As a Navy EOD Operator, I quickly learned that there are truly no good days. When my services were needed, life wasn’t going well for someone; either they wanted to go into danger and needed my guidance to reduce their chances of dying, they were already in imminent danger and needed me to get them out, or they were dead and I needed to find out how they died, why they died and bring their family home, something to bury.
Over time, I valued the recovery of a body over my own life. The mental image of a child holding daddy’s dog tags drove me to make dangerous decisions in regards to my safety. This turned into an addiction, that I could somehow save everyone’s life, if I deployed more. The more I left home, the more I felt at home when I was gone; the closest I ever felt to other humans was over the 6-9 months I spent saving their lives, only to never see again. As I increased my time in country, the more I left parts of me there, the less I brought home to the people who love me.
This addiction became a personal crusade. In a big orange flash and billowing black smoke, the men who wore a Scooby Doo suit at my son’s 6th birthday became the men we celebrate every year; which mutated into my mission to avenge them, because my kids don’t understand why they will never see them again. Thirty-eight is the number of humans who imprinted their laughs into our lives, the same laugh, my children will never again be given that opportunity to hear. For God and Country? No, for nothing. For everything.
Suppress Emotion, Ignore Pain, Be Very-Very Violent:
I became soulless. I have never been a violent person, my MOS saves lives, it doesn’t take them, right? I learned that getting blown up was just an occupational hazard; like a line cook and grease burns, this becomes the normal. The broken bones and shrapnel are a badge of honor, eventually a competition amongst peers for who’s trauma was more extreme. Then, indigenous people became objects, they became soulless, they did not exist, they held no value. I lost all moral values, this morphed into shame, guilt and removed all value within myself. How can the family I sacrificed, for the lives of people they will never meet, love someone who held no value for human life. It seemed that I was headed to hell in a gasoline jumpsuit, shielded by an ego and a smile so people wouldn’t see that I was scared of the stranger I became.
The Breathing Exoskeleton:
What was the value of my own life? I planned my own funeral a dozen times, I wrote my family my last letter on the same occasions. My family got the dreaded phone call too many times for children under 12 to comprehend.
I became a believer that giving families something to bury was worth more than my own life. I put strangers in a storyboard, most likely highlighting the err of their ways which often cost them their life. I put my friends in a box, sent them on a bird home and never saw them again. I never processed their departure because there was another mission. It was always about the mission.
Experiencing that much pain, suffering and death forces a man to make decisions. Some will cope with substances, others will push the limits with high risk behavior among other things. At some point all of these mechanisms of coping plateau, maybe I’d dabbled in a few others to buy time, but eventually they all failed.
I started to believe that I have been so close to death, I might not be able to die. From IED blasts, helicopter crashes, getting shot several times, chemical warfare exposure, and even being hit by a car while messing around on a bicycle on deployment, here I was… still alive. Alive was the most positive word I could find for the time, looking back though I was merely breathing, taking up space. I was not alive, I was existing.
Those of us who fought these wars for god and country, we gave all of ourselves. I don’t mean sacrificing your life, but sacrificing everything but life. Like a lobster that gives you all of its insides, but all that is left is this shell, the empty shell that gets tossed in the trash.
Choose Your Adventure:
In 2017, I decided that it was time for me to depart this earth but not until my oldest child became a man. I planned my death with a lot more vigor than you see in the DODs safety stand down training. I thought I was supposed to be gambling, drinking, and detaching. Instead I found myself hitting the gym harder, treating myself better, loving more. You see, my death wasn’t up to chance anymore, it was on my time, my terms. I was no longer the narrator but the author of my choose your own adventure, turn to page 97, you’re dead.
The Friday before my son turned 18, I was approached by a stranger who relayed to me that I had a beautiful aura, I had a kind soul. This hit me pretty hard, not even during my marriage was I ever told this. I didn’t believe it, but I certainly gave it a lot of thought. I decided that I would hold off on my plan, turn to page 88, and ask for help. I am so very thankful for those who nudged me along during the latter years of my 25 year career, my next words are never intended to chip away at all the credit they deserve: My Mollie – my Alex the therapists who didn’t try to fix me but hugged me, NICoE, Navy Seal Foundation, Navy Special Operations Foundation, SOCOM Foundation, America’s Mighty Warriors and 40 or so Stellate Ganglion Blocks were all unbelievably helpful in transitioning me from a broken warrior to a sustainable Non-Playable Character (NPC), but they weren’t the fix.
