Transcript of From Special Forces to an Outlaw Motorcycle Club | Kenny Robertson

Hey guys, I'm Jack Murphy. This is The Teamhouse, and we're here in studio with our guest today, Kenny Robertson. He is a former Marine, served in Army 101st Airborne, and then had an extensive Special Forces career in 5th Group. And I mean, a whole bunch of different things that you got involved in, teaching the PJ course, going over to Ukraine, doing executive protection jobs, and Today you're with Waypoint 6. Do you want to tell people just off the top of the interview what Waypoint 6 is? Yeah.

So Jack, thanks for having me. What we're going to talk about a little bit is, aside from military history, which a lot of the viewers are well aware of, but this veteran mental health, which can kind of be a boring topic for most guys, but starting to become a lot less taboo. So after my years of service and after a lot of things that I've found that shaped me to be a guy that I did not want to be. It took a little bit more than just the talk therapy or going to a VA. So, su esponte, I end up out of the country, down in Central America, and find myself in the middle of an ayahuasca ceremony. And Waypoint 6 was derived from that. So I founded that based off of my experience working with the plant medicine. So now we're able to take veterans down to Central America, and we even have a spot locally in Texas where we're able to operate out of, and we're getting guys the mental health treatment that they need.

That's awesome. And we'll get into that a little bit deeper later on in the interview. But to go more or less like in chronological order, tell us a little bit about, you know, how you grew up and how that took you towards the military.

Yes. So I grew up in Virginia and outside of Richmond, not a big city, kind of. I was more in the rural areas. And, you know, my dad had land and would take me out hunting and fishing. So I was working with guns from a small age and, you know, kind of learning a little bit about the land and I found my way into, I was trying to play pro football, but turns out, Jack, I'm not that big. I'm not that good at football. So I needed another option and driving race cars was out of my budget. So I had to pick something. And honestly, I was like, man, the Marine Corps, that looks cool. This was in the '90s. What was cool about it was the dress blues. Let's just be honest.

They got snappy uniforms.

They do look good. That pretty much is the defining factor of how good of a Marine you are. How high and tight is your hair and how much starch is on your uniform? Now, not so much. But—

I thought the only thing that matters is the guys that qualified on iron sights versus— Everyone who came.

Iron sights, obviously, you know, in the '90s, that's all we had, right? So you had to be able to run fast and have a tight haircut. So yeah, that uniform drew me in. I did that, but realizing that the head didn't fit in the jar. This was before MARSOC. This was before anything that was—

So what year is this that you went to boot camp?

'97.

Okay. And what unit did you end up in, in the Marines?

So I was over at Camp Lejeune, ended up on— I started out, I was with intelligence.

Okay. Yeah.

It turns out I lost a security clearance. Can't tell you that it happened, but it did. So I ended up with a squadron across the road over at New River. And so I was there. By the time you got out of all the training and stuff, almost the first year is gone. So after a few years, I decided that Nope, this isn't for me. There was no war happening, so I'm done. And then I got out and then there was a war. So I needed to make a move. I did that pretty quick.

So you get out and after— it's after 9/11 that you see this opportunity.

Yeah.

Yeah. And so what year did you reenlist in the Army?

In '01. Oh, in 2001. Right afterwards. Yeah.

Okay.

Went right back in. And when that happened, um, I could just jump into the 101st, uh, because when you were in the Army and you wanted to go be a Marine— and I had this in my Marine Corps, we call it boot camp, right? Army is basic training. I've never gone to Army basic training.

Oh really?

Yeah, we had an E-5 sergeant in the Army in Marine Corps boot camp. I didn't have to do it. So they were just like, nope, you can just go right into the Army and just, there you go. Sign here and here's a costume. Go. All right. And so I did. Jumped, went over to the 101st and they're like, yep, we're going to do this thing over in Iraq. I'm like, yeah, that's why I'm here. Let's go. So off we go.

So now we're into like 2001, 2002 and like the buildup for Iraq is starting.

Yeah. And I didn't even really get a chance to get into a buildup. I just go right over, like, I don't know, 2 weeks after I'd gotten in. Holy shit.

Yeah.

And I'm probably 3 weeks. It was a very— they were just— they're pumping guys out. You go through med pros and you go through a couple of things and they're like, there you go, man. Here's your initial issue.

You're green on good luck. Here's some ammo.

Yeah, I got like 3 different color camos. I got like, I don't know, I got something desert. I got something green. I got, so it was definitely Wild West. It was some weird times. And I was young. I didn't even know anything about the Army. Right. So I was still bringing Marine Corps, which they bring a lot of pride, morale, all kinds of stuff that in the Army they don't quite have. Yeah. The discipline. Isn't quite there.

You're calling like the E-7s Gunny?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For a few times I would call it like Sergeant First Class and I just say Sergeant. I was like, I'm not programmed to do that. I can't do that. So, and I'd still wear a high and tight for like the first, I don't know, 2 years. I'd be out like in Iraq trying to like cut my hair all looking like I'll get a horseshoe Like I'm trying to keep people at work until 9 o'clock.

So you went and met your unit that was already forward deployed. Yeah. What brigade did you go to?

I was over with 3rd.

Okay. So tell us a little bit about what that experience was like about OIF-1.

So OIF-1 was not a lot of rules and regulations at that time. And we also didn't know what the hell we were doing. Except just go take everything, occupy land, go take, take real estate. So we would— we started, we pushed up to Mosul and then we pushed out west, out into Tal Afar and kind of owned that whole northern area. And it was just kind of just chaos.

Yeah. I mean, from Kuwait to Mosul.

Yeah. So the fun thing about it was the former— the vice president of the United States at the time, former CEO of the company that built the entire cities that we then later on lived in. Before all that could happen, we didn't have anything. Just what you brought.

Right.

Right. And you're stringing up 550 cord to wash your clothes and dry them, sleeping under a truck when we still slept under trucks. But now, you know, the safety guy won't let you do that anymore. So, uh, yeah, we just— it was— you ride around in your trucks, you lived in your truck, you lived with your platoon, and you would get resupply with some food and you would just be out and about. We would take over whatever it might be, a palace. We might take over any type of real estate, and then that would kind of become where we lived. And you might stay there for a few months, and then you're just pushing out and going and finding bad guys. But of course, at that point, everybody was a bad guy. We just showed up into their neighborhood. They don't like that. I mean, you come to my house at 2 AM, with big green eyes, you're going to be met, you know, with a field of fire. But I didn't expect that they felt that way. Right. So I'm going to show up at their house at 2:00 in the morning and like, I just kicked down your door.

Why are you shooting at me? You're the bad guy.

Did you guys have some pretty big dust-ups with the Iraqi army at that time?

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

It's interesting because, I mean, I've had a lot of people tell me that at the time, maybe like 80% of Iraq supported disposing of Saddam Hussein, but Then the question becomes, well, why are you guys still here?

Right. So I think the problem, and it was the same in Afghanistan, it was when I say that they don't want to work with us because they sit down on the objective. We can't really push them to do but so much. Their work ethic is different.

Yes.

Right. So if we're out on a hit, if we're out doing a raid, if we're halfway through it, we're still in a gunfight, they're just going to go sit down. They're just not into it. Now, the Kurds up north were a lot better than some of the other cats that we had to work with. Those dudes were pretty motivated to get the job done, but a lot of these units just didn't want to.

It reminds me, you talk about doing CQB and the priorities of work in the room and all that kind of stuff. I remember I had one of these guys, walked right through the door, did not clear any corners at all, went right to the refrigerator, popped it open, shuffled around in there, shut it, sat down on the couch. I'm like, we're all there doing this, trying to clear the structure. Like, what the fuck?

That is a priority of work.

I was screaming. I was screaming at this guy. But yeah, it is different, dude.

They'll take smoke breaks. We're after it, man. We're in a gunfight. I'm treating a patient and they just come over and they just sit down and they're just like, we're good. We're going to take 15.

What were some of the memorable actions that you recall from the invasion?

Crashing.

Oh yeah.

Yeah. So no, I don't think I can call it a crash. I think I call it a hard landing twice. So I actually, I was in a Blackhawk for, they needed some dudes to help with the air crew. So they were having guys fly the left seat behind the pilot on the Blackhawk. You got a left seat and a right seat where the crew chiefs would be. They would have one crew chief because those birds are in the air like all day, all night, right? They're constantly working. So like, hey, we need dudes to help augment. And I was like, man, that sounds cool. I'll be a door gunner. So yeah, man, I got to hang out. We had the old M60s at the time. We were just starting to get some 240s like in '04 or '05 is when they first got fielded out there. But we had the M60s at that time. So I got to ride a lot of left seat. I think I got close to like 500 and some hours in —that thing. Yeah, it was ridiculous because you'd go out for 12 hours a day. They'd break— they're not supposed to break this crew rest.

They have to— they can only be out for a certain amount of time. But the rules were slightly— they worked with them a little different back then. So we had some 2 hard landings about 6 months apart. And I was on that aircraft both times. And I had the same crew chief with me. It messed him up. Like, he had, I mean, his head got scrambled. So he ended up having to get out and seek a lot of, he had a lot of TBI stuff going on and a lot of VA appointments. I just kept driving on. And then the same pilot both times, different copilot, or maybe he was the copilot and it was a different pilot, but same dude. Ended up, when we got back to Fort Campbell, that dude, that pilot ended up, he died in another crash that was a training accident. Yeah. So those were definitely some, we actually were flying the Speaker of the House at the time, Bill Hastert. Uh-huh. And we crashed with him. He was in the other aircraft. Like we were like the gunship that was supporting him. And we crashed.

So were you one of the dudes that was there when they found Uday and Qusay?

Because I remember 101st was— 101st was there. I was not there. Okay. Gotcha. Gotcha. I was in the region, but not— unfortunately, I missed that one.

So you were over there. Sounds like you're pretty busy. No shortage of jobs to do. Yeah, we have plenty of work.

Yeah.

How did that campaign wind down for you?

That was it, man. We were done, came back home, and then it was just one day. We actually started building some pretty good fobs and we were hiring some local force dudes. I was paying them $4 a day in cash. They would line them up at the end of the day. They'd work for 8, 9 hours digging ditches, building stuff with wood that we were accruing to build whatever kind of structures or places for guys to live and things like that. So it was kind of a fun transition when I got to see that something was happening. Right. It was like we were leaving some kind of infrastructure in place. So that was good. Now, we did have an interpreter that I worked with. I'm not going to say daily, but definitely multiple times a week. And we would have to get money from accounting and then we would use that cash, you know, we'd pay out our dudes, we'd have contractors to help moving heavy equipment, moving earth, whatever. So my interpreter was kind of also like the contract liaison. And a pile of money got him killed once he left outside of the FOB.

Oof. Yeah. So that happened. I'd go out to the edge of the FOB that we were building every day, and I had this like big concertina wire fence. It was probably like, I don't know, 80 feet by 50 feet or something. And there'd be 150 dudes packed into this thing trying to get in. To do work for us because they're getting that $4 a day in cash. Right. So they would be out there and me and Chris would go out and it was just chaos, man. You got all these dudes trying to— and most of them were good dudes, Iraqi citizens that wanted to get some work. And so they're like, they're begging, you know, and they're going to come up to you and they're going to be like, man, you start touching us like that. We're freaking out. We're still, I mean, I don't know what the hell's going on at this point. You come up here and you start touching me. Now I feel like you're reaching for my magazines or whatever. Now I'm screaming like a fool. Everybody get down. Like I'm Rambo, you know, and bring a .203 out one day just to, I don't have any, no ammunition for it, but they don't know this, you know, just to make a sound like a rack and a shotgun.

So It was, it was interesting, to say the least. Just trying to do like two dudes trying to do this crowd control and then you grab 10, 12, 15 guys and they throw them in the back. You know, I drove one truck, he drove another truck. I think it was just kind of all over the place.

You're also a young guy, kind of sounds like in some ways acting like the mayor of a little town.

Early 20s. I did not have any business doing what I was doing or doing what I thought that I was doing.

Yeah, yeah, sometimes it's better. You don't, you don't know any better at that, right?

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So when you get back to the United States, uh, When does SF sort of come into the picture for you? How is that on your mind?

So when I was deployed, I saw dudes that looked a lot cooler than me.

They had pockets on their sleeves and Velcro.

