Life Unscripted - Stories of Mental Health and Addiction
Life Unscripted has one goal - to break down stigma by sharing the inspiring stories of people living with mental illness and addiction. Shame and fear often stop people who really need help from reaching out. COVID 19 has created a mental health and addiction pandemic. For many, anxiety is now part everyday life. Alcohol and drug use has increased as people try to cope. Host Janice Arnoldi has lived with bi-polar (manic depression) disorder for more than 30 years. She has a half hour radio show and speaks regulary to groups about mental illness.
Life Unscripted - Stories of Mental Health and Addiction
William Person Went From Bobsled Glory To Traumatic Brain Injury.
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What if the most dangerous sports hits aren’t the ones you see on highlight reels? U.S. bobsled Olympian William Person was on the team for 9 years and he experienced G-forces, track vibration, and micro-concussions that left him with dementia-like symptons from a chronic brain injury - Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy. Person uses a hyperbaric oxygen chamber - HBOT- to help with symptons, a treatment pioneered by football great Joe Namath. CTE is also a common injury for the military exposed to bombs and the G force from fighter jets. Person talks about CTE and his campaign to raise money for a HBOT centre that would be available to any person with CTE.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/cte-recovery-for-athletes-and-military
Meet William Person, Bobsled Champion
SPEAKER_01William Person was a member of the U.S. Bob Sled team. And it's not surprising for anybody who's watched Bob Sled that he got banged around a lot, including his head, which resulted in a chronic traumatic brain injury. William, thanks for coming on the show and talking about CTE. As I said in my intro, I think people are learning more and more and more about it as more athletes and really well-known athletes are coming forward and champions like yourself are coming forward and talking about it. And I don't think it's easy because there are some um memory behavioral issues and all sorts of things get wrapped up in CTE. So let's start, I guess, with your time on the U.S. Bobsled team.
SPEAKER_00Okay, sounds good. Sounds good. What do we start at?
Path To The U.S. Team
SPEAKER_01Like um Yeah, just start, you know, what's what's uh how did you get involved in the bobsled team?
SPEAKER_00Well, bobsledding for me was kind of like the finale of my sports career. Like I was a uh track and field athlete sprinter. Um at points and times of my life I did weird jobs. Like I was just some modeling. I did some um, if you see the movies Jerry Maguire, I'm one of the guys that you see on the football field running running up and down the field. They hired me just to run fast and uh look pretty doing it. So I did that for a while. That's all right. Uh yeah, yeah. So I was doing anything that came with running fast, and I was at the end of my sports career. I was running, uh opened the first ever independent living transitional housing program uh in Utah at the time. So it was such a new program, they opened me as a pilot program. So I was kind of doing different things at the time when Bobsledding showed up. But um, yeah, I went and tried out for it. I set a new record on the tryout, and the rest was history. Nine years later, now I was still racing.
SPEAKER_01And you raced um, I believe, uh two-man and four man?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I'm the four man uh U.S. national champion and uh two-man, but best of my best finish was silver medalists and two-man uh for nationals. Yeah.
The Invisible Costs Of G-Forces
SPEAKER_01So um when you watch Bob Sled, and I think people a lot of people do watch it, um, especially during the Olympics, because it's really, really exciting. And you honestly can't imagine how anybody would even ever think about getting on a little sled, you know, and going down those icy tracks. But but you think about people flying off and in those kinds of accidents, but it's the constant boom, boom, boom, boom, boom on your head that actually caused the CTE for you.
SPEAKER_00Uh well, I believe it's a combination. Um, because I also believe it's the G forces. Because there's there's some athletes I know, they never crashed and they have the same same symptoms as the rest of us. So it has to be the G forces and and then just the the vibrations on the track, it's always a vibration going through your head like a like a shaking baby syndrome type thing. So it's um I don't believe it's just one thing causing this thing.
SPEAKER_01When uh so how long did you bobsled?
SPEAKER_00Uh about nine years.
SPEAKER_01So that's a lot of uh boom, boom, boom, boom, boom on your head.
SPEAKER_00That's why I tell people I'm the perfect candidate because what I know about the science of the sport now, like every time I went down a track, it's a very good chance I was getting a micro concussion. If I had a big crash, it was a big concussion. If we hit the walls too hard, it could be a big concussion. And so, like, no one in the world could probably have as many concussions as I do. And so for me to wake up and after 10 years of cloudiness from the treatment I found, um, like uh I'm the I'm the one I'm the guinea pig. I'm I tell everybody I'm your guinea pig. It should hopefully the the therapy that we're they're doing is working for everybody.
