The Problem With Comfort: Anthony (Staz) Stazicker CGC

You can rewrite that fucking rock.

People get into this kind of self-deprecating feeling of,

well, I can't, I don't have this opportunity.

I'm not from that area.

I can't do what they've done without understanding

it's just fucking hard graph.

Even the military and the rumouries and the powers

that like the romantic idea of being special forces,

but without understanding that it's fucking hard, difficult job.

Anthony Stasaker is a highly decorated

former Special Forces officer.

Author and founder of Clothing Company Through Dark.

What's the problem with comfort?

We've created these systems now

that are making people's lives too comfortable.

And I passed rule marines training and thought,

fucking, at the very proud day for me and slowly,

but surely you sort of joined the commando units

and you thrust out to an operational environment

and you think, fuck, I don't know, nothing.

Tell me about Everest.

Oh, fuck.

We hear what nobody wants to hear when you're on the side

of a big hill.

See this huge kind of fucking moving mound of snow.

I look behind, come run back.

I look to the right, there's a huge crevice.

I can't fucking dive into that.

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Stas, what's the problem with comfort?

Oh, made you want the PC version

or do you want my honest appraisal?

We can just rattle through this super quick

and have it done in 30 seconds.

I'll be out of there now.

Give me the painful version.

Give me the bit there's not nice.

Okay.

The problem with comfort is modern life

has removed friction,

but we still need it to function properly, right?

We're no longer challenged or required to change ourselves

because our lives and systems

have been optimized for comfort.

So soft systems have created fragile people,

fragile humans, soft people.

So you're pretty much saying

everyone's become soft,

we're not facing the challenges physically, mentally,

is this a generational thing?

Is this just young people, everyone?

No, I think it's happened over time.

It's at the death of a back in thousand curts, isn't it?

It's more prevalent now.

I think people are more aware of it.

I think the issue is we've kind of mistaken comfort

for progress, right?

And I think you see,

if we go back and sort of define what friction is, okay?

So from the offset

and it's friction is the resistance

that forces adaptation, right?

And we've all seen this through kind of mental friction,

physical friction, and then the adaptation that comes after

and the good that comes with that, right?

So physical training, cold fatigue, mental pressure,

responsibility, delayed gratification, and then then,

and then morally as well, sort of standards,

consequences, and doing hard things, right?

But I think where has it come from, how has it happened?

I do think it's that kind of fraying,

and that says it's fraying, isn't it,

about hard times creating hard people

and hard those things, then creating sort of softer times,

softer people, and we kind of sickly go through that

and through our lives.

So it's almost as if that's one of my favorite things.

Good times create soft people, soft people create hard times,

hard times, yeah, we both picture it a little bit there.

But it's amazing, we'll get it up on screen right now.

I've actually spoken to this about a few people

before really where a lot of people right now are outraged

that, oh, you've got my pronouns wrong.

Or, oh my God, you've said something offensive,

and it's only because they live in a world where

their existence is only 25 years old.

So the worst thing that's happened in that time

was like, yeah, financial crisis, you know, COVID.

So they think that words, the worst thing

that humans can have to each other.

But if they were to go back to Paul Potting, Cambodia,

Vietnam War, if you were to go back to World War II,

or even Afghanistan in Iraq, if you were to truly understand

the human capabilities that they can do against each other,

suddenly words wouldn't seem like violence to you.

Yeah, it's a good point.

I think it, for me, it all comes back down to perspective.

Right, I've lived a pretty colorful, mad, crazy life

sometimes in special forces, and then moving on into business

and recently climbing Everest, all this kind of hardship.

And even before that, as a kid, you know,

kind of white working class kid from Wigan, just a fucking

white knuckling it through life, losing my mum at a young age.

So having forms of adversity early on really kind of shaped

and defined who I was.

And then understanding that me kind of leaning into that hardship

and that struggle and that endeavor kind of helps

then formulate your idea or perspective on life,

but also the good that can come out the other end of that,

right?

To your point now, and it was a lot of people

that don't actually or have never really had true struggle

or don't really understand the difference between real struggle

and kind of artificial social media inflated struggle and problems.

Yeah, okay.

So the current trend online, you know, some people today

could be outraged about something they've seen on Twitter.

You could be outraged about something in the news

or what Kirstaam has done.

And it's almost in some respect, no fault of their own.

The reason they haven't enjoyed any struggle

is because humanity has done a good thing.

You know, kept them safe, kept them out of wars,

given them health care, given them education,

but at the same time, if something any type of turmoil

does come along, people feel less affected by it.

Yeah, it's exactly that.

We've created these systems now that are making people's lives

too comfortable, right?

Everything is fucking easy, you know, ordering food

and going to the gym, traveling, work,

fucking everything is designed and architecting

in such a way that things are made to be easier

for your life, right?

And with that, people think,

fucking great, right?

We've optimized for making things easier,

but with that comes comfort, right?

And I think once you remove the friction,

though, you don't get that happiness to it,

you then think that you will come of that, right?

And you get a fragility almost from that.

And I think that's what's creating this kind of soft

underbelly and weakness in society and people.

And I love this quote around discomfort

is the tuition fee for competence, right?

About pushing yourself mentally and physically

and then getting that competence through the struggle,

through the hardship, and then being able to apply that

through your life day-to-day,

because mentally, physically, you're stronger

and then mentally, you're much more adept at dealing

with hard, difficult times.

So one thing I knew we wouldn't say long

from getting to the Jiu-Jitsu discussion.

Some people, such as myself,

less rewind, 27, 28, things are going well for me online,

business has started to pick up.

I think I'd given up rugby at this point,

I needed to now seek something that made me uncomfortable,

seek something that's difficult,

seek something that would actually make me more resilient

and Jiu-Jitsu was great for me for that.

I never forget, 2017, I had partied a little bit

too hard in Croatia, I had a bit of a calm down,

but the tears were happy tears.

Sat in bed crying as a 28-year-old,

after a good trip away.

I couldn't face the flight back to Australia,

so impulse by, but to first class ticket back to Sydney,

get on the plane, enjoyed it.

As soon as I got back, I can make Jiu-Jitsu tonight.

When I got to Jiu-Jitsu, I was a white belt,

I was made to clean the mats.

So after a sweaty session, middle of summer,

I'm down on my knees, I'm wiping up other men's sweat,

and I'm thinking to myself, this is beautiful,

because I, within 24 hours ago,

I was laying in an Etihad first class suite,

and now I'm wiping up Dave's sweat

on the bottom of a dirty floor in Rose Bay.

It was the perfect leveling that I needed.

And since that period, I'll be having a great week

of work, smashing out podcasts, and I'll go to the gym,

and someone will just decide to kick the fuck out of me.

And it's almost the perfect leveler,

so could we both agree that people that do live at a world

where they potentially aren't being exposed

to anything that's gonna make them more resilient,

they should go seek that.

Exactly that, I was about to say,

that's a perfect example, and segue into,

well, then how do we fix that problem?