So remember, I was coming from the Marine Corps and I didn't know anything about the Army. So this guy Chris I'm talking about, I was like, who are those cats? He's like, they're— those are Special Forces, man. They don't even exist. I see them. They're right there. He's like, no, man, you can't do that. It's like, okay, like, what do you got to do? He's like, oh, he advertised the SERE school because that's all he knew about it. He's like, oh, man, you got to like, you know, go live in the woods and survive. All right, let's try it. So, yeah, man, you talk to a recruiter that tells you a little bit more about it. Still slightly vague. I was like, yeah, let's give it a go. And I got in shape and I went to a selection and yeah, that sucked. That was— What year was that that you went to selection? What, '08? '07? Yeah. Okay. And then, yeah, so I was like, you got to fill out a wish list and I was like, I'm going to speak Arabic and be an 18 Delta. Yeah.

And they were like sold and they're like, got it, man.

Like skip selection. You just go right to the course and train this guy. Who wants that? So, uh, yeah, got what I wanted. And, uh, yeah, that was, that was super interesting. Um, and I got through the medic course, uh, And made it out to 5th Group.

What was kind of your impression going through the Q course at that time? Was it sort of the experience that you were hoping for?

Yeah, it was professional. It was really professional because especially the 18 Delta course, that part was definitely, that was an experience that, cause that's long. You know, going through that, it was a year long and it was, it was run by civilians. I mean, there was definitely a lot of military cadre there, but it was the majority of it were civilians, PAs, retired guys. Yeah. A lot of retired 18 Deltas, dudes that have now gone on to nursing school, dudes that have gone on to become PAs, civilian PAs. Dudes that have had a lot of experience. And these guys are super smart, like ridiculously intelligent, and trying to teach me how to be a doctor and a surgeon in less than a year. And I was like, man, I, you know, I couldn't even put on a Band-Aid, you know, before going to this course. I had no idea about trauma medicine. Guys are teaching me how to do an IV, you know, back when I was in the regular Army and I didn't understand the concept of a needle and a catheter. It's foreign to me. I have no idea how I made it through that course.

Zero social life, 3 hours of studying every night, and a lot of luck. Yeah, because they ask you some really crazy questions on there, on these tests, and you're getting tested every few days. All right. And then they've got— so we had cadavers in this course and we had this pin test, which I went as a cadre. Like anatomy? Yeah. I was a cadre. I tried to help alleviate some of that struggle because it's at a doctorate level for sure. Yeah. It's asking you about— you've got this cadaver that's broken down into all the nerves, vessels, veins, everything you can imagine. And It's asking you not specifically like, what muscle is this? Like, okay, cool, but what happens when you flex this muscle? What does this one do? And then the nerve that attached to that and the innervation of that nerve. And it's like, what the— what do I need to know this for? Um, so yeah, and you forget it. So I don't— that was my point when I went back to as a cadre, I was like, we don't need this, Max. We're not going to use it. Right. So I don't know.

And was there a final exercise in the course back when you went through?

Yeah, not— it was, but it was, it was kind of watered down. It wasn't— it was very anticlimactic, which is actually one of the things that I wanted to change during my tenure there. So I think we did a pretty good job of doing that. We actually brought in a whole different phase during my time because I went back as a cadre later on for that Delta course, and we were able to include prolonged field care because that wasn't a part of the course at the time.

It was all the golden hour was the thing.

Right. And then you realize that, okay, well, we're actually going to have to sit on this dude for days, for days again, because Africa is going on and those dudes aren't getting a quick transport out of Africa. So when that happens, we're advertising that we can sit on a patient for 72 hours, but yet we don't push blood, we don't do a lot in ventilation, we don't do a lot of things that we're advertising. You know, we might have practiced the skill one time,, you know, for like 2 days and then we move past it. That's not proficiency, right? I'm not going to honestly expect myself to be able to go and handle that 2 years, 3 years from now. So a lot of that did get to change and we were able to bring in a really good final training exercise.

Yeah, we'll circle back around on that for sure. But after you graduate the course, you get assigned to 5th Group, Fort Campbell, Kentucky. And your first kind of spot that you land is in 4th Battalion. So now what is this, 2008 maybe? Yeah. So we were there at the same time, actually. Yeah. Yeah. So what was your experience like?

On 3-5, it was awesome. One of my favorite teams that I was ever on. That's awesome. Actually, when I got there, because they weren't spinning up for deployments. So at that time, at least not all the teams were, I went and did a Caribbean dive recall. I didn't even go to dive school yet. And I'm in the Caribbean for a month. So that was like, oh, this is a vacation. That was kind of one of the coolest training exercises that I'd gotten to go on.

As I recall, they had some of the teams going out on JSETs around that timeframe, right?

Yes. Yeah. Yep. We went, we were doing dive recalls and just starting to spin up later on. And then I went over to 3rd Battalion.

But I mean, they sent you to dive school while you were there?

No. Oh, really? No. Nope. So there was a, I guess there was a school of thought at this point where Sergeant Major was like, look, at that time, no, that was Ranger School. Cause I was trying to go to Ranger School at the time. He's like, man, I'm not going to lose you for 63 days. I'm not going to lose a Delta for 63 days. Now this is just one Sergeant Major's mindset at the time. Maybe more feeling that way, but you know, being a Delta, we weren't a lot of us. Like not every team had two, right? So as you know, like a lot of teams had one, some teams didn't have any, you know, for periods of time. Matter of fact, I had to jump to a couple of different teams to help make their missions, even deploy with other teams. And even while I was gone on a deployment, the team would lose a medic and I'd go over and augment over for another team for a little while. So I did not get to go to CDQC. I did not get to go to Ranger School. Well, where did you get sent?

Uh, I went to dive teams as a, as a dry medic. I went to HALO teams, never got to go to HALO school. I got sent to JSETs and deployments. So no, I didn't get to go to any cool schools.

So you're like a floating medic in some ways. Where'd, uh, which JSETs did you get sent on at the time?

I did a lot of Lebanons. Oh, really?

Yeah. I didn't even really realize we were shooting people over there at that time.

Yeah, we did a lot of Lebanons.

Well, what was that one like?

So Lebanon is actually a pretty cool country. Well, it was until recently, until it's now in shambles. But, uh, so Beirut is where the embassy was. The Marine barracks were there and that got blown up and that was what, '83? '83. That's still there in all of its parts and pieces. Oh, no shit. There's still a .50 cal sitting up on the top under a cover. I don't know if it's the one from '83, but it's been up there for a very, very, very long time. And the people that work at the embassy were like, yeah, man, that's been here forever. So Lebanon is kind of nice. You've got mountains, you've got beaches all in the same day. They've got ski resorts there. They've got terrific restaurants. So that's kind of fun. Right. But then, you know, you get a couple of days of that, but then you're for another 20, 30 days up in the mountains, in the cold, training these dudes, you know, walking through the mountains and put a POI together for a month or two and then come back down and enjoy a couple of days. But it was overall a pretty good JSET.

I mean, they had nightlife. They had And we'd get escorts everywhere we go. But then later on, it became a lot more free. When I ended up going back in 2018 and kind of just do whatever, just as long as you got somebody with you. We'd take a truck and Hilux and you can go out to eat restaurants or whatever.

What was it like training the Lebanese partner force?

So I have to, you know, a lot of guys got foreign jump wings. Did you get any foreign jump wings?

Chilean, I believe, weirdly enough. That's unique.

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

We've had sitting in that same chair, Mike Taylor, who was a 10th Group guy. Yeah. But back in the day, 10th Group covered down on Lebanon. Okay. And he was on the first MTT to Lebanon. I believe it was '83. And then Gary Harrington, he was over there too, around, around that same time frame. So, yeah, it's just interesting to hear these different experiences, you know, and the more things change, the more they stay the same, I guess.

Yeah. One of the— I think I went back again in '15 or '14 and yeah, during a rotation in '14. I, we were working with the dive team, uh, with the Navy SEALs. So I was on a dive team at the time. So we went down and we were training their Navy SEALs. And the irony is like there was a lot of dudes, uh, that couldn't swim. Couldn't swim. Yeah. So I could say, yeah, man, I taught the Navy SEALs how to swim. I sound like a Total ass by saying that, unless I add they were Lebanese. You're telling these stories.

I knew a couple National Guard guys who had a really cozy gig going where every summer they'd go down to Jamaica and work with Jamaica. They have some sort of dive team, rescue dive team. I don't know what they are. Yeah. Work with them every summer for a JSET.

Like, it's pretty cush. Yeah, those were, those were pretty good times because we do a lot of waterborne operations and the Mediterranean is really good swimming. That's, that's a great place to go dive, go swim. No sharks. That's a big worry. Now, we'd go down in the Caribbean to do dive recall. We would, at a team sergeant, that dude was awesome. He's still, still a good friend, but he would purposely find like these coordinates of where these, a bunch of sharks.

Like chum the waters before he puts you in there? So we'll get to that one.

So we'd go dive drive down to where there's known to be little shark neighborhoods. And so, uh, it might be 60, 65 foot down. So going down to the bottom— now I was a civilian diver, so when I'd go on dive recall, yeah, I hadn't gone to CDQC, but I was a civilian diver, um, from NAWI. And so I dove down and yeah, we'd be swimming around with those dudes. And so I got to swim with sharks, got to dive with sharks, which was terrifying for the first 5 minutes. And once you kind of break that fear of it, I'm not going to say you don't notice them anymore, but you pay them a little less attention. Right. Right. And you recognize that you're in their area and they're just seeing what's going on. And I think I tried to play chicken with one. It was kind of coming towards me a little bit. So I planned out I started swimming towards him a little bit. Like, I thought I was a lot tougher than what I was. He didn't stop coming. So yeah, I bailed out and, uh, yeah, he won. I'll give it to him.

But we did jump in the water. We actually went out to this place called One Two Buoy. One Two Buoy. So we take the boats out and we're just going to free dive out here. We're going to go spearfishing. My 1-2 buoy, mind you, is 6,000 feet deep.

This is like a collapsed volcano or something?

I couldn't tell you. And I don't know how, I mean, that is terrifying just psychologically. Yeah. Maybe not for everybody. For me, it was absolutely like just knowing that it's 6,000 foot deep for whatever reason, not going to sink to the bottom. I got fins, I got a mask. Doesn't matter if it's 10 feet or 6,000, but the abyss just had me, right? So, okay, we splash in, we're swimming around, we're spearing some amberjack, you know, big amberjack. They're probably only this big, but nonetheless. So we throw them onto, uh, we're chumming the water ultimately because we throw them in a net that's hanging off the side of the boat. And keeping them fresh, but you know, it's blood in the water. Now we got some big dudes coming along. I mean, I say big, they were probably 7, 8 foot. And that was just, that was uncomfortable. The first dudes I ran into were like 6 foot. Yeah. You had that extra couple of feet on there that made a huge difference. So yeah, we got chased out of the water. And, but we'd go do the 3K swim. You'd get dropped off 3 kilometers.

You know, and you got 90 minutes and you're in your kit and you know, you're out there. I know the Navy does it out there in San Diego, but you know, we're doing the Caribbean, which is a lot nicer because you could see the visibility was a lot better. You could see pretty far away those dudes are out there.

Jeez.

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And so you spent some time, how long were you at 4th Battalion?

I was just there for a year.

Oh, okay. So they kept you busy in that year. Yeah. And then you, how did you move over to 3rd Battalion?

They needed some dudes over at 3rd Battalion. Need a medic. Yeah, they were rotating. So I ended up on 3-6. And that was good. That was, well, best team in 5th Group, actually. Had the trophy. So had that for a while. And then from 3-6, I went to 1-2 and did some deployments out there in the northern region. Now then, 1-2, we were attached to 9-5. Well, the old ODA 595. Oh yeah. So yeah, they did the initial invasion. So we went with them and I got to work with 9-5 for quite a while for that, you know, a lot of that deployment. We got into some pretty good ticks. Where was that? That was in outside of Masar al-Sharif. It was in the north.

So that's like, is that Herat out in that area?

No. Okay. It was outside of Mez. Okay. Okay.

So, well, first you were with 3-6. Did you get sent anywhere with that team?

Lebanon.

Oh, that was my first. Okay.

That was your Lebanon trip. Gotcha. Did that Lebanon.

Okay. And then one, two to Afghanistan. Yeah. And you were the Delta on the team, I take it? Yeah. And so what kind of stands out in your memory from that time and what year was it that you were there?

I did that one in 12, 13.

So bin Laden has been taken out. Yeah. Like, what was your conception of like what you were doing there, why the team was there?

You know, at the time, ever since like the initial invasion and the reason that we went over there, in my mind, it was just full send. We have to go and do this for America. We've got to do this to protect our freedom. And it didn't matter about whether or not the leader of the largest terrorist cell in the world was dead because all of them aren't dead. Right. So that's still the problem. We have to finish all of that. What does finish look like? Yeah. Right. But then what does finish look like when no one else is standing? Except, you know, the good guys. Yeah.

