Hector Bravo UNHINGED
Official Hector Bravo Podcast
Hector Bravo UNHINGED
Healing From The Inside Out
We trace Paul’s path from childhood violence and years in group homes to the moment fatherhood unlocked buried memories, and how that pain turned into a mission serving veterans, cops, and correctional officers. Practical tools, honest talk about meds, and a clear lane for confidential help shape a plan you can start today.
• early trauma and group home life
• violence as learned survival and its cost
• discovering truth at sixteen and its fallout
• shifting from suffering to service work
• why vulnerability beats career‑driven silence
• stacked trauma in SOF, LE, and CO communities
• limits of meds without real therapy
• breathwork, sauna, and cold exposure protocols
• gratitude and journaling for neural reset
• triggers mapped into actionable insight
• daily maintenance versus relapse risk
• family first: being a good spouse to parent well
• building CO programs with real confidentiality
• how to reach Alpha Wave and join events
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Hector Bravo on chaos is now in section. Welcome back to our channels, Warriors. Another banger for you guys today. We have none other than Paul Newt Bar, who has a traumatic background and is a participant in a nonprofit. So welcome, dude. How's it going, man?
SPEAKER_02:Doing good, man. Thanks for having me out here.
SPEAKER_03:For sure, bro. Thank you for making that long ass drive. So where'd you grow up at, dude?
SPEAKER_02:I grew up in Orange County. Okay. I was born in the early 80s, mid 80s, 1986, in Garden Grove. So hell yeah. Yeah, now I live in Northern California up near Lake Tahoe.
SPEAKER_03:So let's dive into it. You said you were suffering trauma early on in your life. How old were you when that trauma occurred?
SPEAKER_02:So my mother died from a domestic violence incident with my father when I was five months old. When you were five months old. Yeah. He smacked her around and she went in the hospital and never came out.
SPEAKER_03:Dang, bro. Sorry to hear that and sorry for your loss, dude. Yeah. Where did you go from there? Were you did a family member take you in?
SPEAKER_02:No, so from five months until about five years old, I was I remained in my dad's custody. He never did any jail time. She was misdiagnosed at the hospital for uh viral encephalitis. So the combination of the two, the you know, the blunt force trauma caused like severe brain swelling.
SPEAKER_03:At what point did the truth come out?
SPEAKER_02:Uh I found out on my 16th birthday how my mother died.
SPEAKER_03:How did that come about?
SPEAKER_02:Uh my uncle sat me down in in front of the dinner table and was like, hey, I think you should know the truth about you know what happened growing up. And I kind of always had, you know, inclinations and suspicions around it because my dad was like extremely abusive growing up. But at five years old, I got taken out of his custody um because the abuse came so severe that my grandparents decided to call an attorney, and the attorney's like, yo, you got to get the state involved. So I got swooped. It didn't get to go with a family member because my dad would never relinquish like his parental rights. So I got caught in the system for like the next 10 years.
unknown:Damn, bro.
SPEAKER_03:At the time that your uncle sat you down at the dinner table and told you where was your father at at that moment?
SPEAKER_02:He lived in Massachusetts. So from like five till about 10 or 11, maybe 12, I was in group homes in California, like all over the state, you know. Like I was in places in Orange County, places in LA. I was in County USC Mental Hospital for a little while for some things that went down in one of the group homes. And then at like 12 years old, I got released back to my dad's custody and he swooped me from California off to the East Coast. And go ahead.
SPEAKER_03:When you were in these group homes, what do they look like, bro? Because I've never I've heard people in the f in the foster care system or in the system. What does it look like? Like, do you have your individual rooms or is it a dorm setting?
SPEAKER_02:Um mostly like a dorm setting. So the first one I went to is called Orangewood Children's Home. It's like right in downtown Orange, like by the block. And um that's like a huge hub, right? They just like get you in there, you do an intake, and then they figure out like what meds they're gonna give you. First thing they do is just pump you full of meds, and then you're in like a like a dorm, you know, and it's a co-ed facility. So you're in a like a boys' dorm, and then there's girls' dorms, and then from there they place you to like either a larger group home, is which where I ended up, which was like maybe 20 to 30 kids, and there's two room or two kids per room, and then they have smaller ones that were like six beds for kids that were like better behaved, and then from a six bed you'd go to a foster home.
SPEAKER_03:Would you was there parent foster parents that would come on site and take children?
SPEAKER_02:No, everybody gets moved in like the middle of the night. So they'll wake you up and they'll give you like a black trash bag in five minutes to like pack your shit and and move you to the next place. But I never made it to end of foster homes. I was uh uh a real violent kid, and so I was always getting in trouble, getting in fights, fighting.
SPEAKER_03:But did you observe other kids get black trash bags in the middle of the night and take off?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, or you just wake up and Kyle would be gone or whoever, you're like, well, where'd your friend go? You know what I mean? Because you make these connections, you make friends, and then next day you're gone, you never see him again.
SPEAKER_03:How did that make you feel?