I think you exactly right, people have to go and fuck

and seek some form of hardship and some difficulty,

and it might be something as simple,

but not so simple as Jiu-Jitsu.

Now, for me, when I left Special Forces in 2018,

and we co-founded Through Dark with Louis,

stressed the eyeballs, it was a new world,

I'd attacked so much of my identity to who I was,

and what I used to do, I was fucking star,

the Special Forces, you spat out the other end

into the civilian world, and actually nobody really gave a fuck.

And that was a quite a hard transition period for me,

like mentally, for the first couple of years,

sort of not lost because I had the purpose

in so much that we had this vision and mission around,

you know, the building, the business,

and the brand, and Through Dark.

But for me personally, I sort of felt a little bit lost,

I was like, what the fuck am I doing?

What's my purpose now?

I've kind of left this echo chamber, if you will,

in this brotherhood of Special Forces

and being at the very tip of the spear,

and going out on very, you know,

cool fucking missions, all the colors you share,

all the kind of high-value target manhunting missions

and operations, you know, when I joined it was,

wasn't arguably, it was the busiest operation

of output the unit had ever seen.

In that 10-year period that I spent from 2008 to 18,

it was just relentless.

But everything that I'd hoped and dreamed and wished for.

But when I left that, I sort of,

I remember, still remember,

I was leaving the main camp.

I don't know why I thought,

I thought, you know, I'm starting to fucking this

and I've been decorating, I thought I'd get,

I've been bugled out of the main gate,

leaving, like, everyone's gonna line the fucking streets

for me, and it actually fucking wasn't.

It was like, that's you, you're out of your mate.

Thank you.

See you later, like, and kind of walked out,

just sort of with your bags in your hands,

thinking, fuck, is that it?

Those are all I've got to show for it, right?

Well, onto the next and turn the chapter.

The good news story around this is that,

I left on my terms, right?

I was ready to leave.

The wind was slightly out of my sails

and I'd professionally ticked all the boxes

that I wanted to tick.

You know, I'd done all the cool stuff.

I'd think I'd used up eight of my nine fucking lives

and I was happy and content

in order to destroy my sort of first marriage.

It was the best job in the world

but the most selfish job in the world.

This is the Donald Trump weave.

I'm gonna come back hoping,

back around to the point I'm making around me finding purpose

and adversity and struggle.

Very hard to do that once you leave our world, right?

Because physically and mentally you're just being pushed

to the fucking revving the engine constantly.

And when I left, it was then, fuck, now.

And I'm under my own steam.

I don't have the pressure of working my kind of counterparts

to make sure that I am physically

and mentally fit for purpose

for that job and for that role within special forces.

So what the fuck do I do?

And look, I've always kept myself physically fit and active

but there wasn't kind of no onus on me to do that anymore.

It wasn't a requirement of the job, if that makes sense.

So thankfully some sheriff from Rio got came down

and I'd heard about Jiu-Jitsu so much on podcasts.

I'd seen you following your journey along that.

And it's something that's always interested me.

I'd boxed as a kid and done all that stuff

but dropped it off really when I was in the military.

And for me, it just, I mean,

some absolutely destroyed me.

And I think it has one of two reactions, right?

You either think, fuck that, I'm out of here.

I don't want to see field touch smell any of that ever again.

Or you think, shit, I need to learn that.

And thankfully it was the sort of lack of for me.

And I then started my kind of Jiu-Jitsu journey

about five years ago down in Paul.

And I think that's one of the anchors

that I've had that's kept me kind of grounded.

You know, we spoke about the humility aspect of that

and starting up that white, white belt mentality

and there's some fucking real beauty in it.

And I love the fact that it's perpetual, right?

The journey, that learning journey never, never ends.

And I think my brain needs a little bit of that.

And then you get the sort of the physical kind of,

look what fucking men, the most men

need some form of outlet,

whether it's just punching a bag or punching other men.

I don't know, but for me, it massively, massively helped me.

I've become fascinated in the last few years

about stasis, about the invisible force

that is between people with the way they interact.

I mention almost every podcast.

Now, one of the biggest kind of causes

and root of depression and mental health

is loss of status.

So if your reputation is tarnished,

that is real bad for people's headspace.

When you are counsel with what they're doing

is stripping away your status, your notoriety.

Now, in the military, you would have had a lot of status

in there because you were playing that game.

So if Staz went to the South of France

and you went into a random military base

that no one knew you'd done,

you don't have the status in there,

so they don't know who the fuck is this guy.

But there may be where you're in our field

or when you're in like a certain UK military base

that the fuck that Staz, you got that status.

So when people leave the military,

a bit like professional sports athletes,

once they retire, you could be the best rugby league player

in the world.

But then once you've retired,

you're no longer club captain, you're no longer the forward,

you're no longer that.

You are a husband.

Now, the reason that I say this is,

when people leave the military,

they don't realize they've been a part of this status game

and will store in his book, talks about someone

who left prison and was depressed in the real life

and they wanted to go back to prison

because in prison, they were respected.

People knew what they were good at.

People went to him for advice.

People used to, he had a game of states in prison

that he had a belonging there.

So when he went home,

he was just starting his house in his own,

thinking, I'm no one here.

The reason I say this is,

when you leave the military and go into civil world,

you no longer, all of that things you've worked for,

your ability on the range, the missions you've done,

the special ups or the confidential things

you can never talk about,

those things stay inside the gates.

So you now have to become a white belt in life

without actually having to think about it.

The beautiful thing for Jiu-Jitsu is,

you now get to join a new status hierarchy

where instead of ranks of court-prosage

and lieutenant, colonel, whatever,

you now get to go to white belt, blue belt, purple belt

and you get to fixate on something.

So no matter if the weather's shit

or if your dog's done a shit in the kitchen, whatever it is,

you are now back onto another rank that you can climb

and you can spend time doing it.

The issue is that I feel so many people

never even realize this.

They don't understand that.

They leave the military interesting.

I'm now depressed.

I had a friend who served from 16th to 26

and his first day at home,

he said he was just stood to attention

in the front room of his mom's house

like seven in the morning.

What do I do?

I've spent 10 years of my life from 16th to 26

being told what to do,

everything I've been told.

The first day, he had no idea.

I don't know how to write a CV.

I don't even have a laptop.

What do I do now?

And I feel that men,

particular, I'll say that because we're men,

we always need to be part of some kind of hierarchy.

And if we don't, it could be quite self-destructive.

Yeah, fucking, that was a good point.

Yeah, thankfully for me,

there are a lot of people that have struggled

not just from the military,

but it's a good, quite a neat thing you've done there

in terms of associating kind of the military

and exprofessional sports athletes.

There's a lot of similarities there.

And I've seen that as well with friends as well

that I know.

Yeah, it is interesting.

I think it all comes back to me

about having the status or agency

and how do we get that in our lives?

And there's lots of people maybe listening

and you might just think,

what's fucking great for you?