Which is kind of an insane objective when you think about it. Right. Reflect back on that.

And I've done a lot of reflecting since then. So, yeah, we'll get to that. But that was kind of the objective is just keep going and keep trying to do what we thought, man, this is God's work. You know, they're all bad guys. And hell, we made them. We made a lot of those guys bad guys. Like I said, if you come to my house and you break in at, you know, whatever, 2 o'clock in the morning, I'm not going to be too happy about it.

And it's like, if we weren't there, would that guy be trying to kill Americans? Al-Qaeda guy, maybe, but like Taliban dude? What the hell do they care?

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

Yeah. What were some of your more memorable experiences from that trip?

Uh, I don't know. That's a good question. That's a very good question. I've got some— maybe they're not the— they're not good memories.

They can be good, bad, funny, whatever you want.

So we got, uh, so we were QRF one night, 9-5 was on a hit. And so we're sitting by the fire, aircraft is sitting there ready. And, uh, we've got a package for them. We're going to bring either ammo or like some med supplies, a couple of different packages. So they're going to go do this hit. We'll call it 2300. Because I'm pretty sure that was the time the hit was. About 23:15, the radio crackles. These dudes are like, we need some help, man. They're calling in the entire package. Okay. I'm like, bro, you guys just got onto the objective. Like, we're en route. We, everything is loaded up. We spin up and airborne we go. We're there in, I don't know, 30 minutes. Maybe a little less, but hitting the ground. I know roughly where they are. We all do. So we've got— now we prepared with everything. We packed, we packed it all. It should have been in a truck, but we don't have a truck. We've got a UH-60. And so now it's like a selection event, trying to carry all of this shit because we're on a ridgeline. So we got to go down this ridgeline, like, because the aircraft won't even get us super close because it's going to drop us off, I don't know, 500, 600 meters away from the objective.

So now we've got to try to haul all this stuff. And team sergeant's like, can't he go? Because they're they, they need medic support pretty bad. So me and a couple guys, we haul ass, we're heading on to the X. Everybody else is like carrying equipment. Uh, so I get there and one of the, the Bravo on the other team, he's walking up this little ridgeline where we're linking up and he's got a dude on his shoulder and, uh, I was like, hey. He's like, oh, Kenny, you're here. Yeah, bud. He's like, hey, I got somebody for you. Okay, cool. Let's put him over here on the flat ground. So he puts him on the flat ground. Oh, there's, we're still in this like pretty good firefight going on. And so, you know, there's 3 rules of SF. Always look cool. That's rule number 1, right? Always look cool. So when I heard that in selection, I was like, yeah, Hair gel, sunglasses for sure, Merrill's or something.

Yeah. Cool watch.

Gotta have it. And then rule number 2 is don't get lost. No problem. I got GPS. Stop and ask directions. Rule number 3 is if you get lost, look cool doing it. Right. I really didn't understand that concept either. Maybe I was like the slowest guy. I slipped through somehow, but I didn't understand really what all that meant. And it might mean different things to different guys. I'll tell you what it means for me. And it was there when he gave me this guy that's missing a big chunk of his head and he's got multiple gunshot wounds on him. And I'm like, oh, fuck, this dude is not in a good situation. He's not doing well.

But you're the medic, so you got to be cool.

I'm the medic. And now he brings me another guy. So I'm putting this one dude's head back together, I'm running through my algorithm, I got the bleeding stopped, I'm putting his head back together. Dude brings me another guy. Now, you know, it's midnight-ish, I don't think we have a full moon out, so the lume is very low, and You know, you can't white light anything. And just right there is the village that this gunfight's still happening. I got my Bravo's now showed up and he's running his gun. It's kind of loud. And I got two patients putting one's head back together. Now I'll get to the other one. I'm going through my MARCH algorithm, massive hemorrhage, airway, respiration. So I get to airway and I was like, it's not doing good. So I'm going to intubate this guy. And I've done this plenty of times in the hospital, but never during a gunfight on Ridgeline at midnight under nods. So I start to open up his mouth and it's not really opening. And I was like, you know what? I'm not even going to do this. We're going straight to the cric. Because of injuries.

Yeah. I was like, we're going straight to the cric. I pull out my knife and then this, Jack, this is when it made sense. Because inside, I mean, I'm kind of freaking out, but you wouldn't know it. Right. Right. Because I've done this 100 times, 1,000 times in training. So I'm like, look cool. Right? Just look calm and collected. And then, all right, so I grabbed this dude's neck. I can't really see super good. So I've got to palpate. I got to feel the Adam's apple. I got to feel the cartilage for where that cartilage is going to be. And I was like, Don't get lost. So I start to make the cut and I'm like, fuck, if you get lost, look cool doing it, you know? Success. Success. Drop the tube. Bam. You know, now I'm feeling like, oh man, I'm badass. No big deal. I planned it that way. Yeah, yeah. Definitely did not see that wasn't on my bingo card. You know, got up this morning, but There it is. We did it. And so that's where those 3 rules SF came in. And that was kind of a memorable moment because then that carried with me for a lot of different things later.

Yeah, we ended up, I had several patients, I had 6 patients. Medic on the team on 9-5 ended up with shrapnel from a grenade through and through. He was medevaced first thing as we came in. So like it was me out there. And I guess I got to learn a lot about me and a lot about the training. It really validated everything that the SOCM course is teaching. I mean, through those halls make the greatest medics in the world. I'm the biggest believer in that. Like those guys are absolute studs. When you get out of that course, if you're able to make it through that course, very difficult first time go rate, but if you're able to make it through the course, you are stellar. I would let any 18 Delta work on me before a lot of these, like, I don't know, some of these dudes out there in the civilian world. Yeah, I trust 18 Deltas.

And did that kind of, like you said, that kind of like stuck with you? Would Did you find that in times of high stress you were able to remain calm?

It certainly helped out. Yeah. Even working with some of the local populace, we would do these little kind of like a medcap. Right. So we do medical capabilities. I would show up as the Western doctor kind of guy, and I would get all kinds of folks out there, kids. I had a kid and I was seeing this kid every few days. I'd have him come back. He was burned. The story that I got was they kept changing, but nonetheless, you take off from his feet to his head, just shit. His whole body was completely different. Because of just the severity of the burns.

Was this scarred over or is this still open?

It was some still open and a lot of it was just scarred over and he was still trying to heal from this.

This is not a sterile environment that he's— not at all.

Yeah. So, you know, like, I— what I've got with me, man, this guy needs a long-term burn unit. He needs skin grafts, he needs surgeries, and I can't do that, right? But I do have some things that I can do. I do have some pain medications to help him get through his day, uh, and I can wrap him up, and that psychologically makes them feel better. So I spent a lot of Curlix on this kid, but the family was very thankful, and that showed gratitude enough, even though I know that that's not what he needed, but I can't give him what he needed. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to do anything that I can. And I guess that made me feel that I was, I was doing something good. But then who did that to this kid? Did we do that to this kid accidentally?

Right. Right. In an airstrike or something.

Right. Because we may have done that to not that kid, but somebody else. Sure. When we were in a tick and we're getting after it, everything was going pretty smooth, more than I thought, but it just wasn't ending. We're about 9 hours into this thing. We got some air support. And so my Bravo is like, man, I got this 320. We got all these grenades. Let's go. Yep. Let's do this. So we just, we're just firing for effect because we're this one, this one group of houses. These dudes are just all over the place.

Yeah. Yeah.

Ants in the anthill. Yeah. So like, you know what? Cool. We're going to do it. So we just start lobbing grenades in there and we get a call from C-130 Specter and it's like, hey, you guys got a dude running around on fire down there. I found this funny at the time. Like maniacally evil funny.

Yeah. 9 hours into the firefight, you're not thinking totally clearly. You're—

but then like, fuck, man, you know, like, I feel like I, whenever I was running my gun, I felt like I wanted to, I don't know, at least be decent about it, even back then. Because I saw what happens with dudes who are really injured and all that pain and all that I'm getting to witness as the medic. So I'm like, you know what? I'm not going to be that guy. At least I'm going to try to do my work to the fullest extent so that they don't have to, because they don't have me on that other side, or a guy like me, you know, with, with fentanyl lollipops, right, and pushing ketamine. And, you know, this guy's gonna suck for a couple minutes, but then I'm gonna take care of him and, you know, snow him, and he's going to be okay, uh, pain-wise. They don't have any of that. So I thought I was a good human, but, you know, having that mindset, but then catching this guy on fire, then I was like, I don't care. Like, that's funny. Hahaha. That came back around years later.

So it wasn't at the time, it felt completely normal to you. A lot of stuff that we did.

Yeah. That looking back, it's like, that was not normal. Yeah. But we normalized that.

Particularly, you know, when you're a special ops guy like you deploying over and over and over again, having those like repeated exposures. Yeah. Like you can't help but feel like this is normal for you.

You get numb to it. Yeah. You get numb. Like I said, I tried to add the, keep the human factor involved in it, but there are definitely times where you felt it slip away. We just, we're just doing work and it doesn't matter. And you have to just cut that off. No emotion. You can't show emotion to everything. 'Cause it's all gonna come and catch up to you at some point. But I tell you, it's not gonna happen today. During this, while we're out here on this mission, none of that's happening.

I don't think, I think very few people even think that far ahead that, what are the long-term repercussions?

I wasn't thinking that at that time either. Yeah. At all. Like I don't think anybody was. Nobody really talked about that. And when you did have some kind of feelings, emotions, thoughts, mental health is what we're calling it now, right? Nobody wanted to talk about that except one guy. And it was, there was probably a little bit of alcohol that might've gotten, you know, moved around into the country that you know, what might not have— should have been there, but it was. And I think that that was a major contributing factor. But I did have a teammate. He was on the other team, but we were co-located together and was going through some struggles. And I I found him with his 9mm in his mouth.

Oof.

That was a difficult encounter on deployment. Um, because, oh shit, man, I gotta be super gentle with this because I could say the wrong thing or make the wrong move or whatever. And fortunately, I don't know, a good 2 hours. We talked earlier about talk therapy. You can go to a VA. But if you talk to somebody that's— you have done similar things, right? You can probably get the point across a lot better and things can— a brotherhood type of thing that you can work out instead of talking to a Someone graduated a psychology degree and has never been in the military, they might not shed the same insight. So I was able to work with him enough to get the gun out of his mouth in 2 hours of talking, a lot of hugging, a lot of crying, a lot of all kinds of stuff. That was very, very unusual for a situation like that at all.

Yeah. Unexpected.

Because guys didn't really want to talk about mental health. You just You go, you work, you do things, and then you keep that buried. You keep it where, you know, it doesn't need to come out. We don't talk about it. We don't. It's just—

I've heard stories over the years that like, I really feel for some of these teams. And the story, it's always some variation of this. You know, my team sergeant got killed. My team leader got killed. The guys are hurting, but the mission continues. These teams are left out there on these little FOBs to continue the mission, and stuff starts disappearing from the med cabinet. And that's kind of like what brings the whole— the whole shit show starts rolling downhill, you know, as the guys come unglued over time. You can see how it happens, you know.

That did happen. Not to me, not to my team. I was always very good on the accountability of our meds. I'm still yet— I've pushed a lot of ketamine. I've never experienced ketamine. A lot of other things, but ketamine, never. So maybe one day. But on another team, we're all going out on a deployment, you know, several teams are all flying out together. This dude shows up, he's a medic and he's just not looking good at all. And I can identify when a dude's been using. I don't know exactly what it is he's been using, but I know he's been using and he's got a problem. I didn't know the medic very well at all. You know, you guys in the, down the hallway, this team's gone, this team's gone back and forth. He's like, "Oh man, you're the new guy here?" He's like, "Nope, been here 3 years." Like, "Shit, I've never seen you." So it was kind of one of those deals. And I could tell that I was like, "You know what? This is actually good that he's going on this deployment because whatever he was doing, he needs to get away from that." Now I've got no oversight of the dude because they go on wherever area that they're going to.

And turns out he got into his med box, so he went home, which also is not the answer because when he got home, he OD'd on heroin and died. Jeez. So it's a slippery slope. Whether, I don't know the underlying circumstances, whether the guy just likes to get high or whether it was a trauma-related issue that he'd been experiencing through previous deployments that he's not been able to deal with emotionally.

To throw away his Special Forces career and then to start injecting heroin, yeah, there's got to be some underlying issues. Yeah. Definitely. Yeah.