SPEAKER_02:You know, when you're a kid, it I don't think it really makes you feel any kind of way. You know, you just think it's normal, right? It's life. But looking back on it now, like I think about some of the kids that I got to connect with and had like real tight bonds with, and then they're just gone, you know, and you know, there's that that void there, you kind of miss them a little bit. And but when you're in young and you're like in the thick of it, dude, it's just another day. You mentioned you were violent. Who were you violent towards? Dude, anybody, man. My dad was like extremely violent, so like he didn't just stop at beating my mom, you know, he would beat all his girlfriends growing up, beat on me, beat on my little brothers, like so. I just kind of was always a witness to this. So I was how I I knew to react to certain scenarios was just with violence, you know. So it didn't matter if you were a staff member or another, you know, kid in a group home. Like it was just I was always in some kind of scuffle.
SPEAKER_03:Looking back in hindsight, do you realize that your actions were based on the environment you were growing up in?
SPEAKER_02:Oh yeah, 100%. You know, but I was just labeled a violent teenager, you know, a violent young, young kid.
SPEAKER_03:The work that you do now, is that geared towards that?
SPEAKER_02:Um, not towards violence.
SPEAKER_03:Towards like people with trauma.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, 100%. Yeah. So like the the job I have with with Alpha Wave Project is the director of healing services. So I'll get guys that come come across my desk who are I work mostly with the military community, um, but we're also work with law enforcement, first responders, and then some corrections officers as well. And uh my job is either to do coaching with them, you know, like one-on-one, um, to kind of find them different tools, like with so many different modalities to combat like repressed trauma and PTSD. So we find, you know, a program that'll work just for the specific individual. If I can't help them myself, we'll find them, you know, the best route of treatment or coaching that they can possibly get.
SPEAKER_03:So these are adults that come to you, military, law enforcement, and they are coming with trauma. Are you able, from your experience, able to identify the trauma that they're experiencing?
SPEAKER_02:Not, you know what I mean? Like symptoms, yes, but I can't identify someone's trauma unless they're vulnerable and like we'll speak up about it. You know what I mean? Like it takes somebody to be vulnerable to like break the conversation of like, hey, this is what I went through. You know, 90% of the the veterans that I get to work with are mostly from the soft community, and I'd say 90% of them have, you know, repressed childhood trauma. And then you stack 20 years of a military career on top of that, and they hit retirement, and they're just like dealing with their military career and all this shit that that's from childhood, and it really takes like a lot of like mining and digging for them to identify, like, oh my god, like I've been fucked up long before the military. You know, it's like it comes full swing. So when they start to kind of unpack things and and talk about certain things, certain symptoms, certain triggers, different personality traits they have, you know, a lot of it stems from way prior to a military or law enforcement career.
SPEAKER_03:Would you agree that some people are hesitant to open up and are guarded?
SPEAKER_02:Most people. Most people. Most people, yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Now, can you please tell us and the crowd what is the importance of actually opening up and becoming vulnerable in a setting like this?
SPEAKER_02:Well, for one, when you're in the military, right? And you go for you get back from a deployment, you got your mental health evaluation, you're gonna lie. Everybody lies. You want to get back downrange. You want to go everybody every single veteran who I've worked with lies through all that, unless they're ready to get out.
SPEAKER_03:Because you also want a job in law enforcement, so you don't want anything to hinder your process.
SPEAKER_02:That and you want to get back downrange, right? You know, you tell the truth, they're gonna medboard you, or you at least you think they will, you know. So being from outside, uh, I'm not affiliated with the VA at all. Um, not a veteran, you know, but being from outside of that circle, it kind of lets that wall come down so they can be more vulnerable and authentic with what they're dealing with. And it's like it's the most important part of healing, is to be honest, with yourself and the person who's taking time to help you out.
SPEAKER_03:Facts. Now when it comes to like substance abuse, does that play a role in in as well in some of the things you've seen?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, most of the most well self-medicating, self-medicating for sure. And you know, I think to a certain extent, that's a good thing, right? To a certain extent. You found something that has been a crutch for you. Like when your legs are broke, you use crutches, right? But eventually it's time to heal. And like numbing out with booze or or weed or pills or whatever it is, pornography, shopping, food, women, women, like all of that, you know, like it it's only gonna work for so long, you know. The the divorce rate in the soft community is like 200%, you know. And I think it's up there. I I don't know the exact statistics with law enforcement and corrections officers, but I know it's up there corrections officers higher than like beat cops and stuff like that.
SPEAKER_03:Now, one fear that a person seeking treatment may face is uh consequences or like, hey, are they gonna take all my guns away? Am I gonna lose my ability to, you know, uh what do you have to say to that?
SPEAKER_02:You know, it's a rational fear, but if you can find somebody who's outside the system, you know, what what's your worry? Which you're outside the system, yeah, exactly. So we're all we're outside the system. I my team is all, you know, there's there's four or five of us, we're growing, and all the board members are retired MarsOcc guys. One forest recon, dude. Um, which is like prior to MarsOc being a thing.
SPEAKER_03:Where do you guys operate off of, operate out of? Is it an online? Is it in person?
