I Came With Fire
"Forged In Fire" with Ian Roland
what's going on everybody welcome back to I came with fire podcast tonight we are here with Ian Roland is a active duty Air Force member security forces member just like Zach and I even though I just took the uniform off a couple days ago but Ian why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself and let everybody know who you are yeah thanks for having me on guys my name is Ian rollers active duty security forces guy really not much to me I'm an instructor at a school house within security forces the enterprise I'm keeping it at that keep it pretty big but yeah that's me I've had a pretty well life with lots of ups and downs so we want to talk about mental health my struggle and then you know how I got help and turn myself into a better person really that's awesome man yeah I know that's middle health is definitely a topic we bring up ever so often on the podcast and like talking about I think the first time we really had like a heavy mental health conversation was we had Dan Schilling on wasn't it Zach yeah that was um dude awesome conversation loved it that was a good one thank you I know you listened yeah that was so I'll keep it real right so um Dan said something on that podcast that literally made me go and and roll at mental health at uh my duty location and um he said that I had to understand that what happened to me isn't me and that yeah and I look knowing who Dan Schilling is right you know you listen so you know but for everybody listening if you've seen the movie Black Hawk Down Dan was there Dan is like a special operations giant I don't know there's no better way to say it really and he's really really really a man dude you stand me Dan literally Dan the man and um he's he wrote a book about Medal of Honor winner Air Force Combat Controller Master Sergeant John Chapman really really good book called Alone at Dawn but when he was talking to Zach and I I just remember thinking like if this dude can sit here on this podcast and say what he's saying about his own mental health then I for sure can go get help and talk to somebody and so that I do I really truly and truly attribute um you know the courage to go seek help and be real about it to Dan Schilling uh because of that episode but yeah we we definitely um it's about four to five all fronts four to five all fronts that's absolutely that's it yeah man yeah I feel like I'm like speaking on behalf of like dozens and dozens of airmen because when I posted that video when I got back from that facility like my DMs got absolutely flooded with younger men saying like hey dude like not really like thank you for making the video but like I'm struggling I'm just too scared to say anything about it and it's they're afraid it's gonna ruin their career and it has right not even slightly messed up my career in the slightest so that's good right right dude I I'm glad that it didn't for you because I have seen a lot of people have it derail their career in fact um the episode we had on we had Matt Harris on did you did you see that one Matt against the beginning brother oh word did you're awesome yeah but Matt and I were on the same flight together when we were at Volroy that's right and I don't I don't I really don't recall if we talked about it on the podcast we definitely talked about it like afterwards when we were chit-chatting we had a troop on on our flight there who I remember you saying that yeah yeah and and we tried telling her like listen like we want you to get help but go talk to somebody else because like they're they're being you know sneaky about these things and they're trying to get you know they're trying to ruin and derail your career and it happened and I genuinely will never forget that conversation that night where we had to sit this young like 19 20-year-old female down on top of all the other stress that she was feeling and say hey like you literally have like I don't remember what it was like three or four days left in the Air Force and you have that process leave Germany and and go back to the United States and do that well obviously she was really upset but I'll never forget her like Matt Matt got down on one knee and like I the biggest biggest fucking tear I've ever seen leave somebody's face hit you know hit his fucking boot and it was it was that sounds stupid but it was like a movie for a second and he can just tell like how genuine and we all like just were kind of crushed for her and obviously none of us felt as bad as she did in that moment but it definitely does ruin careers and I've seen I've seen it ruin careers yeah I mean me - before even really starts being recruiting right so you'll get I've had people who like you know they're like nervous about going to BMT or whatever and BMT isn't I don't think it's relatively challenging or difficult but everyone deals with challenges differently so sure yeah it could be really hard for one type of person or whatever and you don't really know it I've sent people down to who I thought would be like oh you're gonna be fine and then they have like they freak out when they get there and I have people who are freaking out and they're fine it's like okay anyways I used to tell everyone that I shipped down there like the day they were shipping I would tell them hey it can get stressful you can't have a bad day and that's perfectly fine if you do notify your training instructor your TI that you want to speak to the chaplain and the chaplain only I don't care if you're religious I don't care what right what it is you only want to speak to the chaplain if they offer mental health tell them no I just want to talk to the chaplain because if you go to mental health the Air Force is gonna kick you out and they'd be like what I'd be like yes like we send so many people to BMT is like there's 750 people who graduate every single week it's ridiculous and we send like a thousand a week so what's what's special about chaplain Zach yeah so I'll make it to the sector like we send we send like a thousand a week so the Air Force understands like 200 to 250 you are not gonna make it to graduation right like and it just happens it's the way they know that's why they want a thousand so they can pump out 750 and they're gonna they know that they can just be like nope you're not cream of the crop or you have this one slight issue we don't we're not worried about it go home they'll send you home quick the reason why it's only go to the chaplains because chaplains protected you can tell the chaplain anything a chaplain can't say to anyone else you could literally tell the chaplain anything and I would tell this to these to these kids I would say you could go to the chaplain tell the chaplain you're gonna murder everyone in your BMT flight and the chaplain please don't the chaplain just say please don't do that but have a good day and he will let you leave and go back to your BMT flight like that's wild if I go check his gear out of fucking S4 right yeah but that's that like and that's what I tell them and they you know they'd laugh with some parents who looked at me all kind of weird I'm like I'm not messing around like if you have a problem go talk to the chaplain everyone that had any issue that spoke to the chaplain graduated BMT had three that went to mental health all three were kicked out man and one of them one of them was saying that they were like having a bad day they're like I didn't and I got like they're because they try to get back in so I had like all like the records stuff from BMT and like the counselor there some like captain was saying that they were like suicidal that they like couldn't handle pressure like all this stuff do you do you think the Air Force is using those mental health guys at BMT as a filter yes 100 because I was talking I was talking to this kid and she was like no I just told the TI the TI came up to me was like yelling at me because I guess I was too slow and then the TI asked me if I wanted to go home and I said no I'm just having a bad day and then I guess the TI was like airmen don't have bad days they push through and then it's like the mental game they play you know like you gotta just keep going and I guess one thing led to another and then finally she was like can I go talk to someone whatever and just under the stress she forgot to ask for the chat one and TI took her to the mental health and she just told them that she's having a bad day and they held her for a week she saw the doctor like one more time and then she was like a week after that she was literally given a plane ticket turned in all her gear and told to go home holy shit did she try to like protest and say she wanted to stay yeah so mental health stuff if it's deemed like detrimental to your like person or the people around you you can't like try to stay they send you home immediately if it's like if it's like you got sick or like you play something yeah you can say no I'll wait to stay but then you're like in BMT purgatory forever until you're healed up but yeah no if it's mental health and it's considered if the Air Force considers it a hazard to you or others they just get ready yeah I didn't know it's that extremely basic man holy shit so the the thing is is it's a 30 it's 30 days so the first 30 days that you're at BMT you're you're like your contract it doesn't like say and like very specific but like the first 30 days the Air Force can get rid of you for any reason and it doesn't have to go through like a due process like it can just say oh okay it'll make sense it'll just go by at day 31 they then have to go through the whole process because now you're actually like a member of the United States Air Force even though you haven't graduated BMT it that's crazy either is this stuff that you told the people that you're putting in Zach ones that I saw have a problem okay in recruiting you tend to only say the stuff that they need to know in that moment sure you're very withholding and volition I mean like having obviously having been in the shoes of being in delayed entry program and waiting like your your mind is thinking all these things so that's like the last thing you want to do is inundate somebody with extra shit yeah so yeah good good call yeah man now I don't know dude I think all of us have if you've been in the military for any period of time have some sort of story about mental health whether it's your own or seeing somebody go through something especially security forces and not to say that other career fields don't have their issues because they certainly do but you know other than the special operations guys we're the ones that carry a gun and stand a post and and do all that all the time and there's so many more factors that have to be considered you know if you're not working at finance you know like maintenance guys really the only other ones that come to mind because they're working on aircraft you know and long hours right but like you if you're if you can't focus and you're repairing a c 17 you could kill somebody and you know crash a plane and now you're talking about you know a bunch of different things so like those are those career fields are kind of the ones that get focused on like the most but it's it's something what's up I was gonna I want to bring something up because to a lot of our listeners who may not be military or who weren't security forces or anything like that I think it was 2019 was the year of the defender was it 2019 right or there's around there I can't remember the exact time I think I think you're right 18 or 19 18 or 19 was like the year of the defender so the Air Force that fiscal year decided that it was going to like spearhead initiatives to make security forces like more modern it was gonna like fix a lot of you're done with this I have stuff to say about this shit too it was gonna fix a lot of like bureaucratic issues it was gonna they were gonna remove like the bad commanders and leaders it was all like let's keep talking let's make security forces great again that's what that's what it was like they're pledged literally that year though was the record for the most suicides for security forces members and it was like by a landslide and what was really annoying about that year is that you had like big Air Force like the Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force like the security forces center like match cons like all these people always base is talking about all the stuff they were doing for their defenders but then whenever anyone would bring up well why are they all killing themselves it would get deleted it would get swept under the rug it wouldn't get addressed and I feel like it still hasn't been addressed they still talk about like high suicides that year because I think for the Air Force it was also like a record year just in general and then the year after that was really high too but I think that was mostly because of like COVID and stuff but the uh that just really pissed me off and I wanted to just let all listeners and viewers know that the like the year that the Air Force was saying that we're prioritizing our cops was the year that it seemed like they didn't prioritize them at all right and while you're talking I found that there's a graphic um that the security forces center put out that year for your opinion and your rights act it was 2019 yeah um but it this graphic it says what defenders hold sacred and I remember when they put this out because people read it and they were like this is this is just absolutely dumb and out of touch yeah what my cops read they're like what the fuck one of literally one of the things on here that defenders hold sacred is it says chow and there are two defend two secured forces members sitting at here dude I'm gonna I'm gonna give you the link in the chat for you to put it up put it up Zach because um I'm better at it but it you are you are better at it big facts I will I can admit that right now uh you should you should have access to it now but um when you pull it up yeah it says one of the things that security force members they use the word sacred is chow and it has this super cheesy photo of two cops sitting at a table and there's literally there's a sign on the table that says uh reserve for security forces so here are the other things uh that it says that we hold sacred right the berry okay that's that's kind of fair they're like let's start at the top right the badge and shield sure okay we hold sacred all right fine yes i i want to say something they'll want it i think our badge is freaking stupid looking compare okay compare it to like every other badge and why do we're deaf like members to permit the air force have a real cop looking badge yeah why do they have a real cop looking badge and