A situation going on. He's not the only case, you know, for sure. So many more. Yeah. Not just with heroin, but with one, all types of drugs. Opiates. Well, heroin's an opiate. Yeah. Other opiates. Yeah. And other drugs. Yeah. Well, I was not an exception to that rule, so.

And was that when you came back from some of these trips that you kind of like self-medicating?

Yeah, it was. So during that time, it was alcohol. As we talked about, alcohol is socially acceptable, especially in the Army, man. Everybody's drinking in the Army and team parties. Alcohol is always a staple. It's kind of the almost a focal point. So you get used to that just being the way that things are, and that's just life. What we know but we don't really practice is the fact that we have to understand that that is a depressant. That will lower— get all hippie woo-woo now, but that lowers our vibration. Lowering that vibration allows some negative energy to come in. Now, when you go out and you spend your life doing some negative energy-filled stuff, like going on raids and hits and, you know, unaliving people, or at least being, being in that environment where that's a thing, like, some negative spirits are going to attach to you. Because now what's happening at home when you're out doing this Not for all guys. Some guys have amazing, you know, support systems back at home. Some guys don't. They come back, the support system's gone, right? This leads to a lot of divorce. This leads to a lot of, you know, problems.

Now guys don't have their kids because of these divorce. So now you— they're dealing with all this compound interest of garbage, right? Of, of trauma, not just from what they did in, you know, Peshmerga, but what happened when they were gone. And what they're dealing with now, they're getting home. And so you turn to alcohol. You turn to alcohol, you lower your vibrations, you allow some negative energy to get into you, and then guys will black out, right? They'll do stuff, say stuff. The next day they're like, you remember saying this? No, I don't. Yeah, it's 'cause some kind of dark spirit was in you taking over, man, and living in your body. And We do that. We do that for years. And that one thing leads to another. You start with the alcohol, you move on to something else, some other kind of drugs, whatever those may be. Prescription pills. Tramadol was a big one that guys really liked because that was an opioid and pain medication. Just pop that pill. It's like a really good looking naproxen. That takes the pain away. But then you become addicted to that. Like, you just need that to just keep on to function.

And that's the same with most all of those types of opioids.

And also the guys, you know, again, I can feel like sympathetic for it. As a guy goes through their career, starts racking up injuries, like there's a toll on the body as well, not just the mind. And Some of these guys start using steroids because they want to stay on their team. They want to stay on the game. They worked very hard to get to that position. They don't want to leave because their vertebrae are fucked up.

And they got injured, so they need to get something to help them get right.

Right. And things just continue to kind of spiral.

It does. And then it happened to me. They go into these like subcultures. And motorcycle brought me into a whole new subculture, as it did with a lot of guys.

When did that begin?

Man, I got my first bike when I was 8, so I've always been riding, and I've had Harleys for, I don't know, 20 years, 25 years. And everybody knows about all these, you know, high-end 1% clubs, you know, they're— they got movies about them and TV shows and documentaries. Hells Angels, Outlaws, Pagans. And those helped kind of spawn other clubs that a lot of veterans are involved in. And you go around to these military bases, there are a few other kind of big clubs that will also feed into those big 1% clubs. Now, a 1% club is going to run the whole, like, whatever territory. So if your club is in that territory, you answer to them. Yeah.

Like, if you want to wear the— what is the 3-piece set? You gotta be subservient to whoever the big daddy is in that region.

And there are military veterans, active and retired, that will prospect. They will go through 6 months, a year, sometimes longer depending on the club to earn that 3-piece patch to go ride their motorcycle along with a bunch of other dudes wearing that patch. Yeah, it's not quite Sons of Anarchy, but it Sometimes it's not too far off from that, depending on how deep some of these guys go. And military organizations are involved in some of that, which then spawns into a lot more alcohol use, drug use, which in the biker community, they like speed. Those dudes like methamphetamines, cocaine. Not to say all the veterans organizations that ride motorcycles are doing that. What I'm saying is that you get, uh, you might get some exposure, a lot more exposure when you're around that type of culture than you would just being in the military. Uh, and a lot of guys do get, get exposed to that and then end up going down some of those routes.

And the MCs, I've been told, like really love these guys because you've been trained to use weapons, explosives. You have all kinds of like counter-surveillance training, you know, how to like spot undercover cops and that kind of stuff. So like military, or do you think military guys are like specifically sought after by some of these motorcycle clubs?

They're looked into. And another one of the reasons is because they're also easily or more easy to be vetted. An example is if you are in one of these 1%er clubs, you are not going to come from a law enforcement background. You have to hang around these clubs just as a random dude, a friend that starts to get to know these guys. And that might last for a year, 2 years.

They call them hangarounds or something. Hangarounds.

Yeah. And then from there they might ask you if you wanted to step up and participate more, they might allow you to then become a prospect or probate. And you might do that for a year, 2 years before you can become a full patch member. That's a whole vetting process. They're vetting you, you're vetting them. And yeah, they're not going to— if you're a military, at least they know a lot more about you. You come in qualified. You come in with not just that background knowledge, but also it's easy to know that you're not a cop, right? Yeah.

Yeah. The police aren't going to put you in the military so you can infiltrate a biker gang, right? Yeah.

And there was some guys that did go towards the One Percenter route from the military in the Outlaws. And in the Hells Angels.

After some of those trips with 9-5, were you still in 5th Group after that or were you moving on to SWCC?

Then I went over to SWCC. Okay.

Yeah, I went to the Delta Committee. Gotcha. So what was it like becoming an 18 Delta instructor?

I don't know, man. It's a pretty cool job, I guess. Because the first time you go through the medic course as a student, you're just trying to survive. Yeah. Looking through a toilet paper tube. Forget it. You retain 30% maybe. You learn something and you dump it because there's so much more you've got to learn this next week. And then it's just over and over and over again. Now, once you get out to the later phases of the course, the trauma phases, hands-on, actually doing life-saving skills on people and also on— we were using caprines, goats. Those are the types of skills that stick with you. And that's a lot of fun. To me, not working on the goats, I didn't like that. I don't know. I like animals. I don't like people. It wasn't my favorite part.

I think every 18 Delta student hates goats by the time they get out of that course.

If you try to feed it to me, man, I'm going to throw up. I can't stand the smell. It's just that PTSD in my olfactory nerves. It's going to— that was awesome. But to answer your question, it actually started to get watered down during my second half of the tenure. The reason being is because there's a standard with everything across the board, whether that was Ranger School, whether— and whatever, we can have that conversation about what actually happened. Did the standards change or things just get looked at differently? We were getting looked at differently. A guy, I'll give you an example. A guy came through the course that his faith was Muslim and he was fasting and we had the UBRR, upper body round robin. Okay. So if you're not familiar with that, you have to do bench press. It's like your body weight or 80% of your body weight, and how many times can you do it? You gotta do like a minimum of like 4 or 5. It's super low standards. You have to be able to do like 3 pull-ups. Um, you have to be able to like hang from the bar and then put your ankles up above your head and do like 4 of those, like to get a basic score, you know.

And then of course, you know, guys are getting like 25. And then you go to the dip bar and You got to get like 8 dips, dudes knock out 40 or whatever. We had this guy, he was, he was Muslim, he's fasting and he couldn't even get the bare minimum of any of them. And then it ends with a 5-mile run in 40 minutes. He failed every single event. Not only that, he failed the PT test that was given like 2 weeks after that. He failed like 3 written tests. He failed like 2 or 3 of the hands-on versions. And it was, hey, you got to recycle this guy. You got to give him another chance. You got to give him another chance. Because now we started shifting over to being a little bit more— I don't know if you want to use the word woke, but things were changing.

I mean, this might be a little controversial, but it's been said that when there are people going through the Q course who have unique language abilities, that they get pushed through no matter how poorly they do. Yeah. Some of the tests.

Yeah. And you know what? Maybe that was a portion of it. And I would have said, you know, I 100% agree. But then it didn't stop there. Yeah. That was just the catalyst to then every other dude that couldn't make it through. And it's dangerous. Was, oh no, we're giving another chance, another shot. Give this guy another opportunity.. And that just became the norm almost to be like, you can't fail a guy. So, so what did that look like when we were getting briefed by this 2-star that comes out and he says, look, you guys are Green Berets. So it's a small group of us, me and maybe 4 or 5 other cadre. And he had a captive audience. There we are. And he's like, you're here to train these guys because as a Green Beret, you go overseas and in their target language, you're going to train them. To be just like you. And you're telling me you can't do that with Americans that are motivated, that want to do this? So, well, I mean, no, you got a point, but of course there's definitely two different standards of training. I'm not going to create an American Army Green Beret with an Afghan National Army guy.

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

If you're looking a little iffy on the go, maybe.

Yeah. Then I'm not going to pass you. Right? Like, there's a standard, um, you know, and I could be pretty lenient. Like, I know we, you know, we need some guys out there. We're not producing these, you know, mass-producing SOF because we're not supposed to. But it did get a lot more lenient, um, and, you know, I can't say that that was like the worst thing because I feel like we learned from it, uh, a lot of folks got slipped through the cracks. And I think now things are changing. I mean, we could see a lot of changes that are being made with this administration, specifically speaking on the ideology of military training and what our standard regulations are for the troops. I think that's gotten a lot better.

What was kind of like your perception of like why this was happening? I mean, I, like when that general came and told you that, like, did he really have like an ideological belief or was this more like, like a mandate from DOD that like you need to produce more Green Berets? I mean, I don't know what the deal was, but yeah.

What's being fed at the Pentagon and what we're getting fed is probably two different messages. Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure. Most likely it is the, we're going to violate the rule that says, you know, soft is not going to be mass produced. I think that one kind of, they wanted to put that one out the window. And the other part of it was that, I don't know who knows, maybe an OER bullet that they came with science. And I say the OER bullet because somebody for their OER bullet.

We should explain to people an officer evaluation report is how military officers are evaluated.

They're going to get promoted based on how well— it's like their annual review. You get your annual review and theirs is their officer evaluation is their annual review. What did you do over this last year? Did you increase safety by 22%? Did you increase the readiness of this organization by 38%? And everything's got to have a quantitative value. And if so, if you look better than your peers, then you're going to get that next promotion. And those promotions end up into political promotions at a point. Sure. After around '04, '05, now it's all political. But with that, somebody fed them all this science that— in air quotes. Yeah. So the science said that if they make it through the selection phase, then they are going to move forward. But this is the training portion of this. They've already been selected. Right. This is the training portion. Now I can say that, you know what, if they don't want to get rid of them, you know, out of the 18 Delta course, like that's a big problem because the medic piece of that is we're training these dudes to be like amateur team doctors and surgeons out in the field.

So you really need to have your stuff squared away. But this spread to small unit tactics. Right. It's spread into the other committees. And it's not just affecting the medics, it's affecting everything. Like these guys get selected, they're now going to get trained. So you go from, you know, selection is, I don't know, you throw the numbers around, 30% maybe pass rate, you know, let's just say 30%. You go to the Q course, it's like, that's 50%, 50%, 60%. They want that. And like, no, these guys are like 90%, 95%. You're going to push these cats through. OER, mass-produced SOF. I don't know, pick your poison, but at the time I wasn't a fan of it because, you know, I made it, so I got mine. So now I need to be this tab protector.

How, uh, I was going to ask, you know, you became the NCOIC of the Delta Course out there. How did you kind of deal with this situation?

So that place is a, well, it's a museum. For one. By that, I mean we got politicians, every— oh, true star, everybody that's gonna have anything, Congress, whatever. These folks all gonna come to the Delta Course, right? So it's a dog and pony show. Maybe not every week, but at least 3 times a month we're gonna have distinguished guests and visitors. So we've got TVs up there playing our, our video on loop. We've got a, a band, an instructor damn near that stands outside of each section of the classrooms with like a banner hanging up of his section and what he's doing to give his 2-minute brief as I walk them all down through each and every phase. Because the first 6 months 5, 6 months you're in classrooms and you're knocking out like just physician-level anatomy and physiology and just really getting, uh, into the weeds with diseases. And it is the second half of the course when things get what students would consider a lot more interesting. That's when you're working with, um, you're working with moulage, you're working with trauma, um, you're working with mannequins a lot of it, and then you're working with live tissue.

