, well, if I die,

01:35:37.640 | my kids are okay because Bridget's solid,

01:35:40.680 | or were you still just operating on this 24 hour schedule

01:35:44.560 | that you had adopted way back in the seventh grade?

01:35:46.680 | - No, I think, well, maybe,

01:35:48.840 | I'd have to ask her that question.

01:35:50.560 | I think I was backed away

01:35:53.480 | from the 24 hour ledge a little bit.

01:35:55.740 | I knew that the boys obviously would be taken care of

01:36:02.080 | with my wife, like that was never,

01:36:03.600 | and never crossed my mind probably

01:36:05.000 | until you just asked the question.

01:36:06.040 | That was almost just like table stakes.

01:36:11.720 | Back to this adaptive but maladaptive behavior.

01:36:14.620 | When Doug was killed,

01:36:17.240 | I just realized I had to work even harder

01:36:19.640 | to try to stay alive.

01:36:21.960 | 'Cause if you met the guy, there is,

01:36:27.360 | I'm gonna say it probably multiple,

01:36:28.640 | there is not a fucking human on the planet

01:36:31.440 | that was as tough and as focused and as hyper dialed in

01:36:37.680 | to how to do the job 100% effectively as he was.

01:36:42.680 | And it happened to him.

01:36:49.480 | It's almost embarrassing, Andrew,

01:36:53.680 | to say I never thought about it like that

01:36:55.080 | until Doug was killed.

01:36:56.240 | - And yet, and I'm not challenging that at all, of course,

01:37:00.320 | I mean, life, circumstances,

01:37:03.360 | the other team gets a vote too.

01:37:06.360 | - Totally.

01:37:07.200 | - I mean, somebody can be seemingly indestructible,

01:37:11.600 | oh so capable and talented,

01:37:13.680 | and get T-boned in an intersection and die.

01:37:16.560 | Right, like that.

01:37:17.960 | We've known people like that.

01:37:19.600 | All of us, you hear these things,

01:37:21.240 | that's why they're called tragedies.

01:37:22.920 | - Yeah, we just, like to put it in context,

01:37:25.080 | we have to remember is part of the beauty

01:37:28.560 | of taking a young person

01:37:30.560 | and taking all the ingredients

01:37:31.940 | that a person comes into special operations,

01:37:34.020 | pick your service, I'm not, I'm agnostic.

01:37:36.480 | I mean, some of my best buddies are Army and Marine Corps,

01:37:40.360 | like I'm agnostic to the service head,

01:37:42.520 | is when you end up at a certain point,

01:37:45.560 | like and you look back, you realize for 10 or 15 years,

01:37:49.360 | I've been indoctrinated in a very adaptive way

01:37:52.720 | to believe that I'm immortal.

01:37:55.220 | Because if you didn't,

01:37:57.400 | you certainly wouldn't jump out of aircraft

01:38:00.480 | at 25,000 feet with no lights,

01:38:02.280 | and you for hell for sure wouldn't go

01:38:03.680 | into some of these fucking towns we go into

01:38:06.000 | and end up in these firefights.

01:38:07.080 | Like you have some weird, I'll speak for myself,

01:38:10.760 | I was entirely convinced that I couldn't be killed.

01:38:13.320 | And I, just because I was in some way, Andrew,

01:38:18.840 | convinced that our training was so good,

01:38:21.080 | that that shit wouldn't happen to us.

01:38:25.280 | - Let's take a step back for a second

01:38:27.080 | and acknowledge the truth all around

01:38:30.320 | that set of statements,

01:38:32.080 | which is that I think most people can think

01:38:35.480 | of the government and the training programs

01:38:38.320 | as honing the body,

01:38:42.120 | but it's probably not lost on you

01:38:44.760 | at this point in your life, that you were, you're a weapon.

01:38:49.320 | Your mind became a weapon, right?

01:38:51.240 | Your body became a weapon.

01:38:53.680 | You were a weapon of the military from the inside out.

01:38:57.060 | And in the statement you just made encapsulates that.

01:38:59.720 | And that weapon honed itself for a long time,

01:39:05.200 | but then that's what the military is.

01:39:06.320 | It creates weapons out of humans.

01:39:08.600 | And I'm not demonizing the military whatsoever.

01:39:10.800 | I wanna be very clear.

01:39:11.960 | I realized that statement could be construed differently,

01:39:13.880 | but that mindset encapsulates that.

01:39:16.960 | So-

01:39:18.400 | - So with the other guys,

01:39:19.280 | I wanna make sure I finish your question.

01:39:20.880 | So it started with Doug and then, you know,

01:39:24.000 | I don't know what direction you wanna go here specifically,

01:39:25.960 | but then it just kept going, Andrew, right?

01:39:27.760 | Like at that time, Doug was '07,

01:39:31.040 | and then we went to Iraq in the winter of '07, '08,

01:39:33.720 | which was complete mayhem.

01:39:37.000 | And the troop was,

01:39:38.400 | I mean, my troop in the winter of '07, '08

01:39:42.680 | were like fucking superheroes.

01:39:47.480 | And a guy named Tommy Valentine was the troop chief.

01:39:52.520 | And we got home and he was killed in a parachute accident.

01:39:55.600 | After all that shit we went through.

01:39:57.540 | Badger, a guy named Mark Carter

01:40:00.520 | was killed in that deployment.

01:40:01.420 | We got home and Tommy was killed in a parachute accident.

01:40:04.040 | And me and a guy named Dutch,

01:40:05.960 | we went up to Minnesota to notify Tommy's parents

01:40:10.440 | and his sister and his brother.

01:40:12.120 | And we're not, the Navy calls them CACOs,

01:40:16.000 | like casualty assistance officers.

01:40:17.640 | These are jobs in the military

01:40:20.260 | where you're trained to do this stuff.

01:40:21.720 | You know, one of the things that's amazing about us

01:40:23.360 | is if a guy gets killed, we send a team guy there.

01:40:26.040 | But think about the team guy.

01:40:28.400 | Like it's great for the family that you send the team guy,

01:40:31.400 | but we don't know shit about sitting with a family

01:40:34.100 | who's about to be notified that their son,

01:40:36.240 | in this case of Tommy, was killed.

01:40:39.820 | Britt went to Christina's house.

01:40:41.820 | Slab, Britt Slabinski.

01:40:42.820 | He went to Christina's house

01:40:43.940 | and me and Dutch went up to Minnesota.

01:40:46.220 | And I'm shaking right now.

01:40:50.460 | Like I was shaking the whole drive.

01:40:52.500 | We had to get to International Falls all the way up north.

01:40:54.900 | The Valentines are incredible people.

01:40:59.320 | And I mean, notifying a family was just, it was brutal.

01:41:04.320 | And so this is '08, and then it just keeps coming.

01:41:09.900 | It's Nate and it's Mike and it's Lance

01:41:13.380 | and it's extortion in 2011.

01:41:15.320 | And in the middle of that, Adam gets killed, right?

01:41:21.140 | Like tons of people know about extortion

01:41:22.620 | 'cause it was one helicopter, obviously four.

01:41:25.360 | - Well, maybe we just briefly want to mention

01:41:27.340 | that was August 2011, as I recall.

01:41:29.420 | - Yes, yeah, August of '11, yeah.

01:41:31.420 | But in 2010, Adam is killed.

01:41:34.780 | And I got a phone call and I wasn't best friends.

01:41:41.660 | I mean, Adam had some very close friends as a command

01:41:44.180 | that I don't want to make anybody give the impression

01:41:46.540 | that like me and Adam were boys.

01:41:47.780 | We knew each other well, right?

01:41:49.860 | We went through green team together.

01:41:50.740 | He was in a different squadron though,

01:41:51.800 | so you sort of get separated a little.

01:41:54.740 | And I got a phone call in the middle of the night

01:41:58.060 | from one of my buddies who's still in,

01:41:59.620 | who is another legend.

01:42:02.060 | And I answered the phone and it's midnight.

01:42:06.260 | I knew something was wrong.

01:42:07.760 | And we were kind of in this pattern then,

01:42:10.860 | and you're like, actually a few of the commands were,

01:42:13.260 | like our partner command and a bunch of other guys

01:42:15.100 | we work with in other units.

01:42:17.180 | It was a hard time, like guys were fighting hard overseas.

01:42:20.580 | And that just comes with the consequences we know,

01:42:24.100 | you know, and I get the phone call in the middle of night.

01:42:26.580 | I'm like, phew.

01:42:27.420 | And so this guy tells me, you know, get your uniform.

01:42:31.900 | You need to come in.

01:42:32.740 | Something happened.

01:42:34.100 | I'm like, I fucking know what happened.

01:42:35.460 | Like, tell me who it is.

01:42:36.420 | And they, you know, didn't want to say it over the phone,

01:42:38.340 | which I get.

01:42:39.180 | And I had like one of those moments where I told him, no,

01:42:45.860 | I can't, I can't do that again.

01:42:49.400 | Like you have to get somebody who knows

01:42:50.900 | what the fuck they're doing.

01:42:53.460 | And he just didn't let me off the hook, you know,

01:42:56.140 | get your shit and come into the command

01:42:59.620 | 'cause you got to do all this prep stuff.

01:43:01.020 | And I walked into the conference room.

01:43:04.440 | I mean, I remember it clear as day.

01:43:06.980 | And I walked into the conference room

01:43:08.340 | and I could see it on everybody's face.

01:43:10.740 | Again, this is 2010 now.

01:43:12.260 | They were more terrified than I was.

01:43:17.220 | And these are, you know, civilian guys,

01:43:19.260 | guys who retired who are now civilians.

01:43:20.660 | They work at the command and amazing people.

01:43:23.160 | And they looked like,

01:43:25.260 | I don't know if you've seen Peter Jackson's remake,

01:43:29.620 | They Shall Not Grow Old.

01:43:31.420 | Oh, you have to watch it.

01:43:33.000 | They Shall Not Grow Old is,

01:43:34.880 | Peter Jackson took real World War I footage.

01:43:37.980 | - Oh, I did see that, yes.

01:43:38.820 | - Yeah, and he put the color and the lip reading.

01:43:41.660 | And there's a scene,

01:43:43.420 | I don't know if it's a Battle of the Bulge or exactly,

01:43:45.760 | there's a scene where

01:43:46.980 | this young unit, army unit is about to go up

01:43:52.940 | over the top and, you know, run across an open field.

01:43:55.380 | And the camera pans over and there's a young kid

01:44:00.380 | with his rifle in front of him,

01:44:02.540 | the bayonet affixed to it, his helmet on,

01:44:05.680 | his lips are sort of flat and pursed.

01:44:08.420 | And he, everybody in that conference room looked like him.

01:44:11.380 | When I saw that movie later,

01:44:13.360 | I'm like, every single person looked like him.

01:44:15.720 | And they told me it was Adam

01:44:16.820 | and we were gonna go notify Kelly, his wife.

01:44:22.140 | - And he had little ones at that point.

01:44:23.860 | - Savannah and Nathan, yeah, they were small.

01:44:25.860 | And we knocked on,

01:44:29.660 | she had a sort of a stained glass like window

01:44:34.340 | and I could see her at the top of the stairs.

01:44:36.860 | That was the worst, man.

01:44:44.820 | It was the worst.

01:44:51.020 | So we sat with Kelly and a bunch of other guys were there,

01:44:54.580 | of course, it wasn't just me and we did our best.

01:44:57.080 | And I learned later and, you know,

01:45:01.540 | reading Paul's work, Dr. Conte and other people,

01:45:05.220 | and like, that was it, dude.

01:45:07.380 | I was like a, I don't know if it's a locust

01:45:09.540 | or whatever that sheds their skin.

01:45:11.580 | I literally like left a shell of myself

01:45:14.140 | on Kelly's front porch and walked out of my skin.

01:45:20.820 | It was, that was tough.

01:45:23.140 | That was tough.

01:45:24.700 | And so that was kind of the tempo to answer your question.

01:45:29.280 | Like it wasn't exactly every 90 days,

01:45:31.640 | but almost every 90 days from '06 to 2011 for me,

01:45:37.640 | I got out in the fall of 2011,

01:45:39.500 | it was Memorial at the Theater,

01:45:41.660 | Memorial at the People's House, you know.

01:45:45.100 | And our neighbor across the street in Virginia Beach,

01:45:47.780 | she lost her husband in '07.

01:45:49.020 | So one house over, so she was best friends with us,

01:45:52.180 | you know, and so you are trying to live two lives.

01:45:55.960 | You have this military life with all these consequences

01:46:02.020 | where every bone in your body

01:46:06.460 | is telling you to go full Spartan.

01:46:09.900 | Like, no, not that the Spartans didn't have families

01:46:12.100 | 'cause they did, whatever, nothing else.

01:46:14.820 | Like just cut off every other thing in your life completely.

01:46:17.980 | You have to go do this and you have to do it full on

01:46:20.700 | because clearly all bets are off.

01:46:23.420 | Like we're barely making it through.

01:46:25.220 | We're losing our best guys.

01:46:27.380 | And how the fuck do I survive at this pace?

01:46:31.780 | And so, because we're all in the same community

01:46:35.140 | in Virginia Beach, you're around it all the time

01:46:37.620 | when you're home, you know, and you should be

01:46:39.500 | because you're supporting your teammates' families

01:46:42.060 | and that's important.

01:46:43.780 | But it was just, it's almost like a dream, you know,

01:46:47.060 | when I think about it now, how do,

01:46:49.820 | how did we live like that?

01:46:50.960 | How does anyone live like that?

01:46:52.580 | And I know, you know, my experience as a military,

01:46:54.820 | people go through, you know, all sorts of tough situations

01:46:57.540 | and different walks of life,

01:46:59.180 | but I have so much compassion for anybody

01:47:01.020 | who's trying to live in an environment like that

01:47:03.540 | where, you know, you are going on the next deployment

01:47:08.400 | and you know, I mean, look, Andrew, we left Bakuban

01:47:10.980 | in '08 before Tommy was killed.

01:47:13.540 | Three fucking weeks later, guys are getting blown up

01:47:16.240 | in the same area, like, and they got all the debrief from us.

01:47:20.140 | They knew exactly where to go,

01:47:21.200 | but it was just such a kinetic environment.

01:47:23.580 | We just, it was almost like you couldn't stop it, you know?

01:47:29.820 | It was just like the ball's rolling.

01:47:31.340 | And when I think about people overseas

01:47:34.660 | and, you know, different situations

01:47:36.260 | that countries find themselves in right now,

01:47:38.520 | I can feel it for them, you know, what they're,

01:47:44.100 | what it takes.

01:47:44.940 | It's an intense environment.

01:47:48.440 | - Yeah, certainly that comes through.

01:47:53.600 | I think years ago, you said to me,

01:47:55.520 | and this will be an important way of setting aside

01:48:02.040 | which side people are on, you know,

01:48:04.900 | whether or not you side with one group

01:48:07.760 | in the Middle East or the other,

01:48:08.940 | or you feel for everybody that one of the things

01:48:11.680 | that you said that really rung in my ears for a long time

01:48:13.860 | is that the warriors on both sides in their own minds,

01:48:18.860 | each and all of them are just doing

01:48:23.160 | what they think is right for them and their families.

01:48:25.720 | Like, you cannot erase that fact.

