The Green Beret Who Lost His Leg and Returned to Combat | Nick Lavery

So as you can see, I've got a ton of questions, and I haven't read them, and I don't know if I'm gonna ask one question on, on the list.

[chuckles] All right.

Okay? Because I don't talk to people like you very often, and one of my biggest regrets was not going into the military.

Mm.

But I was a full-blown drug addict.

Mm.

Full-blown.

I didn't have parents that talked to me about it.

Hell, they didn't talk to me at all about anything, okay? And so it's just been a huge regret for me, and so what I've done is I've treated hundreds, maybe a thousand veterans in my life, and they are the easiest people to treat for drug addiction and alcoholism.

And the reason they're the easiest is because they've got a baked-in discipline, right? And you can literally, someone could be having an episode or struggling in that moment and acting out, and you can literally say, "Soldier," and they just straighten right up, and then you give them a hug, and you whisper in their ear, "This isn't how we do this.

We love you." Right? And it's just [sighs] what is it like in the military? I asked Tony the same thing, and then talk to me about veterans.

What is that stress like to the point to where people have to self-medicate in order to either get through the current military or the trauma afterwards?

It's a good question, man.

Um, I gotta preface it by saying, you know, every service member's experience and journey is different.

You know, I think just we all kinda tend to get labeled as, and it's okay, there's nothing wrong with this, you know, as service members or like veterans, and those are like massive genres of millions and millions and millions of like unique circumstances and experiences.

Not one is in, is in the same.

And you can use like some cliche examples that would state the difference.

Me, I came in directly into Special Forces.

I've only been a Green Beret now coming up on 20 years of service.

Like my entire military experience has been in special operations during peak GWOT era.

And compare that to, and this isn't better or worse than, I'm just saying that it's different.

Compare that to, um, an admin clerk who served a year and a half and then got medically retired for whatever reason or just decided to get out of the military.

Like th-th-those, those journeys are just so different, so it's, it's hard to paint this like massively wide brush that accurately answers any question really pertaining to like veterans or military or mental health as it pertains to service members.

[lip smack] Um, but I can say from my own experience and, and working with others that, that do different things, of course, over two decades, I think one of the greater challenges that we have, and there's two that I'll highlight.

One is the, is the negative stigma that's associated with raising your hand or outing yourself that you may have some challenges that you're dealing with, and the fear that is gonna come with that.