So you're outside doing a lot of work and wearing your kit and doing medicine that way and sweating and being out there 12, 13 hours just doing all these repetitions over and over and over again. So guys really get a lot out of that. But then the very last phase, the third phase of Trauma 3, that was That was my favorite. That was like, that was my, my baby, if you will. Like I said, when I was a student, we really didn't have a final training exercise. It was kind of really watered down. It wasn't— I didn't feel like I got anything out of it. Hell, I didn't really— wasn't even sure, like, are we doing this right now? I was like, are we in the FTX? And all of a sudden it's done, like 10 minutes later. So, like, man, this needs to change. So we built a really good FTX, 3 days, 72 hours straight, no sleep. Just go. We had a day crew, a night crew of cadre, 12-hour shifts, and just punishing these guys and still failing them. You get to the last thing, the FTX, and a guy doesn't do the job, he fails, you know.

Well, that one didn't fly. We got away with about 6 months, but after a while they're like, no more failing at the FTX. All right. So we built a 100-acre compound. Like, the contract was in order as I was showing up to be a cadre out there. And so we got the contract to go build this like 100-acre type of— I could build villages, classrooms. Um, I put Black Hawk helicopter frames out there, uh, some tank stuff. And there's a river, um, built little warehouses and really a great training area so that guys could do trauma medicine. We work with paintball guns, so we did have a little bit of kind of, you know, live fire stuff while you're doing medicine. And, you know, we have pneumatic machine guns, we have a lot of smoke, really try to generate a good type of experience where you're doing a lot of care under fire. So it was a month-long program out there followed by that 72-hour FTX. And it was great. It was super fun. And guys just, they loved it because you're really out there just playing army. Doing the job, yeah. And we had side-by-sides and guys are out there just screaming around on these things and loading casualties in them and practicing in the back of Humvees while we're driving around and doing medicine.

So guys got so much out of this at the end. So I was like, for the instructors, I was like, man, we need to build you guys like a logo, a team shirt. We have a team shirt for this place. So everybody's like, yeah, logo, team shirt. So I sit around and I'm building one. I'm not a graphic art kind of guy. I can't draw a stick figure. And I think I'm using PowerPoint is how I was assembling this thing. And I built this logo. It was a skull because everything's got to have a skull. Hell yeah. I mean, come on. We had a Navy, we had SEALs, and we had SOIDC, Special Operations Independent Duty Corpsman. We had boat guys. Gotcha. And so the skull has got to have a paddle that runs through it. And then Green Beret, we got to have cross arrows. Yep. Okay, we're going to take one of those arrows out and put a trident because we got SEALs. Man, it's all coming together. And then we had a— it's TRAMA 3 because they're the ones building this logo, so we'll put a Roman numeral 3 on the skull.

And there was 13 active duty instructors that were teaching this course, so everybody gets a star. So there's 13 stars wrapped around this Roman numeral 3, which I guess mirrored some other type of logo. Not intended at the time, but that became like kind of viral at the schoolhouse. Shirts, hoodies, hats, water bottles, all kinds of stuff were— team fund was running rampant. It was, it was doing fantastic. There was even an online store set up for this.

And then it became a little controversial.

It did become a little controversial. So then we'll fast forward, I don't know, 7, 8 years. January 6th happened. Apparently a similar logo. I don't think it was exactly this one, but I don't know, was seen in that area. Ended up turning into a safety stand down for that schoolhouse and it ended up on The internet and websites, Special Operations School uses extremist logo, and they had it so wrong. They had it incredibly wrong. But nonetheless, there we go. That logo became famous.

But it was SWCC that shut you guys down? Yeah. Yeah. Did it have to be redesigned or what happened with that?

It just got, it got, You can't use it at all. It was, it's gone. Or is it? Cause it's still out there. Yeah, they fought back actually. The guys at the schoolhouse fought back and they've kind of kept it in a lot of areas off that grid, but still thrives. Yeah.

They're wearing it on their t-shirts underneath their ACUs or whatever the hell they have now.

The fun thing about it is my son used to wear that, you know, as a kid growing up. He had the water bottle, you know, a hat. He didn't really know much about what it was. Uh, you know, it's like kind of the cool logo for the Special Operations Combat Medic School. So he grows up and goes to be an Army Ranger and goes to that school. And yeah, I got to show up during the FTX and run that lane. That was probably one of my more proudest moments that I had was being able to— because you go through something like that school, anything.

You have a little bit of home field advantage here too, having built the course.

I think a lot of people gave him shit going through that course. He passed everything on his own. I had no influence on— not that I could. I mean, that's like you either doing it or you're not, and everybody's there witnessing. So, you know, I couldn't persuade anybody on anything if I wanted to. But, you know, you go through any kind of, you know, the 18 Delta course, going through the Q course, you know, Navy SEALs going through BUD/S, whatever those things are. That's a significant time. That's a significant event to be able to have your son go through that same thing, walking down those same halls and doing everything that you got to do. That's cool.

And after your SWCC time, you went on to be a team sergeant?

So I went back to Went back to group and immediately deployed again. Where to? We went back to— that time I went to Gosta, which was also in Lebanon. Oh, no kidding. Okay. Yeah, I lived there for a year and a half. No shit.

Off and on. Just so your team was really going back and forth to Lebanon. That crew loved that. And Syria. Oh, and you did Syria too. What was your impression of Syria?

That's a shithole. Yeah, that was a short stint of just training some dudes that, that was kind of, it was anticlimactic.

Yeah, you guys weren't like on the front lines fighting.

No, we really didn't get to do anything cool. What we consider cool. What we consider cool is what, you know, when you're, you know, Call of Duty, you know, like when we're living that, that's cool. Right. And when you're just out there doing day-to-day JSET stuff, essentially. Yeah. Right. Right. That's not cool. So yeah, I went and did, did some more training out there in Ghost. And yeah, I did another 5 or 6 months out there. And I was offered, hey, you want to be a team sergeant in Syria on another rotation? Now I'm at 22 years at this point. The war at this point, it's 2019, it's all done. Yeah. Starting to feel it. You know, had a couple of hard landings, ate a charge, had some other underlying factors of some explosions that I won't really get into that I got some hardware in the leg for, but My body was just not really cooperating because at this point I'm in my early 40s and you got guys on there that are just still studs. Yeah. I can hold my own, but I'm like, I think it's about that time because I thought that I was mentally ready.

Yeah, and I wasn't. And all those years, like, eventually just all hit me at once. And during the transition, that was a challenging time. But it was one like, oh, I'm already committed. To my ex, Phil.

So what was your plan when you got out? Yeah, there wasn't one.

Everybody says have a plan and, you know, the plan, the plan for a lot of guys that don't have a plan is go contract. Yeah. 'Cause, well, that's still there. They're still paying good money. So yeah, it turns out that that also started to dry up and all that money started to kind of not be the big money that it was. And it became like, well, I don't think it's worth it to go over there anymore and do this for what you guys are offering. So it's time to change that plan. Um, I was riding motorcycles a lot.

Yeah, you were telling me that, kind of like to keep that kind of adrenaline level high. Yeah, and it was starting to get a little out of control.

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

Isn't it? Wasn't the Hells Angels started by World War II veterans mostly? Fun fact. Interesting connection there, isn't there?

So the The Hells Angels, the Outlaws, Pagans, Mongols, there's a bunch of— there's 4 or 5 big ones, but they're a one-percenter club. So after World War II, a bunch of dudes, because you know that Allies sent a lot of Harley-Davidsons over, and so guys were riding those. That was something that you got around on. Well, they also got good at fixing them. So Then when the war was over with, that is a surplus of these motorcycles. You can get them relatively cheap. Everybody knows how to work on them, you know, throw a gallon of gas in there and off you go. So a lot of guys got into that, you know, culture is just a way of riding their motorcycles around. And then, well, you ride with your buddies. Well, bunch of guys were doing this together. And, uh, you have in California, Hollister, California, the American Motorcycle Association would do this annual event. All these people come from all over, you know, ride their motorcycles. It was a week-long deal. It might be some drag races and stuff like that. Well, then, you know, if me and you were riding together, you know, whatever, and we're going to show up, we're going to wear the same, like, jacket, you know?

Right, right. Same color looking. We're going to have a uniform. We got to look the same. Everybody same, same. Well, there was a bomber squadron called the Hells Angels, so they adopted their bomber squadron name and then used that. Now, they might not have followed all the rules that the American Motorcycle Association had in store for their week-long celebration for their Bike Week or whatever in Hollister. Some people didn't care. They're like, yeah, fuck your rules, whatever. 99% of bikers are, you know, good dudes, follow the rules, whatever. There's 1% that don't care, and we're that 1%. So they adopted that. They wear that as a diamond patch on their cut, and they take this very seriously. Now that you've got veterans motorcycle clubs, like motorcycle clubs that veterans belong to, that When it says MC, motorcycle club, they've prospected to get that, which means that they've been doing a lot of work for— could be 4 or 5 months, could be over a year to be able to earn the privilege to wear that entire 3-piece patch. And those clubs that they belong to, say most— I don't want to lump everything in and speaking in absolutes— but are going to belong to an area.

They got some real estate, and that real estate isn't owned by that 1% Club. And that comes with responsibilities. Each organization has got different responsibilities to what that might be, but Yeah. But it gives this, like I was saying earlier, it gives guys an opportunity to get into things that they shouldn't get into, whether that's more alcohol, drugs, or being involved in some type of organized crime, whatever that might look like.

And it happens. You mentioned earlier that it's a subculture. And it is kind of interesting. I mean, Special Forces in and of itself is sort of a subculture in the military, but then there's this parallel subculture where now you're a different uniform and there's a different selection process and you belong to this other thing.

It gets better. You got Special Forces guys. We already said that, you know, we're kind of our own brotherhood, you know, SF guys, you know, they, They're belonging to one club and you got another SF guy belonging to this club. Oh yeah. And now there's this, this riff, fist fight riff, even worse. Does that carry? I'm seeing SF guys wearing— oh, that's— they got a different color jacket. Jump dudes, SF dudes, because they're wearing that color jacket. It's like, oh, you're 3rd Group? I'm 7th Group. I'm, you know, we're going to fight. For what?

And does that stuff, that rift, kind of carry into the workplace sometimes?

Yeah, it does. Some of the committees. That the qualification course has are good examples of this. I'm not going to dime any of these out at all.

I mean, in a few cases, I know exactly what you're talking about.

There's a couple of committees where like, yeah, we work together and, but you're wearing that color and I'm wearing this color and that's a problem. And it bleeds over, certainly bleeds over.

Oh man, that's wild, isn't it? Yeah, it's sub-subculture.

It's— I don't know, it's beyond me. I, I was involved in it for quite a while.

Yeah. I mean, if you're willing to talk about it, I mean, how deep did you go?

So I I was in a traditional MC. By that, I mean we followed all the protocols for a motorcycle club. We held what's called church. It's meetings. It's going to be like a skiff, phones outside. We're going to talk about some things. It's very organized. Just like any MC, there's a structure. You've got officer rankings, president, vice president type of thing. You pay dues, you have a clubhouse. And that clubhouse is going to have a bar, living room, areas for guys to sleep in. So it's pretty cool. It's welcoming. It's inviting to guys that have left the team life. And it's like, all right, now what? A new team house. There's a whole new team house. Whether that's just for our club, it's like that for all clubs. It's a team house, whether you've been a civilian or whatever and you get involved in one of these things, that does provide that for you. And guys need that. Guys like that and they're motorcycle enthusiasts. So it gives them something to go. They ride motorcycles, they plan. Poker runs, fundraisers, uh, different events to keep going. Um, and that's how it all started. And then I started getting a little bit deeper into it, and I started going, uh, because you meet with other clubs, um, at events, parleys.

One club might have a— hosting an event at their at their house. All the other clubs in the area will go there and support this club. Now you've got dudes, whether they're Ranger Regiment's got a club, you know, SF's got a club, just Army veterans or military veterans in general have a club. Civilians are all mixed into some of these. Civilians in general have some of their clubs and then these 1% clubs and you get them all in one area. Just like anything, guys start talking. Now you have to do this sometimes weekly. So you're doing this every week on bike night or you're going to like a local bar. The 1% Club is going to say, hey, this week's bike week, bike night is going to be at this specific bar. And if you fly your colors in this area, you're going to be there. Okay, so they got some other random grown man telling us where to be.

You're prospecting at this point.

Oh, even when you're a club? Yeah. If that 1% Club says, hey, your club is—

And if they tell you to come be the doorman all night, like you have to do it. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh yeah. They don't tell you to do it. You just do it. It's just kind of like being like the new guy on a team, like day one. Right. It's just things that you do. So then I started with the 1% Club in Tennessee and I was, I got in pretty deep with those guys. I was at the clubhouse a lot. 'til the sun came up, a lot. Yeah, it ended up on a bike night. And so there was this 1%er club that was a different 1% club that was moving into this area. Turf war. We can't have that. So riding motorcycles at 100 miles an hour, because that's how you ride them when you're in this club, uh, up and down the streets looking for these guys, going to these different bars looking for these dudes that are encroaching on your territory. Then one specific bike night, I had to Let's just say I had to go out of town for something else. So I wasn't with them on bike night. I was doing something else. And the dude that I spent all that time with, I lived at that clubhouse for so many times.