01:48:27.680 | Like, whether or not the government of this country

01:48:30.800 | or the government of that country or group

01:48:32.200 | was correct or incorrect,

01:48:33.360 | whether or not you're even talking about a terrorist cell

01:48:35.960 | versus a military, a formal military group

01:48:38.600 | or special operations group,

01:48:39.780 | that in the minds of the warriors,

01:48:43.000 | they're doing what they truly believe

01:48:45.700 | is right for them and their families,

01:48:47.740 | and sometimes country as well.

01:48:49.320 | And when I heard that, it was sort of a,

01:48:51.240 | you know, it's sort of an obvious statement on the one hand,

01:48:53.340 | but it's a very important one, I think,

01:48:54.540 | to the psychology that, you know,

01:48:56.680 | everyone's fighting tooth and nail

01:48:58.980 | because they believe that they are right,

01:49:01.780 | or they're just fighting tooth and nail for whatever reason.

01:49:05.940 | And that was an important thing for me to hear.

01:49:07.820 | And I think about that a lot when I see any news stories

01:49:10.260 | about international conflict or terrorist military conflict,

01:49:14.280 | terrorist civilian stuff, even, you know, people,

01:49:16.640 | there's something about the human brain.

01:49:17.640 | People get this into their mind, like, this is my job,

01:49:20.440 | and they're doing it.

01:49:21.280 | It doesn't justify it,

01:49:22.720 | but going back to this thing of being a weapon,

01:49:27.180 | humans can be trained as weapons,

01:49:29.720 | and it's often not the weapons themselves

01:49:32.260 | that are making the decisions about where to go

01:49:33.960 | and what to do.

01:49:34.780 | Sometimes it is.

01:49:37.600 | - At this time, Coleman,

01:49:39.700 | what's going on with the three boys, with Bridget?

01:49:42.500 | I mean, your boys have turned out really well.

01:49:46.980 | - They're amazing.

01:49:47.820 | - They're amazing.

01:49:49.340 | And there's no coincidence there.

01:49:51.260 | And obviously it was a team effort with you and Bridget.

01:49:53.780 | But, you know, there are a lot of things

01:49:55.380 | about the way the scenario you're describing here

01:49:58.380 | that speaks to like, how can a home function?

01:50:02.600 | But obviously it functioned well.

01:50:05.700 | And, you know, it's remarkable,

01:50:09.880 | but it can't be due to chance.

01:50:11.040 | So were you able to compartmentalize,

01:50:13.280 | like, the moment you hit your front door,

01:50:16.040 | your dad at home, your husband,

01:50:18.360 | and was that a pause in a conversation with yourself

01:50:23.000 | at the front door,

01:50:23.840 | or that's just something that becomes reflexive?

01:50:25.840 | - I mean, I...

01:50:28.800 | I think it was just reflexive.

01:50:34.160 | It wasn't really a pause at the front door.

01:50:36.740 | And admittedly, the story I would like to tell

01:50:40.100 | is that I was super Zen about it.

01:50:43.180 | And I had this process and I would come home

01:50:46.380 | and I would take this off and put on regular dad things.

01:50:49.120 | And I think I was just by the same level of effort

01:50:54.120 | that we put into what we were doing,

01:50:57.260 | Bridget and every other wife, mom,

01:51:03.140 | at least the ones that I knew,

01:51:04.920 | they put that level effort in as well.

01:51:09.320 | It made our home life just very comfortable.

01:51:14.320 | So it was easy.

01:51:16.040 | Like, I didn't have to go through some process, right?

01:51:18.080 | It was, this is how I remember it.

01:51:19.600 | It was easy for me.

01:51:21.320 | I don't know if it was easy for Bridget.

01:51:22.840 | She would have to answer that question.

01:51:24.060 | It was easy for me.

01:51:25.320 | And so I felt like for the most part,

01:51:28.720 | like I wasn't like platoon commander dad, you know,

01:51:33.040 | some movie, you know, the great Santini type dad.

01:51:37.260 | You know, I think Pat Conroy wrote "The Great Santini."

01:51:40.060 | His dad was crazy, apparently,

01:51:42.160 | or it's like, that's what he writes about.

01:51:43.680 | It wasn't like that.

01:51:44.800 | It was more of this home is such a relief

01:51:48.640 | and Bridget is so dialed that I don't have to,

01:51:52.980 | unfortunately, hard for Bridget,

01:51:54.860 | I don't have to do anything.

01:51:56.920 | You know, the time that I'm here, I can be here

01:52:00.340 | and then, you know, go away again.

01:52:02.860 | And so it's, as we know, what trauma does to the mind,

01:52:06.600 | like there are many, many stretches of that time period

01:52:09.800 | that I just don't remember.

01:52:14.320 | And what I do remember is mostly,

01:52:18.900 | obviously the fun times, the front yard, the whatever,

01:52:22.100 | playing with the boys, doing rough housing

01:52:25.300 | and going on vacation and stuff.

01:52:26.540 | But the, when I was in the grind,

01:52:28.660 | when we were in the training cycle of our cycle

01:52:30.580 | of deployment or whatever,

01:52:32.180 | I don't really remember sections of it.

01:52:35.540 | - So a lot, far too many,

01:52:41.460 | I guess even one would be far too many doorbells,

01:52:44.860 | ringing on doorbells.

01:52:45.900 | You decided to get out.

01:52:49.260 | Was that a conscious decision based on time,

01:52:54.220 | conscious decision based on like,

01:52:56.280 | I would like to have the rest of my life?

01:52:58.720 | You're done.

01:52:59.560 | I don't like to call it a regret, you know,

01:53:01.780 | but it's just kind of emblematic of where I was.

01:53:04.300 | It was the right decision.

01:53:06.280 | I do not regret getting out at the 13 year mark,

01:53:08.740 | not for a second.

01:53:09.700 | I needed it.

01:53:12.640 | We needed it as a family.

01:53:14.080 | It was a snap.

01:53:17.520 | It was a snap decision.

01:53:18.740 | It was like a, what do we say?

01:53:20.700 | 24 hour decision.

01:53:21.540 | - A 24 hour horizon.

01:53:23.500 | - I was standing on the ledge of the 24 hour horizon.

01:53:25.420 | - Right.

01:53:26.260 | And you said, what year was that again?

01:53:29.340 | - That was the fall of 2011.

01:53:31.260 | - 2011.

01:53:32.100 | - Yeah.

01:53:32.920 | - Okay, so that's about four or five years

01:53:33.760 | before you and I met.

01:53:35.600 | - Yeah.

01:53:36.440 | - Yeah, so extortion, we can just,

01:53:37.260 | we don't have to touch into it too deeply

01:53:38.600 | 'cause people can look it up,

01:53:39.520 | but this was a massive loss of special operations,

01:53:42.640 | including a lot of SEALs.

01:53:43.960 | It was basically a helicopter shot out of the sky

01:53:47.000 | with a rap, with a grenade, right?

01:53:51.120 | - Yeah, RPG.

01:53:52.080 | - RPG.

01:53:52.920 | People can look it up if they want to.

01:53:55.480 | And there's a lot of material out there about it.

01:53:58.880 | And it's just, can only be described as a tragedy.

01:54:01.260 | So, and I'm not trying to make light of it.

01:54:04.140 | I just think that we could do,

01:54:05.660 | there's a lot to explore there in a different discussion.

01:54:08.460 | In case you're out, now the probability

01:54:12.260 | that you're gonna die is much lower, provided.

01:54:15.300 | - It's not in my nervous system, so.

01:54:16.940 | - Right, but you're out.

01:54:18.740 | And what do you do?

01:54:22.980 | Meaning, what do you do with all that energy?

01:54:27.500 | The energy of the way you've been operating up until now,

01:54:32.500 | these intense battle rhythms, vampire schedules,

01:54:36.600 | as you call them.

01:54:37.580 | But also, what do you do with all the energy

01:54:39.600 | of what happened?

01:54:41.120 | You know, I think this is where I think our conversation

01:54:44.600 | really hopefully has been related to other people

01:54:48.240 | as we've been going.

01:54:49.080 | But that, you know, sometimes I stop and I'm like,

01:54:53.240 | I know I'm supposed to process all this stuff, you know,

01:54:56.920 | that's happened.

01:54:58.120 | But it's like, what do you do when so much has happened?

01:55:00.840 | Or when something's happened that,

01:55:02.480 | you know you have to move on from,

01:55:03.680 | you know you need to compartmentalize,

01:55:04.860 | but that lives in our nervous system.

01:55:07.580 | So are you thinking about that?

01:55:09.760 | No, you're Coleman Ruiz at that point.

01:55:11.760 | You're just going forward.

01:55:14.240 | - It's just fucking crazy.

01:55:15.400 | I mean, I just didn't know, you know.

01:55:19.040 | It's 2011, it doesn't sound like that long ago,

01:55:21.160 | but still in 2011, this was not a topic for conversation.

01:55:27.160 | You know, and I took maybe one week to process out.

01:55:32.160 | I turned in my gear, I turned in my badge,

01:55:35.960 | and my next visit to the command years later,

01:55:39.480 | I had to be escorted on by people I worked with

01:55:41.660 | in the same fucking squadron.

01:55:43.120 | Like, so within a matter of one week, I'm a stranger.

01:55:47.160 | Like I can't get on the base.

01:55:49.000 | There's reasons for that, I get that,

01:55:50.440 | but I'm just using it as a, I mean, to make the point.

01:55:52.760 | - There was nothing dishonorable about how you went.

01:55:54.880 | It's just that there's security reasons.

01:55:56.720 | - You can't just drive on the base anymore, you know?

01:55:58.500 | And this is like emblematic of,

01:56:03.080 | of course I didn't talk to anybody about it,

01:56:04.480 | not even Bridget, but at the time,

01:56:07.120 | in those first, call it couple of years

01:56:09.360 | or even couple of months, I don't know.

01:56:11.280 | The question you just asked me is a question I was asked,

01:56:15.560 | like, what do I do?

01:56:17.480 | Like, not with work.

01:56:18.840 | Like, what do I do, period, with life?

01:56:21.720 | Like, how do I manage my time?

01:56:23.360 | And I'm not some bumbling idiot.

01:56:24.680 | It's not like I was walking around the neighborhood,

01:56:28.360 | like trying to figure out where my house was.

01:56:30.040 | I had just been in that environment for so long,

01:56:33.760 | to your point, that I didn't know what to do.

01:56:38.760 | I didn't know what to do with my thoughts, my feelings,

01:56:42.320 | my, you know, I could go to the Buddhist five aggregates,

01:56:44.800 | my thoughts, feelings, perceptions, physical form,

01:56:47.200 | like all these things I've learned about

01:56:48.640 | and thought about later that have helped so much,

01:56:51.440 | I didn't know what to do with any of it.

01:56:53.320 | Like, I didn't know what to do with night sweats.

01:56:55.600 | I didn't know what to do with,

01:56:56.940 | I thought the term PTSD was the biggest fucking joke

01:57:00.320 | on the planet until I read all the symptoms.

01:57:02.080 | And I'm like, wait, wait a minute.

01:57:05.040 | - It sounds familiar.

01:57:08.040 | - And so it's that, and it was just like,

01:57:09.920 | and so I remember like even the little things

01:57:12.960 | that kind of make the point of the big things.

01:57:15.720 | I didn't know how to get a dentist.

01:57:17.920 | I could just go to the dentist in the military.

01:57:19.880 | You know, I thought when I was walking around the food line

01:57:23.280 | that somebody was gonna call me and say,

01:57:24.640 | "Come back to the base," because like the bubble went up.

01:57:27.320 | You just, I had zero context and didn't have the courage,

01:57:32.320 | or not even just the courage, but know who to ask.

01:57:36.520 | Right, it wasn't the mentoring.

01:57:39.240 | One of the most important books in my life

01:57:41.360 | in the last 12 years has been

01:57:42.760 | Joseph Campbell's "The Hero with a Thousand Faces"

01:57:45.400 | for the back end of the hero's journey.

01:57:47.940 | And--

01:57:48.780 | - I haven't read it.

01:57:49.600 | I know I should.

01:57:50.440 | I know I should.

01:57:51.280 | - You should actually listen to it.

01:57:52.100 | - I should listen to it.

01:57:52.940 | It's better to,

01:57:53.780 | I've probably only listened to five audio books in my life.

01:57:56.000 | I prefer to read in paper because I can take notes.

01:57:58.860 | In the margin, that book is better listened to.

01:58:02.040 | - "Hero with a Thousand Faces."

01:58:03.360 | - "The Hero with a Thousand Faces."

01:58:04.680 | - Could you just highlight a couple of the things

01:58:06.600 | that you took from the back end of that

01:58:09.000 | that somehow shifted your mind toward like, like cued you.

01:58:12.080 | I'm thinking Coleman Rui's "Circuit 2011"

01:58:16.400 | is like, like, what do I do now?

01:58:18.520 | And then something cues you.

01:58:19.680 | There's like a beacon someplace.

01:58:21.440 | It's like, I always think of this like a texture

01:58:23.640 | of something and you're like,

01:58:24.480 | oh, I want to, you know, you want to feel it more

01:58:26.380 | to get a sense of what it is.

01:58:27.220 | Is that about right?

01:58:28.600 | - It was in that case, for sure.

01:58:30.200 | So Joseph Campbell wrote that book in 1949

01:58:34.520 | and "The Hero with a Thousand Faces"

01:58:36.440 | is effectively the 17 stage hero journey,

01:58:39.040 | which by the way, George Lucas says

01:58:41.400 | and has said many times publicly,

01:58:43.440 | he built the arc of "Star Wars"

01:58:45.720 | around the 17 stage hero's journey.

01:58:47.680 | He credits Joseph Campbell's book for helping him.

01:58:51.160 | And if you ever read it or you go through the 17 stages

01:58:54.400 | or you see it or watch a short video, anybody,

01:58:56.720 | you'll see how damn near everybody's life,

01:58:58.760 | which is why it's called the monomyth.

01:59:00.960 | He describes it as the monomyth or the cosmogonic cycle.

01:59:04.120 | There's a little weirder term for it.

01:59:05.960 | But what he lays out in the book is, I don't know,

01:59:11.080 | maybe supposedly 2000 years of culture

01:59:14.200 | across multiple cultures.

01:59:16.500 | Book is incredibly complicated in that sense.

01:59:19.840 | Angie, when I, so I listened to it audio first

01:59:22.400 | and then went back to it and listened to it in paper.

01:59:24.480 | I could not believe how a human

01:59:25.880 | could put this narrative together, honestly.

01:59:28.200 | And so, but the summary,

01:59:31.680 | I struggled with the first 10 stages a little bit,

01:59:34.400 | but I'll try to come back to them.

01:59:37.000 | If you look at the image, when you lay out the 17 stages,

01:59:40.600 | the way it's in a circle is the ordinary world

01:59:44.680 | and the extraordinary world is on the bottom of the page.

01:59:47.320 | And there's a horizontal line,

01:59:48.760 | the diameter of that circle goes horizontally across

01:59:51.080 | and the extraordinary world's on the bottom,

01:59:52.520 | the ordinary world's on the top.

01:59:54.280 | Okay, and so let me talk about

01:59:56.120 | the back end of the journey first,

01:59:57.280 | 'cause what I was mostly concerned about

01:59:58.840 | with when a friend pointed me to that book

02:00:00.440 | was my return to the ordinary world.

02:00:03.840 | And he told me, "Coleman, you gotta read this book."