But how do I find that?

How do I find the status?

And how do I get out of this sort of comfort zone?

You know, if that is a fucking problem for more people,

I think there's also an issue around people

potentially not understanding or knowing

that it is a fucking problem,

but the statistics obviously speak to themselves.

I think there's a lot to be said about kind of stress

and struggle and pressure and resistance

and what that does to a person

and the quiet around adversity

introducing a man to himself.

But the fucking Stoics knew it.

The military's trained and tested it.

Athletes lived it or live it.

And biology sort of proves it as well.

But it's hard, you know, when people leave,

I felt a sense of that when I was leaving.

And again, you're touching so much your identity

to who you were.

We were the fucking rock stars of the military

and it's difficult when you leave that world.

But for sure, Jiu-Jitsu was a big part of it

and training in general, right?

And then I don't know, for me,

I have to have a goal, something that I'm sort of set towards

some kind of North Star a challenge, if you will.

And that's what a lot of these kind of people,

they climb the second mountain

into the middle-life crisis, isn't it?

You get to sort of 40, 45, your life is, you know,

the wife, the kids that may be flying the nest,

you've reached the top or the peak

of your professional standard, whatever that is.

And then we go, fuck now what?

And what you thought was the summit or the win,

actually was just the beginning of the next summit,

the next kind of 45 years or 40 years of your life.

And then you then have to kind of redefine

or reshape what that feels and looks like

for you as an individual.

I think that's why a lot of people

can get into all these triathlons and cryrocks

and all this kind of shit.

Because people are just racing around and I want to be a part

of something and a tribe, I need to feel a part of something.

And there's, you know, there is some beauty,

some beauty in that, you know, for sure.

I did that in lockdown.

Not in lockdown.

Not in lockdown.

She just was taking away from me and I was like,

I'm going to run, I'm just going to run.

So got my little Garmin and I started doing a 10k.

There's a coastal from Bondi, it's Kudgy.

And the Kaleveli Copa Copa for Tom Brown, it's okay.

And three times a week, I would just go dark on that 10k

but put like heavy metal music on.

I remember one, I put on my David Goggins's,

but I'd see friends on the coast where I'd be like,

don't even fucking talk to me.

And every time, sometimes I kill myself for three seconds,

I don't even like running.

I just had to be fixated on something.

Then I was feeling the recognition

when people were coming on my Strava.

You know, I became a Strava banker a lot.

So when Gijitsu was taking away from me,

but I remember six months in,

I missed the feeling of another man.

Like, not in a gateway,

but there was a part of me,

they're just, they're the rough and tumble

that you have with the boys.

There's something about, when you're a kid,

there's nothing better than I'm going to be a bit of a duff

with your friend.

You're fighting over the TV remote,

you're moonsault your friend over the soul

for so far, perfect.

When that was said, that's probably the main thing

I missed in lockdown.

Yeah, family, yeah, going out, yeah, going to spars.

But Gijitsu was the one thing that I missed

and I didn't get that connection that you had.

That's interesting, the connection,

but I've got three boys, Lucas,

who's 14th, Albu's 9th,

and little Chewie who's four,

who's the absolute fucking terrorists.

Like a little mini version of me.

My wife's Ruby's like,

fucking, that's a mini version of you.

But there's a lot of,

all the studies are out there on there

about how important that is for bonding with kids

and I always try and make that time to,

yeah, she's like, what are you doing right before bed?

She's like, stop fucking doing this.

What are you doing in the Sargary on the floor?

I'm like, I come here and just rolling around with her

and just, but that's where you kind of form those bonds

right in it and you learn how to interact with each other

physically like that as well and kind of give a bit

and you kind of find those boundaries right.

And it's, I think it's fucking super, super important.

But it's a difficult one, isn't it?

Because what do we do?

I think we need to look at the kind of resilience

in kids as well and we spoke about it earlier

about what is the problem on the issues

and parents want the best for their kids, right?

I mean, obviously recently a dad as well

and fucking congrats me.

But it's, we have this issue there back to the original

sort of statement that we butchered around,

we want to make that life comfortable.

You know, I had a fucking fairly, a turbulent upbringing

and it was difficult.

It was just, I'm probably not different to yourself

just scrapping all the time and just,

the peck, trying to find the pecking order

and, you know, I had a shit,

nor the accent dropped into Mansfield, just more dramas

and I went from a rugby town to football,

it was the rugby post, it's like football in me

and I'm in the goal and just having a shit time of it,

but not too dissimilar to anybody.

It's not a sob story, but, you know,

I think there's some strength in really kind of

looking into the next generation

and how we can kind of influence that

and, you know, how far do you push your kids

and it's always a constant battle between the misses

and it's a bit of a dilemma to climb that

and, you know, it's kind of important, I think,

to make their lives a little bit harder

and be that person and understand that,

yes, I'm your dad,

I mean, your dad first and foremost,

I'm kind of, I want to be your best friend,

but actually, I've got to show you a little bit of,

a little bit of the rough end of this as well

to hopefully allow some resilience and hardship

into their lives, don't make it fucking easy.

I think pecking order that you're leading to there

is one of the most important things that we kind of overlooked.

Over the last 10 years, we've been getting kids

getting medals for attending a sports day,

whether they've won or not.

You need these attendance medals,

there's like a quality of outcome, you know,

everyone's equal, all cultures are the same.

I can bullshit.

It's actually going the opposite way

and why I would love if I was put in charge of the UK,

could happen.

I'd be like, right, bring back boxing clubs.

So then when all the lads spar with each other,

you know he's the best, he's better than you.

Hey, go easy on this guy because he's great above you.

We're going to put you in weight categories,

you guys are going to come and by getting punched

and punched each other two nights a week,

you're not going to start fights in the street

because you realize there are some people

very unassuming that piece you up.

You're going to have other sports clubs

where you're going to have cadets

where I was in there, I'm cadets, absolutely loved it.

To me, that again, I was in a peckin' order

where I had to go on my JNC recorder

to get my first stripe or whatever it was.

There, I think men especially,

and it can't be enough for women,

love being in a peckin' order.

Go to your rugby club.

Hey, son, the reason you're playing second grade is

you are not making the hits, you need to play fast.

Over the next two years, you're going to get better

at that so that you can make it to the first team.

We need these hierarchies for young people,

so that when they get to the adult world,

they realize that they exist in the exact same hierarchies

but in a professional level.

So what I think is a step backwards for people

is we are not exposing people to have hierarchies

in case they get the feelings up.

But actually, being bottom of the league

is the reality check you sometimes need

if you're going to get out of it.

Yeah, fucking hell.

Not enough people are getting punched

in the square in the face anymore, aren't they?

But it is a level up, to be honest.

It makes people understand that there is a hierarchy

in the world and to attain the things you want to attain,

you're going to have to get punched in the face

and you're going to have to understand where the limit is

for you as an individual and kind of where you fit

and neatly into that structure, right?