He stayed at my house so many times. He gets involved in a double homicide on the rival MC. A rival MC, because that's what you have to do. Yeah, that's what's ingrained as you wearing that diamond. Like, that's what you do. And now he ends up riding off gets picked up. And this might've happened at 8 o'clock at night-ish. The mayor was inside eating dinner, the mayor of Clarksville. This happened in Clarksville, Tennessee. Holy shit. He was inside that restaurant that it happened at eating dinner. Not that that really made much more of a difference. Didn't help. Did not help. We're not keeping that one quiet. We're not sweeping anything under that rug. Uh, I get a call at, I don't know, 11, 12, 1 o'clock in the morning.

Was this the, was this the steakhouse over by the mall? Yep. Okay. Yeah, I know that one.

So I get a call late at night and It was a detective, the arresting team. So they didn't take this dude to the jail, like the Cumberland County Jail. There was some weird unmarked warehouse-style holding place that was nowhere near the jail, like the other side of town. That's weird. Super weird. And I get a call and they're like, hey man, can you come and pick up your boy? And I was like, I'm not wearing that collar. Like, that's not— so how would you guys associate me with that? So now I'm like, fuck, that's not a good situation. Like, yeah, man, I'm going to come down and get him. So I go down and get him. He's in a Tyvek suit. So I'm like, this is getting even weirder. Hannibal Lecter. I don't know what's happening at this point. The detective's like, take care. I was like, this is interesting. Take him to his clubhouse. Like, hey dude, you're gonna need to go get a burner phone and, you know, go chill out somewhere. So dude goes and he, I was like, man, you need to be in and out of this house. I think I told him 7 minutes.

I don't know why I just picked 7 minutes. Randomly. I was like, dude, you got like 7 minutes to get your shit out of the house, man, and get out of here. And then you're going to go to this spot, get a burner phone. You're going to go over to this area for the safe house. And he's like, all right, cool. And then I was like, and I'm going to meet you there. Take a different route. So he did that. About 20 minutes later, that house got raided and everybody that was in there is face down, got the handcuffs on. So, hey, my 7-minute thing actually worked. Whatever, they'd already let him go, so it didn't matter. But anyway, so off we go. He's in a— he's hanging out at some chick's house, and then he calls me up a few days later. He's like, hey man, I think— I don't know, I think I might need to go back in. It's like, tell me what you want to do, man. So I'll— whatever, if you need help. Deputy or sheriff, detective, whoever calls me like the next day after that and was like, hey, I need you to bring your boy in.

Okay, cool.

So I can't believe they just let him walk out after a double homicide.

Let him walk out. Now took him back in. He just did. I don't know, it's been 6 years.

Oh, he just got out. He just got out.

Yeah. So the dudes drew down on him first. He was— Okay.

So there's an argument of self-defense.

We had talked about how some former military guys go as far as, you know, 1% clubs. That was a former military guy that had gone. Matter of fact, A 7th group guy was— turns out to be the president of Hell's Angels, uh, in Fayetteville. He died a few years ago. Turns out when that funeral happened— oh, you gotta know because it happened in Fayetteville— every agency, the entire alphabet was out there. I mean, the Greek alphabet was out there. Everybody taking pictures of every dude. It's like a mafia funeral that showed up. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, that's crazy.

So what happened with your motorcycle buddy after you brought him back into this sketchy warehouse?

So I'm doing videos. I'd asked him, I was like, hey, look, you know, can we have no press? Because I'm involved in this thing now, right? I was like, I don't want any press being there. Can you guys at least try to— and they're like, yeah, no problem. We have a 30, 40-minute conversation. With the dude standing outside my truck as I'm dropping him off. He was complimenting on how good we made the double doors at the clubhouse because I— we got doors from the post office, like these giant steel doors, and had a great security system on this thing, had cameras all over. And the bartender had all of his— because bartender's gonna be a prospect, You've got all the cameras up there to look at so you can see 360 around the house. There'll be 2 or 3 guys just watching cameras at all times. And the— whether it's the ATF, whatever, they were like, dude, you guys did a really good job putting up those. It was like, there's a bitch getting in that house, man. So it's felt— I wasn't an engineer at Charlie, but yeah, we did good. Uh, so, and they were, you know, I don't want to mention some of the things that were— they were involved in, uh, on this show, but they were involved in some things that I knew, like, all right, this is illicit activities.

This is not—

I didn't learn, like, you know, my lesson quickly. But I eventually learned my lesson. I was like, this is not, not working out. And at this time now, I had transitioned. I'm out of the military and I'm a civilian. I was like, I need to, I need to exfil. Uh, so I go back to Bragg because I had a house out there still, and I'm still riding with my club out there. Who lives right down the street from the Hells Angels clubhouse. And I just did not see— I was like, I'm going to end up in the same situations. So I decided that I was going to get out of that culture altogether and move to Florida where I actually hung up the helmet completely and got away from the motorcycles altogether. I sold them all.

But still kind of chasing that high, right? Oh yeah. Like you made that trip over to Ukraine when that popped off.

Yeah. Yeah, what was I thinking? Yeah, I don't know. It was allegedly, I was telling myself, you know, it was the money. But in hindsight, it wasn't even that much money. So I was wanting to do it to feel relevant. I think that's the best way to describe it.

To use your skills and your training.

I wanted to feel relevant and it was an ego thing, I think, also being like, I've got the opportunity to do this and let's see how far I can push it. That's a whole different situation when nobody's coming. There's no QRF. Nobody is coming. I don't speak that language. It's me and I've got a Terp and I've got a Hilux that I rented. It's way out, like 20 miles across the border. That's not even supposed to be that far east because I had to sneak in Robin Sage style from Poland. That was crazy. I ended up— so there's this long line, about 5 miles to get into the border. So we land in Poland and then we go close to the border, like an hour outside of the border to Ukraine. And we've got this, like, we've got this like augmentee that's going to help us get across the border, right? We got some random dude. That was a very odd situation because he was supposed to be at this link-up point at, let's say, 2:00 PM. Mm-hmm. So we're out there at like 1:00 PM, like on overwatch, cuz I wanna see when this guy comes in, is he being followed?

Is it just him? What is the situation really like? Um, At like 2:30, nothing, nothing. I was like, what? 3 o'clock, 3:30 rolls around, almost a couple hours had passed calling this guy. He finally answers. He's like, oh yeah, I'll send the— the driver will be there in 5 minutes. It was a van that has been sitting there since before we got there. Some dude comes over, gets in the van. I was like, all right, this is already not not looking good. Well, now he wants to bring this lady with her car and then we're going to— they're going to take us to the front of the line. I was like, none of this is adding up, man. Sounds legit. This is super not sketchy. We're going to do it, right? He's like, we're in. And we, we do. So the border is backed up 5 miles or so. It might take 3 days to get into there. We just go on up to the front of the line. This lady had a stolen car. Now I'm going to be in like this international crime syndicate with stolen cars trying to get smuggled into Ukraine.

And Like nothing's coming in. I got some med stuff because like I'm coming over and I'm bringing medicine. I'm bringing like all my trauma gear and everything. Found a dude like 10, 12 vehicles back in a Sprinter van, a Mercedes Sprinter, like nice, a newer one. I went up to him and I was like, hey man, I need you to get me across this border. I don't think he spoke English. I don't think he understood what I meant. He just kind of looked around, opened up the van. Now, there's another red flag that I've created. And I was like, yep, we're going in. Jump in the back of some random stranger's Sprinter van. Now, it's one of these vans that it's like it's a free candy van. There's no windows. It's a pedophile van. It's the seer van. And I put myself into this SEER van to break across the border to go to a war. And I felt wildly uncomfortable with it. I was like, man, this is actually, I feel good about this. We get across the border. Jack, we get across the border. 2, 3 miles, 3 miles tops, this thing breaks down.

Now, we're riding in the back. It's me and 2 guys that I went with now, because when we get to where we're going, we're going to split up and go our separate ways. So it's me and 2 other guys. We're in the back of this thing. Can't see anything. Have no idea, you know, what's— but we weren't back there long because as soon as we got across that border, a few miles into it, the van breaks down. So here we go. We pop out like, what's the situation, man? Another dude just comes rolling up. They strap a little tow strap on this thing and now we're just getting towed down the road by some, I don't know, 1985 Nissan pickup truck that's on its last leg towing us where the dude's got to like ride the brakes so you don't hit the towing vehicle in front of you. So we go, I don't know, 8, 9, 10 miles down the road getting smuggled in this thing. Finally, we hop out and because it was a rental car place about, I don't know, 15 miles or so on the other side of the border. And we go and rent 3 vehicles, 3 Hiluxes.

And we each like, man, high five. And we go link up with an interpreter, each of us, and we go off into the wild. Now Ukraine is, it's huge. So it's not as big as the US, but it's big as several states. So it's several hours, like a couple days even to drive from the, from the west to the east. And actually out west, it's like really nice. The landscaping, the greenery, rolling hills, beautiful restaurants, activity was all normal. There became a phase line, and when you cross that phase line, it was like it went from one to the other immediately, and it was like communist Russia looking. Definitely the vehicles, the people, what they were wearing, and then it got into the the most war-torn looking areas in Kharkiv. And so that's where we started operating out of. So me and my Terp, we linked up with some just random indigenous force, uh, Ukrainian army dudes. We're like, hey, we're here, man. You guys want some training? And they're like, yeah. And pretty much that's kind of how it went. Shake some hands and, uh, start teaching medicine. To these dudes, and they're like, we're going out on mission.

And I was like, awesome, let me hear the mission brief. I'm going to go with you because I got this GoPro, and we're about to start a new Blackwater. All right, so the mission goes like this. It's like 6 dudes and then me. I'm going to go with them, and they're going to go take on an entire Russian infantry unit complete with 2 tanks, they've got, I don't know, all the weapons and like 40 dudes. And there's the 6 of us and me. I was like, no, we're not doing that. It was an issue. We kind of got into like a thing. I'm just a new guy showing up there and I wasn't doing it to be a Dick. I was like, now that's suicide, right, man? Like, you guys are going to die. And I was like, I'm not going to go on that one with you, and I strongly advise you not to go because you're not going to come back from that. I'm just being, being honest with you. And so a few of the guys were like, yeah, if this guy's saying that, man, and you know his resume, and we're going to stick with this guy.

And a couple of dudes were kind of angry about it, and then they wanted to go talk to the colonel about it. The colonel comes down, he's like, no, we need to go. Dude, do you understand this mission planning situation? They don't. And they're also kind of in a desperate situation. Mm-hmm. And which I completely appreciate, but I am not in a desperate situation. So I did my best to keep them from going. And they didn't go. Um, now there were some other ones that, uh, we did go, and I sat in a ditch with tank rounds smacking, getting dirt blown, uh, on me. And then I remember I was going out to this one unit. It was like 8 dudes on this out post. We had gotten— they were like, hey man, these dudes out there like really need help, and you know, they're taking casualties. I was like, okay, cool, I'm gonna go out there and, and help with these guys. So me and my terp, we go out at— we got like a grid coordinate dropped to us, and we go out there, and it's a school now, and a village, completely desolate.

Nobody's there. At all. The school has been shelled a dozen times. All the houses got some kind of mortar rounds in them. And then there's this little outpost and then there's this, an area kind of like a basement, you know, you could go under a bunker. And so I'm like, all right, so you park, I parked under some trees next to the school. Because up until now I've been fighting the Iraq, Afghanistan, and we were accustomed to a certain style of fighting and that's kind of ingrained in us. Drone warfare wasn't part of that, right? And it is now. So we're going to add this to the menu. And so now it's a lot more variables in a country I've got zero familiarity with. With a language that I don't know, with now new fighting techniques that I'm not accustomed to. And I don't have any team. And if anything happens, I don't have support. I don't have a UH-60 coming in. I don't have a QRF. I don't have anything. So I'm like, wow, this is bold and maybe not smart. We're gonna do it, right? So I'm parking under trees because I'm like, man, I gotta outsmart the drones because drones can't see your truck under a tree.