Misreading Symptoms And Daily Life Decline
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so that's the hyperbaric uh chamber that um that we're talking about. And of course, people get concussions and not as many as you, and probably not as severe, I mean, on average, but everybody's had a concussion to to some degree. And I ride horses and I've fallen off and I've banged my head and been, you know, really woozy and not thought anything about it. And I think that that's what you know, we it's coming into um people, and people are learning more about CTE because of professional athletes like yourself coming forward and talking about it. But it's something that I think we all we all need to worry about. And I think that's part of what um what you are working on with with the hyperbaric chamber. But before we get there, let's talk a little bit about the personality changes and the kinds of things that happened with you, because you can't just do a brain scan and say, ah, there's CTE. So you had to diagnose it through through things that you were doing in your life.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, actually, before we go there, um, maybe I I want to comment on something you just mentioned. You you're right. Like when I started this journey, I thought it was really about the athletes. I had no idea. I began to meet other people. You got the athletes, we have our veterans. Uh matter of fact, if you look at the the veterans, we're doing, I think it's 6,400 suicides per year. But what they don't fail to tell you is like uh most people who have CTE, they start to self-medicate a little bit. Usually that's usually alcohol. And so uh the military doesn't count the uh the deaths. Even if if you overdose, even if you leave a suicide note, they don't count it as suicide. So there's an additional 5,000 of those veterans every year that die as well. So that's about 11,000 um veterans every year that's you know dying from behind this thing. Yeah, and then some of them are getting diagnosed with PTSD. And then when they do their brain autopsy later, they find out they actually have CTE. So that PTSD might be just a wrong diagnosis for most veterans coming back. For the veterans who've been around the explosions, who's been around the uh fighter pilots, those kind of people, the guys on those boat runners, they skip across the waves. And then there's the pockets of housewives, the ones who've been uh uh abused. They're they're being they're now dying at their death, they're being positively identified as having CTE. Or the housewife who fell on and hit her head while playing with her children. So it's touching a lot of people's lives right now. And we're just now, no one's really talking about it. No one's a matter of fact, the last little stat I'll throw at you. See, some of the stuff I'm still learning from the last time we spoke. Um, if you look at the last, I think they say 31% of mass shootings are our veterans coming back, turning the gun on civilians now or other veterans. So there's a lot of things out here that we need to hopefully we can address and treat these guys.
Beyond Sports: Veterans And CTE
SPEAKER_01And uh Yeah, well, I mean, with the veterans, it it totally makes sense that an explosion would cause that kind of reverberation in the brain. And I think there's probably, um, which is a horrible thought, people who are coming back with both PTSD and CTD, which requires a little bit of a different uh treatment. Um, but sometimes the symptoms can be the same. And I know that some of the symptoms are um can be violence, can be total, you know, you get total confusion, you don't know where you are. You talked about some of those things.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, absolutely. They have a different life experience. Theirs was about violence and all this other stuff. So their experience is gonna, their brain is gonna react probably different than mine.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So what what did you see in your behavior that um made you start to wonder what was going on?
SPEAKER_00The thing about this, that's the that's the scary part. There was nothing in my behavior that made me think something was wrong with me this way. I thought I was coming down with diabetes because I couldn't get out of the bed. I was cloudy, uh, I was getting lost in my own community. I was in dementia pretty much. So I was definitely in dementia. So that's what, but I thought it was diabetes. I couldn't connect the dots with what was really going on. And that's the scary part about this thing because most people don't. If you look at these athletes and these veterans, they aren't walking around saying, hey, I'm gonna go kill some people, I'm gonna go kill myself. No, they're not doing that. Like those are uh American heroes, like they didn't come back just to turn the gun on us. Something's going on in that brain. And for me, it was a voice that kept telling me as well, just end this thing now. Like, your your teammates are dying already, they're killing themselves. It's why are you still here dealing with this? You don't have to stick this out, you know. So it's you have a lot of little different variables going on in there that just makes life horrible.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and the um the uh personal relationships that you had were severely affected as well. Again, yeah, you didn't know why. You just uh I'm sure there's some things that you just thought were normal. Yeah, yeah, that's just part of life. But you but you had personality, um, not personality, personal issues that were really, really seriously affected.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I would I would definitely I would definitely agree with that because there were some very special people I met throughout my life. And like some of those, like some of the ladies I were dating, like there were very beautiful people inside and out, uh, had a great head on their shoulders. But with something with me, it was like I I don't I really can't put my finger on it. I was just never happy. I just could never be happy, you know. And and I didn't I didn't want my unhappiness to be affect them, so I'm I have to I had to move on. So they you know, but the truth was it was nothing wrong with us or the relationship. It was just my thinking was uh it was I was struggling with my thoughts and um and just the things that I was feeling.