02:00:05.760 | And so the back end of the hero's journey

02:00:09.120 | in the return section is seven stages of the 17.

02:00:16.040 | It's the ultimate boon,

02:00:17.840 | which is you learned something big in life.

02:00:22.280 | It depended on, everybody learns something

02:00:24.240 | where you sort of realize that something big happened to me.

02:00:27.880 | That's the ultimate boon.

02:00:28.880 | And you have this incredible desire to do something with it.

02:00:31.880 | It's either knowledge or it's experience or whatever.

02:00:35.520 | And the ultimate boon you have

02:00:38.120 | and you feel like this life thing.

02:00:41.320 | And then the next stage is typically refusal of the return.

02:00:45.960 | You really don't wanna come back to the ordinary world

02:00:48.520 | 'cause you feel that there is some level of consequence

02:00:51.880 | that maybe you can't handle

02:00:54.120 | or somebody won't understand, you know?

02:00:56.920 | - Or maybe it's too mundane, you'll be--

02:00:58.720 | - Maybe. - You'll feel adrift.

02:01:01.200 | - Totally, yeah, and this is in the description

02:01:03.280 | of the stages, what you just described

02:01:05.520 | as part of that description.

02:01:06.920 | The next stage, you're coming up back

02:01:10.120 | into the ordinary world and this return is magic flight.

02:01:13.840 | And the way it's described in myths or in real life

02:01:18.240 | is you have to escape that extraordinary world

02:01:22.320 | and take one more dangerous flight or sneak away

02:01:27.080 | or something is catapulting you to take that ultimate boon

02:01:31.440 | and fight against that refusal.

02:01:33.480 | You're taking magic flight.

02:01:35.000 | - Amazing.

02:01:37.200 | - And then there is, is it,

02:01:43.120 | it's assistance, I think.

02:01:46.040 | Yeah, it's like assistance from a,

02:01:48.720 | like a special power or something,

02:01:51.200 | which could be your own or somebody else.

02:01:54.040 | Right, and then suddenly you're into the last three,

02:01:56.360 | which is crossing the return threshold

02:02:00.320 | into the ordinary world, master of two worlds,

02:02:04.320 | where you finally realize, through help and/or process,

02:02:09.320 | where you can hold these two opposing life experiences

02:02:12.760 | in place.

02:02:14.080 | And then the very last stage, 17, is freedom to live.

02:02:16.800 | And when you can, I'm gonna give you

02:02:20.280 | my little pet theory in a second.

02:02:22.600 | When you can work your way through those stages,

02:02:25.760 | you can have the freedom to live.

02:02:27.560 | What I realized potentially happened to me,

02:02:32.480 | just my internal feelings about, you know,

02:02:35.320 | my coming out of the military and back,

02:02:37.920 | is if you skip or you don't figure out

02:02:42.920 | how to deal with the refusal to return,

02:02:46.080 | and you just pick, I'm gonna call it the next big thing,

02:02:50.600 | you catapult yourself into a new cycle,

02:02:54.000 | and you never finish.

02:02:55.920 | And one of two things has happened.

02:02:57.640 | You're either two people trapped in the ordinary world,

02:02:59.880 | or you're one person trapped in two worlds.

02:03:02.480 | I don't know which it is.

02:03:03.520 | Like it's either two worlds in one person,

02:03:05.440 | or it's two people trying to live in one world,

02:03:07.440 | but shit gets crazy, right?

02:03:09.280 | Because you just haven't done the cycle.

02:03:11.880 | And it sounds very miscellaneous,

02:03:13.960 | but if you read "A Hero with a Thousand Faces,"

02:03:15.480 | you're like, this journey is not new.

02:03:17.480 | Like this is thousands of years

02:03:19.000 | of very typical human cycle.

02:03:21.720 | Now, if we go back to the top of the circle,

02:03:24.040 | let me try to scream through the first 10,

02:03:26.960 | which will be very obvious for "Star Wars" fans.

02:03:29.280 | Just think about what Luke does.

02:03:30.960 | And I'm not like a super "Star Wars" person.

02:03:33.400 | I've seen the movies, but it's a call to adventure.

02:03:36.400 | Most of us have a call to adventure

02:03:38.120 | of some sort in our life.

02:03:39.760 | Refuse the call.

02:03:41.200 | Help from a mentor.

02:03:42.360 | Crossing the first threshold.

02:03:45.160 | The belly of the whale,

02:03:46.520 | which is described as when you first truly separate.

02:03:50.120 | This was me leaving for college.

02:03:51.680 | When you first truly separate from the ordinary world.

02:03:56.200 | Road of trials.

02:03:57.440 | Meeting the goddess.

02:04:01.520 | Temptations.

02:04:03.920 | Atonement with the father.

02:04:05.080 | Apostasis, which is kind of like dying a death

02:04:09.480 | while you're still alive.

02:04:10.600 | And then you're into those return stages.

02:04:12.760 | And when I first read that book, Andrew,

02:04:14.200 | I was like, I'm trapped in the return.

02:04:16.120 | I'm trapped somewhere in the return.

02:04:19.720 | Just emotionally.

02:04:23.040 | And one of the places

02:04:25.000 | that I was absolutely trapped in the return

02:04:29.400 | was I didn't have the mentor

02:04:31.640 | to help me cross the threshold.

02:04:34.120 | I knew I had to move on in my life.

02:04:37.040 | I knew I had learned something extremely valuable.

02:04:41.280 | I knew that there was a way through

02:04:43.720 | 'cause people across thousands of years of humanity

02:04:45.960 | have done it.

02:04:46.800 | I don't think I'm special.

02:04:47.840 | And I never had the mentor.

02:04:50.760 | I got mentors later, a couple of years out.

02:04:54.000 | And it reminds me that in the,

02:05:00.000 | so I got out in the fall of 2011.

02:05:01.400 | In the summer, one of my very good friends

02:05:03.960 | who lives in Connecticut, he works in New York.

02:05:06.480 | He brought me to a lunch at some fancy club in New York

02:05:11.480 | with a guy named Buddy Buca.

02:05:13.120 | Paul "Buddy" Buca,

02:05:14.240 | who won the Congressional Medal of Honor.

02:05:15.640 | He's a West Point grad.

02:05:16.480 | He won the CMH in Vietnam.

02:05:18.160 | I'd been around a lot of famous military people.

02:05:22.360 | Lunch was very normal, but Buddy was amazing.

02:05:24.880 | It was a normal lunch.

02:05:25.760 | We didn't talk about much, like impact.

02:05:28.440 | We didn't talk about combat action or whatever.

02:05:30.800 | There was a green velvet set of stairs.

02:05:33.600 | We were leaving the club, the upstairs.

02:05:35.640 | We were coming down the green set of stairs.

02:05:37.440 | If I remember, Buddy's a little bit shorter than I am.

02:05:40.840 | He reached out, I was on his left.

02:05:42.560 | He reached out his left arm.

02:05:43.920 | I was a stair, one stair below him.

02:05:46.720 | He stopped me.

02:05:48.360 | I turned to my right to look at him.

02:05:49.800 | He looked at me.

02:05:50.800 | He said, "Son, you have it.

02:05:52.200 | "You know that?

02:05:53.360 | "You have it, PTS.

02:05:55.760 | "And you're gonna have to deal with it."

02:05:57.960 | And we left.

02:05:58.800 | I got in a cab and I left.

02:05:59.640 | And I remember thinking, "You might have it, but I don't."

02:06:04.400 | Because that's the old days.

02:06:07.200 | Like we were prepared for this shit.

02:06:09.560 | I was still convinced that I'm good.

02:06:13.600 | Like nothing happened to me.

02:06:15.320 | Nothing in the military happened to me.

02:06:16.600 | That's just normal stuff.

02:06:17.760 | And all of our training, it's a story I told myself.

02:06:20.880 | All of our training prepared me for that.

02:06:22.960 | Like this, the rest of my life is just gonna,

02:06:25.880 | nothing bad's gonna happen because I'm good,

02:06:29.840 | whatever that meant.

02:06:31.560 | And when I started to learn more and read more

02:06:34.240 | and talk to people who were helping me,

02:06:36.800 | I remembered Buddy telling me that.

02:06:38.720 | And back to those return stages, Andrew,

02:06:42.160 | it's just incredibly important for me

02:06:44.960 | to understand that my journey is not special.

02:06:48.120 | We are part of a long history of evolution

02:06:51.160 | that people who go through very challenging.

02:06:53.800 | I mean, the 17 stages in Joseph

02:06:56.440 | could not be more accurate to my life,

02:07:00.080 | particularly the return.

02:07:01.320 | - And of course, if one looked from the outside,

02:07:05.680 | they would agree with your mindset then and say,

02:07:08.960 | "You're alive.

02:07:09.840 | You certainly done very hard things, extraordinary things.

02:07:14.760 | You're married, you got three kids, they're thriving."

02:07:17.720 | PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder,

02:07:23.200 | and things like it.

02:07:24.440 | 'Cause I don't think any single acronym

02:07:26.080 | or diagnosis can capture anything.

02:07:27.600 | I think Paul Conti made that very clear to us

02:07:29.480 | in the mental health series.

02:07:30.920 | These are names by necessity, but-

02:07:34.000 | - It's a framework.

02:07:34.840 | It certainly taught me something.

02:07:36.520 | - Absolutely.

02:07:37.360 | And certainly those who haven't been in the military,

02:07:40.400 | maybe had a seed event of something challenging

02:07:43.280 | or whatever it is.

02:07:44.800 | Many people struggle with these kinds of things

02:07:48.920 | that live inside them, in their nervous system.

02:07:52.240 | They pack it down, maybe they don't,

02:07:54.360 | but that was inside you at that point.

02:07:58.280 | I think you and I first got acquainted

02:08:00.000 | in somewhere around 2016,

02:08:02.800 | when you and some other folks from tier one community

02:08:06.640 | and related communities started coming to the lab.

02:08:08.560 | And my lab, and I never really talked publicly about,

02:08:11.720 | my lab has been involved with various things

02:08:14.040 | in Canada and the U.S.

02:08:15.960 | Not trying to create any mystique there,

02:08:17.360 | but it's not a point of interest what we did.

02:08:21.080 | But I recall at that time just thinking like,

02:08:24.400 | this guy's just an amazing team guy.

02:08:28.000 | But in any event, we got to know each other a bit.

02:08:33.000 | And my sense then was like,

02:08:36.840 | it's kind of indestructible, right?

02:08:41.080 | And now I realize nobody's indestructible.

02:08:42.920 | We're flesh and bone.

02:08:44.520 | But if we may, let's fast forward a bit

02:08:50.320 | to a couple of years later.

02:08:52.680 | If you're willing to talk about it,

02:08:55.800 | maybe talk about some of the evolution that happened.

02:09:00.680 | So you started working a job,

02:09:02.400 | you're getting back into civilian life.

02:09:06.320 | And I recall a conversation about this time of year,

02:09:11.320 | probably about three years ago.

02:09:14.560 | Yeah.

02:09:16.240 | And you had done what a lot of

02:09:20.000 | vets from tier one operations have done and are now doing,

02:09:24.760 | which I actually have mostly a favorable outlook on,

02:09:29.480 | which is, now these are, I want to be very clear,

02:09:33.680 | legal and sanctioned explorations of the psychedelic space.

02:09:38.200 | Right?

02:09:39.040 | And I remember you called me

02:09:40.480 | and you described the experience that you had had

02:09:44.640 | and some of the connection with warrior culture

02:09:48.720 | that that had helped emerge for you.

02:09:51.080 | So could you explain what happened there?

02:09:53.760 | You know, probably the entry Andrew is as important,

02:09:56.840 | you know, meaning it's not all about books,

02:09:59.200 | but this is actually another thing I've really learned.

02:10:00.880 | You know, I was very intellect and achievement central.

02:10:04.640 | And as you can see how easy the emotion comes out now,

02:10:09.880 | I kind of very frighteningly understand

02:10:13.520 | people who like feel stuff a lot more.

02:10:16.800 | It's a whole other landscape.

02:10:18.120 | - It's miserable.

02:10:19.520 | - Well, wait, yeah, it is.

02:10:21.280 | And yet it's, I agree.

02:10:23.440 | It's a very uncomfortable space, you know,

02:10:26.080 | but we'll get, we'll get there.

02:10:27.800 | - It's a journey for me, I put it that way.

02:10:30.200 | So, you know, there's a bunch of other,

02:10:32.960 | I'm a voracious reader, I really enjoy it.

02:10:35.520 | And, you know, my entree and little window

02:10:39.560 | into the world of getting that kind of help

02:10:44.000 | came from a lot of different areas.

02:10:46.280 | I found in our area, a craniosacral therapist

02:10:50.600 | who it still seems like, 'cause I mentioned it to people

02:10:54.080 | and it sounds fringe to them.

02:10:55.600 | It's a very light touch, not even chiropractic like,

02:10:58.040 | and it's closer to myofascial type of massage.

02:11:00.880 | - Some tapping, very light tapping on the top of the head.

02:11:04.320 | - The part I actually love the most

02:11:05.520 | is the back of the neck sort of manipulation.

02:11:08.720 | - You're lying down relaxed.

02:11:09.920 | - Yeah, you're clothed, super easy in terms of that.

02:11:14.400 | A couple of years of that, just 'cause of athletics,

02:11:16.880 | I love massage and that's kind of my entree.

02:11:19.400 | - So through the body, somatics, yeah.

02:11:23.600 | - Which frankly, in many ways is my favorite,

02:11:25.520 | back to the physical orientation to the world

02:11:28.880 | is what's useful to me.

02:11:30.980 | But also, I mean, I read Sam Harris's first book,

02:11:36.920 | "End of Faith" in 2006.

02:11:39.400 | And so I've followed him for 15 years, religiously,

02:11:43.440 | read all of his books, "Lying", "Moral Landscape".

02:11:47.600 | And his, I don't know him personally,

02:11:50.620 | so public stuff notwithstanding, that's not important to me,

02:11:52.880 | but waking up and I took an online course with Robert Wright

02:11:57.880 | who wrote "Why Buddhism is True",

02:12:00.240 | but that's really not what he's known for,

02:12:01.960 | Princeton professor.

02:12:03.000 | He's so funny, he's very humorous.

02:12:06.660 | And I started to work my way into,

02:12:12.360 | I don't want people thinking I have some like whiz bang,

02:12:15.560 | like spiritual practice that's whatever,

02:12:17.680 | but it became very interesting to me, Andrew.

02:12:20.880 | I started to realize I needed to find a way

02:12:25.960 | to back away from the 24-hour ledge,

02:12:28.400 | like that super hyper focus.

02:12:32.120 | I needed to get a little bit of perspective.

02:12:35.600 | One of my favorite short videos

02:12:36.800 | is Richard Feynman's "Pale Blue Dot".

02:12:38.800 | I needed to just back away.

02:12:40.840 | It reminds me, thank you so much for talking

02:12:42.760 | about time-space bridging, I think, the other day.

02:12:47.040 | - We make, I'll cue people to that clip in the caption.

02:12:50.560 | It's a way of taking oneself

02:12:52.440 | out of one's immediate sphere of vision

02:12:55.360 | and literally looking further out into one's environment

02:12:58.560 | and then back again as a perceptual exercise

02:13:00.760 | of understanding that as our visual field expands,

02:13:04.400 | our perception of time also expands.

02:13:06.760 | The binning, the chunking of time.