the reason why i think it looks stupid right so like i have a leoza okay mm-hmm when i get like what's a leoza uh law enforcement officer safety acts was enacted by gorge bush which allows law force officers to conceal carry off 50 states we just call it as leoza because we have a car this is his leoza right anyways um there's not every one of security forces to get there you have to meet a certain criteria typically most bases make you wait for like senior airmen or staff sergeant usually i don't know if they're still doing it now but typically yeah anyways um i have that so you can still carry so i can stop by a cop i do that yes i also do carry like my badge too because sometimes like people like cops normal cops carry their badges their leoza or something else so just showing them my identification card which they probably haven't seen can be confusing to them and i've had time for show them this badge and cops literally will say is this a real badge or like this looks like a toy and it does it's freaking stupid yeah i'm doing like an actual like cop badge the daft guys have an actual badge and they work for us they're the same thing let's be let's be real man the as as a security forces member there are only a handful of installations where you're really doing law enforcement at the level that a cop on the outside is doing that's true other than that you're a glorified security guard yeah and you may end up doing some sort of law enforcement if something happens and even then you know i'm out dude i'm gonna go all in on this shit no one is proficient at it to include leadership i literally had to tell a senior master sergeant in my last unit that he couldn't um interrogate people without reading them their rights because he wanted to essentially ask a bunch of airmen questions about something that happened and i was like you realize if you do that you have to advise them and and put it on a statement right and yeah it's like you just leave a look on his face like just washed over him that like oh my god wow yeah due process i'm an e8 i have to do this like yeah no shit you have to do that you know and he literally changed his mind about asking them questions which is pretty funny um but anyway yeah so badge and shield sure the flash right defense or fortist defenders of the force sure obviously they're going to put the badge they're going to put the uh the flash and they're going to put the berry on there okay i got but i i got say stuff sorry i'm i'm sorry no no maybe i'm not like uh like an old school boomer cop whatever but i think the berry is stupid too disagree you disagree again i want to hear you disagree with it so berry's are for like uh the tradition of a berry's for like a for like a combat unit that's typically what it's for that's why i like pj's wear um green berry's wear um that type of stuff um yes security forces are like the infantry of the air force and we are combat oriented in a way we do go to like a bunch of stuff we we could do convoys we've had fallen defenders in combat we've had to finish fight that type of stuff yeah i don't like our berry in our uh duty uniform i'm perfectly fine with it in dress blues i think that's perfectly okay and it distinks us uh distinguishes us pretty well but i think for actually working the berry is lame and i don't like how it says that i identify as a defender in the crowd you know it also i identify as a defender in the crowd my giant flak vest and the gun on my hip or the police car that i arrive in like yeah i mean i'll agree with you that that i've always kind of thought that justification about making you highly visible is is kind of dumb i mean it is true in some fashion because you definitely don't find pj's combat controllers tag p whatever on every installation right so if you do see somebody in a berry ninety nine point nine percent out of the time they are security forces so it is true but it's also like not true in in some some regard um and i would agree when people make the argument that the berry is not like um suitable for certain duties right so it doesn't provide any sort of like protection like the bill of a hatwood to help you see um it's made of wool right so it's hot whatever and then it goes over the face so you get a sunburned one half and you're white on the other sure i mean yeah if you if you are if you have the skin complexion of dracula like zach does but uh anyway the reason why i disagree with you zach is for some of the reasons that you that you said right um there is a whole history to it yeah and um security forces members back in the day weren't called security forces they were called air police and then they're called security police this whole you know right and i'm not a berry in vietnam that's that's kind of what i'm getting at is is that in vietnam there there was you know this a lot of different things that's you know security police security forces members did earn that berry to fight for it etc that's kind of how it's taught to you and your cdc's even though they don't do cdc's anymore um so like i i do i think that it is um like do you have to you do you earn it yes do you have to earn it in the way that like a combat controller or a green berry or whoever wears a berry no you don't not not even close right um but i i don't think that um i will say this that 110 outside of like special operations in the air force no one is held to a standard that the security forces guys are when we fuck up when anything goes wrong and so you know that whole and this is this just might be like the whole fucking you know puff my chest up kind of thing about it uh but i don't want to wear a fucking ball cap like everybody else on fucking base because i'm not the fucking same i don't get a two-hour fucking lunch i don't fucking get away with murder if i fuck if i'm finance and i fuck your payup no one fucking cares i've seen people like get in serious fucking like financial hardships because the air force fucked fucked up yeah you know what i mean and um but anyway like i'm just saying like i yeah me too like i mean i didn't wind up in like serious financial hardship but i've had finance issues yeah pay issues right um but so like that's why i think the the berry you know matters and and should stay even though it's kind of i guess like fading phasing out i guess in some ways like some units like my unit my last unit um would let you wear the the ball cap or the berry but you're deployed you don't wear the berry yeah i think the berry like i understand it's history and stuff my issue with the berry is like on journey wall and like fatigues like that's my issue with the berry it doesn't make any sense like if you're if you're maybe working practical i will be with you on that but that's about it like the gate sure but like if you're the like security person if you're the if you're the patrol person like i don't know like there's there's what does what does Ian think yeah Ian uh well i see both sides of it um i definitely agree with the fact the berry is not like functional in the slightest however i do see it from like the leadership thousand foot view like it does look a hell of a lot more professional than like a typical ball cap wood if it's um shaped properly yeah if you walk around like there's definitely already yeah sure but i i haven't worn my berry in like coming up on four years we wear ball caps where i work at so well i mean you're you're an instructor then zak was a recruiter so of course zak hasn't worn his his berry he's not allowed to are you no they actually yeah yeah they actually encourage you to but uh oh really yeah because they want you to like it's it's a talking look excuse yeah it's a talking point and look more professional like Ian said it has nothing to do with looking more professional sharp it's because the army guy next to me is going to be wearing his stupid ass non ball cap and uh he's like hover and then uh um which looks better i'm gonna i like the ball cap more and i'm gonna uh we know and i i'm gonna be sitting there with my berry and it maybe the kid will come up and go why are you different and then i explain why i'm different that's that's the thought process i don't agree with the fact that it like it identifies us in a mass populace because like like what zak was saying yeah the plate carrier the gun the patrol car yeah i don't know i can go both ways on it and i'll tell you right now if there's something serious happening where everybody's panicking they're they're not going to be like where's a cop and and looking around for a blue guy walking down looking at the hell out of there dude yeah they're running dude so yeah and and times out of 10 that that cop who's off duty at the shop bed grabbing his his tornados because braid stuff yeah he's also running away he's not going to the he's well i will say this we were before we jumped in and in hit record we were talking about camp cymbal and that's exactly what happened when camp cymbal got attacked is the cops assigned to do security there and defend that installation turn tail and run they run uh man then and literally the person in charge of base defense that day drove back to to base to get away from it and left his his subordinates out there yeah so there's a whole investigation about that so yeah i mean um anyway what's funny well we'll finish this thing but i just want to say what's funny about that too is there were there were like security forces members like when they got back to their like base trying to put in for like combat action medals and like other stuff yep and they were all denied because they're like none of you fired a shot what do you mean you want a combat action metal you i will say this you left one of one of the guys i went to tech school with was was uh was there and he actually did leave the installation to go respond when the the army guys that were out there went and left to the airfield to respond to that um and he has a bronze star and his combat action ribbon for it and i'd like to get him on the podcast eventually i won't say his name but i won't say his name yeah um i could tell you guys afterwards you um maybe you guys don't know him but went to tech school with him um but uh yeah so one cop i know of at least did something um when that happens so but it definitely brings a lot of shame to career field and validates kind of what you know everybody thinks about how cops just aren't tough because i mean that most of us are not that's a fact so but anyway this this this graphic right it's kind of like the first four like our givens right of course or maybe even the first five they're going to put on there the badge the flash the berry the general orders and and small arms expertise because those are like the bread and butter right yeah but i know for a fact unless you're a a fucking 45 year old master sergeant no one holds guard mouth sacred right no one gives it no one absolutely holds false briefings sacred unless you're that dickhead kernel that comes through the gate and wants to get one from an airman to feel important all whether day and night force no one holds that sacred chow is probably the dumbest one on here actually i take that back chow is the second dumbest one on there in my opinion post briefings that are first and then a lot of cops do take dress and appearance seriously but i do think that's absolutely going out the fucking window so just when this graphic came out it was one of the most tone-deaf things i've ever seen because of what you were saying zach that the suicide rate that year was through the roof and then this is what chief master sergeant tamala hearts decided she was going to put out and not a single word about anything else just this dumb ass graphic so i'm surprised because like you actually don't get a chow slash meal break the death i know that's that's what's so funny about it you don't how many times have you got to get a guard shack to go check ids or something in the middle of your burrito or your tornado or whatever how about when you're eating and you get dispatched to the call and then back to right all the clockwork most most bases don't even like if you are a cop even if you're an airman in the dorms if you're a cop you usually get like your full uh basically i was obsessed with this you're bas because your work is so refreshing as you can even go to the chow hall so most security forces members don't even know what the fuck a chow hall is i've ever been in one since tech school facts dude right facts right yeah most most anybody on chow chow card is is a brand new airman who hasn't processed their bas paperwork yeah that's literally it you know like so anyway um i mean i don't know what do you guys think like i i feel like i felt like this was a super tone deaf thing when it got put out yeah and i i remember i remember there was like a big briefing by her commander and they were talking about oh we're going to get these new sick guns and they're gonna have silencers on them and then we're going to get this sick ass new this new rifle is going to have a second it's going to have a school stuff it took like what some you didn't still don't even have the sig p320 or the whatever the heck it is the m19 yeah it's a sig p320 but the some units still don't have it those rifles no idea when those are coming we still are using the same ones and i know for a fact that the second all those rifles show up with those suppressors even if they do show up with those suppressors they're going to immediately take them off they're going to be just stored in the guard power or in the armory oh the armory yeah yeah and then when shit hits the fan before you respond to the active shooter stop by the armory and grab your suppressor real quick like that's awesome yeah if i have i mean i i agree they take them off again yeah they take them off the gun so stick yeah i don't do you remember when this came out Ian yeah yeah and like you guys are saying just extremely tone deaf and my original thought is if i if i think back to 2019 i remember security forces dudes and do that uh dropping like flies that year yeah and i saw this and i was like no like this is this is not what right looks like man like even in my own opinion i was a senior ever at the time but i was like no this isn't right and this is when i thought they're not really thought i began to see like the systemic issues that we have in security forces i saw the scene that camp is involved and then as i've progressed throughout my career it's made me make decisions to or the decision to separate in a couple years um for whatever that's worth but yeah and you know it's it's sadly that's the story for for a lot of people you know who just are sick and tired like you know they're obviously this is