SPEAKER_02:So in person, I I meet with people all over the world, you know what I mean? So, but we do we host events all over the country. We just had one in New Jersey who which was like out in Long Beach Island. We had the soft community and law enforcement from that area come out and do surfing and different modalities. We do we do contrast therapy. We just got approval to work with the dudes who are coming into the pipeline for MarSOC. So, like we're getting access to guys to be able to give them certain tools to help regulate their nervous systems throughout their military career instead of getting them. Bro, that's smart. It's amazing. It's such an amazing opportunity because up until now we get dudes at retirement when they're spiraling.
SPEAKER_03:Right. It's you gotta do it taking a proactive uh approach.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Instead of reactive, exactly.
SPEAKER_02:And I'm working right now also to get I'm going to tour uh Folsom State Prison and then New Folsom next month to come up with a similar protocol for the corrections officers.
SPEAKER_03:I believe we did have a little slight conversation about I get a lot of in- uh messages and stuff, but so you're uh you're and this is beautiful, bro. And I believe everything happens for a reason, right? Which is why you're here today. So you guys are expanding into the world of correctional officers and mental health.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I was like spiraling, not spiraling, but I was like, my guys on the east coast are real involved with the veterans and and active duty guys, and I'm out here in California in the mountains, like, what am I doing? And I did a job for a dude who was uh uh he's like the the the higher up of internal affairs for CDCR. And he's like, hey, you got to talk to so-and-so. Um anyway, so I talked to the one of the psychologists there and got the ball rolling and they like what we're have to offer, so they want us to tour the prisons to see what you know the contrast of one a level two yard versus a level four yard, and then come up with like a specific protocol for corrections officers.
SPEAKER_03:For correctional officers, right? And I'm glad we put the emphasis on there because a lot of officers, from my experience, get discouraged because you have all these prop um programs for inmates, right? But this is finally something for the staff members.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and I hope it goes through. I mean, they could they could cut it out and say, no, we're not interested, but they've taken a lot of time to like meet with me and my team to like set up the tours and get everybody there and like really make a go at it to to come up with something very specific for for you guys.
SPEAKER_03:If a correction officer out there right now wanted to reach out to you guys in the program, is that possible?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_03:How would they do that?
SPEAKER_02:They could hit us on Instagram, uh alpha wave underscore project. Um, I can leave my email in the show notes if you want to do that.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I'll put it in the link. What is it?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, my email? Yeah. It's Paul at alphawaveproject.org. Okay. So super easy to get in touch with us. Um and if and if I can't personally help somebody, we've got like a ton of resources to to like put dudes on track to a place where they can get get the help that they need that they deserve.
SPEAKER_03:A hundred percent, bro. Does your heart go out to like these individuals that you work with?
SPEAKER_02:Dude, so much because there's so much like trauma's trauma, right? The facts. The the traumatic events, the traumatic event, the result of that is so much similar to my healing path. Like, I didn't know I had all these issues until I had kids. Excuse me, and my kids brought it up.
SPEAKER_03:What did that look like when you had kids and you realized you had these issues?
SPEAKER_02:Dude, I was I was five months old, or my son was five months old. He's crawling around the floor in my bedroom, and I'm like, I think I'm like 33, 34 at this time. And uh I bent down, he had a book of matches in his hand, so I bent down to pick up this book of matches from him, and it was like a fucking movie screen went off in my head of my dad holding me down, burning me with matches at like three years old. And I was like, oh boy, like where did that come from? And from that day forward, it was like every moment that I had with my kid that should have been a special moment was robbed by like some horrible memory from my child childhood that I experienced with my dad. And I came to the point where like on the outside, if you looked at me, I have a beautiful house, a beautiful wife, I own a business, I got the nice car, you know. My like everything looks picture perfect. But inside I'm like fucking planning my suicide. I could not find a way out of my own misery, you know, and I would hire a therapist, work with them, wasn't working, fire one, hire another one, fire one, hire another one until I met one that like actually got it, and my life changed forever. You know, between some real heavy like work with therapy and psychedelic medicine, it changed my life forever. And and that day, like I did I dedicated myself to like bringing that healing to other people. Bro, you're doing the Lord's work. I am, and I love it. I absolutely love it. It's spiritual what you're doing. It's so spiritual, man. It's so divine. Like it, like anytime I get to work with somebody in a one-on-one setting, like there's always like a divine presence there, you know. And I do believe that there's no doubt about it. People ask me, why do you believe in God? Why do you why do you believe this? And I'm like, I have zero reason not to. You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_03:In hindsight, now that you're sane and serene, do you realize that you went through what you went through so that you can be able to help people?
SPEAKER_02:100%. It's like I have this like immense sense of gratitude for all the horrible things. Like, I'm really thankful that you showed up late because uh I'm like uh tired of telling the story of all my trauma, right? And it's really nice to be able to bypass that and get right to the like meat and potatoes of what we're doing and how we're trying to help people. But I could do a four-hour long podcast on just all the fucking terrible things that happened to me growing up into the systems. So you're cool with me being late today, bro?
SPEAKER_03:I'm cool with that. Totally apologized, man. I got a lot of shit going on in my world, bro. Sorry. But to hear you say that, I'm like, all right, cool, man. He didn't want to go take a deep dive. And I'll be honest with you, bro. I'm not gonna say I've heard enough. I'm getting chills thinking about it, but I can feel your authenticity, bro, and your your willingness to help others. I can fucking feel it in the room, man.