And where you can add value and being honest

with yourself where you don't fucking add value.

And also, if you're not, say you're the worst boxer

in the gym, you can cry about it and get better at boxing.

You can spend your spare time working on your footwork,

spend your spare time shadow boxing,

spend your spare time watching other fighters.

If you are, you know, in the cadets,

you might say to, hey, I'm going to strip down

these rifles in my spare time.

I'll clean them up.

I'll do this, whatever.

If you are in your local Jiu-Jitsu club,

you say, hey, I'll take the kids classes or whatever it is.

There's always an opportunity to become better.

And I feel that so many people become outraged

to make so much noise about where they are

rather than improving on that.

Yeah, well, 100%.

I played, like I all fell football stories, I got injured,

but I played football at a fairly high standard.

I was like England school boys associated

to professional clubs.

And look, I was not the most talented footballer

on the pitch at all, by a long stretch.

Often times, I had the imposter thing and thing

and fucking all these kids are super talented all around me.

But I was meant, my granddad was,

my grandparents raised me and my granddad was, you know,

kind of old school values, a fantastic man

and kind of really helped shape me

in my thought processes.

And I can connect that now looking back

at the kind of good that he kind of instilled in me.

At the time, if I can fume in, thinking,

he's this old guy, what's he talking about?

But actually, he was talking about, for me personally,

I'd get off the pitch, I didn't think you did.

Like, it's all right, what do you think?

I was more interested in his opinion.

What did you think?

He was like, look, you're not the most talented person on the pitch.

However, you just do not let anybody fucking out work you.

He was like, your strength will be the fact

that you can just outrun out muscle

and just outwork every fucking person on that pitch.

And he really fucking stuck with me.

And I thought, he's like, he's on to something there.

He's right, I'm not the most talented.

I know I'm not.

I've got to be honest with myself.

But every time I sort of laced up the boots,

I just ran out there like a little kid possessed.

Just give me the ball, give me that.

I was just that annoying kid.

Everyone's like, fucking leave me alone.

Just chomping at everybody and everyone's ankles

and just winning every ball and then just quickly pass it

and give it somebody far more talented than me.

But it actually got me quite far along and down that path.

And there's a lot to be said about how that can transfer

into life as well and to your point there.

If you're not the best fucking do something about that,

you know, and it's within yourself.

You have the agency yourself to make yourself a better person.

Did you take those skills into the military

to be the same person in the military?

Absolutely.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

Exactly.

So yeah, look, I joined the military,

I had a fell football career.

I then went into college.

I turned up at college on day one.

And I had this vision and dream in my head that I love cars.

I love motorbikes.

I used to race motorcross it.

So I was like, I want to be getting involved

with something around that.

I'll be a mechanic.

Along those lines in terms of the future, the future job.

So I went into the college and they were like,

whatever it's the, the stall is like an open day.

And the geese is there behind saying,

look, let's have a look at your grades,

not a fucking chance.

Like you're going to have to go back, reset this,

reset that, come back in a year.

And it's sort of 16 or fast.

Fucking, it's a million miles away.

So I kind of quickly looked around the hall

and there's loads of fitchicks in the corner.

I was like, what are they doing?

They're doing sports side.

We saw my way through and thought, I'm going to do this.

So I enrolled on to BTEC National Diploma Sports Science.

Did that for two years?

Sorry, BTEC in their sports studies.

They said they had the same thing.

And just around all that and I thought,

what's fine, I love fitness.

I love being, you know, keeping fun, all that sort of stuff.

So I did this course, more to play football.

I ended up playing for like the bridge colleges

and all this sort of stuff.

And my dream was then set a light again.

I kind of played for the British colleges

and then offered a full scholarship

out to the University of South Carolina in America.

So fully paid four years, I thought,

fuck it, that's me, I'm in.

I thought that's my own ensure eligibility forms

incorrectly.

They deem me to be a professional

because it's very distinctly different

between UK and US in terms of professional, non-professional

and what sort of standard league you can play in.

I just thought out of form,

have you ever been paid to play?

Yes, have you ever had a contract?

Yes, have we received royalties?

Yes.

And the coach was like, the fuck have you done?

Oh, no.

Again, wait a year.

We'll push this under the carpet.

You can come back in a year.

At that stage, 18, I thought,

what is going on, I ended up working

in a local council run.

Jim, I was a PT going out on the lash every weekend

and just thinking, fat, what has happened, you know?

That's not to bash PT's or anything like that.

I'm bashing my way.

I enjoyed it.

But I just thought, fuck out.

I've gone from this and all this opportunity

and playing for England and being injured

and then British colleges and then a

Scott false paid scholarship into America.

That was my out from what was a shit,

kind of low opportunity environment,

being from a pit village.

And I then at the same time sort of twin towers

happened, second goal forward kicking off.

These Marines were all over the TV

and I just thought, fuck, look at these guys.

They look like in brilliant

and maybe that's something I could do.

So I saw it as an escape mechanism

into the military and I thought, I got sold the dream.

I went down to the armed forces career's office

in Nottingham, the big fucking dude

behind the desk, he was a Royal Marine.

And typically it was like, before we do any of the forms

and all that shit, just jump up on the bar there

and if you can bang out 10 pull ups,

we'll start up with the forms

and we'll look at the kind of potential Royal Marines course.

I jump up, cocky little shit, did 11, I was like nailed it.

And he was like, okay, we'll fill out the forms.

I did all that.

Then next, before I know it, I'm at Limston.

It's the command of training center,

Royal Marines down there and I'm embarking on 32 weeks,

kind of arduous infantry sort of training

to become a Royal Marine.

I covered a Royal Marine and I passed through this training

and like it wasn't easy, it was fucking very, very difficult.

I think the part I found harder wasn't the physical element

because a lot of my kind of fitness transferred

from football and from working in a gym.

It was just the stuff around actually sold him.

But that said, I actually really fucking enjoyed it

and leaned into it.

I got the Brown Nose or a Ward, I got the Kings Badge,

so the best sort of recruit in the troop as I passed out.

I got the PT medal for being the fittest guy.

But actually, more importantly, I thought,

fuck, I actually love soldier and I'm pretty good at it

from a training perspective, right?

I then joined a commando unit straight out to Afghanistan,

you know, which was an eye opening situation for me

in scenario, sort of a boy thrust into a man's world.

You get to see the best and worst in humanity.

I was in Kabul, Afghanistan, you know, the capital.

How old were you when you went to Afghanistan?

24.

This is sort of 2006.

Checked my maths, might be a little bit.

You went with 23, 24.

And yeah, it was just a different fucking world.

But on that tour was the first time that,

I mean, we'd all heard of special forces,

but there were kind of like the ghosts,

these kind of mysterious figures that you knew

were operating in the same area,

but never knew what they were doing.

It was all clandestine, sort of missions and operations.

Anyway, I'm still on the front gate

and we're sort of allowing cars to ingress,

egress out of the camp, right?