the military and there's an element there is an element 100% of that this is the military and you have to expect you know certain certain level of the shit sandwich that you're going to have to eat right yeah and that just comes with the territory but but at the same time you know you can still get treated like a human being and respected as a human being and dude like you know i can sit here and talk and and just tell stories forever about shit that's happened you know on flights or other flights that you know in my unit and things that have people have done to other people they should be in jail for you know and it's all in the name for of being tough you know and um you know and i'm not even talking about things like hazing i'm talking about things that are like way worse you know and um it's just yeah i mean i was gonna say i just looked up the suicide numbers for like yeah yes and that and that and that's 2019 yeah so let me give you a little a little couple of years before so 2017 the entire Air Force had 11 suicides 2017 the whole Air Force the whole air was not terrible 2018 they had three the entire Air Force had three whoa in 2019 the United States Air Force had 137 suicides you got the fuck it went from three to 137 that uh they always include civilians, reservists and guardsmen just so you know so of the 137 84 were active duty airman of the 84 57 were security forces yeah dude i always remember here i was fucking let me set black photos of badges with bands on them i remember seeing being posted on on the fucking facebook and shit that year i was like i remember at one point there was like three in a week and i was like what the fuck is going on i remember that this is crazy and people everyone was asking that question what the fuck is going on yeah i remember that yeah and uh just you know that's what i'm getting at man is is that year it was almost like yes obviously they decided that 2019 was the year of the defender they're gonna focus on it they're gonna prove their career field they were trying to build some sort of culture and and you know make that culture more like military than it already was that's what the point of right that's what the point of this graphic was right but it you know instead of going with the game plan no matter what ride or die you fucking start seeing this massive fucking uptick in suicides in your career field maybe we pump the brakes on the stupid fucking graphics and start addressing these issues and you know what i didn't see a single fucking post or or or comment from any of these people about the situation and i'll tell you a true fucking story okay i i met chief hearts twice once at mousham and once at in germany when i was there um our ticket back it wasn't a mousham it was when i was at seven level school so it was at lackland it was when i was assigned assigned to mousham was not impressed either time at all and um somebody asked her a question and like a briefing we all had to go to um and uh essentially it was like hey what are you guys doing about the christ mental health crisis going on i saw somebody ask a question online one day about letting people retrain and the retrain rate is like a mega low like don't you think that that would help people out a little bit you know and you know letting them go into other career fields they want to stay in the air force but they don't want to stay security forces and and she basically got fucking pissed off and told us dude to get fucked like in front of everybody and you're not going anywhere i don't care you're not going anywhere you put on a parade that's your that's your fucking job and we don't that's that's not that's not even a conversation we're about to have here in front of everybody and it just was again like everything i came to expect from her but this again like i said this was that year sitting in a briefing room having this conversation trying to have this conversation with the highest ranking enlisted member in our force right and that was her her response i i'd be willing to bet that the year the defender was the reason for the spike in suicides what do you mean for so the two years before you had 11 and three two dozen eighteen two dozen eighteen there wasn't this no single cop killed himself not one two dozen eighteen two dozen nineteen you jumped up to fifty seven in one year that's just are you saying that maybe this is before like any anything yeah yeah easy global thing happened right i'm i'm speculating that because they announced the year the defender like the you know end of fiscal year two thousand eighteen so like august september two thousand eighteen and then one october's new fiscal year so two thousand eighteen as we start the year the defender and as the suicide started to like ramp up i'm i'm thinking that it was the year the defender a whole bunch of airmen and security forces were like hey they're gonna fix all these issues they can take care of us and then they noticed that nothing was changing and that it was all fluff and it just caused a huge rebound like a big almost like a i don't know like a reverb i want to know what it was using and do you think that maybe seeing all these people could take their lives maybe kind of had a an accumulative effect so to speak where it kind of like i hate saying this but like started a chain reaction of suicides oh i i definitely agree man like suicide prevention it's been if you don't address it as like a resiliency type of training if you just talk about suicide in general it puts that in people's minds and if people are already feeling like suicide and thoughts they're already feeling down or depressed now you're thinking about it more and now it's just a cascading effect your thoughts are eventually going to become actions that can potentially affect your life in that way if that makes sense it does and you know it's it's it's crazy because um when we have Vince Vargas on you may remember Zach yeah one of his initiatives is and maybe you could look it up real quick Zach so we could give it a shout out but one of the things he does also is is bringing awareness to resiliency and mental health and for those who don't know Vince Vince is a US Army Army veteran but um and Border Patrol veteran but um he said that what you just said is that um the the training that we all got back in the day used to be that you know hey saying the word suicide isn't actually giving somebody the idea the idea is already there and and a lot of the new research they've done on it is that yes actually talking about it in that way like you said does put the idea in people's heads and that we need to revamp how we talk about it and you said you said the right word man is resiliency and I've always said this that the Air Force doesn't actually teach people how to be resilient it teaches people how to be professional victims 110 percent mm-hmm what did you did you find it Zach? I can't find exactly what he calls it but it's uh okay he is talking about how there's a different mindset um when it comes to talking about suicides like oh it's a suicide or talking about how do you take care of the issues before you get to suicide he is talking about I kind of liked his approach on that because it was a little bit of tough love you know not like not like completely but it was like hey you know you really do have to take this in your hands and do something about it dude I think tough love is I mean for for me and my personality type it's what helped me like get to the point where I'm at now because I don't want somebody just allowing me to play the victim if that makes sense like I need I need somebody and thankfully I had a a mentor in my life at the time who basically called me out of my shit and we'll get there when we get there in the conversation but no let's hear it man I think it's a good spot to jump in honestly okay um I'll start from my childhood because that's really whatever you think I'll start it yeah so uh grew up in Fresno uh California um very old school yeah California uh very old school Christian type family okay at least what I thought was we got old school Christian type family uh my dad turned out to be one of the biggest hypocrites uh on the face of the planet uh he was very emotionally and physically abusive to my mom my brother and I um punch me in the face numerous times threw me through doors my mom got the worst of it man I know it's a lot I'm just jumping up to it but yeah please full send um yep yeah it got to the point where uh when I was 12 years old I stood up to him and I went after him with the belt and basically beat the shit out of him cops got called I charged with assault and battery my dad and a joke Joe at 12 years old yeah that's the California justice system which eventually led to issues with my security clearance getting into the military because I had completely forgotten as a minor that's crazy yep yep I thought as a minor it'd be expolished or they wouldn't have access to sealed yeah no rent for the federal investigator just no rent for the sealed it's not a real thing yeah the federal investigators asked me what happened to me I was like yeah dude like I stood up for my mother and this is what happened but yeah dad went to jail uh they were both really addicted to like prescription painkillers both from had physical issues uh my mom fell down a flight of stairs before she got pregnant with me so messed up her back uh after my dad went to jail my mom's drug addiction like skyrocketed and I can't really blame her so I'd become a man of the house for a little bit um again at 12 years old I basically raised my brother uh wasn't helped from my grandma some other people in the family but it was hard yeah um what what was that like you know being in high school I assume you know what I mean the old high school raising your younger sibling like how did that how was that how was it like going through it and then kind of how has that shaped your you know outlook as an adult right with as a father you know like yeah yeah I mean there's there's a lot of parallels to it man and I felt like being put in that situation made me mature a lot faster than I probably should have um so I kind of started acting like an adult like middle of high school years but right it was it was hard man um I grew up skateboarding in California so like that was my outlet and that's really the only thing I focused my life on like your typical skater boy stuff like I wanted to be pro and yeah yeah yeah all that you know crazy stuff so skateboarding was a big outlet Tony Hawk Ian Brothers Pro Skater 2004 oh dude I wish yeah I wouldn't be in the military if that happens right but yeah it was uh looking back on it now I'm very grateful for it because it's it got me to a decent maturity point pretty early on in my life and I feel like it's it's helped with being a father because I'm already kind of used to some aspects of it like the patients and all that good stuff but sure yeah definitely I still have my struggles as a father and as a husband and yeah man right so um that must have been really hard for you then to make the call to join the military and walk away from your younger siblings because if you were sort of in that like in local parentis role for your younger sibling like what was yeah is that like a an easy decision for you because you wanted to get away or is it something that you struggled with no it was it was very easy for me to make that decision to get the military because I was I was stuck in California man I was uh I was going to school to be a US history teacher and there's really only so much you can do as a US history teacher I majored in other the teacher instruction era uh on two modern times at the time nice post-civil war it's nice to recall anything all that shit is brain dunked at this point yeah bro I need to hear about Andrew Johnson right now no shit but no it was uh it was pretty easy for me to make that decision and honestly me joining the military just made my brother and I close closer than we already were your typical brother relationship like we're always at each other's throats but like we have each other's back at the end of the day and after I graduated basic training something happened with him like a shift in his mentality towards our relationship like in a good way like okay okay yeah real good way like he and I are incredibly close to this day but it's amazing man that's kind of like one of those things where like the fucking silver lining on the whole situation now is is you guys have that relationship oh yes what did what does he do uh he actually he works at crumble cookie as well okay part of their manager friends you have full full disclosure I've never had a crumble cookie so how do you revive there's like one there's like one here in like Syracuse which is like a sitting nearby and I've never they're building one at my time right now Zach when you get here you know what we'll do is we'll both go because it's not open yet and then we'll send a snapchat to Ian of us trying a crumble cookie that's doing my life is obsessed with a couple cookies dude all right all right all right dude we'll do the whole like lady in the tramp thing Zach and one into his not you know some jim chicken stuff and then and then go yeah exactly go for a running medally after a burner off yeah it's like a thousand calories a cookie dude like this it's the lower things cookies you're good for the day 2000 guys dude that's like the perfect thing to buy a homeless person I guess hey dude or like it's like an mRE almost you know this has got 3500 calories it's two cookies holy shit but yeah thanks brother right um but yeah man so that obviously uh you know your your childhood played on a lot of the I guess would you say that like it was like a a buildup and then from the military comp how did the military compound a lot of what you were going through yeah yeah so like every other airman I got married to a woman I should have gotten married to my starter wife yeah yep married her and I deployed to we have all this we were talking about earlier and worked with an organization that is in special operations realms and I got to do some medicine alongside them they put us through like this six week like medical pipeline to get certified on an advanced tactical combat medicine like I don't want to church it up like a memetic or anything like that but right right you got more than more than the average bear uh we were actually plugging holes out there dude like that's cool stuff is happening at least all the time while I was out there at least like the medical side of it shit man that the team from the base that I went from mountain home at the time they were the team that did change over with the army infantry brigade or regiment