SPEAKER_02:You know, authenticity is a really important thing because like me being authentic, it like gives you an invite to be authentic, right? I like that. So whenever you're in a group of people and and like maybe it's the first time you're meeting or there's some work to do around healing, like sharing your story and your struggles and like like breaking down that wall, like to show your true self, that invites a person across the room from you to like do the same.
SPEAKER_03:So let's be authentic, man. In the rooms that I grew up in, army, infantry, prison guard, you got some of the most egotistical, right? Ego is huge in our world and profession because you kind of have to be to face fucking monsters and uh machismo. It's like gossip, right? Well, what I'm trying to say is like how much importance is it that they cast that mentality aside in order to seek the actual help and treatment that they need?
SPEAKER_02:You know, it's important, but there's also a time and a place for it, right? Like when you're when you're an inmate, right? Yeah, you have to become the worst version of yourself to survive in prison. 100%. You guards are the ones who are dealing with the worst version of I mean I don't even know how many inmates there are in California. 90,000. 90,000, right? How many how many guards are there? 30,000. Yeah, dude. So yeah.
SPEAKER_03:I love what you're saying. You're saying it's a double-edged sword.
SPEAKER_02:It's a double-edged sword, right? Because you can't be your authentic self while you're at work, and that's part of one of the things that we try to break that cycle, is because like when you got a deployment, right? You got a 16-hour flight home to decompress and kind of like go through stuff, and then you go back and you do, you know, you're back to the training pipeline and you're getting ready for your next deployment. When you're a police officer, a firefighter, a paramedic, a CEO, you got like a 30-minute ride home. A lot of guys are still coming home in their uniform and their family's getting leftovers, you know. So like it's hard to like flip to the other side of that sword when you're doing rinse and repeat every every day of your career.
SPEAKER_03:For 20 years, 30 years, and now up to 38 with the retirement plans. Dude, it's wild, man. Men are born and wired to provide and protect, right? So a lot of us in our brain is like, hey, we don't care as long as there's a roof over the head over the a roof over the head of our wife and child, but how important is it for men to be emotionally and women to be emotionally present in their family's life?
SPEAKER_02:I think one of the first things overall is like in order to be a good father, you need to be a good husband. And that goes to the wayside like so much. Like my daughter, she's she'll be three. I'm the first man she's ever gonna fall in love with. I'm the example of what I need to set for her to know, like, if if she brought a 23-year-old Paul Newt bar home, I would be so disappointed. I was a fucking wild ass until my 30s, you know. So it's important to to be able to just be a good husband, right? But a lot of times that takes work on yourself first, like you don't even know how. Maybe you didn't have a good example of what it was like to be a good father and to be a good husband because things were broken in your home. You know, having a network of people who are like-minded and on the same growth pattern as you, or maybe somewhere you want to be, is is like so important for that inspiration.
SPEAKER_03:Now, when you said like a group, um, I myself have sought treatment and have been in treatment since the year 2010 for my post-traumatic stress disorder and alcoholism. We're now in 2025. There is various uh forms of treatment. One's group therapy, individual. Would you agree? And I can't do groups, bro. For the love of me, I cannot do groups. I get agitated. It's tough. Would you agree that, like, hey, for the people just to keep trying and trying different approaches and methods?
SPEAKER_02:I mean, that's what I had to do, right? If I stuck with that same therapist I was with at the beginning, like I would have ate a bullet.
SPEAKER_03:You know what I mean? What kept you in the fight to keep trying uh other methods or seek other therapists?
SPEAKER_02:You know, I was rationalizing like suicide, right? I'm like, my wife's beautiful, my son's five months old, he's not gonna remember me, she'll find somebody good to take care of. Like, I I was playing all this out, but at a certain point, you know, I don't know if somebody had talked to me or what. I was going doing so much at once, I'll tell you exactly what it was. I I was in a group. I I was listening to a podcast. This dude, Cody Offers, retired. I know who he is. Okay, so Marine Raider. Yeah, Marine Raider. Yeah, I was listening to his podcast on Sean Ryan, and I was like 30 feet up on this giant ladder doing a plumbing job, and I just had like a complete emotional breakdown. And I started pinging that guy's phone. I got I got his uh or his Instagram. I just sent him message after message after message, and finally he's like, What do you want? Like, what do you want? And I'm like, yo, I need help. I feel like you're the only person that fucking gets this. And that wasn't true, but that's just how I felt. But I he had a coaching group, you know, and I joined his group, and I was with, you know, 30 to 50 other men and women that were all on like this similar path of healing and growing. And that community We Defy.
SPEAKER_03:That's the name of the thing. Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_02:Well, We Defy is a uh brand, a jujitsu company. We defy the norm. We defy the norm. Yeah, that's his coaching group, which he doesn't do anymore. But I met some really amazing people in that group, including Cody himself, and just having that common ground of like, hey, we're all fucked up, right? And our past might be different, or our past, sorry, but the path that we're on is like to become better men and women, father, husbands, wives, all of that. And like that connection and that common ground really opened up a lot of doors and like changed my perspective on healing to see like, hey, it is possible, and it kept a gun out of my mouth, man. Saved your fucking life. It saved my life, and it saved my kids' life because you know who would have who knows what would have happened.