I'm just on the fucking pulling up the fucking barrier

to let people in.

And in roll, a couple of soft skin vehicles.

They're like a Toyota Hilux, if you will.

These fucking dudes jump out, long hair,

beards, tattoos, different kit equipment,

jeans on frontal shares.

And I was like, who the fuck are these rock stars?

They get out with their fucking passes

and they sort of, they're almost floating to me

into the camp.

But the main thing I found with these guys

was that it was their humility.

Really nice, really engaging, open, didn't rot us off,

didn't think they were better than anybody else.

And off they went, less of a said to the guy,

next to me, like, the fuck are they?

It's the SPS, you know, they're kind of working

in around here and it was sort of shrouded in mystery

and everything.

So that just planted a seat for me.

I went straight back into my unit and applied,

or was going to apply for the selection process,

but bearing in mind, I'd only done two, two and a half years

in the Royal Marines.

And for me, I thought, what can I do

that's gonna set me up for success

to join special forces or at least then roll on

to the joint UK special forces selection process?

And I picked the kind of hardest infantry course

that you can do and it was the sniper course

for the Royal Marines.

So I thought, fuck, if I can't pass the sniper course,

there's no way I can even dream or think

about joining special forces.

So I did the sniper course 12 weeks long.

I got to pass with a distinction and again,

it's the hardest infantry course that you can do.

And I remember sitting in the fucking office

with the Chief Instructor Rob, a big Jordy guy

and I didn't get on with him particularly well

throughout the whole course.

And he sits in front of me and said,

okay, right, you've passed the other, the other,

where do you want to go, what's sniper ability do you want?

What you commando units you want to go to,

which wreckage troop, which sniper troop?

And I said, I fucking don't.

I'm going on special forces selection

and he fucking spits his tear out.

And he was like, fucking, good luck with that.

And I thought, you fucking bastard, you can't.

But it just let a little fire up in my belly

and I thought, right, that's it.

I got back when straight onto selection pretty much.

And I think it was my naivety, my stupidity

that allowed me to drag myself through that course.

It was, it's the fucking hardest job interview in the world.

It was, you know, for me the hardest,

physically and mentally thing I'd ever done.

But you know, sort of lining this back to comfort and resilience

and then sort of being spat out the other end,

what that forms and shapes in terms of a person

and individual is, you know, it sort of speaks for itself.

But I sort of, it's funny, the story linked back

because I then now pass selection,

I go on to 10 years of kind of service within the SBS

and, you know, I'm surrounded by incredible people

and leaders and inspiring individuals

that have accomplished so much.

And I'm now a sergeant, I'm in the sergeant's mess

on the camp down in Paul and the SBS.

And if I can rather than a bit of a gathering in our social

with a few beers and I'm just sort of bumps into me

and I'll turn around and it's fucking Rob.

The, the, the truth instructor, I'm like,

you can't write this and he sort of looks at me

and we're not in uniform or anything, you know,

and sort of slowly and slowly things like,

the fuck are you doing here?

And I was like, no Rob, what the fuck are you doing here?

And it was just one of those sort of moments of,

yes, there is a God.

But I think it's, yeah, there's a lot to be said

about the kind of the things that I gained

and the knowledge and everything that I learned

but going through some pretty fucking hairy,

hairy situations and again, back to the point

around perspective, giving me a very unique perspective

on life and how important, struggle and strain

and what the problems are that are associated with

having and leaving a comfortable life.

I want to ask some stuff about the sniper course.

So anyone like me played Call of Duty,

he loves the sniper missions,

guillies in the mist, Call of Duty for, you know,

probably arguably one of the best levels

and there's quite a kind of a sexy vibe around snipering

but actually in reality it's fucking scary shit.

So first of all, if you are sniping,

you are likely to get sniped

because if you're in say long range combat with someone,

they're looking for people hiding in the grass

and if you're stationary, if they see you

before you see them, you're fucked.

And if you've got long range, they've got long range,

is it true as well that you need to kind of become

comfortable pissing and shit in yourself

or is that just stuff from the films?

I can tell, yeah, you're having a man of your,

if you're pissing yourself and shit in yourself

but generally speaking, snipers are forward

of the line right at the floor.

They are the guys that push ahead of the main body

of kind of infantry people behind them

and I think there's the romantic idea

that you're just out with you and your sniper buddy

and you're just popping people off

from that distances and pissing shit in yourself.

But the reality is 95% of the job is observing.

So being a very good observer,

yes, getting into a place of tactical advantage

and observing the battle space

and but the effect that a sniper can have is devastating.

I've been shot out before with snipers

and it is fucking everybody hit the ground

where the fuck is that coming from.

And if you're good at your art and good at your trade graph,

you're not being seen and they can have a huge effect

on the battle space and it's changed now over time

with the, you know, the influx of technology

and drone warfare and everything else

that has just reshaped everything to our advantage, thankfully.

But yeah, there are some skills and everything else

which is it's kind of cool because I've always been

like non-conventional, even in the military

which sounds old, right?

You think you're a military person?

Yes or no?

So I've never been about that.

So I've always, my life and my career

has always taken me into places where

I'm a little bit more free-thinking

and a little bit more free-operating.

And then with the side, of course,

and then into the special forces

and then sniping with the special forces

again is a completely different world, right?

But yeah, there's times where you sort of dig into positions

and you can span up to five to 10 days

in an observation post.

So you're going at night, you can parachute

and get in, take all your kit and equipment

literally dig a hole in the ground

and sort of do a subsurface OP, cover it all up

and it's just you and through the guys in there

and, you know, you're sort of pissing in bottles

and shitting in plastic bags

and taking it out with you, which is delicious.

To be honest, fascinating,

because you've got one side of it,

which is like, enemy at the gates,

then it's like jar head.

Is it?

I've obviously watched a lot of films

and ever served in the military,

but I've always been fascinated into, you know,

for me, the idea of learning to snipe

as a professional accolade, so it's fucking awesome.

But the reality is, once you actually take that

into practical real life scenarios,

it's probably not so fucking cool anymore.

Yeah, again, there's that kind of romantic idea,

isn't there, but, and with being this,

I, the reason I did this night, of course,

was to set me up to success.

And, you know, in terms of the Mac reading skills,

the stalking, the field crafts,

all of those things I knew were not nice to have,

they were kind of requirements

in terms of being a special forces soldier.

And I knew that it would set me up to success

and carrying heavy packs and heavy loads

of being self-sufficient for long durations of time.

That's the main reason I did it.

But yeah, within the military, it's kind of,

yeah, it's a little bit of cuedos and, and for sure,

because it's so fucking hard to pass

as the attrition rate and the failure rate on it is huge.

You know, there are, I think they stop people going

on the course if you're corporal and above,

because they're worried about the impacts

that it can have on your future career, if you fail.

And the failure rate is so high.