whatever you want to call them one of my buddies there was a school bus full of kids that got blown up by an ID and they brought all the kids to that place and he worked on these cases like blown in half it was crazy dude but I'm not gonna church church up my scenario to that level because it really wasn't as horrific but yeah right the time got or the time happened where I actually had to use it and I had a dude die on me like right in front of us and so that was like the beginning of the downward cycle a couple days after that my ex-wife admitted that she had basically been having a whole separate life with another dude so two like very traumatic things happened within a couple days of each other um finished out the rest of the deployment went back home took my R&R and my leave spent time with my mom um went back to mountain home after all that and my very first day back at work I was working a gate shift and after morning traffic I got a call from my brother um said mom was dead and apparently she had holy shit man it's just about to say things happening happening in three so I was waiting for the third one yep she OD oh my god she OD yeah then a couple months after that uh my first wife ended up leaving me from the dude that she had a separate life with so I lost what I thought was everything dude I mean in in that context it basically was everything yeah her life I and I went down a whole dude like how could you not became the highest functioning alcoholic senior I'm in a ball time it was it was crazy dude like my career skyrocketed when I was going through all that stuff because I used it as a distraction like it was crazy um we I was a consigliere yeah we were fortunate enough at mountain home while I was there to have an EST and at the time we were one of the ESTs to have like an actual like national SWAT certification it wasn't just what hey like let's train everyone so I'll type day yeah but oh that's awesome uh graduated SWAT basic uh like two weeks after my first wife left and multiple other SWAT schools after that um all kinds of stuff that probably shouldn't have happened because of um how my mental state was but I was I was you're out at the time your your your comfort was literally doing well at work succeeding in that killing in that realm you know but it was a what people do time yeah yeah so what at what point you know did you kind of wear that distraction was no longer you know keeping all of that at bay yeah it wasn't until I got to where I work at now um and I started working in the supply logistics section of our uh of our unit we had a the kid a couple years ago so me just lateral transferring over to supply logistics just made more sense from the family we can go home every day and you know this is a little bit better so with all that extra free time my mind wasn't occupied so the symptoms of PTSD and all that stuff just got astronomically worse I was coming home super super angry every single day um I've never like obviously I've never physically abused my wife but I've said a lot of things that I regret to her man and there was there was one instance with my daughter that kind of like highlighted like the I how do I have to get checked out now she was doing just at the time she was 12 months old and she's just doing baby stuff man like she's learning how to walk and all that crazy stuff um right on our coffee table I was an irresponsible parent I left a lot of stuff on the coffee table and she just smacked it on the floor and dude I came unglued like I stood up and I was like what the fuck like to a baby man and she turned around and her eyes were so full of tears and she looked at me like she was scared and I was like holy fuck dude I'm becoming my dad like whole that I feel insane it was the lowest I've ever felt in my life and it was just a knee-jerk reaction I didn't even think about it it just happened uh a couple of months went by after that and a couple of my co-workers had a legit like intervention with me uh one of them told me that what led them to do that Piedema Maas always ain't yeah yeah I was just always angry at work and like any slight inconvenience I would go fucking crazy and rip people's heads off which is completely out of character for me because I'm generally a pretty nice outgoing type person but yeah those those days were just dark man I couldn't I couldn't block a day more right so that's what was happening it was coming out yep they told me if I don't get help they're going to report me to mental health and that was the best thing that has ever happened to me is having a group of friends that held me accountable how did you take it in that moment when they did that in the moment I was super pissed like I'm not gonna lie like I told them I was like man like fuck you yeah like fuck you like I don't need help I was like I'm not a fucking pussy I was like I've been through all this shit like that fucking put a bullet in my head before I quit like you better call an ambulance after you call mental health because you're gonna need one and not for me I'm right not for me for you and yeah I mean my my boss at the time saw it um the off the OIC saw it and they held me accountable man and it was I'm incredibly grateful for it took a lot of courage for those guys to do that to you I'm sure oh for sure for sure so I ended up just saying fuck it I let go of it or of everything I let go of my pride let go of my ego and I went straight to mental health and I was like dude I'm broken like I'm a shell of who I used to be um that first session was bad it was it was the only time I've cried sober since my mom's death oh I that's for like three years was everyone just saying like that's intense yeah that's that's that how did it feel to like an actual cry like all sober like one that you would remember one that you fully experienced one that you what was I like it felt relieving like it really did for like a thousand pound weight lifted off my chest and to finally come to the grips of the myself that I am fucked up or was fucked up at the time and I'm finally addressing everything head on like I should have done all those years ago I mean if it wasn't for a couple people in my old chain of command I'll shout a dude out his name is uh oh yeah Kyle Hepworth he's a senior now we were at TDW to Florida for once sounds familiar yeah a little bit okay I don't want to derail you yeah no no you're good right as my divorce initiated I got three others a team of us that got sent to south Florida to work a presidential security mission it was us guarding the F-15s that were protecting Air Force One at the time when Trump was in office out in the waterdale area got you as a super air force one as a new single dude in southern Florida around Miami I had a lot of fun we party all the time but yeah my uh he was a master at the time I was a senior and we were uh we were sharing a bottle of whiskey one weekend and um he got me to the point where I was so drunk I was just bawling my eyes out and he slammed like the thing with whiskey on the table he was like Ian I love you I'm sick of seeing yourself drink drink your your life away one glass at a time I literally just been getting that like fucking picture in my head of um Goodwill Hunting for Robin Williams it's like it's not your fault it's not your fault you know what I mean like that I don't know like it sounds like you had like a real life the real life version of that that man saved my life like I am physically alive because of that man and I wish you and I were as close as we used to be obviously like you know we go our separate separate ways in our course just kind of how to do that he was the only adult male besides my dad and a couple others that tell me that they love me and look me straight in the eye and say it that was like oh my god dude um okay like need to get this right so the drinking was under control after that and then I relapsed extremely hard when I got to where I'm at currently and now it's just sorry no I was just gonna ask like what if there is even a reason what caused you to relapse it was during the uh the COVID time is when you relapse really hard and honestly dude it was just free time a lot of that going around that's for sure yep uh free time and I was bored um that's really it it's super weird I was still working out like I was still in shape I was still doing all my other stuff but it got to a point where I couldn't sleep unless I was blackout drunk then like legit blackout drunk um and we're talking got to get up I have an hour and a half drive to work driving hungover as hell like it was just nice dude I was drinking you know that uh that beer voodoo ranger like that super strong IPA I was drinking a six pack of that a night like a night during the week nights it was like it was like 10% aren't they? do I support somebody sent war team this is like a German beer holy shit dog yeah you probably never fucking wrote his congressman twice probably oh dude he was gnarly with the president and then other than that all right like my wife and I would get like a couple big bottles of like vodka and just party all weekend like rinse and repeat the next week yeah man it was it was rough can I just say real quick about that dude like knowing the mental health issues the military like as a military we deal with and every single military installation has a classics for people don't know that's a liquor store on base and it's typically a hell of a lot cheaper than buying liquor off base and like it's almost like it's encouraged to do this like what you're talking about because bro I can't tell you like honestly I cannot tell you how much money as an airman especially when I was in the dorms or like when I was a young staff sergeant that I spent on 30 racks on two thousands yeah it's and it dude every every is predatory almost yeah every event and like recruiting me like semi-annuals training events um annuals like all the stuff and the big thing is always overall gonna get swashed we're gonna get smashed we're gonna relieve all the stress that we've built up for the last year well guys what's what's what's the what's the prototypical security forces way of kicking back after work oh dude we get blasted together right what do we call it choir practice right now am I the only one that that knows that i don't prefer it's your foot into mouth well it's just got an excuse he was fucking Mormon forever right but not a choir practice right i mean that's what i've always heard it called but it's like what it is man like i i um i can't like either the flight chief or some attack somebody you know just had maybe a 30 rack of cores in the back of his truck and like after fucking duty we'd go it's coming off mid it's 6 30 in the morning and by the time you leave the parking lot you're three or four fucking beers deep you know yeah like that's just that was that's kind of the way it is bro i'm gonna say this i'm gonna tell this is a true fucking story bro and i'm not gonna say his name but if he listens to it he'll know exactly what i'm about to say when i was in airman um i had a really he still is a really really good friend of mine we we have been through so much we talk every single day pretty much and um he had he had a truck and i come into work you know we're i had to pick up a vehicle every morning so i had to be a like fucking gear issue like 345 and um i i drive from uh gear issue over to the armory two different buildings and he's sitting in a camping chair in the bed of his truck so he's like up off the ground and and he's literally drinking before we go in to fucking arm up and i was bro and i could like the culture of this flight was insane man um and i walked up to him because i was policed to that day and you know i walked out to him i was like what's that man and like i i had to i first like i could see because it's it's dark outside and it's the typical parking lot with the orange fucking parking lot lights you know like i saw the can when i drove in and i was like that looks like cores but like it might not be you know what i mean so i i walked over to him to see you know if if it was really more than anything right and it and it was you said what's up bro he's like you want one and i was like nah fam like i i don't bro like as much as like we would do this any other time and i literally said this to him i said i said dude don't make me have to be put in position to arrest you today yeah it's like i'd be like i'm policed too that'll be that'll be me and i will never forget the look on his face and even after that he told me that he told he said he told his mom that and he never forgot forgotten to say that and like you know it just that is and i don't say that to like you know talk myself up or something i say that because that i'm trying to paint a picture of drinking as a culture especially in security forces just because that's what we know right i know maintenance guys that fucking are just functioning alcoholics too like you were talking about you know but like um that's that was normal is all i'm trying to say is like literally about to go get a gun full well knowing like what could happen to you and a camping chair in the bed of your truck out in the open fucking silver bullet you know right before arriving like just that that was that's the culture that's the culture man exactly is reckless Vince was talking about Vince burgers he's talking about how uh drinking is like always core is usually almost always correlated with suicides because it's it's a depressant absolutely and if you just constantly drinking and that's you're out like you're you're in pretty scene every time you keep drinking you're increasing your chances to just finally end at all dude the old time like sorry no no go ahead me i'll tell you i'll i'll say it was gonna say after you yeah i mean i was gonna say like i can completely corroborate that because the only time i had like really like actual like suicidal thoughts that almost led to ideations when i was going through all that stuff was when i was drunk like absolutely when i was drunk yeah man my my first the first time i knew somebody in that i actually knew in the military who took their life was a friend of mine um from tech school and he had gone to fv because the majority of my team went to one of the big three and um he was on trf got got drunk with on his 21st birthday with a bunch of the trf guys supposedly um they were there was a lot of hazing that went on and drunk on his 21st birthday went back to his fucking quarters in the trf building and killed himself and he was drunk in about yeah this is this is yeah yeah buddy i mean his was Brandon Tafoya that's his name Brandon Tafoya was i went to tech school with him he took his life because of it yeah