SPEAKER_03:I'm glad you didn't go through with that, man.
SPEAKER_02:100%. And I wasn't sure if I was gonna kill myself or just disappear. I hear you. You know what I mean? I but I was you know, I was standing in my yard the other day watching my kids jump on the trampoline and hanging out. Priceless. And I was standing in the exact same spot where I was like really planning that shit out. And I looked at what I have now versus what I was going to give up just because of my own suffering, you know what I mean? And it was it was valuable suffering, like it was valid. Like every I have every reason to hurt the way I did was like justifiable, but I'm I'm giving a permanent solution to a temporary problem. There it is, there, dude. You know.
SPEAKER_03:Right now you made the statement, hey, we we're all fucked up. And you know, I I get it, right? But um, how important is it to let these people that are out there, because they're out there suffering from trauma, to let them know, hey, you're not crazy, you're not fucked up, you just experience trauma, and these are the symptoms.
SPEAKER_02:You know, like you know, trauma's trauma, right? No matter what, the worst thing to happen to you is the worst thing to happen to you. The path to healing is gonna be different for everybody. Um and and just like not giving up, staying off the med that the VA is gonna try to pump you with, man. Like, that's like putting a band-aid on an infected wound over and over and over again. You know, I get guys that I get to work with who are on like six to ten different medications, you know, you got uppers to stay awake, downers to go to sleep, SSRIs because you're sad, you know what I mean? Like all this shit. And you become like chemically imbalanced, you know. So like trying to stay off all those meds, it's like, man, I don't I don't know what it's like for for COs, but dude, they'll pump you full of so much shit that you're just zombified, man.
SPEAKER_03:I know that the VA hospital will push meds 100%. But I've also learned and through experience that during this traumatic event, your brain does get rewired. Right? So some of those SRS SSRIs, they kind of like offset, I I believe.
SPEAKER_02:They do, you know, but it's it's a it's a band-aid, right? If you're doing the SSRIs and you're not doing any sort of therapy or coaching or any mindfulness or anything like that, then you're just kicking the can down the road. Eventually you're gonna have to like rip that band-aid off and heal that wound, you know, and and that's the important part of all that.
SPEAKER_03:When you rip that band-aid off, man, and everything is raw, would you agree that it sucks to face reality?
SPEAKER_02:Oh my god, it was it was like torturous, dude. You know, I start reading, I started reading books on trauma and like repressed trauma and child abuse and violence, and like you're reading these books. I remember one book I would read, I'd be reading it, and I'd listen to it, you know, on my way between jobs. And uh, dude, I'd have to just pull over in my truck and just fucking weep like ugly crying, man. And just like it's like reading a book about yourself, dude. And you know, a lot of times it's gonna get harder before it gets better, and that scares people away. But let's be realistic, it does get better. It does get better, it gets way better, you know. And the people who I've been able to work with, like two of them are on our board of directors now, helping other people, you know, and and so it's like uh it's almost like a s a sort of training to be able to kind of to help others who are going through a similar thing. Once you've made it out of it and you're on the other side and you're like in the light at the end of the tunnel, there's something about it that makes you want to pour that back into you know the community of people who are suffering.
SPEAKER_03:Because it's a gratitude. It's like the wanting to give back to what was given to you.
SPEAKER_02:Dude, gratitude is like an um uh mo most important part of all this healing, you know. It's impossible for your brain, like gratitude and anxiety and anger, they use two different neural pathways in the brain. So you can't be grateful and pissed off at the same time.
SPEAKER_03:Um bro, I'm learning every day, and I just learned that shit. You've probably heard it before, but I have horrible memories.
SPEAKER_02:You know, you can't just be like, oh, I'm grateful for this. You have to really dive into it. Like, what is it that you're grateful about, like your daughter? You know, like you can't just be like, Oh, I'm grateful for my daughter. That's not gonna work. But if you start to really think about it, like, man, I'm grateful for her smile, her laughter, the way she loves me when I come home from a hard day, and like really all those things, like it's it's a switch in the brain that allow you to get out of that flight or flight and into like a calm state.
SPEAKER_03:So my daughter, she's seven years old right now, and about three years ago, we would have a gratitude book, sit at the breakfast table, and write down three things a day she was grateful for. Yeah, that's a skill, coping skill.
SPEAKER_02:For sure.
SPEAKER_03:And a tool. What other tools or coping skills can people use in their daily lives to offset that?
SPEAKER_02:Dude, breath breath work is like, you know, bar to none. Like it can reset your nervous system. Like, you know, you you practice a breath work for two minutes, four minutes, like it's gonna reset that. All that stuff is things that we teach and implement, like what we're doing with the Marsaw guys right now, and with Intrepid Spirits, we'll they'll show up and they'll do like a 30-minute breath work, and then we put them in a sauna for you know, 30 minutes and then cold plunge. Damn, dude. Yeah, so it's it's a real gnarly contrast therapy. So you're going from elevated, you know, uh emotional state to like a deregulated one, and then back and forth, back and forth. And that like has long-term effects on the nervous system, but short-term fixes, man, gratitude, breath work, cold water, you know, you take a cold plunge, it produces like 90% of the dopamine that doing like a big old line of coconut. It does? Yeah, like 90% of the dopamine you get from doing blow, but it lasts like six hours instead of six minutes. You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_03:I have done blow and I have done cold plunging.