SPEAKER_01And you mentioned dementia. Uh I I think we could uh go back and think about Muhammad Ali or any any boxer really, but but I think that he was probably the most prominent uh boxer who who showed some seriously effects from getting hit in the head, you know, and we said, oh, he's you know, punch drunk, and you say that about about fighters, but um he ended up with a dementia, and I think Parkinson's Parkinson's, yeah. And um uh and I'm not saying that those weren't there because they can test for that. However, I'm gonna guess there was some CTE in the background also happening there based on what we're talking about. It would be impossible to go through.
Overlap With PTSD And Behavior Changes
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it'll have it has to be in there. It was no way in the world he was not suffering from CTE symptoms. It's impossible. You're right. Yeah. Well, let's talk about the hyperbaric chamber. All right, all right.
SPEAKER_01Because um, it's it's interesting. I mean, how did you even discover uh, you know, hey, let's go in a hyperbaric chamber and see if it works? How did you even end up in one? And then we can talk about what you've what you're doing with that because it's helped you so much.
SPEAKER_00Well, uh Joe Namath, he uh showed up, old football player from the 60s.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00He uh sent he had some videos out. See, first of all, I couldn't uh I didn't know what it was and uh until my last teammate who called me speaking gibberish, once they did his um autopsy, uh he was in stage four. So once I knew this was CTE and it wasn't diabetes anymore, then I changed my focus of looking for answers. And so when Joe Naaman said he um used hyperbarics, I first I didn't believe it was gonna work. I didn't think it would work because I I tried everything, I treated every symptom that was there. Every every time something popped up, I'm addressing it. And so I went to this place and I I tried it. And I was in that machine for one hour. It looks just like the one that's behind me right here. And um when I came out, like uh my life changed. Uh I had 10 years of cloudiness at that time, and it just went away. It was gone for six days. Um and they let me come back a second time, and that that second time, uh, then it was clear for I was clear for nine days. So then I had to buy one.
SPEAKER_01So And the idea with a hyperbaric chamber is it's if I'm correct, it's negative pressure. Is that is is that what it does? How does it how does it work?
SPEAKER_00Well, it pressurizes that chamber, and then it makes your body believe it's like mine is a 1.3 atmospheres, so it makes it believe that I'm about seven to nine feet underwater.
SPEAKER_01And at that point, okay, so it's it's more pressure, not less pressure.
SPEAKER_00Yes. More pressure, yeah. And so, yeah, it makes your body believe it's uh seven feet underwater, your blood is like a gas. So now you can send it'll send blood and oxygen to everything in your body, it'll get through all the blockages, and that's really what the how they it was explained to me.
SPEAKER_01It's it's interesting that pressure, I mean, that just sort of made me think that that G force was one of the things that is a problem. And then you're talking about in Bob's letting and that would definitely be um the issue with fighter pilots when you're talking about that. So it's interesting that you go into a chamber where there's pressure. The reason I said negative pressure, because it seemed like, well, you've had a lot of pressure on your head, now you would be negative pressure. So it is interesting that that's what the hyperbaric chamber does.