and that was and and just to what you say Zach is he was drunk and it's crazy because like there were there's been multiple suicides that you know uh a have been to right um and have have heard from other people and almost all of them there's some sort of alcohol involved you know whether it's everybody it's just about to say or drug yeah almost that prescription or otherwise yep yeah Ian you were you were talking about how like uh you you kind of like relapsed when you start having like a lot of time again and i wanted to touch back on that we're like uh kind of my own personal story is like time definitely if you're not I guess staying busy you're not kind of like staying active and stuff and you do kind of get stuck in time you can get stuck in your own thoughts there's a lot of people who fear their own thoughts good point man they can't be in their own head they can't like talk to themselves that's how it's been for the longest time yeah because they're afraid of themselves they're like worry yeah and uh in my time security forces i've i've seen death um there was a there was a little girl i think i've talked about this before or i think i've said it at least i think in a popcorn pocket or something but there was a little girl her name was Madison um she died when i was a senior airman i responded to a crash it was pretty shitty like an eight-year-old little girl is really really shitty um but i remember in that moment that it didn't really phase me i was like that sucks sucks you know that's really crappy i remember my flight chief after i turned in was like smithy okay i'm like yeah i'm fine sir and then i just continue working and stuff but as months years i started to realize that she was always in my head and like i couldn't like couldn't get her out and it become more and more so i just i would distract and i'd play a lot of video games so i didn't i've never drank uh i've never done drugs that type of stuff so like my outs was like hardcore video games or um lds bro lds choose your right ctr or i would i would i would i would uh i would go running a whole lot like i was in like really fit shape and stuff but something that happened like this is the time piece is i had to go to a lot to like being a really good cop being really good secure force kind of like what you were saying you were doing slot stuff you're doing a whole bunch of cool stuff came we uh came back for my deployment with brandon uh and um got a sign to recruiting duty and went to recruiters school and that was a lot of time lost stuff but then i got to my actual recruiting duty and like i was saying earlier before we started the podcast when we were just kind of uh chitchin is it's just me it's just me in an office there was no like immediate supervisor saw me there was no top cover there was no nothing and really quickly within like a matter of like months i started to feel like existential dread i was thinking like everyone was trying to kill me like i was having panic attacks dude i i was saying i was in i was looking in the right aid next to my office and i was just going there to get like a water just get out of my office for a minute go for a walk get a water and there's an old lady behind me and the whole time in my mind i think she's gonna stab me and i had a panic attack because i thought this old lady was gonna attack me in uniform yeah bro and i was like that's not logical it doesn't make any sense i don't know what's going on reason i have my video that turned around and punched that old lady in a grocery store fuck you bye never right so i finally was like this is not right something's wrong so i i seek help too i uh we don't have like a mental health thing there's no base here so i had to call military one source and they got to be help or whatever like those like three sessions you can get into them and uh they eventually got me on like medication or whatever so like deal with like what they pretty much said is i was having existential dread um i was having uh like super high anxiety yeah and um they were saying that because my previous job had fear like you're you have the potential to be in a conflict or to respond to something crazy that your body is on like a high all the time because something could happen and then my current job has no fear so i wasn't receiving the fear dopamine hit anymore yeah your body was used to not being a dangerous causing me to like freak out and my counselor was literally telling me to like go do mma like go get punched in the face she was like go like clock climbing go do like extreme like a country zag okay do like thanks bro do like something that makes you feel alive or whatever and uh i had to start doing like other stuff to kind of just make my i guess my life more threatening to kind of it was weird it was it's like counterproductive they tell you you know you should relax you know try but it's not what works for everyone mine was i was too relaxed i needed more fear i needed more like stuff happening for sure fix that's what helped me so everyone could do what's interesting to hear that like it's like the the vastness of things that can't work for for the else stuff is it blows my mind man i basically had to do the exact opposite because my body is so used to being in that constant like fight or flight and i do it to myself like even though i'm not in like an operational unit anymore like i still like strive through the absolute best i possibly can't work and they they call that in therapy like like unrealistically high standards or whatever yeah and i hold myself to an extremely high level for no reason like i'm still going to get the job done at the end of the day due to walmart stresses me to fuck out i know i mean i don't understand why because there's so many people there but i had a lady i had a lady gone to me at walmart the other day correct oh yeah you told me that snatcher yeah yeah grunted so i was very large woman like 300 or something pounds i kid you know tund and over yeah and she's no relax appears she's waddling down the aisle right and i'm trying to go past her so i went over to go around her and she saw me and then got in my way she like moved into my way and i was like wow so i like stopped waited for her like move again and then i went to go around again and then she went back in my way and she growled me she's like and like looked at me like like like a dog almost like a dog what a trick dude take his toy did you feel unsafe like you may get eaten no i mean based off like stay strapped about running how big my bed yeah you know i looked at her and i was like what and she didn't that's really weird there's there's something her elevator wasn't going all the way up maybe too many Doritos i don't know and uh so i i just went down waiting in our on elevators you know there's too much fat in range couldn't comprehend things so i went down a random aisle just to avoid her and i saw her later she said me mugging me i don't know what her problem was but yeah maybe it looked like somebody maybe one thing that i'm still struggling with and i'm still trying to find a way to deal with it or to make it better sleep like i don't know how to do it as a sleep patterns i'll put it minor i'll tell you bro yeah so like i just want to like kind of corroborate what you guys are saying because like a couple of these conversations we've had like Zach and i have noticed that there's a lot of similarities and all everybody's stories and like trying to like pattern this out right like coming from an installation like bodeway that was super duper busy to one like Travis and Travis paints itself is really busy but it is absolutely not not to the levels that bodeway yeah not the level that like that bodeway is what you what you said Ian about like having nothing to do and then all this stuff like for me um i felt i said this i said this in therapy that i felt like i realized i was in a box and that box was filling with water and that i felt like it was like at the point where like i my head was up and i was like breathing just through the tips of my lips and that's how i felt and um there was a couple times where like i um because at the time my son was like maybe one like really young kind of like what you had said you know your daughter and um i would feel really really overwhelmed about something that was going on and then all of these things like you know that i had seen right suicides really really bad traffic accidents you know um experience i have somebody trying to kill me like i just you know it was almost like it just was rushing and rushing and i and i don't know if you've ever had an adrenaline let down like where it you can genuinely feel it like flood your body and it you get cold and like for me like my hands get really cold and i get kind of shaky um i i remember once time specifically like i was just pacing back and forth in front of the island we have in our kitchen and i remember my wife asking me like what's wrong and i just i lost it and i told her like i like just have been pacing because i am just seeing faces and like seeing things and like i and like as soon as i started saying that it kind of like was over and that happened multiple times and that's something that the therapist eventually told me because that when i brought up earlier i don't know if we were recording yet or if we were talking before when i mentioned Dan Schilling like when that happened like that's just like when i was really going through a lot of this and understanding that like holy shit something is happening to me i've never felt this way before and this is really bad and like the one other time i felt something serious like that was in Germany was right after i got attacked um and i had like this one one instance of like mega rage and it was over in like 30 seconds and i thought that that was really weird and i remember telling the shirt about it because he had asked me you know um for a couple weeks like how i was doing and i told him like you know honestly i got really mad this one time and that was it um but this was super different and the therapist told me she's like you know when what you said this is an instance where you're finally your body feels comfortable enough to let some of this stuff come to the surface so i think you you know it is like you guys are right you know there's an element of where when nothing's going on your brain isn't hyper focused on on certain things and and you can't external stimuli it can't ignore it anymore like you said you know and um that's also you know like something that i've really learned too is that the the manner of which you decide to address this stuff is also going to dictate like you getting over it right oh and and that gets either going to make a break it absolutely man like and and the one thing too is like i i know that i had to really really realize that therapy isn't going to make stuff go away that therapy is going to help you just handle it when it happens you know what i mean there yes yeah yes yeah and i mean i feel like you know just your reaction like you've you've experienced that like realization before oh yeah yeah i mean for me it was it was going to a place called struggle which is a 30-day inpatient trauma treatment center out in utah and i was i was very apprehensive of going at first man because they they labeled my PTSD as as combat PTSD i've never been in combat dude like we got shot at a couple times like in in africa but like i have never done this in the line of work yeah but you know i was like you've been in combative situations like you were beat by your all the where the yeah well i was gonna say too where some of the wounds you dressed where they combat related because they that might be also too why they yeah like categorize it that way but anyway like you i don't want to take away from what you're saying no no you're good and so i was i was super apprehensive about going to first man because like when i when i got there not to like give out these people names but there were there were tier one like people there like an actual tier one units there was a lot of tier two people there it'd be it felt like you weren't supposed to be there yeah i was like who the fuck am i to like talk about this stuff and there was one guy and this is maybe why i have such a soft side or soft part in my heart for ODA's it's like i was one of my or not one of my my best friend at that facility was a green berry like i don't understand why he and i just like almost immediately clicked so well but he he told me to stop comparing trauma and i was like dude like yes i just felt bad i was like you i'm not gonna say his story but yeah he saw it went through some crazy shit i bet he didn't like lucky to be alive type of crazy and here i am complaining about my ex-wife like my mother and you know that one dude who died on me like being shot at a couple times like wasn't anything serious it wasn't until we started digging into like cognitive behavioral therapy dialectic behavioral therapy and EMDR yeah many MDR right now man i'm still an EMDR bro me too yeah it all the symptoms are the same so like what's the point in like comparing to like and this is the thing i have that's wrong with or the stigma in security forces like we got to dress it dude like if you go to mental health or if you go down an arm and you didn't take a knee you are looked at as weak you're bastardized from your unit yeah i get it there's some people that malingar and like fake shit right to get out of work i'd ruin it for everybody else essentially i've known two of them that have played this card and gotten a hundred percent b.a i was like okay i don't want to be like that like i feel like i have legitimate issues that i need to dress because if i don't i'm gonna die or i'm gonna turn my father like and me turning into my father is probably worse than death honestly so i had to dress right because for you that has all these these elements tied to it of like you know dude i'm just gonna say this because it's almost ironic i watched um i had no idea that this interview existed but um are you familiar with the rapper logic i've heard of him yeah okay here's a song right for he has a lot of song yeah he does he has suicide hotline song but that's not what i was going to talk about the um there i guess he had an interview with his his biological father and a lot of it that interview had a lot to do with like him being abandoned by him and one of the things that he said to him in this interview was i'm a man of my word because you aren't and that i watched that today i was like holy fuck like jesus you know like i'd never want to hear somebody especially my kid say that to me you know like yeah so like when you say that like you're you're feeling