SPEAKER_02:And which one makes you feel better longer?
SPEAKER_03:And I didn't end up in jail and the other one, yeah. No, you're right.
SPEAKER_02:You know what I mean? And it's a healthy way to do it. Like cold water sucks, man. I hate it. The more it sucks, the better it is for you. You know? And then just like your plain old talk therapy, dude. Like that is like journaling.
SPEAKER_03:I know these are different.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, journaling's good. You know, there's three questions if people struggle to journal with like what am I grateful for? What did I learn today? And what are my emotions through the day? And those three simple questions will snowball into pages and pages of stuff, man.
SPEAKER_03:When you look at society now, we're I was born in 84. You said you were born in 86. Yeah. Do you see that society is hurting as a whole?
SPEAKER_02:Oh, dude. Just walk down the street here, bro. You know what I mean? Like, yeah. Big time. Hurting and disconnecting. You know, 90%, I think I heard it was 90%, but I looked it up yesterday. I think it's like 70% of AI is used for companionship. No way. Yeah, dude. And it's really popular amongst teenagers. They just like they don't have people to talk to, or they think they don't have people to talk to them. Yeah, they think they don't have people to talk to. You know? So you have 75% of our population using a fucking robot for connection and a world full of lonely people.
SPEAKER_03:And another fucking percentage slamming fentanyl.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Yeah, my brother died two years ago from a fentanyl overdose. Sorry for your loss. After a five-year prison sentence.
SPEAKER_03:After a five-year prison sentence?
SPEAKER_02:Got out of prison. They gave him eleven hundred dollars and like a box of a couple hundred hypodermic needles because he's a uh diabetic type one. No fucking way, dude. Yeah. It was pretty wild. I got all his release papers and he was in Maine State prison and like you know, he used dope his whole time locked up. You know what I mean? Like whether he was shooting, you know, heroin, fentanyl, suboxin, whatever he could get his hands on and getting a needle, he would he would put it in there. And uh it was so bad that he actually snuck needles out of prison. So like I was going through all his paperwork and I saw like his homemade needles out of like the laundry ties, the rigs, and the pen, you know, a pen with like a laundry tie broke off in there, and you know, it broke my heart to see like you had this kid for five years, he never deserved to be in prison, you know, and what did they do while he was in there? You know, it was like fucking zero rehabilitation, and then he gets out and you give him eleven hundred bucks and a box of needles, you know. Damn. Like what do you think he's gonna do?
SPEAKER_03:You to me, bro, you have the answer to help the hurt people in this world, bro. What do these hurting people need to do? Do they need to look internally? Do they need to analyze internal trauma? Do they need to take the steps forward to address that issue?
SPEAKER_02:You know, b both. Like the the first thing to do is take a step forward and to really like reach out to somebody because obviously, if you're in your 30s or 40s, what you're doing hasn't been working if you're still suffering, right? Insanity. Yeah, exactly. You know, and finding that person who can relate to a little bit of what your past trauma, the incident might not be the same, but the symptoms very well could be, you know. Um, I myself I've had sexual abuse, physical abuse, neglect, torture, like all this shit. So I have like a an ability to help a lot of people, like a large variety of people with different traumas. But just like putting your guard down and reaching out and saying, hey man, I'm I'm not doing okay. You know, that that is probably the most important part. And then finding somebody that's willing to walk with you through it. You know what I mean? Like me just giving somebody five, six tools to like, hey, try breath work and cold plunge and go to the gym and work out. Like, cool. They probably already told themselves that, you know, 500 fucking times, but they're still doing the same thing, right? Right. You need somebody to literally take you by the arm and walk with you through this shit. And there are people willing to help you walk through hell. All over this country, man. There are facts, you know what I mean? Like we're in California, Florida, New Jersey, North Carolina, and I like that you're from California, bro.
SPEAKER_03:You even got that fucking vibe of just realizing it right now, bro.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, man. I'm a little surf rat, dude. Yeah, yeah. Um, but yeah, just like putting a guard down.
SPEAKER_03:Now, all of this hard work we are talking about, we're identifying um how important is identifying triggers?
SPEAKER_02:Dude, it's a superpower, bro. Like superpower. I used to have the gnarliest triggers smell is like a really big one for me. Like, like cleaning products would just trigger me all the time. You know, a lot of the abuse that happened to me, like whether it was incarcerated or in group homes, like is always happening in the bathroom. You know, if you're locked up and you're fighting, a lot of chances are it's happening in a shower or bathroom because it's out of camera sight. You know what I mean? Um so like cleaning products would always trigger me. Go figure I've been a plumber for the last 20 years. So I'm like constantly triggered, didn't know why, but I would just like be ramped up into like just redlining in a full beta mindset and never really could understand it. Like lights buzzing, like the fluorescent lights, would drive me insane. And recognizing that that trigger came from being strapped to a bed at like six or seven years old, you know, waking up from being shot full of thorazine and you're strapped in restraints, and all that's there is that buzzing fluorescent light. So, like identifying the triggers, it it became a superpower for me because now I know, like, hey, this is triggering me. I can separate myself from this environment, or I can sit with it and and have some gratitude attached to it for being able to like now be able to help people who've been through similar stuff. But identifying your triggers can, you know, become an absolute superpower.