So, yeah, they kind of keep it further, you know,

the Marines, the lunch corpals and the corporals,

because anyhow, they're not,

it can be, I've quite a detrimental effect.

Do they ever do things?

So, I've heard rumours that, like,

fire pilots get laser eye surgery,

but it's even better than normal.

Is there any of this stuff that goes on with, like,

you get a, you might not be able to tell me this, you know,

I'll remember, I'll need to grow it up.

They're like, yeah, you know, special forces.

If you're asked, and then I'm allowed to say,

you know, it's supposed to be a secretive thing.

If anyone tells you they're in their SAS, they're what?

Because they're not out.

Is there any, like, cool shit like that,

where they're like, right?

You're, you're all special forces sniper.

You're off to see LASIK headquarters

get the best eyesight of the world.

Is there any of that?

I can, I wish, mate, I'm like, I am a blind sniper now, mate.

I've got glasses.

I think it's from my right and I, from staring through so much glass,

but, yeah, you get, obviously,

get all the stuff with corrective eye surgery and stuff now, of course,

and get that paid on the, on the tax pay, thank you very much.

But, yeah, it makes all bullshit.

And the, the step up into special forces.

So, he's there, he gets to do another sniper course there.

Is it like, they're like, right, lads?

Welcome to the Laircake.

Everything you just learn.

Yeah, yeah, there is, there is an element of that.

Fucking life is like a game of snakes and ladders, isn't it?

You think you're the best at everything that,

at that certain time in your life, right?

You're, and you go through those stages

and I passed raw Marines training and thought,

fucking, very proud day for me.

And, you know, awarded the coveted green beret

and I had the flashes on raw Marines commando

and it meant a lot to me at that time.

And then slowly, but surely you sort of joined the commando units

and you thrust out to an operational environment

and you think, I don't know, nothing.

You know, and the people, and the, and the kind of the elders

are then dragging you through and bringing you up to speed, right?

And the same happened again on selection.

I passed UK Special Forces selection at 240 people joined our course

and six of us passed for the SPS

and I was the first guy that was running through on the first attempt.

So again, and all of those 240 people that turn up,

everybody is a competent and confident soldier.

They're coming predominantly from the raw Marines

or the parachute regimen.

So it's good stock, good people.

So the kind of bar and the barrier to entry is set and it's there

and the standards as well haven't changed for fucking years

for a very good reason.

But you turn up and I passed selection

and again, it was the fucking hardest thing I'd done in it.

And it stripped the military very good at this.

They're not the funner.

I'm absolutely fucking everything in anything

that you think would be fun parachute in diving.

You know, we're going to the jungle great fucking terrible idea.

We're going into the snow great.

No fucking terrible ski and no terrible.

And then they just, they make you cold, wet, tired, hungry

and remove all of it and then kind of add complex tasks

and layers on top of that.

And then at the end though, it is designed

as such a way to get the guy that they're after out of the other end.

You know, and they know exactly what they're looking for

and what that standard is and they don't bend or break that standard.

Yeah, so it is kind of interested,

but it's a game of snakes and that is I remember joining my first day

in thinking, that's it, I'm just batched, you know,

again, another proud day.

You're going to a different barrier, a different badge

and you turn up to the lines down it, you know,

at your respective unit, whether you're in the essay

has been heard of at all, or the SPS and Paul.

And just thinking to your point there, different world,

a whole different world, different kit and equipment,

things I've never seen before.

And the learning curve is so fucking steep.

But they've tested this through selection.

I think it's a lot of it is they say it's the doing the basic

to a very high standard, but like consistently,

you think, oh, sounds fucking easy, I can do that.

But they just hammer it and fucking hammer it

and then remove everything that is of comfort

to make it even harder.

And yeah, I sort of joined and then I went straight

out on an operational deployment.

So I just remember literally being pushed and pulled

around a compound in the UK and we were doing some training

and it was everything was different.

All the close combat, close quarter combat, drills

and everything, the guy is literally fucking moving me

like I'm a fucking mannequin.

I think what the fuck is going on here?

This is different lasers, different torrent,

different weapon configurations, different communication

systems and they're like that, either fucking learn it

or you're getting binned, you know,

and so very quickly you can work it out.

But yeah, and it kind of then continues like that all the way

through. And as I sort of finished my life

within special forces, I was the chief sniper instructor

for the unit, so responsible for delivering everything

from small arms fire, from pistols,

carbine weapon systems all the way up to long range

precision rifles as well.

But yeah, it was a weird and wonderful world.

Constantine Kissin said earlier on that for the Venezuela

attack with the American troops that got in,

they used a new type of weapon.

We heard of this?

Yeah, I mean, there's lots of things that are

what can you tell me?

I can't tell you anything.

I'll be getting far, walk out of this room

and just get fucking through.

There's someone there waiting for you.

Yeah, get wiped out.

That's very interesting.

I think what we can say to expand on that

is that technology is moving at such an incredible rate

right now, and asymmetric warfare,

the way that people are fighting and turning upon the battlefield

is completely different even to when I was on.

The drone stuff scares me.

Yeah.

And so I was, so in Constantine as well,

I've seen the footage of the spewls of the cables.

Yes, yeah.

Around eight cables, yeah.

Covering fucking, yeah.

And so the drones are set off of these cables plugged in

and they can have spewls of 70 kilometers.

So the drone can fly 50, 60, 70 kilometers

whilst connected with a cable

to stop again, it's feared with.

Then some of the footage I've seen online

where you've got soldiers that see the drone,

they're on the floor, they're in the prime position.

There's nothing they can do.

They're not gonna be able to outrun a drone.

And even you see some of the soldiers like gesture like,

there's nothing I can do.

The drone gets closer and closer and closer and detonates.

And like the crazy thing is, I look at that

and people go, oh, so that's not allowed

but shooting someone from a mile away's fight

with a 50 caliber, you know, a 50 caliber bullet

out of the breath, 50 caliber.

That's fine.

That's humane.

But the drone that comes in and ends up,

but either way is the one thing about

probably the Ukraine Russian warriors

for the first time in one time, social media,

you can actually see soldiers on TikTok.

You can see things that before maybe

you're not gonna stand in a rock,

just wouldn't have made it back as far as footage.

Yeah, fuck, I mean, it's, it's pretty scary really, isn't it?

And an eye opening, I guess, for a lot of people

but I don't know, maybe have had a romantic idea.

Most of our ideas and assumptions off

based around fucking films, right?

I didn't, you know, that we grew up

watching all those same films, probably.

And you kind of almost romanticize the idea of war.

Well, actually, it's pretty, pretty horrific.

Yeah, and that is testament to it right now in Ukraine.

Yeah, I think I might have told you just for offline,

but one of the reasons my interview went so terribly

a well-backed college for officer training

was I was in an instant where I shot someone

with an air rifle when I was 13.

I was told you this.

No.

So from watching too many films, there's a bit of gun obsessed.

So I had a break viral air rifle at the BB guns a lot.