like you're your dad and and you know it just that has to feel worse than death i guess is what you're trying to say you know what i mean like that that's just yeah yeah i mean i saw all the damage like or obviously like the physical emotional stuff he partnered on me but like what you did to my mom dude like no woman on the face of the planet should ever be treated like that and here i am going down the same exact behavioral patterns as my dad so something had to change dude so i i made i took that leap and i got help man they didn't almost cost me my career right but dude that that takes a lot it really does dude because um i must say it again man listening to dan chilling talk about it like just but kind of what you said dude like sitting there listening to the shit he's gone through and i'm like i i was like silently while he was talking and comparing trauma because like man i'm like dude like this guy fucking like they made a movie about what this guy went through you know what i mean like exactly i'm like oh dude you're fucking pussy bro you're just up you're you're fucking in sitting here crying about people dead in a car accident you're sitting here crying about you know fucking dead kids and shit like you know i'm like this guy fucking they made a movie about like you get off your fucking ass and like i realized that like i said that to the the lady that my therapist and she's like that's the wrong way to think about it but i'm glad that it made you partially made you come in here you know that's really the wrong way to think about it and i um one of the episodes that i did with the last guy the the douche that um was the my co-host before zach um what was we had on sergeant michael sugrew and the episode we did is called stomp the stigma and um he uh and he wrote a book about it so i'll talk about it but essentially he wasn't involved in an officer involved shooting and he took somebody's life he had to you know and um and his entire book it's really really good he went through a lot of stuff he he um you know had a kid and he was divorced and you know he dealt with a lot with the the police unit and he he was prior security forces as well and then became a um a civilian police officer in california but um you know the stigma he had to deal with and i was taught we were talking to him and literally in the middle of me like telling him a story he stopped me he's like no he's like we don't compare trauma here he's like we and and he said it like it's in that it's in the episode if if anybody's listed i don't know if you that's if you've listened to that one Ian you said you listened to butch room but yeah he said that to me and i was like and even my mom wrote me which is kind of you know like kind of like embarrassing sorry you know what i mean because she's like Brandon you don't have to and i'm like blah blah you know and but it's like it's so true you know right yeah stop man um but it's you know it's it's it's very true and even now like talking about it it still kind of feels hokey to like say oh you know don't compare trauma because like like 100 percent like you said like these these guys that you were at that that center with like 100 percent have been through shift way more serious and intensive yeah like and even Zach and i like a lot of the people that we've had on the podcast not just Dan showing you know like have been through just exponentially crazier shit than than we have and um your your trauma isn't their trauma but you can experience the same feelings to exactly to to your own respect of trauma and you know what the crazy thing was about those tier one and tier dudes or tier two dudes they welcomed me in with open arms and they made me feel really awkward so and like it was it was awkward but like i had never felt like a sense of community like that like i felt like i belong there like wow just this is gonna sound quirky but like a bunch of dudes just loving each other like which is obviously like so not normal man because what does society say about us men must suffer like you gotta fucking suffer we do it to ourselves too man yes dude right we're the worst about it my mentality for the longest time was if i'm not suffering like if i'm not beating my body into the ground if i'm not like how do we like discover each other like on instagram like you guys know like i do all this like fire and stuff like yeah if i'm not pushing it to the max shoot faster shoot more accurately like there's no reason in doing it and that's the unrealistic standards i mean me pushing my body the way i did for so long as the reason i had surgery three weeks ago like my shoulder surgery it's like well it's a tragic response like what you were saying before you know doing that to yourself yeah i mean i i felt so alive in the gym like it's just me the iron like i can i can smash this deadlift and i can pretend like like i'm smashing my emotions into the ground you're like insert whatever dude i've been hyper yeah no dude it's it's true and it's not hyperbolic because in that situation that is exactly what what you're doing man and i have been in those situations lifting and i dude i'll say this like i used to lift a lot and i actually have a really nice lifting rig in my house and i did not get the catharsis i thought i would from lifting and i stopped lifting and started running and dude i run six days a week at least you know and always every day i am i do and i'll talk to him and i'll run five miles i'm fucking talking to him before we're gonna do five miles yeah i did episode is we're gonna oh dude we're gonna have this guess it's true bro but no okay you ain't that good no it's but but i have gotten more like me personally right you know like i've gotten more catharsis and get more release from running than i did lifting but it's the same thing like when i'm running you know it is and not to again like not to sound cheesy but it's like the stoic line of like you make hard the body so that it doesn't disobey the mind you know and and you have to take care of both of those things and i don't think it's it's unrelated those correlations of doing something physical like you said because there is the trauma response aspect to it like you said that can be unhealthy where you don't sleep because that's definitely been a thing i've gone through where like i'm not i'm not i can't sleep i'm not gonna sleep i'm not gonna sleep you know and then the the i i need to do this and it needs to be fucking ridiculously hard or it needs to be ridiculously high standards it has to be perfect you know what i mean but but it can be a healthy thing too to find something physical you're doing whether it is going to go to the range or going running or going lifting and i would tell anybody dealing with this shit that on top of taking care of your brain i'm telling you man taking care of your body in some way doing something physical it is going to have a response in your mind and it is going to make you so much better and so much clearer for you oh yes promise please don't just like talk to somebody you need to be doing something like we are you are mind, body, and spirit like 100 percent you need to be part of it like that's what i tell people all the time sorry got to zag be changed and that's what i always tell people dude is like you have to move like you have to get out in nature like we as humans are not designed to take in this artificial light like yeah especially over the top right there yeah light that i'm having above my head right now why that lady at walmart was grunting at me she's like right really freaking like fat and it was the fluorescent lights dude kind of like a mental breakdown she's an ocean it's all the seed oils and fluorescent lights over the windows the way that i view myself now that i am more in control of my thoughts and my emotions all it's going to sound really cheesy all it's done is make me a better warfighter because i you know in 100 percent control of my my body yeah 99 percent control of my my head i still have my hard days like yeah they're never going to go away either a couple of days ago was a very very very bad day for me but i have utilized the things i learned at strong hope to basically allow myself to sit in those emotions to love myself feel those emotions process it and then put it back away for when it comes up next time and that like i feel like more of a fucking warrior now than i ever have in my life like dude it's not because you're building a real it's not i mean it's it's not i get it like it sounds cheesy but it's not because you're building a toolbox bro like you you literally are and it's like you're you're developing a toolbox you have experience and you recognize that and that kind of comes with the territory and it almost is like one of these things we're like not to gain sound cheesy but like for lack of a better way of expressing this like you recognize the scars you have as a seasoned warrior right or seasoned seasoned airmen and you recognize that it it does get better it does make you better and now that you almost can harness that and recognize it and put it away and putting it away almost gives you that sense of empowerment that does sort of drive that you know feeling better and in control of yourself thing and if i could build on what you said too one of the things that i learned in therapy was um i was given essentially like is it an analogy or like of a roller coaster right and that one of the things that she had me learn initially and get to the point where i could and this is like a process for for several sessions was understanding that that when you hit the high point of that roller coaster is when everything when you when you've lost control and then on your way down it's it's a it's a hill in a valley right and then every time you go down you're going to go lower past what your threshold was and it takes more to come back up and and come back up doesn't mean come back up and feel better it means ramping up and letting those emotions take control and then you're going to fall even lower each time and then you have to you have to recognize when you start ascending up that hill and make that hill shorter does that make sense so you're down trend yeah your down trend is not as violent right so you're not dipping even further so you recognize when you're going up because you're going up you have to come down and the quicker you recognize it the the littler that hump is right the more you get back to baseline and that thinking about it that fucking way like it and it sounds so simple and like i i would have been the first person two years you're like that's fucking dumb you know what i mean but it obviously no but it i would have and that was me right yep but it but it absolutely is not fucking dumb because it as simple as that sounds like it it gave me a real tool and i'll tell you another fucking tool bro like this and this just happened to me the other day like over a couple weeks ago now with with emdr is um you know i had a situation and you know something happened with another with another member we we witnessed somebody take their their own life and one of the things that i had to overcome like i the guilt i felt essentially was that like a i was angry and these are things that we talked about and the she will encourage wouldn't encourage me to talk about these things is that you know i was angry about why i was there in the first place i was angry about how like being the universe putting me in that situation yep i was i was angry about the fallout after it with people on my flight and then i you know felt mega guilty that i my abilities essentially did not prevent it from happening because the same relation to have a conversation with this person before he took his own life right and she said something to me that has helped me process process it through the course of of emdr was that the outcome was going to be shitty no matter what and that i couldn't change the outcome but that that was the best outcome because i was there and and that sounds maybe that sounds cheesy and maybe it sounds i don't i don't know but like that really helped me pivot away from thinking about that situation and saying as simple as it is it is what it is that was going to fucking happen no amount of worrying about it is going to put me put me back in that situation and feel better about it sorry man like yeah because i can see this you know and you know it just it was going to happen anyway and that that was the best best outcome i that could have happened because maybe maybe it was it was worse some other way you know what i mean and so like yeah that for sure you have to you have to go through this process is all i'm trying to say if you're dealing with shit it's not fucking stupid like you will you will come out with tools i guess let's let's let's talk about like the physiological effects that emdr has on you like i don't know for you i'll speak for myself um the first time i did eat emdr i was disgusting crying dude like yes i like snot like all over my shirt like like yes like i had never experienced anything like that ever in my life and for for those listening emdr it's the base of there's two different ways of doing it there's like a visual way of doing it where your eye is tracking this light bar and the way it seems for eye movement desensitization and reprocessing is what it sounds like. The eye processing doesn't really work for me uh i feel like i have one diagnosed ADHD so maybe maybe holding the vibrating tappers yeah yeah so these tappers are are very very lightly shot and more like vibrating in your hands and the science behind it is it's supposed to stimulate the left side of your brain and the right side of your brain simultaneously so you experience emotions and relive these traumatizing experiences at the same time at least at least that's how i understand it yeah and one thing i told i told my therapist the first time we did this was that it almost made me feel trapped in the moment because it made me feel like i couldn't like i guess if i had to analogize it that i was going i was a bowling ball going down the alley and i couldn't fall into a gutter and get away from heading down towards the pins because both the left and right paddle or whatever you know they're vibrating like it made it feel like my brain had fucking bumpers and like trying to try to get away from those thoughts it couldn't happen and it was like there's no telling me no tunneling me through it and it's a is a very weird feeling and like dude full disclosure saying bro like i was overwhelmed and like i was like i i fucking just knew somebody walking in the hallway outside was probably fucking could hear me you know what i mean you know what i mean and