02:13:10.080 | That and my in-ear conversation years ago

02:13:12.240 | about horizon and activating the parasympathetic system

02:13:17.240 | instead of sympathetic, I just very slowly started

02:13:21.400 | to realize I needed to back away from the small picture

02:13:25.240 | and the reading and the cranial sacrum massage,

02:13:28.000 | and I was still not really getting consistent real help,

02:13:32.880 | but I thought I could do it

02:13:33.880 | through educating myself intellectually.

02:13:37.160 | And I thought it was time to, and it was,

02:13:41.480 | it has short-term consequences, but long-term,

02:13:43.960 | it's been amazing to deal with the plant medicines

02:13:48.960 | in a controlled and curated environment,

02:13:51.960 | and that experience was super safe

02:13:55.560 | and quite amazing, actually.

02:13:57.560 | The weekend, or the three or four days was super intense,

02:14:02.560 | but I didn't leave there thinking,

02:14:06.080 | again, I kind of thought, "I'm good."

02:14:08.240 | That was great.

02:14:09.080 | - Yeah, a couple things.

02:14:12.640 | One, we've covered psychedelics on this podcast before.

02:14:16.180 | I'd say this not for liability reasons,

02:14:18.800 | but just to really to emphasize for people's safety,

02:14:22.040 | to protect them.

02:14:23.440 | Plant medicines are illegal most places still.

02:14:26.320 | This is changing.

02:14:27.160 | MDMA has been filed with the FDA as a potential treatment.

02:14:31.760 | It's not yet legal.

02:14:33.680 | These things have great power to heal

02:14:37.480 | in the right circumstances,

02:14:38.760 | and they also have great potential to harm

02:14:41.200 | in the wrong hands or circumstances,

02:14:43.760 | people with potential for psychosis, et cetera.

02:14:48.760 | But with that said, I remember I was on,

02:14:53.800 | I was driving, I was on a phone call with you

02:14:57.120 | around this time of year, about three years ago,

02:15:00.240 | maybe it was four, but I think it was three years ago,

02:15:01.920 | and I said, "What was your experience

02:15:04.120 | "with Ibogaine DMT like?"

02:15:06.980 | And you said, "It was among the most profound experiences

02:15:14.040 | "of my entire life."

02:15:16.280 | And I recall you saying that you felt

02:15:18.980 | that it had connected you through time

02:15:21.560 | to all the warrior cultures that had preceded you,

02:15:24.880 | not just US military, but all warrior cultures.

02:15:28.200 | And you sounded great.

02:15:31.140 | You sounded like better than great.

02:15:34.680 | You weren't high, but you just sounded like,

02:15:37.520 | man, like something had synced up.

02:15:40.920 | And I thought, well, this is great.

02:15:43.680 | And I hadn't explored plant medicines,

02:15:45.320 | at least not in a long time

02:15:46.160 | 'cause I had done the recreationally as a youth,

02:15:48.200 | which I do not recommend.

02:15:49.400 | It took me down a bad path.

02:15:50.760 | But, and more recently,

02:15:53.360 | I've explored them in controlled conditions.

02:15:55.080 | But I thought, awesome.

02:15:59.400 | - This worked.

02:16:00.240 | - This new job, you did some very controlled,

02:16:04.580 | and again, physician-assisted Ibogaine DMT experiences.

02:16:09.500 | And you're telling me how great everything was.

02:16:12.280 | - Yep.

02:16:13.500 | - And then about, I think it was about three,

02:16:16.520 | four months later, I got a very different call.

02:16:20.780 | And if you're willing, I remember that call.

02:16:25.780 | Maybe you can tell me about that call.

02:16:28.020 | - Yeah, so, I mean, the experience,

02:16:31.620 | it was incredibly powerful.

02:16:33.780 | Humor is such a powerful way to get through hard times.

02:16:37.080 | That's why I'm laughing.

02:16:38.500 | But it really was, Andrew.

02:16:39.820 | I mean, to be fair to thousands of years

02:16:43.900 | of people having experience with these things,

02:16:47.100 | we often joked about like what poor sucker

02:16:52.020 | reached out and grabbed that root for the first time

02:16:54.600 | and chewed on it, the Iboga tree.

02:16:56.820 | Boy, he found out.

02:16:57.860 | - Or she.

02:16:59.800 | - Or she, yeah.

02:17:00.700 | - To be fair.

02:17:01.540 | - To be fair, probably some session

02:17:04.920 | that wasn't supposed to go that direction

02:17:06.340 | and someone chewed on the wrong root.

02:17:07.700 | But it was extremely powerful.

02:17:10.960 | I've heard that the 5-MeO for some people is not much.

02:17:17.220 | It's like black.

02:17:19.720 | For me, it was just liftoff.

02:17:24.060 | And I saw an entirely perfect geometric mosaic

02:17:29.060 | in light blue and white.

02:17:31.760 | And that was the warrior culture connection.

02:17:37.540 | Like that whole 20-minute ride was just something else.

02:17:41.740 | As you know, I guess--

02:17:44.260 | - I haven't done it, but--

02:17:45.100 | - Noetic is the word.

02:17:46.220 | - Noetic.

02:17:47.060 | - Yeah, that people use.

02:17:48.180 | And very difficult.

02:17:49.140 | I don't have the language for it.

02:17:51.040 | And a couple months later, the bottom dropped out.

02:17:54.020 | - Yeah, and I wanna talk about that now.

02:17:57.760 | I also wanna emphasize, I know a good number of people

02:18:00.440 | that have had the same experience you did

02:18:03.080 | with Ibogaine DMT through the Veteran Solutions Group.

02:18:06.620 | And I know Marcus and Amber Capone very well.

02:18:10.880 | Actually, a bill just got passed in Congress

02:18:12.680 | that Dan Crenshaw helped spearhead to bring funding

02:18:18.740 | to use of psychedelics for PTSD treatment in military.

02:18:23.020 | And I should mention, 'cause this was interesting to learn,

02:18:28.020 | that that bill was highly bipartisan.

02:18:30.780 | I'm not gonna name off the names, 'cause if I do,

02:18:32.740 | there's gonna be a lot of cringing, screaming, and yelling.

02:18:35.380 | But it's like, if ever there was a bill

02:18:38.180 | that was supported from both sides of the aisle

02:18:40.320 | with the most diametrically opposed names

02:18:42.960 | who came together around that funding, it's that bill.

02:18:46.980 | And just striking.

02:18:49.120 | So, this is a very bipartisan thing.

02:18:52.060 | So, I will say a number of people have been greatly benefited

02:18:55.820 | by the Veteran Solutions work.

02:18:58.080 | And we can't causally link what happened to you afterwards

02:19:04.260 | to that at all. - There's a lot to it.

02:19:05.260 | - There's a lot of contextual stuff.

02:19:07.140 | So, we're not doing that, but we're an open book here.

02:19:11.300 | And I think that's a great group, by the way.

02:19:13.900 | Veteran Solutions is amazing.

02:19:16.740 | - A few months later, you said the bottom dropped out.

02:19:19.660 | So, what happened?

02:19:21.180 | And when did you start to notice it?

02:19:22.620 | And then maybe we can talk about that phone call.

02:19:23.980 | - Yeah, I think, you know, looking back, Andrew,

02:19:28.780 | I think a couple things.

02:19:30.460 | Most people who call me about, you know,

02:19:32.940 | friends who say, "Hey, should I go do this?"

02:19:34.540 | I initially tell them, well, 100% of the time,

02:19:38.340 | I tell them, "No, until."

02:19:40.940 | Until you get, I was having this conversation last week

02:19:46.240 | with a guy who I'd never met before.

02:19:48.200 | You need to stabilize your situation,

02:19:51.780 | whatever your situation is, through some very slow,

02:19:58.480 | deliberate, Dr. Conte-level help.

02:20:02.360 | Because in the case of, I'm happy to see that some people

02:20:07.220 | are using just a wider spectrum of on-ramp,

02:20:09.500 | not the nuclear option to start.

02:20:11.780 | I can tell you unequivocally, Ibogaine and 5-MeO DMT,

02:20:14.660 | two days apart, is the nuclear option.

02:20:16.560 | And it's not right for everybody.

02:20:17.920 | I'm not a scientist, there's no question.

02:20:20.120 | That cannot be right for everybody,

02:20:21.560 | that just doesn't make any sense.

02:20:23.320 | There's other ways to enter, I believe.

02:20:25.600 | - And when you say the Conte option,

02:20:27.160 | well, just for those that didn't see the series

02:20:28.640 | with Dr. Paul Conte, we'll put a link to it

02:20:30.240 | in the show note captions, but what Coleman's referring to

02:20:33.040 | is talk therapy with somebody highly skilled,

02:20:35.800 | and perhaps also prescription medication,

02:20:40.240 | if that's necessary, maybe hormone therapy,

02:20:42.440 | if that's necessary, that's up to the physician.

02:20:44.660 | But clearly, talk therapy with a skilled clinician.

02:20:49.460 | - I believe I needed, I don't know what other people need,

02:20:52.020 | I needed a mentor to help me contextualize

02:20:57.020 | what I was coming from and what I'm going to.

02:21:00.300 | And my experience with the plant medicines was,

02:21:05.300 | it kicked the door wide open

02:21:08.940 | and took that beautiful ice sculpture,

02:21:12.840 | perhaps at a person's wedding,

02:21:14.680 | and shattered it on the floor.

02:21:17.000 | And I was, again, left alone, my fault, not anybody else's,

02:21:21.680 | left alone to figure out

02:21:23.320 | how to put that ice sculpture back together, piece by piece.

02:21:27.040 | And my belief is I could have avoided that

02:21:31.840 | by having a much more deliberate process.

02:21:34.200 | So when suddenly the ice sculpture was on the ground

02:21:37.680 | and every bit of intellect that I built over,

02:21:41.760 | however long, four decades, I was flat on my back.

02:21:46.760 | And as I told you, Andrew,

02:21:49.800 | and I've been really verbal about with so many friends

02:21:54.560 | who only want to talk about it in quiet circles,

02:21:56.760 | which I totally understand and respect.

02:21:59.480 | And if you want to talk about it in a quiet circle,

02:22:02.200 | like email the HumorLag Podcast,

02:22:05.080 | and you can give them my cell phone number

02:22:06.380 | because I know how important it is

02:22:07.800 | to people in that stage,

02:22:09.480 | is that was another thing

02:22:14.360 | that I never thought was possible for humans.

02:22:16.800 | It was severe depression, severe.

02:22:22.920 | And I was so, because I guess

02:22:26.200 | I just never thought about it, again,

02:22:27.760 | or never had a mentor,

02:22:29.440 | the shocking thing, Andrew, was how shocked I was.

02:22:32.240 | It was like, if I had known something like this was real,

02:22:34.640 | not that I would have listened to anybody if they said it,

02:22:37.340 | but the most shocking thing was that, again,

02:22:39.540 | this could happen to me.

02:22:42.300 | And when it did happen,

02:22:43.340 | I was completely unequipped to deal with.

02:22:48.340 | It took, forget how weak,

02:22:51.180 | forget every other thing in my life.

02:22:53.960 | It took 10,000X the energy

02:22:58.320 | of anything I've ever done in my life before

02:23:00.980 | to just put my feet on the ground in the morning.

02:23:04.100 | I could not PT, I couldn't run.

02:23:06.660 | Andrew, like, I could not fucking function.

02:23:10.840 | I did function somehow to some level,

02:23:13.940 | but it was so terrifying.

02:23:17.560 | I just have, for anyone listening who has been through,

02:23:21.820 | I just have such incredible respect

02:23:23.940 | for people who have dealt with it

02:23:26.200 | and have learned to get through something like that.

02:23:28.820 | - Depression.

02:23:29.660 | - Oh yeah, or any, pick the title, right?

02:23:33.040 | Whatever tough situation someone's in emotionally,

02:23:35.700 | I have such tremendous respect for them

02:23:38.220 | because I would have been, years ago,

02:23:41.500 | the guy who, like, just tighten up your boots and get to it.

02:23:44.980 | It's not possible.

02:23:46.140 | Like, you have to get help from people who care about you,

02:23:49.280 | and you have to, like, you have to step back away

02:23:52.540 | from the problem set somehow and work through it,

02:23:56.500 | you know, step-by-step.

02:23:57.940 | One of the most helpful things,

02:23:59.220 | and I'm so, feel so fortunate,

02:24:01.700 | that I never really had, like, the chemical dependence thing.

02:24:04.700 | It was easy for me to stop drinking.

02:24:06.980 | - When did you decide to stop drinking?

02:24:08.620 | - It was around three years ago or so-ish.

02:24:10.860 | - Prior to this lapse into depression.

02:24:13.300 | - No, no, right during.

02:24:15.140 | Yeah, right during.

02:24:15.980 | - You just figured alcohol's a bad thing right now.

02:24:18.420 | - Yeah, and I mean, look,

02:24:20.500 | you and I have been friends for a while now, Andrew.

02:24:22.020 | Some of the things you and I have discussed,

02:24:24.260 | and I hear you talk about publicly,

02:24:25.580 | they were just good reminders, you know?

02:24:27.580 | One of the things I absolutely hate, but I do every day,

02:24:31.460 | which is wait 90 minutes to drink coffee.

02:24:34.140 | Oh, it's the worst.

02:24:35.580 | I cannot tell you how much of a difference

02:24:37.180 | that's made in my energy throughout the day.

02:24:39.620 | And the drinking was similar.

02:24:40.960 | You know, like, look,

02:24:42.300 | I'm just gonna drop it for a couple weeks,

02:24:44.300 | and then suddenly my sleep's better, my fitness is better.

02:24:48.140 | You know, so, you know, we all, even my friend,

02:24:50.380 | you know, you chat about stuff.

02:24:51.620 | Oh, what are you doing at this age?

02:24:52.980 | You know, I'm approaching 50.

02:24:54.220 | That helps you stop drinking.

02:24:55.500 | Everything else, like, all the other recommendations

02:24:58.780 | come second, at least for me.

02:25:01.340 | - Was that pretty easy for you to do?

02:25:03.380 | 'Cause I know there's a big culture

02:25:05.020 | of drinking in the teams.

02:25:06.180 | - Yeah, I was just lucky.

02:25:07.380 | So, my point there is, you know,

02:25:12.380 | just the respect I have for people

02:25:16.060 | who work through stuff like that.

02:25:18.180 | And I was gonna say,

02:25:19.540 | the reason I referenced the drinking

02:25:20.740 | is because I started reading a lot about the 12 steps,

02:25:23.380 | AA, I've never been to a AA meeting,

02:25:24.700 | but the Simpsons, the PTSD, and the 12 steps,

02:25:28.460 | I'm like, oh my God, this is me.

02:25:30.940 | Like, I need to go through these steps in my own way,

02:25:33.580 | not for, you know, not for drinking,

02:25:35.500 | but for whatever, this low-grade,

02:25:38.860 | the way I've described it is, you know,

02:25:40.220 | the Buddhists obviously call it dukkha,

02:25:41.580 | so unsatisfactoriness, this low-grade irritation

02:25:45.500 | that I carry around every day.

02:25:47.100 | The one amazing thing that that couple of months did for me,

02:25:55.700 | and the way I describe it visually,

02:25:57.060 | is if someone cut me from neck to belly,

02:26:00.300 | and filleted open my chest, and took a propane torch,

02:26:04.780 | and scorched me from the inside,

02:26:07.220 | and then put me back together, and said, "Start over."