SPEAKER_00Oh, I got one for you. Uh, I was interviewed by some military veterans over in uh the UK, and they told me they're not allowed to uh deep sea dive over there. You can't you have so a lot of the veterans they have the same issues as American soldiers over here, same stuff. So what they do is they um he said they go to a little island and uh he didn't know he didn't know much about hyperbarics at all. He was just kind of we were just talking through it, and so he says they go to the island and then they go down deep and they stay down there for a long, long, long time. He just kept really emphasizing emphasizing long, long. And so I'm just kind of getting, I was getting goosebumps and kind of giggling on the inside because whenever I get in that chamber, it's called a dive. It's the same thing. They found another way to do it, which is the same as what we do here. This is actually simulating what they do. So yeah, and and so that's just another confirmation that uh this this technology has been around since the 1800s, people are doing it all around the world. It just looks different over there. They actually go in the ocean to do it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I'm not sure that we can actually just say, hey, everybody, just go deep diving and you know, and pretend it's like well, or simulate a hyperbaric chamber because it's obviously um if you're don't have somebody with you or somebody who knows about deep diving, you could be you could be uh getting yourself into some trouble. But but that is interesting that that that's the um the uh correlation between the two things. So let's talk about um the campaign you have going. Now you want to start a center for hyperbaric chambers. So you do have a GoFundMe campaign, which people can um can find on on Facebook. Um where do they where do they find that on Facebook?
SPEAKER_00It's actually on it's on uh if you go to GoFundMe, it's it's everywhere. It's called One Man with the Chamber. Uh okay. Or you can look up my name, William Person. Um, I'm very easy to find. Matter of fact, let me show you this. We are official now. We we are a not-for-profit now.
SPEAKER_01Oh, fantastic.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So not only can we take uh we're doing crowdfunding, but now we can start creating a partnership so we can actually get this thing up and moving.
SPEAKER_01So uh where where how when is this happening and where?
SPEAKER_00Well, it's really about dollars and cents. Um, as soon as because this this chamber I have behind me is the only chamber we have right now. And so um it's not made for uh sending that many people through it. It's really made for one for a household. And so I need to get some metal chambers built. And those metal metal chambers are expensive, they run between$50,000 to$100,000. And so as soon as we acquire probably about$50,000, we can probably purchase the first chamber. And then we want to open in St. Louis. And I chose that because it's right in the middle of America. Matter of fact, we we're the gateway to the west, so you're supposed to come to St. Louis, walk through the arch and and welcomes you to the west, supposedly. But anyway, that's kind of how that goes. I don't I don't really get it because if you go the other way, it's the gateway to the east. So which one really is it? That's true, that's true. Yeah, um, it's a gateway to somewhere. Yeah.
Discovering Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy
SPEAKER_01I was thinking about it and I was thinking, why is it Lewis? And I was so I was talking to my partner about it, and she said, Well, it's the middle of the country. And I thought, and she said, So everybody, you know, it's almost equidistance for everybody to get there. So so that was pretty interesting. Now, you are not, are you are um hopefully going to expand this so you go beyond professional athletes, and it would be potentially someone like me who's you know been riding horses, fallen off an hair head one too many times, and is experiencing some symptoms that aren't explained by other medical um diagnoses. And that's that's the thing, right? I think that if you're experiencing potentially something like we're talking about with CTE, and you can't find any diagnosable reason for it, then CTE is something you really should be seriously looking at.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01And uh and you want to build, you want to build, I mean, a hundred thousand dollars a chamber is a lot is a lot of money for you to have to raise, but if you can build that be, you know, one chamber, one chamber, one chamber at a time, you could be helping an awful lot of people out there.
SPEAKER_00Well, actually, the one chamber that uh is a company uh we're talking with right now, and they can build me one with uh host six people. So if I'm open eight hours a day, I can I can actually service 48 people. Wow. So that's that's a significant difference than me sending one person through this chamber right here.
SPEAKER_01So yes, because how long do you have to stay in it?
SPEAKER_00Um usually starting out probably be about an hour, but at home I do 90 minutes when I get in my chamber.
SPEAKER_01Okay. And what do you think the timeline's going to be like before you before you get up and running and and uh people can start contacting you about coming and coming to the to the center and and um experiencing well that's a hard question right there, right?