And me and my mate who grew out in the gardens,

we felt like we were American sniper, mate.

We'd be putting up cans, glass bottles, whatever it is.

We'd be prone lining up the iron sights, you know,

the sharp tip pellets, whatever.

And we would just be whatever we could find

as a target in the garden with some.

And then one day, let's just say,

so I'm going to incriminate myself too far later,

we were just being fucking idiots.

And I'm playing Age of Empires to on my computer.

My mum comes down, she's crying.

She goes, what have you done?

That's sinking feeling.

I turn around and she's like the police here.

So I go through two police officers

starting the front room home on 13.

And they go sit down, sit down.

There's been an incident, someone's been shot.

And I at first, I didn't know how to like emotionally

take this in.

So they go, look, which can take some notes now.

Was he real alone?

I said no, I was with my neighbour, one of my good friends.

They go, cool.

And my mum's obviously a stork.

They're like, come down the police station tomorrow

but do with this.

It's 2003.

So my dad comes home, don't talk to anyone.

So we got on the other side too late.

Too late, I already, I want to spill the bit.

The police were so salmour when they came.

They were like, look, we know what's happened.

You know what's happened.

Just come into the police station tomorrow.

So my mum and dad, furious.

I mean, next day, go to the police station.

Police officer comes out, back to the police station.

Goes, you ready?

Go, yeah.

The right to remain silent.

Anything you do say, I didn't know I was going to get arrested.

I thought I was just going.

I've been so upset.

Yeah, yeah.

So fingerprints, DNA, mugshot.

I remember the swabs on the inside of the mouth.

They're the ink with the fingerprints

and 13 at this point.

And the police take us to side,

I have to give them the statement.

And none of my friends at school

believed me that I got arrested.

All the rough kids were like,

you ain't been arrested, brov.

I was like, tape deck, two dates, two red buttons.

Oh, you got arrested.

So then the police credit to them.

And I think the British police,

I have such a love for them

because I've never had a bad incident with them.

They're all, I've been pepper sprayed

and put in a cell overnight

and even then they were sound.

I was like, can I go home?

They were like, absolutely not.

They were like, I'll tell you about another incident.

But they were like, look, we know what you were doing.

We know you obviously didn't mean to shoot them.

So we've organized for you to meet the guy that you shot.

And we're just going to take you through a ballistic report

beforehand.

I went ballistic report.

They were like, this guy, this guy can see us.

Hi.

He went and tell them at hospital, it's sort of been shot.

He goes, do you understand what the police have to do

when they get that call?

There's an armed response, there's police door to door.

The guy was like, you're kind of lucky.

There wasn't an armed officer that came to your front door.

So they go, we're just going to go through the ballistic report

and I'll never spoken about it as publicly.

So might as well don't on a podcast.

And the police were like, just they were trying to get it

into me with how lucky we'd been.

He wasn't the driver, he was the passenger.

It didn't come in through his window.

It came in through the back window where his son was at.

Window was down, missed the son, hit him in the face.

Seven stitches.

Oh.

So the police officer was like, moving target as well,

fair play.

We might celebrate it at the time.

That's a joke.

So came in the back, he goes that if you hit the driver,

you could have crashed, you could have killed a woman.

You could have blinded the driver, could have blinded the guy.

He goes, better yet, if you'd hit the son,

we'd be having a very different conversation right now.

And I tell him, I'm laughing, I shouldn't be, but yeah.

So yeah, and then six months later, I tried to join

and like, meeting with Walbeck about joining the army.

I'm like that.

Yeah, you shot someone at 13, not having them.

She had a scene, I just in the, the, the, the show,

loved to the good in that.

And for what, moving target from distance,

probably an angle, fair play.

Probably the fact that I got a city that I own about.

So I had to be on your first confirmed kill.

Yeah, well, literally, that was the bit.

So I was probably like a rep from I was 18.

He didn't, press charges, we didn't get convicted.

Oh, okay.

He was getting convicted.

We would have been fucked.

Ballistics, report, everything.

And from that moment on, I was like, right,

I'm going to be good as gold.

Every time I got caught, you can double KDs by the police.

I was like, yes, sir, I'll pour it down the drain.

You know, there was no talking back or anything.

But yeah, when I went to, to Walbeck,

they had the police report.

It was flat doing like a, I could check on me.

And that meant that I could only probably join the army

as a, was a squatty, let's say.

And my dad at the time, with troops going to Afghanistan,

was like, no, he was like, I've everything

he'd seen before in the military.

He was like, fine, go join the army.

As part of cadets, he was like, pardon me,

for electrical account engineers.

And we were kind of looking into it.

But then when, when soldiers went into Afghanistan,

he was like, no, he was like, I don't think this is

the right thing to do.

Because I think at this point already,

it wasn't the smoothest operations.

And also, I think a lot of people in the UK,

then were like, what are we doing there?

You know, why is the purpose of it?

And what would that, 20 years?

Yeah, yeah, 20 years now, 2000.

So it was the first boots, yeah.

The most fucked up thing I did kind of saved me.

So it was a weird old, your life kind of,

fucking done, yeah, completely different way there.

And on we're talking about the distance, maybe only a few

millimeters or a few inches, and we're maybe 40,

50 meters away.

So, yeah, like, maybe I enjoyed the sniper

and films a bit too much.

Yeah, yeah.

And some of that I want to pick up on there

and sort of talk about the kind of perception

of what people think and why people fail

or volunteer with through on that selection process

and much like life.

I think a lot of people like the romantic idea

of doing a specific job.

And I don't know if you've seen this before

and anything that you've come across where there's a lot of guys

in, even in the military and the romories and the powers

that like the romantic idea of being special forces,

but without the understanding that it's fucking,

it's a hard, difficult job, right?

And I think people go on there with this,

with the wrong kind of, with the wrong intentions,

the wrong notion in their head about what I want to do this

and just see it as a course rather than actually

that kind of being part of your lifestyle at eat.

So, I think I said before,

best job in the world, but really selfish as well.

And it kind of consumes your world and your very being.

And it has to, right?

You can't just sort of half being special forces and thing.

Oh, I'll just kind of dip my toe in a little bit

and then I'll go off and do something else.

It's you kind of all on nothing

and fully invested in that.

And I think today there's an element of that as well

where people maybe don't fully understand

what they're getting involved in

or on the count of that is not understanding

what they want to do or why.

And the reasons are not having purpose around that

and then not having purpose,

becoming less fucking comfortable than,

and then they just sort of end up almost being

a fucking passenger and just on an autopilot

cruising through life.

Yeah, people they say they will envy you

what you have, but never how you got it.

Fucking right.

So they'll be there.

Or I want that.

I'll call you just three years, two slap courses,

seven years away from family and friends

living in a military barracks in a single bed.

They had to make every morning

and if I didn't forward the fucking shoot right,

a sergeant called me a gun.

They're like, oh, maybe not quite so much on that front.