02:26:10.300 | That's how it felt.

02:26:12.340 | That's literally how it felt.

02:26:13.620 | I mean, I could not believe, Andrew,

02:26:15.740 | and you can obviously, you know,

02:26:17.540 | Dr. Conte can articulate this better,

02:26:20.300 | I couldn't believe how emotional pain

02:26:22.500 | could be so physically painful.

02:26:25.940 | That whole experience, again,

02:26:28.500 | the shocking part was the shocking part.

02:26:30.820 | I just didn't think it was real.

02:26:33.220 | And so, then when it was, and I'm like,

02:26:36.380 | "How many fucking things do I have to deal with?"

02:26:39.580 | You know?

02:26:40.740 | And I realized everybody deals with a lot of stuff.

02:26:44.340 | And it was challenging.

02:26:46.460 | And then slowly, you know, it got better and better.

02:26:51.340 | And guys like, you know, friends, very close friends,

02:26:56.340 | a very, very small, tight group,

02:27:00.420 | were, man, what people do when you finally tell them,

02:27:05.420 | and you think, "Oh, this guy's gonna,

02:27:14.300 | "he's never gonna talk to me again."

02:27:17.260 | They do the opposite.

02:27:21.780 | They rally immediately for you, you know?

02:27:24.740 | And then guys that aren't in your inner circle

02:27:27.140 | necessarily helping directly,

02:27:29.100 | and they're in the next circle.

02:27:31.580 | 'Cause now, this is very weird,

02:27:33.980 | it's back to like the feeling thing.

02:27:36.140 | I can, not 100% of the time,

02:27:39.580 | but a lot of guys in my community,

02:27:40.740 | if I speak to them and they're in a bad spot,

02:27:42.940 | I can detect it within five seconds.

02:27:45.340 | Just the tonal and kind of like the tempo.

02:27:49.700 | And when you tell that ring of people,

02:27:51.700 | not your super inner circle, they dump it immediately.

02:27:56.500 | As soon as you open the door, they're like,

02:27:58.580 | "Hey, man, I had a couple of tough months," you know?

02:28:02.980 | Boom, they're right in for the most part.

02:28:05.300 | - They open up.

02:28:06.140 | - Yep.

02:28:07.140 | And that really scares me, Andrew, because I know,

02:28:09.660 | like if we need to flip the switch this afternoon,

02:28:14.900 | like we can flip the switch.

02:28:16.340 | - Meaning?

02:28:18.060 | - Meaning like, I can go to old school 15 years ago,

02:28:22.660 | that's what you and I have discussed in the past,

02:28:25.220 | has kind of come back to the fighter mentality is,

02:28:28.940 | the problem with that, the hardcore, intense, focused,

02:28:33.940 | that's easy.

02:28:36.940 | Like, it's so easy to do that tough stuff.

02:28:41.540 | That's easy.

02:28:42.940 | This is the hard part.

02:28:44.660 | And that's what, you know, was so challenging.

02:28:48.180 | It was to go to people who normally we do,

02:28:51.620 | you know, the, "Yeah, yeah, let's do this, let's do that.

02:28:54.460 | Let's do something crazy."

02:28:55.460 | Okay, well, tell that same person who you've built

02:28:58.780 | persona, identity, you know, around them and with them,

02:29:04.060 | they're like, "You're this guy."

02:29:05.660 | And then you have a tough spot.

02:29:07.980 | Now you have to go tell them the opposite.

02:29:09.660 | Like, "I'm really not doing well."

02:29:13.420 | It's terrifying.

02:29:14.500 | - It is terrifying.

02:29:16.700 | But I second with both arms,

02:29:21.780 | your statement that when we actually open up

02:29:26.460 | to somebody trusted,

02:29:28.100 | hopefully a friend or somebody close to us,

02:29:30.820 | but like some people go to clergy or AA

02:29:34.020 | or any number of the different resources.

02:29:36.820 | And those resources really are out there at zero cost.

02:29:39.900 | They really are there if one has to look a little bit.

02:29:43.380 | Sometimes a lot, unfortunately, but they're there.

02:29:46.900 | My experience has always been,

02:29:48.780 | and in observing others,

02:29:50.540 | that there's something about the human spirit

02:29:53.380 | that wants to help.

02:29:54.580 | - Totally.

02:29:55.420 | - And sometimes that help comes from somebody

02:29:57.100 | who's really been through it.

02:29:58.260 | But even if somebody hasn't been through it,

02:30:00.860 | there's something in our nervous system

02:30:03.140 | that sees real pain in somebody.

02:30:06.060 | And contrary to what we think,

02:30:07.700 | they don't judge and think that everything

02:30:09.660 | that the person who's hurting was before was a fraud.

02:30:12.260 | The contrary, they see it as an act of strength.

02:30:15.280 | But it feels like hell to reveal that.

02:30:20.260 | And I totally agree.

02:30:22.740 | I think all the tough stuff,

02:30:24.060 | anything physical is like a fraction of the emotional pain.

02:30:30.420 | And thank you for highlighting the physical aspect

02:30:34.180 | of emotional pain,

02:30:36.300 | especially if one isn't accustomed to it.

02:30:38.740 | If one isn't accustomed to it.

02:30:41.220 | But if you're willing,

02:30:44.420 | how bad did it get?

02:30:48.300 | I mean, the call we had suggested it was bad.

02:30:53.300 | I sometimes refer to a line,

02:30:55.620 | and I'd be lying if I didn't admit

02:30:57.580 | that I've seen that line a few times in my life.

02:30:59.340 | I've been right up next to it a few times.

02:31:01.500 | And now if I ever see it,

02:31:04.460 | I know to do many things

02:31:06.380 | when it first comes into my visual sphere.

02:31:11.100 | The line, of course, being the point

02:31:12.500 | at which one is considering taking their own life.

02:31:15.100 | Something that happens far too often,

02:31:16.700 | even once is far too often.

02:31:18.500 | And we've sort of skirted around this topic.

02:31:21.940 | After all the wartime stuff and the gunfights

02:31:26.300 | and people dying and the doorbells,

02:31:27.980 | been a lot of friends of yours,

02:31:29.620 | and some of whom I know, but most of whom I don't.

02:31:32.780 | - Two this year.

02:31:34.060 | - Who continue to kill themselves, to put it bluntly.

02:31:37.340 | Where were you at with respect to that line?

02:31:41.220 | Because depression is one thing,

02:31:43.380 | there's mild depression, there's severe depression,

02:31:45.100 | there's recurring depression,

02:31:46.100 | there's management, and on and on and on.

02:31:48.420 | But ultimately, that's the thing

02:31:50.300 | that hopefully everyone's seeking to avoid.

02:31:55.300 | And it's a, yeah, how close were you?

02:31:57.800 | - I would say there was probably,

02:32:00.780 | I really wanna say one day.

02:32:02.700 | And the truth is, it was one day.

02:32:04.340 | - It lasted one day?

02:32:05.820 | - Being that close to the line.

02:32:07.500 | - But it only takes a moment to go.

02:32:09.100 | - That's the scary thing, right?

02:32:10.580 | And it probably lasted a couple of weeks,

02:32:14.140 | but there was only, back to the buds thing,

02:32:17.380 | like I never thought about quitting.

02:32:19.460 | I thought about it one day.

02:32:20.860 | - What was the thought?

02:32:23.780 | - It was, I mean, sort of like the classic symptoms,

02:32:27.100 | Andrew, I was up all night sweating and shaking

02:32:30.940 | and it's back to the shock of it.

02:32:34.500 | It was, okay, I actually was able to step,

02:32:37.860 | like one of two things is happening.

02:32:39.660 | Either I am fundamentally bad.

02:32:46.700 | There's no way you can feel this bad and be good.

02:32:50.500 | So one of two things is happening.

02:32:52.100 | Like I'm just bad, a bad person, which I know is not true,

02:32:57.540 | or something bad got inside of me

02:33:00.420 | that I have to get rid of,

02:33:02.140 | and I don't know how to get rid of it.

02:33:03.940 | And so sweating, shaking, up at three in the morning

02:33:08.420 | and legitimately thinking, this is just the scariest thing.

02:33:12.740 | And for anybody in the situation,

02:33:14.980 | you think with every ounce of your being

02:33:21.180 | that people are better off without you.

02:33:23.940 | And then somehow, thankfully through chemistry,

02:33:28.780 | neurobiology, past learnings,

02:33:30.920 | I stepped back away from that very quickly.

02:33:37.940 | But the feeling of putting me up to that line

02:33:41.140 | didn't go away.

02:33:42.380 | I just intellectually was able to,

02:33:44.380 | it was kind of where the maladaptive behaviors,

02:33:47.820 | back to training work in your favor,

02:33:49.940 | which is I'm not quitting.

02:33:52.780 | Like this can't be just me,

02:33:55.660 | even though it did feel like just me.

02:33:57.220 | I mean, you suddenly become the core

02:34:00.100 | of the entire existence of the universe.

02:34:02.060 | You think like you're it, you know?

02:34:03.840 | But in the negative side of it, not the adaptive side of it,

02:34:07.880 | because the pain is just so extreme.

02:34:11.240 | But I was able to back away from it.

02:34:14.820 | And then over, I'm so grateful to so many of my friends.

02:34:18.780 | I can't imagine how many hours,

02:34:20.860 | if we collect up those hours,

02:34:22.860 | how much time I spent with them on the phone.

02:34:25.280 | And one of my, in those really hard weeks,

02:34:31.220 | maybe a little bit after that injury,

02:34:32.340 | one of my buddies,

02:34:33.180 | I was actually just talking to him yesterday

02:34:34.180 | 'cause I had time in the car.

02:34:35.620 | The tough love side of it,

02:34:41.380 | when you're feeling that poorly is a little tricky.

02:34:43.920 | Like I probably wouldn't deliver tough love

02:34:46.260 | unless I really thought the person could handle it.

02:34:48.040 | I think it's, you gotta really deal with kid gloves

02:34:50.420 | at those moments.

02:34:52.380 | But one of my buddies told me,

02:34:54.020 | if you do something to hurt yourself,

02:34:57.700 | you will have proven to every person who knows you

02:35:00.060 | that you are a fucking liar and a fraud.

02:35:02.320 | Everything you've been about your whole life is a fraud.

02:35:06.260 | And Andrew, I was, we were on the phone.

02:35:08.960 | I was like, whoa, my God.

02:35:13.960 | He just went 10 ring.

02:35:15.140 | I mean, dead center.

02:35:16.420 | And it, that was a pivot.

02:35:19.300 | Like that really helped me a lot.

02:35:21.820 | - That's what you needed.

02:35:22.740 | I mean, I don't know that that's what I would have needed.

02:35:26.480 | I recall when we spoke,

02:35:28.900 | because I obviously not professionally trained

02:35:31.220 | in any of that.

02:35:32.260 | I just remember thinking, how do I put in this,

02:35:34.740 | this into language that Coleman's gonna understand?

02:35:37.740 | And I just said, you know, I think your goggles are,

02:35:40.780 | I know one thing for sure,

02:35:41.860 | which is that your goggles are foggy.

02:35:43.700 | So you gotta, so you have to outsource your decisions now.

02:35:48.780 | - I think you might've also told me

02:35:50.620 | to outsource my identity.

02:35:52.060 | And that helped a lot because it was that idea

02:35:58.140 | of you have foggy goggles.

02:36:00.320 | You're clearly like not on stable ground.

02:36:03.700 | Everything you believe about yourself,

02:36:06.100 | just let it be the spokes of a wheel

02:36:08.340 | that somebody else can hold for you for a period of time.

02:36:11.660 | I was like, well, I can do that.

02:36:13.340 | And then my other buddy,

02:36:14.180 | I didn't want to be a liar and a fraud.

02:36:15.580 | I was like, I can do that.

02:36:17.420 | (laughing)

02:36:18.820 | - Yeah, I mean, I'm grateful for the opportunity,

02:36:23.060 | but unfortunately I've had a few circumstances

02:36:25.780 | where people close to me were at that edge

02:36:29.900 | and I'd be lying if I didn't say I've been at that edge.

02:36:33.020 | So I knew where, I had some sense of where you were at.

02:36:35.780 | And under those conditions,

02:36:38.220 | I don't think there's a playbook.

02:36:39.560 | I mean, obviously when people have a plan

02:36:42.700 | and they're thinking about implementing that plan,

02:36:44.300 | those people need to be put under protection

02:36:46.620 | from themselves.

02:36:47.640 | Fortunately, it didn't come to that.

02:36:51.500 | - And you know, a few friends just did the basics, Andrew,

02:36:53.460 | which was, I really wanted to talk to you at that time

02:36:57.460 | because I knew you would give me some advice.

02:36:59.220 | You know, I was so uncertain about just the,

02:37:01.700 | I'll just say the chemistry,

02:37:02.540 | but the chemistry and like something is not right.

02:37:05.180 | And you know, different friends offer different

02:37:07.860 | and some friends just sat and listened to it all.

02:37:12.260 | And when I think back, it's like,

02:37:13.960 | I would take a bullet for them

02:37:18.260 | 'cause they just took it, you know, and let me offload it.

02:37:21.460 | It's an amazing experience for, let people help you,

02:37:25.960 | which I was never willing to do.

02:37:28.980 | - No, and you were, we have to highlight something

02:37:32.060 | that might've been overlooked earlier

02:37:33.380 | 'cause we went through it quickly,

02:37:34.460 | but that you were, you know, you're a commander of a unit.

02:37:38.160 | So you're head of a family.

02:37:40.700 | I know Bridget's also head of family.

02:37:42.440 | There's a trade.

02:37:44.060 | - You try.

02:37:44.900 | - You go back and forth.

02:37:45.720 | Right, exactly.

02:37:47.060 | But you're used to leading and protecting others.

02:37:49.860 | And I think it's awesome that you're able to have access

02:37:54.860 | that raising your hand and asking for help.

02:37:59.740 | - You have to.

02:38:00.580 | - It's such a sign of strength and skill

02:38:05.580 | and it feels like the exact opposite in the moment,

02:38:08.760 | the exact opposite.

02:38:09.980 | And then we go to these narratives like,

02:38:12.780 | oh, if I've ever done that in the past,

02:38:14.420 | people didn't help that, you know,

02:38:16.140 | we come up with a million excuses,

02:38:17.460 | but in the end it's such a thing of strength to do that.

02:38:22.420 | So you did ratchet yourself out of that

02:38:27.580 | very, very dark hole.

02:38:29.180 | - Slowly.

02:38:30.380 | - And I wanna place this in the context

02:38:33.980 | of this hero's journey.

02:38:36.020 | Would you see that, you talk about that,

02:38:38.340 | the magic flight that you're against,

02:38:41.540 | you're like the refusal, you won't go back.

02:38:44.140 | But so it was accepting it seems that there was,

02:38:47.340 | that some pieces of you needed work.

02:38:49.620 | That there was this PTSD,

02:38:50.880 | this gentleman that you mentioned saw that

02:38:54.300 | and you refused to kind of deal with it.

02:38:56.220 | And so shine a light on it and God, the universe,

02:39:00.980 | whatever your beliefs are, forced you to see it.

02:39:06.100 | And you went to the very bottom, but not out the bottom.

02:39:09.620 | - Yep.