dude it is what it is during that year my first time doing it i didn't give a fuck what anybody else thought like it was so relieving i was like finally i i'm i'm 31 years old i joined a little bit later in life i got joined in i was 24 so i have like house 23 yeah damn near 20 years worth of like childhood trauma mixed with military trauma like just pent up any of this finally coming out dude like i i've admitted to everybody man like anybody i like talk to a work that is struggling with mental health i immediately direct them to yeah my therapist like dude talk therapy doesn't work for some people like i know EMDR doesn't work for some people but at least gives something that's right it's better than just sitting away like for the airman like in your door room like getting drunk oh yeah dude don't make the same mistakes like us it's the easy way out it is it really is and you may feel like you're toughing you're tough in that moment because you're you're just fucking throwing it back you're not doing it's it goes back to what you said Ian that like it made you a better war fire war fighter because now it's like i wish i could find a better way to to analogize it to use a word again that you've you've just taken all this shit and it is it's like tools in your toolbox now and in it those having those tools are just as important as being proficient with your duty weapon yeah absolutely and my my home sword in a sword it's got to go through fire there you go exactly it's got to go through it's a forge and make it stronger so all right there you go there you go Zach is actually good yeah that was good it's almost like exact same dude it's called i came with fire or something i'll be here all night you've just had like a super stereotypical like security forces oh which is absolutely yep exactly my my whole focus has shifted now i'm gonna clip that it's going in that's fine you do what you gotta do like my this is gonna sound weird too but like my love and like my adoration for like the lower enlisted is just at a level i can't even like put into words anymore because one because i physically know what they're struggling with because they slid into my dms about it but like my heart goes out to these kids man because they're being raised in a weird time and security forces dude right now like where we don't really know if we have an identity anymore one because of simba and two like the gwats over dude like well dude yeah how are we preparing for the next war dude and it's security forces like first off like you said you brought that up man i watched the um the brief that i don't remember his name now but he was one of the s of g commanders i had when i was at maelstrom and now he's a fucking two-star willcocks i think maybe he gave a brief about the fallout and like the the actual report that came out and i um it was i listened to it on my drive home because it's on fucking youtube and it was like right after it came out i was just like what the fuck and i knew people that were there and like i'd gotten like their POVs and like you know i already knew some of the shit that happened that like wouldn't make the news and stuff like that but like yeah you know and just how much the dod really it was like fucking up the air forces ass about what happened like it took the entire responsibility away from the air force basically you know what i mean and but you know to to your point about like an identity crisis and security forces i have always said this sf does not know what it wants to be no every once in a while would be like okay we're gonna be we're we're focusing on law enforcement the sf academy is going to be a you know it's going to be like you know FLETC certified or innocent of these people to FLETC it's going to be a real law enforcement academy and then a year or two will go by and maybe we'll get a new security forces director or whatever and it's like actually air base ground defense is what we need to be focused on and just flip flops all the time at flip flops you never know what you you're gonna be and we always say this about us is that we're we're jacks of all trades and masters of none that's the fucking truth dude like what do you want me to be do you want and it's really easy if you if you do nuke security because you know that's your fucking job you know what i mean like nothing fucking else if that's the only black and white right yeah and but you know for everything else and getting out of nukes and going into the real air force like you really see like just the confusion and a level of confusion and it's just how much people are not proficient at their jobs to no really detriment of their own like obviously you can learn your job and a lot of that's on you but what i mean is the air force is not kept up with civilian counterparts law enforcement right so that and i i will say this to i i um when i was thinking about getting out i called and actually spoke to a a san francisco police department recruiter just to fucking hear like kind of what they would offer right and i really had no interest like i was i really had no intention of going but i wanted to to hear right and this guy literally told me he was no one looks at air force or like military police whether you're an m a or an mp or security forces in the civilian side as as experience anymore to the degree where they're going to take you in and say oh yeah you're seasoned he's like no one looks at it anymore he's like people enough people have come in now to where we understand that you guys don't do things the way that we do the level of training you guys don't get the experiences aren't there anymore you guys are very antiquated in how you operate and do things and i'm like wow like this dude is not long you know what i mean it's so true and so there's no incentive anymore for these kids that you want to tell they oh they show up at the recruiter's office and like i want to be a police officer like for i mean i don't know if this conversation you have with somebody zack but like you should definitely if you're recruiter be like listen man like yes the air force has cops but i'm going to use these abbreviations right in air quotes cop like very rarely or and there's only a couple installations like you know like vogue away fucking cadina like maybe that you're going to actually get to do real law enforcement with like a vogue like we're partnered with collet's eye german police yeah i'd explain to kids that like look there's like three different types of bases there's a security base a law force of base in the nuke base you could potentially never be in a law force of base so you won't ever really get any cop stuff and there's really no way to most our security oriented yeah as i can you have no really no way to know which which one it's going to be except the new case you know for sure they're going to be new bases but like but like and i would explain it to them or whatever um they might be another one yeah the only the only thing is that like uh i know california new york mass juices and uh there's another state they're really really strict about like military coming over whatever but um almost every other state as long as you have your leoza it is a lateral move um okay like texas i don't know enough about it yeah texas will do it washington i don't know my channel i think forda will forda will let you transfer some of that time if you go into like uh like sheriff's sheriff's department yeah the the big thing is you have to have like your you have to have a leoza so like that's like the thing so like uh and i i'm gonna i'm gonna appear real quick i don't mean interrupt yeah you go go for it dude uh see i see your airman who just does like his four years doesn't have a leoza he's not lateral lateraling into any police agency starting from ground zero you might as well yeah services in the air force that's the right equivalent um but a lot of agencies if they seem to leoza they it's a lateral but you're still on like um you're on a one-year probation they still know you don't know anything about civilian police so some of them you can skip an academy but you do go to like a crash california yeah that's the thing i was saying like california in new york you have to go to the jews academy and there's one other stage you can't remember which one it is things organ it might be Oregon uh i genuinely don't know but yeah they uh in the in the other states you can skip the academy but most of them will be like yeah you skip the academy but here's your like a 90-day crash course to learn crash course via cop yeah this county's laws or this state's laws or right or how i had a lot of friends in montana that separated i shouldn't say a lot i like a couple i guess that went and were like montana highway patrol or whatever and um i they did not have to go through the academy at least at the time i don't know if the laws are still the same because they change very very frequently but um but yeah no but that's the point like is fusion too a lot of pleases don't like taking a military just in general just because we've different ways yeah so like treating responses even even how we communicate um our phonetic alphabets completely different than civility don't use ten code either yep when i use ten code so like it's really hard to take someone who's been programmed to do a very specific thing for six ten plus years and the team program and try to make them do something else these agencies sometimes we'll just look at them and go i'd rather just take a new 22-year-old right because we can train them exactly how how we want to but but that's the point man is what i'm getting at is the air force genuinely has failed in that aspect to keep security forces relevant and you know i know that there's a lot that they are there's a lot of bureaucracy and i've heard from people that are part of those processes that actually want to make changes and they're like bro it's it's impossible they're like like i'm a fucking chief and i just work here you know and it's like that's you would think like maybe as a senior airman like you think like oh that guy can do something not at all you know what i mean and yeah it's it's kind of nuts but that's the point i'm making is like to your to your point to Ian that you know security forces has an identity crisis it doesn't know what it wants to be right now i know um the last i heard at least going back to shred-outs for law enforcement and security again that the prime they're getting rid of it not happen that's not see that's the last thing i heard and that um i also heard too that and correct me if i'm wrong right that um the focus is air-based ground defense for obvious reasons with it what's coming up on the horizon and that what i had heard was that um the majority of troops when they were talking about doing two different um tech schools like they have in the past and having a security and law enforcement shred-out was that like 85 percent of airman we're going to go be abgd and that the other 15 percent we're going to be law enforcement i've never i've never heard it like divided about the most like percentages like the most recent thing the most recent thing that i've heard is that the air force is currently teetering this is like couple once ago the air force is teetering with the idea that security forces will get rid of law enforcement completely and i'll just go to death yeah well it's so it's higher all this the all the staff civilian guys will be the cops security forces will be based ground defense so flatline security and the gates that's it right and so you won't ever be a cop anymore so one thing that i heard is as this like kind of model because the air force is like the little brother of the army right because the air force came from the army but the at least you know from my understanding and and being a a joint army air force unit in germany is that there are field MPs and then there are traffic MPs right and if somebody's listening you know if i'm telling this inaccurately please correct me right but that the majority the MPs i work with were field MPs and they rotated every couple of months out to the field with you know everybody else like the infantry and all that and trained that way and only a small handful were they went to the army's traffic school and they only did law enforcement and those guys did not rotate and they did not change and that that was kind of what the air force was looking at going at because of you know china and russia and you know world war three on the on you know looming right is they need everybody to be proficient at air base ground defense and a lot of these other capabilities that they want security forces to have like one thing i think is really cool is i've seen like dagger become something really legitimate it looks like that's building a real culture it looks like it's becoming something like it honestly because and this happens very often in the military in general is a lot of things like dagger end up morphing into their own thing and then eventually like like it's just a job it's its own job right yeah i could see it becoming that and it seems from an outsider's perspective because i've never been raving or or dagger is that it is it looks like it's heading in that direction at least from that outsider's perspective and maybe you know more yeah not friends that are daggers man uh we i mean i work with a couple of them and just like it doesn't seem like they have an identity crisis like they know that they they are no support and they will do whatever the fuck it takes to get those soft dudes to where they need to go and there's i mean they do more than that that we can't talk about on here isn't that just like in life though bro like having a purpose in a direction is is going to be like and they they love well i wanted to and same with the raid and do this i want it's huge it looks amazing man like i wish that like the opportunity like we were talking earlier before about how like those opportunities to go to like aerosol and stuff like that were like few and far between but like that's something when i was in airmen that like i wish a lot of this stuff was around and that it was more open because and i don't know if it's still this way but i know at one point it was like you had to be you had to have the luck of being at an installation that had these jobs for you to even be looked at for them instead of having like an actual process to to go through and get them which is shitty because you know like me a dude my first duty station was mouse room i was there for almost eight fucking years trying to leave you know what i mean like and they just i got the shit into the stick if i wanted to do something else yeah i mean i was no didn't