It’s Not Normal:
But as I retired, I went from 1 of 1800 to 1 of 16.2 million. The ‘continuity of care’ promised by the military and VA doesn’t exist. To be told by the VA you don’t have symptoms of brain injury after a recorded 312 TBI’s on active duty, is deflating. I got shot in the head, the math just ain’t mathin! This is when I decided, it was time to be real with people, specifically those who are in charge of my medical care. This is when I realized that the civilian populace is not ready to hear about the things we joke about, in truth we laughed about the unspeakable, because we are coping.
You see, after I retired I learned that every day of my life, I wake up and I make a decision; to live or to not live any longer. I was tired of being asked if I was okay. If I answer no, there is a chance that I will get the involuntary three day grippy sock vacation. If I answer yes, the same question will be asked again, and again. I decided it was time to let it be known. No, I am not okay. Society has this expectation that because I am alive, I should be okay. Because I am not crying in the corner, that I am okay. What type of reaction can you expect from a man who volunteered to walk down on an unknown device that may or may not be there, find this device that has an unknown set of detonating triggers with an unknown amount of explosives, built by and unknown individual in a country that hates you and the highest likelihood that you, the expert, are the actual target of this device. Then, do this over and over, again and again, without hesitation, for year after year having fully grasped the fact that, either you are going to come home a winner or in an instant… it is no longer your problem, that you just became someone else’s worst day and your life is summed up in a powerpoint storyboard.
You see, behind the darkness of my pupils is war. Everyday it is the greatest fight of my life. I have never lost a war; I have given up white space and utilized the cover of darkness to gain the tactical high ground, resupply and bring the fight to the enemy. Eventually, I will run out of high ground and the resupplies will cease. It is well known in the community, we keep one bullet for ourselves. The beautiful irony behind this story is, that once I run out of high ground; I will be out of the darkness. I will have won, high score, game over. That my support network, my tribe of humans will not have to ask if there was more they could have done, they will know they are enough, exactly everything I needed. That nobody in this world can stop me when I decide it is my time, on my terms.
Actually Healing, For Real:
They made me promise that I would exhaust all available treatments and once that was done, I was free to take my trip home. This 
began my journey beyond Cognitive – Dialectal Behavioral Therapy & Freudian based healing. It started with The Mission Within and Ibogaine/5MEO-DMT, hyperbaric treatments, the amazing folks at Virginia High Performance, which all landed me here with Task Force Dagger. You see, I wasn’t ready for what these previous treatments had in store for me, but the universe gives you what you need, and the universe gave me all those previous treatments to prepare me for what Task Force Dagger offered with Ketamine Infusion.
Ibogaine/5MEO offers you a very serious ego death and it absolutely gives you that and so much more. But ego death wasn’t what I needed; Remember, I did not value my own life. Ketamine offered me something I have been seeking for nearly two decades; actual death. I have never feared death, but how did I know this?; Since I have only gotten close to death… really close, but I never died. Ketamine confirmed for a fact that when facing death, it is the most calm I have ever felt. I got to experience my death in all six ketamine infusions, it helped me understand that despite the thousands of mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, sons and daughters are still alive because of my work, but even more, that I am beautifully insignificant in the grand scheme of it all. That the most selfless thing I can do, is to be selfish and put myself first. That, my reason to live isn’t for my children, for my family, for a paycheck, for a better life; my reason to live is for me. I am enough. Everyday, I should celebrate that I am the record holder for the longest thing I have ever kept alive.
Perception is Reality:
Task Force Dagger gave me the opportunity to alter my perception of pain. Mental/emotional pain will manifest as physical pain, physical pain will manifest into mental/emotional pain. I know that my pain will never go away, but my perception of it has. After the very first ketamine treatment I knew that there were many more chapters left in my adventure book. I am more than this non-playable character the military made me into, that I am the main character that others are rooting for.
Bonus: I have been chewing tobacco since the 6th grade. That can of chew became my staple on the squadrons and teams as it was attached to my helmet in a custom dip holder. Every infil “Joker 1 what’s your location”. The same can of chew never shamed me for the lives taken out of anger, it was there for every death, it soothed my soul when I was tired. It kept my aim steady and my mind sharp. Every IED I disarmed, I had a chew in. I always said, I would die with a chew in my mouth.
Without a doubt, Task Force Dagger gave me the opportunity to die, with a chew in my mouth, for the last time, they altered the path of my existence. I was once asked a question I could not answer: “What makes you happy, Bryan?”, It has been 7 years since I was asked that question and after my ketamine treatments I have the answer. Being alive, that is what makes me happy