SPEAKER_03:Facts. Because if you don't identify the triggers and or the symptoms you're experiencing, you think you're fucking dying and having a heart attack.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and you and you exactly. You know, I had been to the hospital several times thinking I'm having a heart attack, and they're like, Yeah, dude, you're just high. You know, you smoke too much weed or whatever. And I'm like, no, it ain't that. You know, it's like full-blown anxiety to almost to where you can trick yourself into going into cardiac arrest because it's so severe.
SPEAKER_03:Does all of this work we are speaking on, does it require daily maintenance or maintenance?
SPEAKER_02:I'd say in the beginning stages, it's a daily grind, right? But eventually they become habits to where it's not like something that you are like having to set alarms to do or forcing yourself to do. It becomes, you know, it becomes habit. It just kind of becomes who you are. But I don't think you can ever let your guard down, right? Like think, oh, I was an alcoholic for 15 years and I've been good for the past year. Let me go have a drink, right? You're you know, chances are some people can handle that. You know, they've addressed the trauma, they're not, they're not using it as a crutch. They want to use it maybe to celebrate or have you know a night out with their wife, and they can maintain, but most of the time, you know, it's it's you know, you're you're playing Russian roulette. You know, it might not go off, but there's that chance that it does.
SPEAKER_03:Right, because of the addictive or chemical personality going on in the brain. Is there anything I haven't covered yet that you want to speak about? I mean, we covered a variety of topics, but something that you did really want to say or no, I'm very massive.
SPEAKER_02:I'm curious, like what your take is. Like, you know, I have this meeting coming up with CDCR, like maybe some insight, and we can even talk about that off record if you want to.
SPEAKER_03:We can talk about it on record because it's part of uh you know reality. Is is my off the top response is like I can tell that you're very authentic about this. You gotta understand, and it's not even me bashing CDCR. It's that they're looking at things from a band-aid andor monetary business type of um agreement. Yeah. So it is possible and feasible to get on board with them and contract with them, right? You would just have to sell it to them and tell them the importance of it and even bring up statistics of the high suicide rate for correctional officers.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it's high suicide, high divorce, high domestic violence, high substance abuse. You know, I think it's the it's the highest in law enforcement.
SPEAKER_03:So you would have to come at it like that.
SPEAKER_02:I've already done. Yeah, I think I've already done my foot's in the door. I mean, what can I do? Like, where do what do you think these guys and girls are most are struggling with the most?
SPEAKER_03:So I'll I'm glad that we're on camera, bro. And like if the program does, God willing, get unveiled, hey, you know, this guy is legit, right? This isn't a fucking scam or anything like that. Because then, you know, we got that as humans, we got that uh paranoia type. Like, is this a bunch of bullshit? Is this a bunch of hogwash? But no, this is the real deal. Uh I think people struggle with the most um self-medicating. I mean, I have Instagram, bro. Everybody's doing those beer shots and alcohol, and whether they have an addiction problem or not, it's still a high consumption of alcohol.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah, and you know, it it is an addiction problem if you're coming home and smashing a six pack every night, right? You know what I mean? Like call it what you want, you know.
SPEAKER_03:Domestic violence is also big, bro, in law enforcement. Uh suicide, the all the it hits it, it it hits all the criteria, the checks, bro.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, there's a book uh I don't know if you've read called Operator Syndrome. No. Dude named Chris Free wrote it. It's basically checks all those boxes of symptoms and then reasons for those symptoms. But across the board, like I don't think if you if you have like a high-stakes job, like you know, police officer, firefighter, military corrections officers, like a lot of the the stuff that you deal with is very similar. Symptoms very similar. Is there things in your job that were like harder for you to deal with thanks for? It's all of it, bro.
SPEAKER_03:It's all of it. It's all of it. It all compounds to uh witnessing violence, uh, whether it's overdose, suicide, murder, self-uh cutting. It has to do with the stress of you know, management and deadlines and unrealistic uh expectations, uh the environment's cutthroat, bro, like gossipy rumory, false allegations, and so it's like all that compounds and just fucking hardens you.
SPEAKER_02:And compartmentalize it, you know? Because you might see a dude overdose here, drag him out, get him to wherever he's gotta go. You got a dude shanked up down here in one shift, and someone cutting themselves over here.
SPEAKER_03:In one shift, Charlie Ardor.
SPEAKER_02:And then this this officer's over here talking shit about you while this one's sleeping with another one, you know.
SPEAKER_03:And then within one other one's getting punched and knocked out. All in one shift. All in one shift, bro. That's not abnormal at fucking all, especially on your some of your most wild fucking prisons here in California.
SPEAKER_02:Where were you working at?