02:39:10.440 | - What was the process of putting things back together?

02:39:14.520 | - I mean, really, I mean, a lot of it, Andrew,

02:39:18.860 | was cutting out, so as a practical matter,

02:39:22.340 | I mean, I'm gonna go just go back to regular therapy

02:39:24.500 | 'cause I don't, that, I mean, my therapist is amazing.

02:39:29.500 | - So you're now, at what point did you enter

02:39:31.820 | a quote, unquote, talk therapy?

02:39:33.060 | - Immediately then, immediately then.

02:39:33.900 | - So you got a quote, unquote, therapist.

02:39:35.420 | - Because, oh yeah, yeah.

02:39:36.260 | I mean, effectively, you know,

02:39:39.560 | Bridget and I in multiple, at some point,

02:39:43.800 | it was, Bridget was like, this is, this is it.

02:39:47.420 | Like, full-time help, effective immediately.

02:39:51.060 | And I knew it was necessary, but if I'm really honest,

02:39:55.620 | like, I would have avoided it.

02:39:58.020 | I would have somehow, like, tried to gut through

02:40:00.460 | the situation without, like, full-time help.

02:40:03.860 | And I mean, once a week therapy, yeah.

02:40:05.300 | - So the idea of sitting down with somebody

02:40:07.820 | and talking about past, present,

02:40:10.060 | and maybe some ideas of future was worse to you

02:40:12.860 | than jumping out and playing at 3,000 feet

02:40:14.820 | or going into a gunfight?

02:40:16.460 | - Not even close, not even close.

02:40:19.740 | And--

02:40:21.720 | - Hearing yourself say that, dude,

02:40:24.060 | you realize how--

02:40:25.500 | - Ridiculous.

02:40:26.340 | - Well, how untrue that must be at the physical level,

02:40:30.420 | but the nervous system doesn't know,

02:40:33.020 | to quote Dr. Balkanti, the limbic system

02:40:37.260 | that it experiences, or it creates this sense of fear

02:40:40.600 | and dread, doesn't know the clock or the calendar.

02:40:43.540 | It's like, if you go, meaning, if you experience that,

02:40:47.140 | there's the idea that it's gonna go on forever.

02:40:49.100 | I think that's the fear.

02:40:50.100 | - That's correct.

02:40:51.220 | Yep, that's exactly right.

02:40:52.640 | Thank you for saying that.

02:40:53.620 | The fear was, this will go on forever.

02:40:58.500 | But, so yes, I just did not want to,

02:41:03.500 | back to Bessel van der Kolk's,

02:41:07.060 | when I read this word in his book,

02:41:08.340 | Body Keeps the Score, alexithymia,

02:41:09.980 | if that's a real thing, where you can't put language

02:41:12.940 | to what's going on.

02:41:14.800 | I didn't want to put language to it.

02:41:19.980 | I couldn't, I just didn't feel like it.

02:41:22.420 | Like, I just felt like gutting through it.

02:41:26.300 | And then I got, you know, once a week therapy,

02:41:30.100 | amazing people.

02:41:31.420 | And I don't know, Andrew, the first three months was,

02:41:35.700 | you know, I mean, gutting through,

02:41:39.140 | I just couldn't, I couldn't seem to shed

02:41:41.780 | that emotional, like, burden of,

02:41:46.120 | pick the category of stuff from the last,

02:41:49.260 | what does it say, 20 years.

02:41:51.420 | It was just, but it was all,

02:41:53.060 | I couldn't stop it from coming out,

02:41:54.300 | and obviously that's a good thing.

02:41:56.100 | And so that just continued, and every day got,

02:41:59.740 | and when I say, this is the tough part,

02:42:01.940 | for at least me, and I know a lot of guys like me,

02:42:05.420 | the gains are minuscule, you know.

02:42:09.420 | But things improved, slowly but surely.

02:42:11.740 | - Were there ever moments where you felt

02:42:13.100 | you were drifting backward?

02:42:14.960 | - Not really, and that was nice, you know?

02:42:18.220 | You see that, there's some stall, you know, plateaus.

02:42:22.400 | - You don't have to share this,

02:42:24.900 | but, 'cause I'm a believer that talk therapy

02:42:28.300 | can be very effective, certainly that's my experience.

02:42:31.420 | I wouldn't be here if it weren't for two,

02:42:33.780 | in particular, amazing people

02:42:35.500 | who really helped me along the way, in that way.

02:42:38.620 | But I do think there's a place, at times,

02:42:40.780 | for pharmacology to assist the process.

02:42:44.180 | I know nowadays, people hear SSRIs,

02:42:45.900 | and they demonize those, that wasn't,

02:42:47.900 | I'll come clean, and then maybe,

02:42:51.140 | if you feel like it, you can.

02:42:54.080 | I hit about a depression in my, during my post-doc,

02:42:57.000 | did a short run of Welbutrin bupropion,

02:43:00.720 | which is more of the dopaminergic, noradrenergic agonism,

02:43:04.340 | mostly adrenaline, noradrenergic, it really helped.

02:43:08.080 | It nuked my memory at the dosage they suggested,

02:43:13.080 | which meant I had to take a very low dose.

02:43:17.040 | And then, eventually, I came off.

02:43:18.280 | And I think that that's one thing I learned from Conti,

02:43:21.040 | which is that most of these medications

02:43:22.960 | were designed to help people get over a bump,

02:43:24.920 | as opposed to be taken continuously.

02:43:26.280 | Some people need to take 'em continuously.

02:43:27.640 | I have been able to be away from that for a long time.

02:43:31.080 | But I think pharmacology can help.

02:43:33.440 | - Oh, yeah, I think, I'd have to go back and look,

02:43:36.160 | four months, maybe, of pretty low dose of Welbutrin,

02:43:39.000 | thanks to, yeah.

02:43:39.840 | - Okay, that sounds, yeah, that's about right.

02:43:41.240 | - Yeah, thanks to my buddy, Jimmy.

02:43:42.640 | You know, I called him and asked him what he thought,

02:43:46.280 | and he said, "Well, you use a gun sight

02:43:50.440 | "on your weapon, don't you?

02:43:51.680 | "And you use glasses if you can't see."

02:43:53.160 | "No, I need reading glasses."

02:43:54.080 | "You need glasses if you can't see, right?"

02:43:56.080 | He's like, "Just fucking take the Welbutrin, man, chill.

02:43:58.480 | "Like, just get it, get some space,

02:44:01.280 | "back to the space-time bridging concept.

02:44:03.400 | "Just get back away from the danger for a few months."

02:44:07.200 | That really helped.

02:44:08.680 | - And that's very different than the backing away

02:44:11.080 | from the danger with, say, alcohol or drugs.

02:44:15.200 | And look, my stance on cannabis

02:44:17.080 | is some people can use it safely.

02:44:18.280 | Most people probably cannot, but some can.

02:44:20.920 | But there's something different

02:44:22.840 | about the drugs that have an addiction potential

02:44:26.360 | or the drugs that disrupt sleep.

02:44:29.320 | Like, ultimately, if you look at people who commit suicide,

02:44:32.960 | and I've spent a lot of time with this literature,

02:44:35.080 | in almost every case in the preceding weeks,

02:44:39.120 | there's a disruption in sleep schedules,

02:44:41.120 | meaning disrupted from what they were doing

02:44:43.160 | prior to that when they were not feeling suicidal.

02:44:45.960 | So, then you think about alcohol disruption of sleep,

02:44:48.200 | even if you think you're sleeping.

02:44:49.360 | And, like, there's a story,

02:44:51.560 | like a common theme starts to emerge.

02:44:53.460 | So, you stabilize sleep, you were getting some dopamine

02:44:58.120 | and noradrenergic assistance from the low-dose Wobutrin,

02:45:01.200 | and you're basically also just-

02:45:02.920 | - Offloading.

02:45:03.760 | - You're just letting it all out with a therapist.

02:45:06.320 | - With a therapist.

02:45:07.160 | And the thing that strikes me is,

02:45:09.360 | to your point about my resistance to the therapy

02:45:11.440 | versus jumping on airplanes or whatever,

02:45:13.440 | the most important people in my whole life

02:45:17.560 | since day one have been people that have helped me.

02:45:20.720 | Coaches, parents, friends, boom.

02:45:23.840 | Doug, work colleagues, the guys that I work for now.

02:45:27.720 | Like, you have all these people helping you,

02:45:31.000 | and then you hit this thing that's so unusual.

02:45:35.000 | I'm like, I don't want anybody to help me,

02:45:36.380 | and I don't want to tell anybody about it.

02:45:38.360 | It's like, what is that, Andrew?

02:45:39.800 | That was the, it's like, what is that?

02:45:42.360 | And it's not like I wasn't in these environments

02:45:45.200 | where I've been coached and mentored.

02:45:47.080 | Like, I've had coaches and mentors on my ass

02:45:48.880 | my whole fucking life.

02:45:50.560 | Like, instructors, you know, it's a nonstop.

02:45:53.780 | And I don't know, like, I couldn't,

02:45:57.880 | I just couldn't do it until I did it.

02:46:00.320 | And then, and you know, it's been a process since,

02:46:04.060 | and I'm super grateful for it.

02:46:05.240 | And I don't know where we are in the journey,

02:46:07.880 | but in terms of, like, the hero's journey,

02:46:09.600 | but I hope I'm at freedom to live some version of it,

02:46:12.280 | because with my, this is dangerous,

02:46:15.760 | 'cause I only say this, like, with my really, really,

02:46:17.800 | really close friends.

02:46:18.720 | I know this is going to more people than my close,

02:46:20.560 | I feel like a completely different person.

02:46:22.660 | And none of that stuff really ever goes away.

02:46:27.060 | It's all a process, right?

02:46:28.420 | And I'm never gonna stop the process,

02:46:30.400 | but I don't even recognize myself in some ways anymore.

02:46:36.280 | And that's been a good thing,

02:46:39.120 | because in those times when I was just

02:46:42.460 | on the 24-hour horizon sometimes,

02:46:45.440 | I just did not know what the fuck was going on

02:46:47.920 | other than exactly what I was doing, you know?

02:46:50.960 | And it's just an odd experience to be in a different place.

02:46:55.440 | And it's scary to know that without that experience

02:47:00.760 | and without people really kind of forcing me to get help

02:47:05.200 | and things forcing me, I might be doing the same stuff,

02:47:08.800 | which is a hard way to live, you know?

02:47:11.040 | - Or worse. - Or worse.

02:47:12.440 | - You might not be here.

02:47:13.280 | - Or worse, which has happened to many of,

02:47:15.280 | our buddies, you know?

02:47:16.120 | And I wanna go like retroactively hug them

02:47:19.720 | and collect them up in like a net and say,

02:47:22.360 | "Guys, just stop for a second."

02:47:25.400 | You know, like we,

02:47:27.260 | it doesn't have to go there.

02:47:31.400 | - Yeah, I feel that the yearning in that statement,

02:47:36.700 | I suffer from a terrible,

02:47:43.360 | very destructive, debilitating desire

02:47:47.600 | to travel back in time and fix things.

02:47:50.360 | It's like, I know I don't have,

02:47:51.680 | my graduate advisor, who unfortunately,

02:47:53.880 | all three of my graduate advisors are dead,

02:47:55.300 | but she used to say, "My time machine's broken."

02:47:59.240 | Anytime I'd raise something that coulda, woulda, shoulda,

02:48:03.180 | "My time machine's broken," and we know that.

02:48:05.160 | But I felt that statement in every cell of my body.

02:48:09.000 | It's clear you would.

02:48:11.680 | - But you're also, in sharing this experience

02:48:14.040 | and this information, you're doing that now

02:48:16.920 | in what we call in biology, in the interograde fashion.

02:48:21.800 | And, you know, somebody, many people are gonna hear this

02:48:24.800 | and cue to the recognition of what's happened to them,

02:48:28.400 | hopefully before they get to that line.

02:48:30.200 | - Yeah, you have to, and you just gotta tell somebody.

02:48:35.200 | You know, it's like, it's crazy how simple that is, Andrew.

02:48:38.760 | I mean, months, I was like, "I can't tell anybody."

02:48:41.640 | - I can't tell anybody.

02:48:42.480 | - Well, and maybe we drill into this a little bit deeper,

02:48:45.320 | 'cause I think that this really speaks

02:48:46.640 | to the global experience of being human,

02:48:49.840 | where, unlike a physical wound,

02:48:53.040 | where, you know, if you see bone exposed,

02:48:55.560 | you're like, "This is pretty serious."

02:48:57.040 | You know, we all have different thresholds

02:48:58.440 | for what we can tolerate in terms of pain

02:49:00.300 | and seeing ourselves wounded.

02:49:02.100 | We all don't have to decide what's the difference

02:49:04.240 | between hurting and injured.

02:49:06.440 | But when it comes to psychological stuff, we don't know.

02:49:09.480 | You know, we also are dealing with a world now

02:49:11.800 | where some people feel psychologically injured

02:49:14.040 | by everything, you know, so that's the extreme there.

02:49:16.320 | But I think what comes through,

02:49:21.320 | and I think people need to perhaps highlight in their minds

02:49:25.840 | is when something's kind of nagging or scratching

02:49:28.480 | at you beneath the surface, that voice,

02:49:30.120 | what do you think that voice is?

02:49:31.840 | - I call it the low-grade pain.

02:49:34.120 | Okay, for me, it was, there was a low-grade,

02:49:38.120 | just slight hot burning starting in '07,

02:49:43.120 | probably before that, but it was, for me,

02:49:50.920 | it was a weird mix, Andrew, of like an uncertainty,

02:49:56.200 | a seeking, a, this just doesn't feel right.

02:50:00.960 | Like, it has to be fixed.

02:50:03.280 | There has to be an intellectual,

02:50:05.560 | an achievement way to sort of get around,

02:50:08.960 | this is where the Buddhist writing and thinking

02:50:12.000 | really helped me a lot, there has to be a way

02:50:14.400 | around this low-grade unsatisfactoriness somehow.

02:50:19.400 | My sense for me, and I'm obviously not, you know,

02:50:25.480 | the Dr. Conte in the room,

02:50:26.960 | just because of all the things I've learned,

02:50:30.720 | it just had to be this constant,

02:50:34.920 | I'll use the word trauma, but for me,

02:50:36.720 | it was like something had to happen to our system,

02:50:40.040 | obviously it does, something happens to our system

02:50:42.560 | that is a little bit of a, boom, there's a shock there,

02:50:46.160 | boom, and then a buddy gets killed,

02:50:47.400 | and then it's not even always with death,

02:50:49.240 | then you have extreme firefight, or close call,

02:50:53.420 | and then it's just boom, boom, shock, shock, shock, shock.

02:50:56.200 | It's almost like getting TBI for the nervous system.

02:50:59.160 | It's just a constant high, to me,

02:51:01.760 | it always felt like that constant high end.

02:51:05.440 | Now, if you keep going, perhaps,

02:51:09.180 | if you never recognize any of it,

02:51:10.820 | and you just keep jacking the dopamine and the adrenaline

02:51:13.560 | your whole life, maybe you can just never recognize it,

02:51:15.860 | but for me, when I shut the engine off,

02:51:18.000 | and I decided it's not really how I wanted to live,

02:51:22.140 | and I was trying to work out of that low-grade,

02:51:24.960 | whatever I was, residue that I was left with,

02:51:30.920 | it was like every time I came home from deployment,

02:51:34.040 | I would get sick that night.