Uh, so then I cover the truck up with branches. Hell yeah, dude, we were getting in it. And so I'm out there and I'm trying to set up all my stuff to make me a little clinic because we're going out on hits. So I'm setting me up in areas. I was like, I know we're going to take injuries, some casualties, so I want to be prepared. Well, the casualty is about to be me. So I'm going out to the truck and that's when the drone saw me because I'm out and it's kind of a field. And to get to the truck was about 50 meters or so, and that 50 meters was enough for that drone. I couldn't hear the drone or see the drone, but it had to have been up there because I heard a tank round. You ever heard a tank round?

Not at close range like that.

It was like a maybe a click, two clicks, which is close range for a tank, right? Yeah, yeah. Um, and I'd never I'd never heard it on the receiving side until that day. And oh, that's a very, it's a, that sound, you'll know it. If you ever get shot by a tank, you will know what that sound is without ever having the preparatory command of that. And I was like, I don't know what to do. I just hit the ground and to get as flat as possible. And from me to that microwave you got there, about 6 meters away, was a little outpost that I just mentioned. It got leveled. And I was like, son of a— So I get up and I sprint the short 10 meters or whatever to get back into the bunker. And I went down there and they just started drilling it. And I got it on GoPro.

Yeah, that sucked, man. So this was like right on the front lines, obviously. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

It was right on the border. Then I got caught up by Good Morning America. Oh, no shit. Yeah. ABC World News Tonight. Because I said there's 3 of us. Mm-hmm. One dude stayed in the back and he's coordinating because Well, we've got to get some viewership on this, but if we're going to start a militia, right, we're getting funded by— I still couldn't tell you who exactly it was. None of the three of us that were out there doing it, and I could tell you that. So they caught up with some news organizations and some journalists and ABC World News, ABC World— Good Morning America, ABC World News, and You know, they wanted— so I went back, linked up with those guys, and got to go do some footage for them. Um, and then all of this was not blurred or anything. So I don't know if I became one of the most wanted out there. Deca 52. So, uh, it was just the irony is everywhere that I lived was leveled, not while I was there. I escaped that place. I escaped death, I'd say, more times in a few months that I was in Ukraine than I did in all the other deployments almost combined.

I mean, there was definitely situations, but this one was just hit after hit.

Yeah. And the enemy has drones and ballistic missiles and, and I've got like no friends out there at all.

Um, but it was, it was cool.

What, uh, ended up making you decide to leave?

Um, when I went, so I, I kind of, I fell back to like almost as far as I could to be in like a safe zone. Um, the hotels were great. They were like $15 a night. So I was staying, and these are like decent hotels. Uh, and then just being in there, like, you almost want to feel, okay, cool, I'm safe, I can kind of relax. Nope, nope, rockets are coming in. And they're hitting a block away. And it's just like, man, I'm going to be laying here and sleeping and I'm going to get hit by a rocket. And I've gotten you all the footage. I sent everything that I could to, you know, doing this. And like, you know, unless you're going to up the ante of that funding that while I'm here, like we're done. I got you everything that you need. I think to get started. So yeah, a few months and I was like, I'm done. T for train down Ukraine. It's time to bounce. And I did, jumped on a train and went back to Poland. And then now guys are starting to show up and there's more like retired guys and then organizations are starting to happen.

And I was like, good luck, fellas. I'm going to the house and not coming back.

And so when you did get back to the United States, you started doing executive protection work. You started teaching medic classes, essentially, to fire departments. And I want to get into this whole other, you know, part of your story that outwardly you were doing really well at this point, right? You know, getting jobs, making money. Yeah, everything's going good. But internally you were having problems still.

Yeah. So, you know, like we discussed being, you know, you get out and want to be a contractor because there's all this money. Because when you're in the military, you don't make money and everybody wants to make money, but we don't do that job for the money. So I was able to find very lucrative careers or training opportunities within my career field, which was teaching medicine. And you can certainly do very well for yourself going out and teaching medicine on government contract levels. Very well. And so I was doing that because I was like, oh, I want to stay kind of involved in medicine and again, try to stay relevant. And oh, it's an opportunity to make some good coin. All that was happening, but it wasn't happening for me in here. Yeah. So then I was offered, hey, do you do security? I was like, why not? Uh, you know, what kind of money are you talking about? Same money working down in South Florida as that they were gonna— were paying me over in Ukraine, which, like, contractor money. And I was like, man, that's— it was some specific types of clients. So then I got to work with a lot of ultra-high net worth clients, some famous and some infamous clients, clients that have laundered billions of dollars through countries that we are currently in conflict with.

That's a whole nother situation with what that recently came out 2 weeks ago in the news and how that You know what, let's not get into that one. Um, but yeah, so executive protection, I got to work with a lot of really good, uh, a lot of fun clients. Got to see some, some things that I might not ordinarily get to see. And I got— certainly got to see a lot of people that I would not ordinarily get to meet. Um, but that was kind of boring. Um, I think really the biggest thing was a void that I felt, and it needed to be filled. I wasn't involved in any kind of motorcycle stuff, you know, no team stuff, no shootouts anymore. Um, Ukraine was kind of a bust, so, you know, there's still alcohol. That's still a good one, you know, tequila. That'll never let you down. Yeah, unfortunately it does every single time. Uh, it took a few thousand times of trial and error to learn that it's never going to work out. And the, the motorcycle world, uh, also led me to some substance abuse And that doesn't work out. No matter how empty you're feeling, that is not going to be what fills the void.

As an atheist, church was out of the question. So I don't know, I just needed something. I hated myself. All these things that I'd, you know, think that I'd done, you know, there was a lot that I did that I haven't mentioned that made me hate myself. And but I didn't really understand that that's what it was. I was angry. At what? I don't know. Anything. This, that. Doesn't matter. That's going to just piss me off. Anxiety. Kind of depressed states. For what? And not to sound like a complete— but I will sound like a total asshole, but I mean, I was driving a new Lamborghini and it wasn't making you happy. It wasn't making me happy. I was like, man, I still feel dead inside. I was like, I don't even know what to do about all this. Why am I so angry? Why am I pissed off at the world? What is wrong? Why am I drinking myself into an oblivion? Not like every day, not even every week, but Hell, who knows? If I have 2 drinks, I'm probably going to have 12. And if I have 12, who knows who you're going to meet?

Because it's not this guy right here. You're going to meet somebody else. You're probably not going to like them, and I'm damn sure not going to like them the next day. So I need to figure out how to get over that.

What was kind of the turning point?

Definitely the bottom of a bottle of Casamigos. Um, it was the next day when it's one of those— you wake up and you're like, where am I? Okay, I'm in my house. Good. Holy shit, what happened? What did I do? How did I get home? Oh man, one of those. I probably made some comments and stuff the night before, but nothing detrimental. And I'd had an Uber take me home. But the point was that I'd had too many of those nights. Yeah. And every time I have one of those, I'm like, man, I'm done. I can't drink anymore. It's just, I can't do this. Whether it was that or going on a cocaine bender, just, I can't do that again until the next time. And then you're like, all right, all right, I can't do that again. How many times does that need to happen.

I mean, as we both know, it kills a lot of people.

Yeah, it damn near killed me. You know, I say, you know, Ukraine, Afghanistan, during the— during their peak times were some of the most dangerous places in the world. And I would walk along the edge during a lot of those times. I stayed on that edge a lot longer just in my regular life with drugs and alcohol. Yeah. I should have died more during the activities that I was doing in that state versus being At war. At war. Yeah. So what was it? A deciding factor is just one day I said, I had— today has got to be the last day. And the next part was like, okay, how do I do that?

Right.

Um, and it's from podcasts. Oh, really?

Yeah.

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

Yeah. If anything, you're predisposed against it at this point, I would imagine.

Yeah. Yeah. And I'm like, yeah, I don't do that. But I've been hearing so much about it from these guys on podcasts and how it's helping veterans. Was offered it years ago, uh, and I, I was like, nah, that's not for me. It's like hippies, you know, I don't do that.

It's probably like worth pointing out to people, like, from everything I've been told, like, the plant medicine is not a drug. Like, there's no situation where like you and I are going to sit here and like do ayahuasca, like trip balls in this office. It doesn't— that's not what it's about, and that's not how people use it.

Never. Yeah. But yet I kind of, that was still kind of the stigma that I had even up until that point. And I was like, you know what, but I got to try something. So I'm going to do this. I don't know how, where, with who. So I used the internet.

This is where it begins.

So am I going to shaman near me, right? So I know there's no shaman down near me in South Florida until there is. Yeah. It's popping up everywhere. So I decided I'm going to go to Mexico and I found a guy down there. On the internet, and I'd show up. Now, mind you, I'm already kind of sketchy about this whole situation, but as we've learned from my previous Ukraine sketchy— you know what, we're gonna— let's just do it. Uh, the sketchier it is, the more fun and better it's going to be. And I end up down this long dirt road, and it's some like house. I was like, am I at a house? I'm picturing some type of sanctuary, like a, some type of rehab recovery center type of thing, and they've got this big ceremonial space, and I'm in a dude's house. And I was like, uh, okay. And this guy comes walking out in like jeans and a t-shirt, and a local guy from the area, and I was like, He's like, Kenny. I was like, oh, all right, so I'm in the right spot. I was like, but, uh, you know, you things, you made me feel a little bit more, uh, less comfortable.

And he's like, nah, man, it's okay, everything, we're good. Like, okay, well then I'm gonna park my car, let's get started. Uh, so actually next door had this little cabana that he had me live in. And I got to stay out there with him for, I don't know, 5 days. And he's feeding me all types of good food, healthy stuff, keeping my body clean. And he said he's going to start me out with this cleansing called combo. Okay. I'm I didn't know anything really about combo. I researched the psychedelic treatment that I was coming down for, and I figured I knew quite a bit of enough about it to, to go through with it. Um, I don't know what this combo is. She was like, you're going to drink a lot of water, like a gallon of water. So I drank a gallon of water. Now mind you, I got there like, I don't know, We'll call it on a Tuesday, and I just kind of got settled in. And then Wednesday we started all the process. So I drank this gallon of water. Now he's going to take this vine and burn the vine, and he's going to get me in my, in my shoulder, and he's just making like little cigarette-type burns.

So I've got small open wounds in my shoulders, and then I lift my arms up so that he can pour this powder— it's frog toxin— into these open wounds and spray them with water. Now, this dude doesn't use a measuring tool or anything. He's just eyeballing this, just dumping it out. And I was like, I mean, is it supposed to be that much? And turns out, uh, I don't know, I think I got more than I needed. Because instantly, I say instantly, about 2 minutes into it, I can feel myself turning another shade of green and I'm starting to just like wanting to just turn inside out. I didn't feel like I was going to die, Jack. I wanted to die because it was painful. The nausea was just horrible. And I'm describing this, nobody's going to want to do combo after I explain this. To him. So, you know, your experience may vary, but I just felt deathly ill. And he kept telling me, drink more water, drink more water. So I'm trying. I physically can't drink any water. And then it finally starts to come up. Now it's about 5 minutes or so until it starts to get to the peak.

And that peak lasts for about 10 minutes or so. And then you start to come back down. Those 10 minutes were an eternity, but I got up things that I was holding on to from 2004. I didn't understand why I was doing this. I do a lot better now. You've had a gut feeling before? Mm-hmm. So Your gut is telling you things, whether that's because it's your second brain, whether it's just the data stored in there, memory, trauma. That's how you get these feelings. It stores stuff in there that you don't want. And this purging ceremony, you have to drink all the water so you have something to purge out, but it helps the cleansing of that biome so that you can start fresh and then so that you can accept the medicine. So once I was done violently throwing up green, orange, I don't know, it was just a kaleidoscope of garbage in there, just of evil that I was getting up from forever. He was like, all right, we're going to the next ceremony will be in about 2 hours. I haven't done anything psychedelic at all. I just did this and I felt like I had just been in a fight with a couple of like heavyweights and I lost badly.

And I was like, man, I'm done with everything. Like, I think we're good. I'm healed. I'm good. I'm not doing anything anymore. And he's like, why are you here? And I was like, well, I'm here because I need to fix something in myself. He's like, then you're going to stay and work. And I was like, yeah, I mean, he just called me out on that, so I can't say no. All right, I'm going to stay here and work. And I went and rested for about 2 hours. He called me back for for my next ceremony, which is arguably one of the world's most powerful psychedelics. It's called 5-MeO-DMT. It's the frog or the toad. It's the Sonoran Desert toad, and excretes a toxin when scraped and dried in the sun. You could smoke this. I don't know who figured this out, but it's— I don't know, it definitely changes lives. So I'm sitting at this dude's house, and you take 3 hits of this. You need a third hit as a breakthrough hit. So you take a big hit, you let it out, and immediately another big one, let it out. And hopefully you can get the third because you're already going completely incoherent.