SPEAKER_03:I was at Donovan, but like that's trust me, bro. I speak to everybody at every prison. It's the same shit. I would like you, um, like as we close this out, I would like you to like put the emphasis on the importance of because correction officers will be hesitant, bro. I'm not gonna lie to you, I'm gonna keep it real to you. Yeah, for sure. Like, tell them the importance of like how important confidentiality is to you, that you're not gonna speak out on what they tell you, the importance of how their life will probably change for the better if they face their trauma.
SPEAKER_02:It will change for the better, you know, and and like being outside of the system, like I don't work with the VA, I don't work for any government agency. So unless somebody's like, yo, I'm gonna go shoot up a school, dude. My lips are sealed, man. Like everything that happens, like I don't take notes when I'm working with people, which sometimes is a little bit tricky because it takes me a minute to kind of like remember stuff, you know what I mean? When the when we meet for the second or third time, then I got a relationship. And when I meet with someone the first time, I'm not taking notes. I want everything to be, you know, off record and and completely confidential, unless for some crazy reason, which I haven't had anything yet, someone's gonna be a harm to somebody or their family or anything like that. Right. It's all off record, man. I don't and and that allows for the vulnerability to to be there.
SPEAKER_03:And I agree, bro. Not too many people are gonna say, oh, I have these plans on shooting up a school, I have these plans on offing A, B, and C. I don't see that, bro, because they're not they the the majority of these people have good hearts.
SPEAKER_02:That's why they started their career in in law enforcement because they want to make a difference, right? Yeah, unfortunately, you get caught in the loop and you don't really realize what you're getting into.
SPEAKER_03:You get caught in the abyss. Yeah. As Frederick Nietzsche said, man, those that fight monsters ought to be aware they do not become a monster themselves.
SPEAKER_02:You know, you have to like um it's really important to have good mental hygiene, right? And to be able to kind of like clean that shit out daily, not weekly or monthly, or whenever, you know, whenever you see your therapist like daily have practices to clean the closet a little bit. You know what I mean? Making a man's not holding resentments. You know, resentment's like drinking poison expecting it to kill the other person. You know what I mean? Like, how how many times can you do that before it just kills you when the other person's fucking forgot all about it, dude? They don't know why Hector's pissed. You know, they're on to the next deal, pissing someone else off.
SPEAKER_03:Bro, if even if you remove one of these character defects, such as resentment, from your life, it will your life will fucking change drastically. And that's just one character defect.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Imagine cleaning house and taking all your inventory.
SPEAKER_02:You know, and and doing it regularly. You know, journaling's amazing. I I was working with a dude, not actually working with him, we're in a uh a group together, like an integration group. He's a law enforcement in New Jersey, and uh he had a call, like a really heavy call that was a domestic dispute. He uh witnessed a uh, you know, a wife get the sheet kicked out of her by the husband, and there was a young man in the house as well. And he immediately was that young kid. He's like, all I could see there was a seven-year-old me, and I he's like, I wanted to put hands on this officer or this this father. Right. He's like, all I could think about was doing that. And he's like, instead of like sitting with that and stewing on it, he's like, I did my report, did all the intake stuff, got the kid into foster care, and I went in my car and I journaled about it. And he's like, and it all went away. Because we're human, bro. We're human and he processed it. Like, as soon as it was an issue, he processed that shit by journaling. Instead of compartmentalizing it and going to the next call, he dealt with it before he had another call. And I think just doing that, like, even if you just have to keep a little tiny notepad in your pocket, and just like you're taking reports all day long. Like, why don't you take a self-report? You know, right.
SPEAKER_03:Any last closing words you want to give to the audience, bro? The floor is yours, like where they can find you and how beneficial it would be.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I mean, I can't force anybody to do anything, right? But if this intrigues anybody and they want to uh reach out and and uh check out alpha wave, we got a our Instagram's easy to get a hold of us there. It's alpha wave underscore project. Our website is uh alpha waveproject.org. Um uh my email is Paul at alpha waveproject.org. We've got uh a plethora of resources for military and first responders like all over the country to get them help. And if we don't have something, we'll find something. Sweet, dude. Um we're doing all kinds of events, you know. We got one Camp Pendleton coming up in the in July. We're gonna do a surf event down there. So if anybody wants to come check that out, you know, that'll be fun where we do surf lessons. We we'll have the sauna there and cold plunges and do all the breathwork stuff. Um I just really encourage anybody that that's suffering. You don't even have to be from a military background or law enforcement. Like I work with kids of child trafficking, sexual abuse, like men and women. Like the door doesn't close on these people just because they don't have a uh government background. We're here to help. You know, Alpha Wave works prime which works strictly with first responders uh and military, but I myself am not privy to just working there. Um and just to be vulnerable, man. Like I I was gonna kill myself or disappear. And I met the right person that put me on the right path. And and between really heavy lifting and some work with some psychedelic medicine, changed my life forever, man.
SPEAKER_03:I'm glad you showed up today, bro. There's no doubt that you're gonna get flooded with all kinds of uh people hitting you up, man. We'll go grab lunch right now, bro. We'll chop it up some more. Yeah, sounds good. And uh we'll get you plugged in. Wow, there you guys have it, folks. It's all making sense now why things are turning out the way they are and why God is putting people like him in our lives to help those that need the helping. If you like what you saw, make sure you hit the subscribe button. Love you, keep pushing forward.
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