02:51:35.760 | Like, I would have a fever that night, headache and fever,

02:51:39.260 | and I tend to get sick at the end of the year.

02:51:41.960 | Last two years, it was Christmas.

02:51:43.240 | This year, it was Thanksgiving,

02:51:44.880 | and Bridget and I always joke about it.

02:51:47.640 | It's 'cause I slightly turn the engine down a little,

02:51:51.040 | and then the immune system--

02:51:53.120 | - Yeah, that's the way it works.

02:51:53.960 | Everyone thinks stress depletes the immune system,

02:51:56.960 | and indeed, it can, but if you think about it

02:51:59.520 | in evolutionary adaptive ways,

02:52:03.160 | go, go, go, go, go allows you to stave off the infection,

02:52:06.400 | or at least to not have the symptoms

02:52:08.280 | of combating infection, and then when you relax a little bit,

02:52:10.760 | go on vacation, boom, you get sick,

02:52:12.640 | which is not to say constantly stress,

02:52:14.840 | but you need to modulate.

02:52:16.760 | - Right. - You gotta modulate.

02:52:17.980 | But when you're on deployments, you don't have the option.

02:52:19.800 | - No, you don't, yeah.

02:52:20.640 | - You're in gunfights every day.

02:52:21.480 | - Yeah, so as soon as you turn it off, you get sick, right?

02:52:23.240 | But for me, in this particular instance,

02:52:25.320 | what do I think it is?

02:52:26.240 | I think it was all of those experiences at once,

02:52:29.920 | turning the generator all the way off,

02:52:32.040 | or the electric panel fully off,

02:52:33.960 | and then it just all came out.

02:52:37.280 | - Well, for people or anyone listening

02:52:43.140 | who is facing that feeling, that underlying feeling,

02:52:47.120 | or who is challenged with a breakup,

02:52:52.680 | loss of a loved one, fear about the future,

02:52:56.560 | languishing because they don't know what the future holds,

02:53:00.240 | or the feeling that, quote-unquote, so much has happened,

02:53:05.240 | or some combination of those five things,

02:53:09.960 | where do you think the healing process starts?

02:53:14.880 | - I hope, again, back to the hero's journey,

02:53:18.320 | I hope for every single person

02:53:19.920 | that it's not a rock-bottom moment,

02:53:22.860 | but it seems like if you follow a lot of,

02:53:26.520 | enough people, and you hear enough stories,

02:53:28.820 | you've talked with Dax, right?

02:53:32.560 | - Dax Shepard, yeah.

02:53:33.720 | - He talks about it nonstop.

02:53:35.000 | Like, unfortunately, I think a version of bottom

02:53:38.120 | is where the process starts.

02:53:40.320 | All the people I know, the stories they tell me,

02:53:44.740 | the process started when they hit some version of bottom.

02:53:49.400 | What's the quote that I love is,

02:53:51.100 | "You don't change until the pain of staying the same

02:53:54.680 | "is worse than the pain of change."

02:53:56.600 | - Yeah, amen to that.

02:53:58.800 | I have experienced that more times

02:54:01.760 | than I would like to admit.

02:54:03.240 | And that brings me, actually,

02:54:04.200 | to this more macroscopic question.

02:54:07.360 | My understanding of the hero's journey from,

02:54:10.680 | obviously, I haven't read or listened to the book,

02:54:12.540 | is that we don't complete this cycle

02:54:15.220 | and then rest at the ordinary world

02:54:17.280 | where we are living in bliss and peace forever.

02:54:22.280 | We actually have to go around that wheel

02:54:25.360 | over and over and over again.

02:54:28.320 | Hopefully, not going to bottoms

02:54:30.440 | that put our lives in danger,

02:54:32.000 | but it is not a process in which we ever really get to cruise.

02:54:37.000 | So, let's orient Coleman Ruiz in that cycle.

02:54:44.460 | You seem to have returned to the ordinary world.

02:54:46.920 | For those listening and not watching,

02:54:52.620 | whenever you describe the feeling of getting through,

02:54:57.500 | but also that people assisted you, you smile.

02:55:01.320 | As friendly a guy as you are,

02:55:04.260 | I think in the first three years I knew you,

02:55:05.700 | I didn't see you smile once.

02:55:06.900 | - That's probably true.

02:55:07.900 | - I didn't see you smile once.

02:55:09.220 | I just thought like,

02:55:10.780 | and these tier one team guys, they're serious.

02:55:14.260 | - They're locked in.

02:55:15.100 | - They're locked in, but you smile a lot now.

02:55:19.740 | So, I think you're back in the ordinary world.

02:55:22.140 | What are the things you're watchful for?

02:55:26.260 | You're not drinking, you pay attention to your sleep.

02:55:30.060 | You always train, you always did it.

02:55:31.300 | You call it PT, but physical training.

02:55:33.060 | - Yeah, yeah, I train pretty hard.

02:55:33.980 | - Cycle, run.

02:55:35.380 | - Swim, lots of kettlebells.

02:55:37.140 | - Yeah, every morning?

02:55:38.540 | - I train probably five out of seven days

02:55:43.060 | and the two days that I don't train,

02:55:44.780 | I'm in, I have a sauna at my house.

02:55:47.100 | I'm in sauna at least for an hour.

02:55:49.100 | - So funny how team guys talk about getting into cold

02:55:52.060 | or getting in the sauna, like it's just a regular thing.

02:55:54.180 | Like they never post it to social media.

02:55:56.660 | For them it's just, it's part of the routine.

02:55:58.660 | But I say that because I think a lot of people think

02:56:00.300 | it's like this esoteric biohacking thing.

02:56:02.700 | Wrestlers and people in the military

02:56:04.740 | are custom to like sauna cold, sauna cold,

02:56:07.700 | just like cardio lifting weights.

02:56:10.220 | It's not this esoteric thing.

02:56:12.220 | I mean, I think on average, there's a sauna in Finland

02:56:14.780 | for like every single person in the country.

02:56:16.220 | So we didn't invent some amazing recovery process

02:56:19.300 | by doing sauna.

02:56:20.260 | - Right, what do you think it is about physical movement

02:56:24.580 | that helps the mind?

02:56:25.700 | Obviously it's not, I consider it necessary,

02:56:28.700 | but not sufficient.

02:56:29.940 | Like you need to do the talk therapy,

02:56:31.500 | the working through, the writing, the reading,

02:56:33.300 | the introspection, the talking to other people,

02:56:36.380 | maybe pharmacology, but it does seem to be so important

02:56:40.300 | for resetting us.

02:56:41.820 | What do you think it is about physical movement?

02:56:43.860 | - I mean, since, it might go back to John Rady's

02:56:46.900 | little anecdote in "Spark," you know,

02:56:48.220 | the sea squirt, I guess, swims around,

02:56:50.100 | then as soon as it does whatever it needs to do,

02:56:51.820 | it just dies when it stops moving.

02:56:53.020 | - Oh yeah, so the sea squirt is this aquatic animal,

02:56:56.940 | a plesia, as it were, that when it lands on a rock

02:57:01.940 | and stops moving, it actually digests

02:57:04.180 | its own nervous system.

02:57:05.220 | That movement is the great Nobel prize-winning scientist,

02:57:08.500 | Sherrington, that said that movement

02:57:09.640 | is the final common pathway.

02:57:10.700 | That movement is the way that the nervous system

02:57:12.980 | tells the brain and rest of nervous system

02:57:15.700 | that it's still needed here on earth.

02:57:18.640 | Which I like, it's like a, it reminds us of our own utility.

02:57:24.900 | - Yeah.

02:57:26.220 | - In a neural way.

02:57:27.860 | - I mean, whatever that is, and you're right,

02:57:30.460 | the chemistry and the neurobiology of it all,

02:57:33.060 | this goes back, again, going back to seventh grade.

02:57:35.340 | I was at the end of the rope on the detentions

02:57:37.380 | in the suspension, and I have this very clear memory

02:57:41.220 | that before my dad got home, I ran laps,

02:57:43.980 | I don't know how many, but a lot around the block.

02:57:46.940 | And by the time he got home, I was like,

02:57:49.740 | whatever my punishment is, I'm good.

02:57:51.580 | Like, I'm not worried about it.

02:57:52.860 | That physical activity for me all the time,

02:57:55.640 | I don't wanna overdo the runner's high thing,

02:57:57.560 | but whatever that is, that's what I think it is.

02:58:00.540 | Like, when I'm in motion or my heart rate's up,

02:58:04.620 | for the most part, everything's fine.

02:58:07.560 | And I'm clear-headed, and I cannot be,

02:58:13.500 | again, dropping the drinking.

02:58:15.500 | I can't be lethargic and sit around.

02:58:17.780 | Like, I have to take care of myself in that regard.

02:58:20.580 | I watch my sleep super close.

02:58:23.820 | If it gets past 10.30, I'm in like a full-blown panic.

02:58:26.200 | I need to get to a pillow.

02:58:27.900 | The basics.

02:58:28.860 | Like, I don't do anything crazy, really.

02:58:31.520 | - You eat what you want?

02:58:34.420 | - No, no.

02:58:35.380 | I would say on the neurotic scale of things,

02:58:38.380 | that's probably my most extreme.

02:58:40.260 | There's probably a little bit of cutting weight,

02:58:42.500 | kind of like eating disorder issues, if I was guessing.

02:58:45.220 | Not that extreme, but-

02:58:46.060 | - So you eat meat, vegetables?

02:58:47.700 | - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

02:58:48.700 | But I'm a really light eater.

02:58:50.340 | I eat like a bird and probably eight times a day, maybe more.

02:58:54.680 | - Eight times a day?

02:58:57.220 | - Oh, easily.

02:58:58.060 | I'll have, you know, thanks to you,

02:59:01.420 | I'll wait an hour and a half to have coffee,

02:59:03.180 | which is miserable.

02:59:04.860 | - You're welcome.

02:59:05.700 | - But, oh, it's amazing.

02:59:06.540 | Thank you.

02:59:07.360 | It's helped me so much.

02:59:08.340 | - Well, you know, I take some shit for it

02:59:11.660 | because some people say, "Do I have to?"

02:59:13.960 | Well, if I train first thing,

02:59:15.580 | then I'll have my coffee first thing.

02:59:17.020 | It was really to stave off the afternoon crash.

02:59:19.580 | But a lot of people find that experiencing

02:59:22.820 | that natural wake up, and look, it's 90 minutes.

02:59:26.220 | It's not like cutting out for two days or two weeks.

02:59:28.820 | And Michael Pollan, I think, quit coffee.

02:59:30.260 | And I was like, "Why in the world would you do that?"

02:59:32.380 | - Yeah, why in the world?

02:59:33.420 | I love coffee, love yerba mate,

02:59:35.100 | always have from first sip.

02:59:38.120 | Which, by the way, I had my first gourd of mate,

02:59:40.220 | caffeinated mate, when I was four.

02:59:42.160 | There's a picture of me in my grandfather's lap.

02:59:43.700 | - That's hilarious.

02:59:44.540 | - Argentine side, yeah.

02:59:45.500 | So, but the point here is that, you know,

02:59:50.260 | these practices, these things,

02:59:51.740 | I think that they involve a little bit of discipline,

02:59:54.020 | but they really can have an outsized effect, I think.

02:59:57.260 | - Oh my goodness.

02:59:58.340 | Yeah, it's incredible.

02:59:59.820 | - I mean, the eating thing, and then maybe, you know,

03:00:02.820 | one more mental thing in this regard.

03:00:04.820 | I'll probably have maybe an avocado in the morning,

03:00:11.860 | and then two hours later, maybe one hour later,

03:00:15.820 | I'll have sliced cheese and an apple.

03:00:18.940 | And then--

03:00:19.780 | - So you're a light grazer.

03:00:20.900 | - Really light.

03:00:22.020 | I'll probably have the smallest plate at dinner in my house.

03:00:25.420 | - We've always been in great shape.

03:00:26.900 | Like visually, you're tall, you're lean, you're strong.

03:00:29.780 | - Yeah, thanks.

03:00:30.620 | - Yeah.

03:00:31.460 | I think we're realizing now that you can still train on,

03:00:34.540 | you don't have to be like gorging oneself with calories.

03:00:36.340 | - Yeah, especially now, right?

03:00:37.300 | Like we're both approaching 50.

03:00:39.020 | It's actually surprising how much I've discovered

03:00:41.900 | we can do on how few calories.

03:00:43.740 | And I'm not trying to like test it some crazy way,

03:00:47.060 | but then just eat throughout the day.

03:00:49.340 | And, you know, macro life experience,

03:00:51.180 | I just cut a bunch of extra bullshit out of my life,

03:00:54.140 | big and little things.

03:00:55.860 | Like I try to just do my job and, you know,

03:01:00.860 | do a good job at it and hang out with my people,

03:01:05.340 | friends and family and all the extra shenanigans.

03:01:10.020 | Like I'll maybe do, you know,

03:01:11.380 | I was always doing some big race

03:01:14.020 | or some big mountaineering adventure,

03:01:16.060 | or I was just piling stuff into my schedule.

03:01:19.260 | I might do one race in like in the spring.

03:01:23.820 | Everything else is casual, work really hard at it.

03:01:26.900 | I like cycling a lot.

03:01:28.100 | It's one of my favorites and go hard,

03:01:30.220 | but I'm not trying to race cat too,

03:01:33.220 | or, you know, win some event,

03:01:36.380 | or that release of extra bullshit in my life

03:01:40.900 | has been as big as anything else.

03:01:43.380 | - And your boys presumably take some time

03:01:45.140 | and attention in here.

03:01:46.260 | - Yeah, they're great.

03:01:47.100 | - Yeah, your son's a runner for university level runner.

03:01:52.780 | A lot of our conversation gets to some kind of core features

03:01:57.780 | of being human and the psychology of challenge

03:02:03.780 | and thinking one is, or others are invincible,

03:02:06.820 | discovering that none of us are invincible,

03:02:09.980 | but that we are renewable.

03:02:11.700 | You clearly illustrate that.

03:02:13.580 | There's clearly a message

03:02:18.380 | that everyone is gleaning from this, many messages,

03:02:21.860 | but like what, if any, revision or adaptation

03:02:26.860 | do you think we need of the concept of being a man,

03:02:33.820 | growing oneself into a man?

03:02:36.100 | You know, I'm not a gender studies sociologist,

03:02:40.420 | psychologist, neuroscientist,

03:02:42.060 | but setting all the sociology and the nomenclature aside,

03:02:47.060 | like if you had a short list of things,

03:02:50.700 | like it seems like you believe

03:02:54.660 | that it's important to be able to do hard things,

03:02:58.060 | but sometimes those hard things

03:02:59.300 | are not the hard things that you aren't,

03:03:02.100 | we think they are like sitting down and telling one story,

03:03:04.300 | being more terrifying than going into gunfights overseas.

03:03:08.220 | - Yeah.

03:03:09.740 | Yeah, I mean, it's funny that the prelude a little bit

03:03:13.500 | is I'm not a gender studies scientist,

03:03:15.340 | either a sociologist.

03:03:16.300 | I stay away from most of these conversations.

03:03:18.700 | You know?

03:03:19.540 | - But they're barbed wire.

03:03:22.340 | - Yeah, people seem to be so over activated over stuff.

03:03:25.060 | It's very odd, but for me and my life experience,

03:03:30.060 | Andrew, it's range.