How Hyperbarics Works
SPEAKER_00And actually, let me uh address one thing that you asked. Um yeah, I do. Um I don't really want to this thing start out as me saving my Olympic teammates, like uh but once I saw the numbers, we we're losing 11,000 soldiers a year. I'm gonna open to the public immediately. Like it won't be, I'm not gonna be just uh athletes, no. We're gonna open to everyone. So it'll be open to the public, is what I'm trying to do. And this is something that's so different. Like I'm getting flack left and right. People who want to put money in, they're like, hey, let me put some money in and let me be an investor. I I just can't do it because I don't want to pass that buck to um to the customer. So I'm really hoping to do it through crowdfunding, through um uh through my 501c3 where I can hand out uh you know tax write-offs, things like that. Um and yeah, like I said, we we're here to treat the public because everybody needs the help. And it's it's just really sad that like even for myself, I'm I'm fighting one of the biggest uh cases in the world trying to help my teammates. And even I I got to see some of the best doctors in the world, and none of them are really gonna see it on you. They're just gonna just keep kind of you know patting you on the shoulder. Oh, you're 6'1, you're 220, you're you know, nothing really wrong with you. But they didn't know I got lost just walking home half a mile from there. Like I'm I'm lost in my community. Uh I I don't know where I'm at sometime. Like I knew I was in trouble. And so most people in America are gonna have the same problem. And they are having the same problem. It's and you're you're all the uh the military family saying the same thing. Like we tried to get them some help, but it there was no help to be got. Like it doesn't make sense to me. And so what I'm doing, it's it's really for it's for the it's for the public. It's not really uh it's not it's not a business to make money for for me. It's that's not what it's about.
SPEAKER_01Will there be a cost or are you trying to keep it at uh at zero?
SPEAKER_00I want it at zero because let me give you the like for example, some people like when I went and got in the chamber the first time, like the lights turned on immediately. And I matter, I thought the salesman was a crook at first. I thought he was trying to rip me off because he saw me putting my glasses on and off, and he was like, What's wrong? You know, and I was like, Yeah, I don't think I need my glasses. And so um he was like, Oh, you're one of those. And so when he said that, I'm thinking, okay, he's about to try to sell me this chamber. Okay, that was a that's that's a good gimmick. He let me use it for free, he bought me in, suckered me in there. I like it, and so you know, it didn't do any damage. And now he's you know, about to try to, you know, gouge me. But he was right, some people get immediate relief, and then some people need like uh two sessions a day for 30 days. Now in Los Angeles, that's gonna cost you$200 per hour. So that's around$12,000.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
Diving, Pressure, And Global Parallels
SPEAKER_00And so what I don't want to do, people won't show up for the treatment because they can't afford it. People right now, I'm I have a service right now. Like uh if you find me through my TikTok, I'll help you find a chamber. Some places will treat you for free, or at least I help you find one in a community if I can. And so I'm sending people to different places now. But a lot of people right away, they was like, I can't afford it. I'm just gonna have to sit here and suffer. And that's what I was doing. Once I figured it out, I knew this chamber was working for me. Then I had to find 20,000 bucks to buy this thing. And I had just bought a home. And so I didn't have that money laying around. So I was laid, I just laid around until I was starting to suffer again. Then uh my dad showed up and he saved my butt by just uh purchasing that chamber for me.
SPEAKER_01But yeah, what a difference in your life. I mean, to the with the the direction your life could have taken is is uh beyond tragic possibilities. So the fact that you were were able to find almost by happenstance, right? It's not like you had you know read a lot about it and thought I've gotta find myself a hyperbaric chamber.
SPEAKER_00No, I you know, I I I and I did the research on I didn't think it was gonna work. Like I tried everything, like every symptom that popped up, like I but no, it was such a blessing. And um, like even to this day, like I still use it for maintenance and I I make sure I still get in there every now and then. Um usually if I go 30 days without it, I start to get a little bit fuzzy again. But so far, so good. Like right now, I haven't uh been back in there because I had to be in there for over about two months. Like I still get in there pure just in just to make sure it doesn't. But there's so many people out there, they're doing this and they don't need the service anymore. They they don't, you know, it's it's like it's reversing their stuff, like Joe Naman. There's a lot of those guys, yeah.
SPEAKER_01I'm probably the one and reversing it permanently, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. I'm the worst case scenario because remember, I raced for nine years. That means I went down that bobsled track between one and six times a day for three to four three to five days a week for four to five months of the year for nine years. And if every if you get a concussion every time you go down that track, the microbes, I'm I'm the worst case scenario. If it's helping me, it should. That's why I'm really praying it'll keep helping everybody. And so far, so good.
Center Location And Expansion Plans
SPEAKER_01And just tell me again, where can people find you and get more information? If you go go to uh TikTok, I'm one man with a chamber. You can listen to all episodes of Life Unscripted Stories of Mental Health and Addiction on your favorite podcast app or on my website at lifeunscripted.ca.