know it could be the only reason i got hired as an instructor where i work at now is because i came from the specialty teams within security forces like in my specialty team was dst like and it allowed us to go to swat schools the only reason i was allowed that opportunity was because i went to a base that just happened to have one like just had it it wasn't a problem and it's been like one of the if you're if you're nukes you can go to trf you know what i mean but yeah i wanted to touch a little bit on like how like security forces loss as identity it's not like move that doesn't have it right now it reminded me i just remembered um so i'm part of a security forces networking and mentorship page on facebook i don't know if you guys are both on there or not there's this one guy uh back in like january and he was asking like how can i better incorporate um like pt into my squad where you make people want to do pt you want to have a stuff and for those who are listening the air force as a whole sees pt as an individual requirement so pt is not something we typically do i know like the army like to do a pt like every day then we need to like go for content too the air force is typically individual crime but security forces they be in or army group runs are like a special event yeah security forces wants it to be like after every shift or like a couple times a week where you do this a group that type of stuff but it's not it's different unit to unit it's different flight to flight like like i've been on flights where no windows pts on your own all the time that type of stuff but uh i commented on it because he was asking what the issue is with like trying to get people to do like pt or failing like physical standards and stuff and i said said i believe the biggest issue with pt and our crewfield is the top leadership thinks our afse air force specialty code is comparable to actual special warfare when we are actually just one of the easiest slash min qualified afse's for people to join the air force wants its defenders to be elite but are too afraid to actually hold us to a higher physical standard because they know over half our man you would be gone over right there they circumvent this with ravens or daggers or other special units within our career field but that doesn't make sf as a whole any more elite stop trying to make everyone a raven and just get them to pass their pt test with ease work to make pt not stressful while also respecting your airmen's time and i actually got like one of the most likes and people were like yeah that makes the most sense of type of stuff but it was funny is there was like the retired mass warrants their tired seniors and chiefs the boom or back in my day they came in there and yeah they were like you're into a pt every day and it's like i was elite i was an elite honor guard or something stupid thing it's like cool i served in the cold war you know the fuck you did oh okay listen let's an artsy moron yeah like is the cold war didn't happen nothing happened so again is like this we we still don't have like a culture identity and like you can't you can't tomorrow be like hey everyone needs to be this way because you can't put out a graphic of sacred things and security forces yeah like problem solved yeah because i know the fucking aircraft career mission accomplished in the background you know what i mean it's like one thing that it's got to be from within yeah be from within yeah one thing i tell the students all the time that i talk to um or give my introduction steer wherever mainly with pistol um i always start off the class with like do you guys understand the power you have on your hip that weapon system will take life if you know how to use it properly and a lot of the looks are like what like sorry you mean uh i might be put in a position to use this i'm sitting here like motherfucker like yes dude you gave it to you efficiently say it's the same thing in physical fitness like if i'm like this super advanced gunfighter or whatever but i can't run 100 yards without my heart exploding you're a liability to everybody like i'm not kidding you're you're a very you're you're a intensive loot drop you are a loot drop you are and i i just like it wasn't security forces i don't know if we're still trying to do it because i haven't been in it for four years but there's like talks of them making like their own PT test right kind of like yeah there is this is the burn-in this is the 2023 was the burn-in year okay so starting next year 24 you have to meet this new test on top of the air force test or is it you don't have to take the AFPT if you're taking the SFPT okay but the SFPT that would be but the SF SFPT Brandon because if you know more about it um do you think that's going to make a lot of people now fail and then there's so so yes i'll answer your question in two different ways right um the intent with the security forces PT test was it to be more functionally accurate to a security forces member right so like part of the PT test right is is like a body drag there's a sprint portion from what i remember there's like a farmer's carry portion and some of it looks really similar to some of the like special ops PT tests although it's not as hard but you know what they do they do more dynamic things and more dynamic movements than just the AFPT running on a half mile and a half push-ups and sit-ups and waste measurement because they brought the waste yeah they brought the waste measurement back i mean you may have through a mile and a half but anyway yeah so it's more dynamic meant to be more dynamic and then but um i haven't seen any of the like passing criteria to give you that information but one of the things i heard right and this is again this is i heard grapevine right so in and you may know more than me so jump in if i'm wrong is that part of it was like a 400 meter sprint and then a body drag like right after to simulate the you chasing somebody and then your partner goes down and you have to drag them to safety and just when i heard that i was like and you're supposed to be in kit too right so play carrier that was like so give me people are gonna fuck this up i was like they're gonna be handed out fucking PT waivers left and right and they're gonna be fuck yeah and they're gonna be failing people left and right you were in you were at or deployed location in africa brandon and there were airmen there who i would not trust with anything i think i did a couple of them come to mind physical standards and their size yeah yeah yeah there's a couple of them who they could have fit properly in their play carrier and you knew if they got they got shot and they'd be dead because we even hit their play carrier well yeah dude that i remember there was a certain female whose play carrier maybe took up a fifth of her you know fucking torso because of her size and you're right bro it's just the same female who when i asked her to try to load the uh 249 like show me how to load it she put the rounds of backwards are we talking about the same one we're talking about the same one oh yeah i never know it just i never had to like stop myself from yelling at an airman because i knew yelling at her wasn't gonna help her you know no so i had to like i had to like walk away and then come back and then like help her was me talking about my headphones yeah no but that's but that's that's the truth man did that stop the recording when i swapped out the headphones what can you guys hear me no no what is that yeah he has like a little thumbs up the postural growths in a while i don't know what it is oh this is the first time i've seen it yeah it's happened once anyway yeah no but that's just the point man is that the the the people that are in premium shape you know are are the ones that are very rare is kind of all i'm getting at you know and um you know we just we just lost Ian so probably maybe we could just wrap up um but uh middle health right you're super duper big stigma i will say to its credit that the air force is getting better at at that stigma but there are some paths the air force is taking that are not good and to what Ian was saying before is that the air force does not teach resilience the air force teaches you to be a victim and that's a fucking fact and the air force needs to fucking turn and i i don't really do really care for this person but i had a commander who said would say this about morale when airmen would complain about morale that morale is in your fucking hands it's not my responsibility to um you know to give you morale morale is in your hands and that is 110 the fucking truth and the uh yes circumstances external circumstances are going to have an effect on your morale and that is what it is you know what i mean um but the fucking truth of the matter is even with middle health is that you need to take things into your own hands you need to understand that resiliency means being okay and recognizing that and getting up and not wallowing in what happened and part of doing something about it and not wallowing is getting help but it's also recognizing certain things too that you know you need to recognize your own shortfalls as well and address them because that is something the air force does not teach and these are things that tie 100 percent into resiliency overall resiliency does not mean you're a victim resiliency means falling off the horse and getting back on it and riding off and uh you know we i'll bring up something that i listened to um the ones ready guys talk about is um i want to say it was erin was talking about how um they've had guys like during jumps where they will um their parachute won't open and they have to go to their reserve shoot and he said the first thing they do to those guys is send them right back up into the plane and tell them to jump again so that they have a successful jump right after their fucking fail jump where they had opened the reserve ship they had that fucking butthole pucker oh shit moment and then they fucking confronted immediately don't let the fear settle in and they go and they have a successful jump and they say there you go you know that's fucking resiliency and you know what that is too is that's your leadership not letting you fall into that trap of oh shit and it's forcing you to have some sort of resiliency and that's something that security forces is not good at is forcing people to fucking confront their shit and deal with it and then giving and then being a part of the solution like what what erin was talking about in that situation is oh fuck your reserve should open like security forces would be like oh poor you you know what i mean what i think i think the issue with that is there's so many cops like security forces the large critical near force and they know another one is coming like honestly right right overall leadership sees like you as a number your flight chief might care about you your supervisor should care about you at a minimum you know right but like when you start getting up to like ops superintendent commander um base command like you start getting up there you're just a you're just a number and unfortunately in today's security forces and probably most air force jobs they know that if you're having a problem or you're messing up you can leave because the the next airman will take your position and fill it and absolutely and the mission will get accomplished and this goes back to like when we had chief cody is a chief master on the air force do more with less that's still a thing in the air force even though we've had what three chief masters since then two illies i think dude that's one of the things too that like i i love throwing in the faces of some of these like older civilians that work around these units is they're like um you know oh well back in my day we did this and we had all this other shit and i was like do you realize how much fucking bigger the air force was in the 80s like it was way bigger than it is today yeah and you guys had a lot less to fucking do yeah so now there are less people with more shit like they literally have multi-capable airman so now you have airman who are have multiple AFSCs doing shit because there aren't enough people to fill those AFSCs so i'm sorry not sorry shut the fuck up with your shit that's not helping you know what i mean yeah so or they or they're being like this wasn't a problem when i was here or like we we could handle that problem it's like great right so it's still sucking now because you failed to fix it then so now move out of the way just don't fucking came in fucking fab move out of the way now so we can fix it for the next generation of airman because right you're still being the problem right right then like move catholic dude i know that's that's literally that's a one of the problems that i i have with fucking old old hat civilians that hang around for a paycheck but anyway man uh it's too bad we lost Ian um i really appreciate him coming on uh for that conversation about mental health because it's uh you know it's a very real one very real problem facing the military suicide rates are still up um i don't know i thought i remember reading that um another year after 2019 sort of passed that uh that suicide rate i think it did i think 2020 and then 2021 were both higher but at for security forces specifically 2019 was the highest right 20 air force did the air force the air force numbers went up but the there he is the air force numbers went up and the security forces was the highest in 2019 correct okay okay yeah can you hear you guys here and see me okay can't hear you brother can you give me a thumbs up if you can there you are yeah yeah sorry for the well they just went away so we'll wrap for some technical technical difficulties we're gonna wrap it up thank you guys for for listening um i just wanted to say to that today uh mark the year for uh i came with our podcast not the year for having Zach the real co-host on uh because Zach is the co-host that matters and uh but that we also hit a thousand subs on youtube thank you thank you so much you guys thank you very much you know the statistics still say that there's a lot of people who listen but don't hit that subscribe button so please hit the subscribe button yep it doesn't take any effort um did even if you hit the subscribe button and mute us because i'm ugly that's fine just keep that subscribe yeah hit it hit it you know what i'm saying and um as always please support us by supporting our sponsors head on over to refine violence get yourself some cool shirts sweatshirts MMA gear hats and skull and cross beans coffee both of those 10% off with code uh fire 10 so all right y'all thank you so much for listening Zach and i are getting out of here choose