03:03:33.140 | Like to use David Epstein's book title, right?

03:03:34.860 | It's range.

03:03:35.820 | And I've noticed this so much because of parenting

03:03:41.900 | and watching my boys grow into men.

03:03:44.260 | If I think about, I'm gonna come back to range.

03:03:48.540 | If I think about myself at 17 or 18,

03:03:51.740 | not my parents, not my coaches,

03:03:56.340 | unless I really wanted it,

03:03:57.700 | you could not fucking tell me what to do.

03:04:00.220 | You can't tell me what to do now.

03:04:01.820 | Like if I want it, I love the mentoring and the teammateship

03:04:04.700 | and the things that get you where you wanna go.

03:04:07.020 | But if it's something I don't wanna do, I'm not doing it.

03:04:10.140 | You know, no matter what.

03:04:11.580 | And so if I think about that in terms of being a dad

03:04:15.620 | or manhood is, let's take it back to my kids.

03:04:20.180 | Like I think one of the most important parts of my job

03:04:23.540 | is to release the grip and take the reins off

03:04:28.020 | and just barely keep them inside the boundaries of alive.

03:04:33.020 | You know, 'cause they're gonna make

03:04:36.820 | all their own decisions anyway, and they have to, right?

03:04:39.860 | And so I think a big part that I see,

03:04:43.500 | and I saw myself a lot for years,

03:04:46.500 | was we over-grip sometimes as men,

03:04:49.300 | like we are so afraid of losing control

03:04:53.060 | in an already uncontrollable world

03:04:55.540 | that we over-grip everything.

03:04:58.540 | And I over-gripped everything.

03:05:00.980 | And suddenly when I'm not over-gripping stuff,

03:05:04.420 | things are going better.

03:05:07.380 | And when it comes to range, it's okay.

03:05:11.300 | For me, it's okay to have your tough guy moments,

03:05:14.460 | your fighter mentality moments.

03:05:16.020 | I would never wanna lose that

03:05:17.340 | because no matter how much help I get

03:05:20.540 | when I'm out with my family or my wife or my boys,

03:05:23.180 | my head is on a fucking swivel.

03:05:24.580 | And if somebody touches them, it's curtains.

03:05:27.900 | And we need to keep that

03:05:30.380 | because that is just a part of life.

03:05:33.420 | Like you have to be,

03:05:35.220 | you cannot move through life with blinders on.

03:05:38.140 | Like there are people who are not good people.

03:05:41.100 | And it's okay to have range

03:05:42.740 | and have that in your toolkit.

03:05:45.220 | What I don't think is okay to do

03:05:48.140 | is to let that slice of the traditional,

03:05:51.340 | whatever you wanna call it, aggressive manhood,

03:05:53.420 | be your whole life.

03:05:54.700 | Like that's just not functional.

03:05:56.260 | It's not good for relationships.

03:05:57.300 | It's not good for parenthood.

03:05:59.100 | So every other little tool you can put in that toolbox

03:06:02.820 | that takes you all the way over here

03:06:05.020 | to what we might consider,

03:06:06.820 | oh, Coleman, he's soft now.

03:06:09.700 | No, no, don't mistake my kindness for weakness.

03:06:12.620 | There's a category for everything.

03:06:14.700 | And I think that makes you such

03:06:16.300 | a much more complete person.

03:06:17.900 | It's made me a more complete person.

03:06:21.300 | It's difficult.

03:06:22.620 | I feel like I'm brand new

03:06:26.100 | at being able to do other things in my toolbox.

03:06:29.180 | Like this part's easy.

03:06:31.180 | I can go jump to that in a nanosecond.

03:06:33.340 | This part over here of normalizing life

03:06:37.460 | across whatever, 80, 90,

03:06:40.420 | it's really hard to sort of excavate the normal shit.

03:06:45.420 | But that's what I think we need to do.

03:06:49.060 | I mean, it's okay to be kind and calm and gentle

03:06:54.060 | and there's nothing wrong with that.

03:06:59.060 | - And I'm guessing the word surrender

03:07:01.820 | probably held a far different meaning for you in the past.

03:07:04.820 | A lot of what you're describing

03:07:05.900 | is surrendering to the realities of life

03:07:07.620 | that we can't control everything.

03:07:10.100 | And just how painful it is to undergo that surrender.

03:07:13.660 | And here I'm talking to myself too.

03:07:15.140 | It's a process I'm still deeply involved in.

03:07:18.380 | Somebody who's tried to go rung over rung as best I can.

03:07:22.100 | - Doesn't Andrew speak to our like evolutions?

03:07:24.100 | Like that is so difficult,

03:07:25.860 | at least for me and guys like me.

03:07:27.660 | I'm putting you in my group here.

03:07:29.900 | That is so hard to do.

03:07:30.980 | Like that just tells me more about

03:07:34.420 | the evolution of our male system.

03:07:37.140 | Like that part's so easy and this part is not so easy.

03:07:40.780 | But man, it's a battle to remind myself,

03:07:44.660 | slow down, listen, just the basic shit.

03:07:49.860 | You don't have to go attack every problem

03:07:51.540 | like a fist fight, it's tough.

03:07:55.540 | - It is tough.

03:07:56.380 | And I think that the more that I resist surrender,

03:07:59.420 | the more that, well, I believe in God.

03:08:02.620 | So I'll just say God, but God, the universe

03:08:04.500 | or whatever it is for people.

03:08:05.500 | But for me, the more that God places me in circumstances

03:08:08.180 | that make the act of surrendering harder.

03:08:11.740 | Like if I would just do it on my own,

03:08:13.060 | it wouldn't have to be so hard.

03:08:14.080 | I wouldn't have to, a good friend of mine,

03:08:16.140 | I'll mention my name, Tim Armstrong.

03:08:19.660 | He just said like,

03:08:21.400 | you got to hit every branch on the way down.

03:08:24.300 | He was telling me I had to.

03:08:26.380 | He's like, you're a stubborn punk rocker, you have to.

03:08:28.700 | And he was talking about himself too.

03:08:30.060 | Like there's certain phenotypes where we have to,

03:08:33.580 | but they're like the universe just screams out.

03:08:36.400 | You don't have to.

03:08:39.260 | You can actually just like lower yourself down

03:08:40.920 | on a rope to the ground and walk away,

03:08:43.380 | but then there's that stubbornness.

03:08:45.100 | But I think that the stubbornness

03:08:46.580 | has its evolutionary adaptations too.

03:08:49.300 | And the hero's journey, nothing in the hero's journey

03:08:51.680 | says that the transitions between these different states

03:08:54.120 | are linear, are of equal duration,

03:08:57.300 | are of certainty, only that they exist

03:09:01.900 | and that there's no way, as you point out before,

03:09:03.820 | to skip steps.

03:09:05.220 | - You can't skip.

03:09:06.420 | I couldn't skip.

03:09:07.820 | If somebody skips, I mean, it's like you hit every branch.

03:09:10.780 | - No, but nobody skips.

03:09:11.900 | And whether or not somebody tries to skip

03:09:13.860 | through psychedelics or through being the toughest

03:09:16.620 | or through the acquisition of money

03:09:19.180 | or just focusing on family,

03:09:20.980 | family obviously is super important,

03:09:22.420 | but that's not going to accomplish

03:09:23.980 | the other aspects of the journey.

03:09:26.240 | It's a huge part of it,

03:09:27.140 | but it's not the only part.

03:09:28.780 | Again, necessary, not sufficient.

03:09:30.660 | - Yeah, it's like, again, the 12 steps are some,

03:09:33.460 | I'm not that experienced in it.

03:09:34.820 | I just read about it a decent amount.

03:09:37.100 | It's like hitting every branch.

03:09:38.880 | Like you got to follow the steps, man.

03:09:41.260 | Or you can live with that low grade pain nonstop.

03:09:45.680 | You know, it's not a good way to live.

03:09:49.500 | - No, because even if you're not conscious of it,

03:09:51.900 | it erodes you in ways that are very destructive.

03:09:54.660 | - I wasn't conscious of it at all,

03:09:56.260 | you know, until the universe, as we say,

03:09:58.780 | came in with a fucking wrecking ball

03:10:01.420 | and said, fine, you're not going to listen?

03:10:04.060 | Sent you all these messages, you're not going to listen?

03:10:06.180 | Okay.

03:10:07.020 | - I think it's important that we at least briefly touch

03:10:12.500 | on where things are at right now,

03:10:15.300 | because it would be remiss for us to give the impression

03:10:19.900 | that like you're sitting there meditating,

03:10:22.500 | you're drinking your coffee 90 minutes late,

03:10:24.980 | after you wake up, you're sitting there in bliss

03:10:27.940 | and thinking about all the great things that happened,

03:10:29.380 | how you made it through.

03:10:30.220 | Like, there's still a lot happening right now.

03:10:32.780 | So to the extent that you can share,

03:10:35.680 | you're working all the time.

03:10:38.460 | What are you doing nowadays as a vocation?

03:10:40.900 | - I was in private equity for a while before I met you,

03:10:43.140 | running a company for,

03:10:44.340 | companies for a really good friend of mine

03:10:47.180 | named Tom Ripley, amazing guy.

03:10:49.160 | And then I stepped away because I was exhausted

03:10:52.780 | and I didn't know how to say it.

03:10:54.400 | I didn't know how to tell anybody.

03:10:55.660 | Like I needed to escape again,

03:10:57.420 | take magic flight somehow, you know?

03:10:59.420 | And he and I are incredibly close.

03:11:03.620 | Like he was one of the guys

03:11:04.700 | who is in that super tight inner circle.

03:11:07.440 | And then I came back to it with this team that I'm on

03:11:14.180 | and I serve as the chief operating officer

03:11:18.820 | at Lid Sports Group,

03:11:19.780 | the largest brick and mortar licensed sports retailer

03:11:23.900 | in North America.

03:11:24.760 | We have 2000 stores during the holiday.

03:11:26.920 | We have 8,200 employees and amazing team.

03:11:30.280 | The private equity firm that I work for is an amazing team.

03:11:32.560 | And the company is an amazing company

03:11:35.480 | and just incredible group of folks.

03:11:38.720 | And so, yeah, I work a lot.

03:11:42.100 | I was out here doing store visits in San Francisco and LA

03:11:44.480 | and that's, it's all good.

03:11:45.600 | And I think I do those little things

03:11:50.600 | all day long, all the time, but no,

03:11:53.420 | I am not sitting on a mountaintop.

03:11:55.280 | Like most days there's no meditation at all, Andrew.

03:11:58.000 | It's meditation as a workout.

03:12:00.120 | Tom and I throw kettlebells around multiple times a week

03:12:02.440 | and I do those other little things.

03:12:05.520 | But the difference for me is I'm okay with it.

03:12:09.460 | And I say that because I was incredibly busy, you know,

03:12:14.320 | before when I first got out of the Navy

03:12:16.520 | and I wasn't okay with it because I thought,

03:12:21.400 | again, this is back to the hero's journey.

03:12:23.800 | I thought like the return to ordinary life

03:12:27.040 | was going to be sunshine and rainbows.

03:12:28.720 | Like, look, I have the ultimate boon.

03:12:32.080 | I had this big experience.

03:12:33.600 | Not that I wanted to be like front and center in the media,

03:12:35.900 | but here I am world, it's calm out here, right?

03:12:39.900 | Like we get to chill and have a good time and sleep

03:12:43.720 | and nothing is stressful in the real world, right?

03:12:47.320 | Wrong.

03:12:48.340 | I just wasn't ready for that.

03:12:49.520 | Like I really genuinely thought

03:12:51.360 | that it was just going to be easier.

03:12:54.200 | And so when we talk about the low grade pain, Andrew,

03:12:57.280 | and like the, you know, what is that?

03:12:59.180 | To me, that was one of the biggest frictions.

03:13:01.100 | Like, holy shit.

03:13:02.720 | I did all this stuff, all these deployments,

03:13:05.600 | lost all these buddies and there's no fucking rest.

03:13:09.760 | Like the regular world, it's not,

03:13:12.680 | it's supposed to be easier.

03:13:13.720 | At least that's the story that was in my mind.

03:13:17.640 | Going through all the stuff we just talked about,

03:13:19.600 | now I'm okay with it.

03:13:21.660 | Like, I like it.

03:13:23.000 | I know how to manage my life.

03:13:24.300 | I know how to manage my time for the most part.

03:13:26.840 | I have a different relationship with my teammates

03:13:29.560 | and my mentors and my bosses and my own work life.

03:13:33.560 | And I love it.

03:13:35.880 | Like, I feel like I'm back to, in a very different way,

03:13:40.120 | where I was when I was in the squadron back in '07.

03:13:43.680 | Like, I feel like I'm on,

03:13:46.240 | hope this doesn't get clipped,

03:13:47.200 | but for me, I'm on another level.

03:13:49.080 | Like, I really feel good about where I'm headed.

03:13:52.440 | And I haven't felt like that since I went into college.

03:13:56.080 | You know, I felt like shit was just deteriorating

03:13:59.680 | and now it's not, which is nice.

03:14:02.340 | - Well, the beauty of what you just said

03:14:05.800 | and everything you've shared today is that,

03:14:08.160 | I don't know if it occurs to you or not,

03:14:09.600 | but you've been providing mentorship to millions of people.

03:14:15.360 | To millions of people in the form of sharing your experience

03:14:20.360 | of your own hero's journey.

03:14:23.180 | And I want to thank you for making it so clear

03:14:28.180 | as to what your experience was and being unafraid

03:14:32.720 | or perhaps afraid and doing it and telling us anyway,

03:14:35.480 | exactly what that felt like.

03:14:38.680 | Even better in that sense, you know,

03:14:40.760 | and stepping into that fear.

03:14:43.540 | But also making it so clear

03:14:46.680 | that while your life experience is, you know, extraordinary,

03:14:51.680 | SEAL teams, tier one teams, all in all, you know,

03:14:55.760 | all of it that, you know,

03:14:58.560 | everyone's life has these components of extraordinary

03:15:01.400 | and the opportunity for extraordinary

03:15:03.080 | and the return and renewal through the ordinary world.

03:15:06.280 | So much of what you shared has meaning,

03:15:10.080 | regardless of people are male, female, young, old,

03:15:13.480 | so thank you for being a mentor today

03:15:17.880 | and for having the bravery,

03:15:21.080 | for stepping out into the quote unquote ordinary world,

03:15:25.200 | which is oh so unordinary and if you're willing,

03:15:30.200 | I think it'd be great to have you back

03:15:33.560 | in maybe a couple of years and see where you're at.

03:15:36.720 | Meanwhile, you and I will be in touch often

03:15:39.440 | as we frequently are, so.

03:15:42.680 | - Thanks Andrew, appreciate it.

03:15:43.720 | - Coleman Ruiz, thanks for everything you've done.

03:15:45.880 | - Thank you.

03:15:46.720 | - Thanks for everything you're doing

03:15:48.320 | and thanks for coming out today

03:15:51.280 | and sharing with us what real life's about.

03:15:55.400 | - It's always great to see you, appreciate the time.

03:15:58.000 | It was a joy, thanks.

03:15:59.440 | - Likewise.

03:16:00.960 | Thank you for joining me

03:16:01.800 | for today's discussion with Coleman Ruiz.

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Coleman Ruiz: Overcoming Physical & Emotional Challenges

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