Oh my God, you are catapulted into the ether in milliseconds. Now, what do I mean by that? So The English language is difficult to— it doesn't have the words to describe what you're in there. I will first tell you that I was dead and I knew it instantly. I was like, he didn't measure this out enough. I OD'd. I'm dead. Wow, that's a real disappointment that I went to Mexico and OD'd on drugs. And, uh, this is going to be a difficult one for, you know, to explain. Uh, that lasted about 30 seconds, and then I became at peace with it. And I became at peace with it, and I just let go. And when I did, it was the most profoundly beautiful experience that words can't describe that I've ever had. And I say that because it was so intense with just the overwhelming amount of love. And people say that God is love. I've been around the world and I've seen a lot of stuff, evil. And I'm like, God is not love. Like I said, I was a pretty devout atheist. The Bible, none of that made sense. Um, but when you have no body anymore, because you physically, you think it's gone because you can't see it, because everything that's in your reality right now, you know where you're at on a couch.

I'm in this chair. I could, I can identify a lot of things. But when all of this is completely gone and it is something completely different, and then you have no concept of time or self, what do you have as a landmark to life?

You're like a disembodied consciousness.

All of those landmarks are gone. Therefore, you feel like you cease to exist because you don't exist in this anymore. And because time is now gone, You, you don't know if you're coming back. And this is so profound, you've never experienced anything like this before, that like you're convinced that, okay, you've moved to another whatever the next thing is after death. Um, and so once I was convinced that, yep, there it is, I've died and I've moved on, and I felt that overwhelming love the 10 minutes that I was in that, roughly, because it's very short, very short.

That's interesting, both of these are like 10-15 minutes.

Yeah, yeah. Um, so dimethyltryptamine is, is very fast acting when smoked but very short half-life. And that 10 minutes when I came out of it, um, I just cried. Tears of joy, tears of emotional overload. All of the things that I have, all of the things that I've built throughout my entire life, every memory that I've had and every memory that I've forgotten. You never have forgotten it. You have just put up a block. Right, right. So conversations that you've had, the way somebody has treated you, the way that you treated other people, you've built walls into your brain that have prevented you. Because if you hold on to that memory, that's going to affect you. So we put up that wall and we forget about that, but it's still there. That is our ego or our default mode network. And this completely eliminates the default mode network. It's called ego death. That's why you think you died, because you have. My heart's still beating, my lungs are still filling with air, but the Kenny that I was before I took that DMT is no longer here. He's dead. And I was able to come out the other side a completely different person.

And everyone that knows me will tell you the same thing.

Is that because you were able to let go of some of these past experiences, or did they feel reconciled? Like, what was sort of that process like? Forgiveness. Really?

Yeah. Absolute and total forgiveness. This brought me to faith because I sat with God and I felt the love, and nothing compares to it. Nothing. And the words can't remotely— it's— I'm using a stick figure to talk about the Sistine Chapel. You just can't do it. Yeah, I get it. And that feeling then opened up my consciousness and opened up— it gave me a big peek behind the curtain so that I could understand what else is going on out there. Right, right. How little do I actually know? And I know nothing. But I do know now that there's so much more, and I've seen it. I can't tell you about it because I don't— it's like having a very vivid dream. As soon as you wake up, you're like, uh, something like an alligator's chasing me, but then I was on the top of the building and— but it was so vivid 15 minutes ago. It's like that.

I knew everything, but now I don't. And there was like one more step in this, uh, first journey, wasn't there, that he had you do?

So after that, uh, the next night was ayahuasca. So Ayahuasca, just like the 5-MeO-DMT, is DMT. So ayahuasca is an ancient brew. It's been used for over 1,500 years, and it's a Peruvian, Colombian jungle medicine. It grows in the Amazon. It's a plant that— it's actually two plants. So it contains— there's Chacruna leaf is primarily the leaf that's used in the making of ayahuasca. The chacruna leaf is rich with DMT, dimethyltryptamine. If you were to ingest dimethyltryptamine, you just eat the leaf, nothing's going to happen because your body has got monoamine oxidase. That monoamine oxidase breaks down the DMT before it can do any psychoactive effect on it. So then you have to combine that with a vine. Now, the Banisterias cappi vine is also grown locally to Peru, and you chop down a section of that and beat that into submission. And then you put Apolo leaves and some of the vine, and you boil that for 12 to 24 hours, and it comes out with a— as a tea. Um, now when you ingest about a shot, like the shot glass, you will start to feel some effects in about an hour. The second shot glass, that's when things get interesting.

That's when things get a lot of fun. Uh, ayahuasca is unlike ibogaine, which is now what we're pushing for psychedelic research. It was just signed a few months ago into legislation to advance the research on that. That's got some cardiac difficulties. It can put a little bit of strain on your heart. And, you know, you're pushing 50, guys in their early 50s. I'm uncomfortable doing that. It requires doctors, nurses, a whole staff. Ayahuasca is much safer, a lot safer. So this is done in the jungle setting. Now, when I did ayahuasca with that shaman, it wasn't at his house because this is not something that you do. If I come over your house, we can smoke a little weed and watch some TV. That's cool. You're not going to do that with ayahuasca. It's not a party drug at all. This is structured. People take this very seriously weeks ahead of time with a proper diet, not eating red meat, abstaining from sex, no alcohol. Social media, staying away from that stuff for a few days. You really put forth all of this energy into respecting the medicine. And then when you go down to the jungle where I went, we went deep into the jungle, and it's just you and the shaman and the fire and the jungle.

And then this medicine will talk to you. Now, ayahuasca is going to last for about 4 to 6 hours. So when you combine that vine in there that's got the monoamine oxidase inhibitor to allow you to do that. So, what I brought for you today is the ayahuasca vine. Oh, wow.

Thank you. And so, what is this?

So, that is the vine that it's an actual vine that's lacquered. But, that vine, you would take a section maybe about 3 feet, and you would take a wooden mallet and you will beat that, make it all nice and flat, and you'll put it in a big giant tub of boiling water with a big pile of the chacruna leaf. That is what keeps the body from breaking down the DMT.

So, that's the difference between the first time you're smoking DMT, the second time you're ingesting it. Correct.

When you're drinking it, it's different. You have to have the vine attached to it so that it can keep the body from breaking it down. Right, right, right. Yeah. And people have a lot of similar results. Results may vary, but they're all very similar. Similar experiences. Yeah. So I've worked with over 60 veterans just this year. Uh, we've— I've worked with some high-ranking veterans. I've worked with veterans with severe alcohol problems. I've worked with guys that have been going to the VA and they get put on a laundry list of medications to include Zoloft, 200 milligrams. That's like the most they'll prescribe daily. You get on 200 milligrams a day for a few years, like, I mean, that's your daily regimen. I have taken guys on a structured retreat, 2 nights of ayahuasca ceremony with several other things in a 4-day weekend, and no longer on those types of medications. They take cannabis for anxiety and sleep. They don't do that anymore. Their gummies are gone. Guys that were drinking nearly every day, no drinking. I haven't touched a drop of alcohol since. Not since my first ceremony, I haven't touched it. And I do ceremonies with— I take guys down to the jungle because I said I went down to Mexico, I looked up a guy on the internet.

So since then, I've done a lot more research. I've gone shaman hopping and I've found some amazing Peruvian shamans that I've been working with repeatedly over and over. I've got a beautiful sanctuary in Guatemala up near Antigua by Volcán de Fuego. It's the most active volcano. Yeah, yeah. Yes, active is about 15 times a day that volcano is going to go off and we're at the base of it out of lava reach, but that's pretty intense. So you're in the jungle at the base of active volcano. It's 2:00 AM and ayahuasca is showing you all this love and Mother Nature is showing— Mother Nature showing you all the power. It doesn't get any better than that.

And this is Waypoint 6 now.

Waypoint 6. I decided that I wasn't the only one that needed some kind of help. And people aren't going to just look at— look up on the internet and find a random dude that's going to serve them, you know, plant medicine and feel comfortable doing that. So I thought it was a good idea for me to help guys. Yeah. And be the liaison for that, right? And I say, hey Jack, you know, I see you struggling. Do you— let's, let's talk about this. Hey man, I'm working with plant medicine. Are you available next month, man? I'm going to take you down there with me and you're going to feel a lot more comfortable if we approach it that way, right? Then you just find something out on your own. White Pages, right? So then I'll take a small group and I'm going to take you down there. I'm going to put you through the whole retreat.

I'm going to do it with you.

And that's how we're going to do things. And, uh, yeah, speaking of which, you want to go?

I, I think, uh, I ought to at this point. Uh, like, I've talked to so many veterans that have been through the process and speak so highly of it. Like, probably I should give it a shot myself.

I don't put as much energy into the things that shouldn't bother me like I used to. And that would give me anxiety, right? And then I would— You feel more focused. It would upset me. I would get angry. And yeah, this, I'm like, those things don't matter. I've seen what matters. And you can't unsee it, although I can't describe it to you. I can't unsee it. That's weird. I get it. But it's the most profound thing that ever happened to me, and I just want to share it with the world.

And, you know, speaking of which, where people— where can people go to find Waypoint6?

So waypoint6.com. Okay, that's easy enough. Waypoint6.com. And Yeah, they can go on there and send out an email and usually it's going to be me calling.

And you've been doing this like once a month, you're saying?

I've been going at times twice a month. Okay. But yeah, at least every month. So you're in demand. We— yeah, we're pretty booked up, at least for a couple of months out. But which is sometimes I'm like, hey, I'll run an extra one this month because I'm not going to call out any other organizations on your show. I applied to an organization. This is why I went on the internet and found my own guy, because I applied to an organization. Nobody got back to me. I get it like a day or two or three or a week. So I found my own guy. I went, I handled myself. I went, I found another guy later, and I was like, oh, this shaman is the best, this sanctuary is great, moving in, we're going to start working. And started getting into a kind of a rhythm and already taking somebody down there. And then that organization finally messaged me. I'm like, it's been a few months. Not only did I self-medicate, right, right, but I found the beauty in it, and I found how amazing it was with my results. I've been taking guys down there to get this for themselves, um, and they were like, oh man, that's terrific, you know, great.

But That was the whole idea. It's like they didn't even contact me for such a long time. Uh, and then when they did, before I actually came out and told them it was going to be thousands of dollars and I had to do it, you know, like, hey, we can do it next month and it's gonna be thousands of dollars, but if you wait, you know, we might be able to get it sponsored.

So then I've been reaching out to— I understand that they're maybe busy, right? This is the same complaint that we have had of Veterans Affairs, that you're on this waitlist for 9 months, and during that time period, the guy's self-medicating and doing stuff that's going to hurt, if not kill himself.

Yeah. So I wanted to make my effort to be, I want to contact you immediately. Like, if you send a message, if you're on the website and you're like, hey, uh, more information, apply, I want to get back with you within like a day or two. And then, I want to be able to get you somewhere. Let's do it in a month or within the month. Here's the next available one. If I get too many people, I'm going to run another one. I don't want guys waiting for months on end. And then, another thing that I wanted to do slightly differently is that a lot of these organizations that are working with psychedelic medicine, which Thank goodness there's so many of them that are out there and that it's becoming so much more mainstream that it gives veterans lots of opportunities to do that. There's so many of these places catering specifically to special operations, which great, you know, did a lot of time as a special operations guy. All my friends were, you know, soft guys. But they're not the only ones that are in the mental fight. There's a lot of guys that are Marines in Fallujah.

It's not special operations. Those dudes were just out there kicking in every single door. There's dudes in the regular military units, whether that's 10th Mountain, 101st, the 82nd, whatever, and they're getting blown up by IEDs. They're taking RPGs. They're getting shot. They're in there doing it. They're in the mix, but they don't get the same kind of credibility because they're not a soft unit guy. So we wanted to get away from that and open this up to all veterans that need it. Yeah, it's awesome. Yeah, not Coast Guard, all the veterans though.

Well, thank you for sharing your story with us, Kenny, and setting this whole thing up, Waypoint 6, and flying out here to do this interview.

Yeah.

Thanks for having me. It's a lot to think about. Is there anything else that you want to talk about before we get going tonight?

I don't know, man. I think that's it.

Yeah, we talked about a lot. And you got me. Well, like you said, I mean, maybe you got to go and experience it from From here on out.

Words can't describe it. Yeah, yeah. You just got to go. Go with an open mind and an open heart, and you'll come back and you'll move differently.

Well, everyone out there, thank you for joining us tonight, and, uh, we will see all of you next week. Thank you.