But I just see that people aren't willing to put in

the fucking time energy and effort now.

I think, and social media's got a lot of times

before isn't it?

I mean, we use it in the correct way

and for the correct reasons to our advantage.

But lots of people are looking at the fucking show

real aren't they?

And I'm thinking, why can't I do this?

And why can't I have that?

And it, and again, there's all of the data

suggesting around mental health

and let's fucking touch on mental health

and what that means.

And then we slightly touched on it with your kind of friend

who had a torrid time when he left the military.

But what is the fucking issues today?

While there's so many boys and a particular men

that are struggling?

I had a great conversation.

There's a guideline, George.

There's a page called the Tinman.

And he kind of brings up usually double standards

between men and women.

But he has a really good take on men's mental health

where he says very rarely is it a condition

with someone having, you know,

oh, there's a chemical imbalance in the brain.

He goes, and that's often the set of circumstances.

And actually the way I see it is,

if you were to take most depressed people

and we were to break it down to the exact circumstances

that they have, if you remove that person

and put me in there, I'm probably going to be fucking depressed.

You pull him out, grab another person and put them in.

It's actually so much circumstantial,

whether it is loss of status, whether it's loneliness,

whether it's lack of purpose, whether it's, you know,

depressing outlook on the world.

Really the way that people need help

is for these circumstances to no longer be the way they are.

For instance, we spoke about before,

if people aren't in a pecking order,

if you don't know where you're going,

or what you're working towards,

you're going to feel very lost.

Alternatively, we might have men who are single,

play a lot of video games,

don't really interact with people,

not really doing much with their lives,

again, a set of circumstances.

But for me, oh, see, I feel slightly conflicted there

and maybe I have a different viewpoint

that all the things that I think that you've mentioned there,

you can challenge that status quo.

And it's almost mostly, for the most part,

excluding genuine kind of mental health issues

and psychological issues, chemical issues.

You can fucking change that.

You can rewrite that fucking wrong.

And I think the issue is that people get into this kind of

self-deprecating feeling of,

well, I can't, I don't have this opportunity.

I'm not from that area.

I can't do what they've done without,

actually, as a point earlier,

without understanding it's just fucking hard graft.

For the most part, for a minimum of 10 years,

to whatever you fix your mind on,

you're gonna have to just fucking pull your big boy pants on

and just get on with it and push your pill

and understand that you're in for the long-term,

in for the long ride.

And I've seen that for most of my kind of life,

you know, I don't really look at my life

and the success from that and not being the most skilled,

not being the fucking smartest kid in school,

but leaning into the strengths and thinking,

well, what can I fucking do and where can I add value?

I can just graft and work hard

and I can learn quickly and adapt to my situation.

My situation is shit.

I get out of the situation

with friends and people aren't serving me,

ditch it, move on, you know.

And I do think there's this issue at the moment

with society and people just feeling fucking sorry

for themselves and it's difficult

because there are people that are genuinely fucking struggling,

right?

And I'm not discounting that,

but I think for the most part,

people can change their environment

and their circumstances.

Yeah, like, for instance, I say to people,

you're a lot of people that are just complaining

about the UK all the time.

Fucking move.

Like, if you've got a point in the shade

and you're just like, oh, it's just not growing,

it's just not growing, oh, well, we can move it in the sun.

And then if that doesn't work,

we can try putting it somewhere else.

People are, I actually think some people

like to revel in the complaining,

it gives them some kind of emotion they can sit there and do.

One thing I'm interested in though,

those circumstances can be shitty partner,

shitty job, shitty country.

I know they move into Australia for me,

it's really good for my mental health.

I didn't realize, I was exactly in a bad bit of mental health.

And actually, interestingly,

I had a conversation with Paul Mortlance

where I said, I'm very fortunate

because I've never struggled with mental health.

And he goes, well, well, he goes,

it's not you've never struggled,

it's that you're very protective.

And I go, I'm not, he goes, you are,

because I've watched you.

He's like, you don't do things you don't want to do.

He's like, I've never seen you do anything you don't want to do.

You cut people out your life

with him being depressing or they're dragging you down.

And he's like, you're constantly solving problems.

He was like, you don't even know it,

but you're very protective of that.

But the one area that I probably have the most sympathy for

would be PTSD.

Now, special forces, military, first responders, everybody, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, first responders as well.

Of course, police, ambulance drivers.

There are things they see that they quite literally can't unsee.

And you think even right now,

we've got special parts of the police force,

which are going to be, you know,

child traffic.

Oh, fuck, yeah, yeah.

Peter Filia, all of those things.

How the fucking people were supposed to spend all day at work,

hunting down sexual predators,

then just to go home and supposed to be like,

oh, hello, darling.

You're not parking that at work, are you?

Yeah.

That to me, where they're a mental health,

potential issues, especially at the military as well.

The crazy thing, the only thing that I probably

would say hasn't been romanticized from the films,

is the way that you're supposed to serve

enough Afghanistan and Iraq.

Then in the journey of a plane trip,

you're supposed to come home and be a normal human being.

Yeah, I definitely felt a bit of that.

I remember being out on quite a kinetic tour,

you know, out most nights.

And doing the thing that I'd want to do,

that I trained to do, that I joined to do,

that I, you know, ultimately loved.

But I'm not, you know, I hopefully

that comes across in the right way.

I'm not a fucking warmonger.

But I genuinely felt like we were doing the right thing

at the right time for the right reasons.

And I saw the benefits of that to the people.

But I remember literally back to,

I'd not got off the ground until sort of back

onto the camp at six in the morning,

covered in sweat, been out all night.

It's a tour during kind of summertime

and just covered in all sorts.

And we sort of walk into the chow hall

into an American place, we're sort of eating

and I'm like, fuck, I'm, I'm going on R&R.

This is a six month deployment

and I've got two weeks to go home.

And they do it not because they're being nice to you,

but for tax reasons.

Yeah, they're like, yeah, you two weeks R&R,

I think they're fucking great.

Well, hang on a minute.

Why are you doing that?

You know, I don't want to go home.

I don't want to go and see the misses of tax reasons.

So you don't become enough gang to tax reasons.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And if you're out of the country for an extended period

of time, then your wage is out there.

It's pretty fucking outrageous really.

But there are other nations out there

that don't have to pay tax.

Imagine that your outsurfing, you know,

came queen and country at the time

and protected all the values which we hold there

for our beautiful small island nation.

A lot of the time, you know,

you're paying tax when you're abroad, you know,

fighting the good fight without getting into all that.

The reason I'm sort of spinning the story here

is that I would sort of set in this chowel

and thought, fuck, I'm on R&R and I'm leaving tonight.

And remember, I just got off this big job.

I'm fucking knackered.

It was really kinetic.

And then I leave fucking the good old R&F,

take me home delayed.

Obviously, we're learning to rise

an auto and higher car driving.

I think I'll stop for a coffee.

And I'm going to this coffee shop

and it's quite a busy area, busy town.

And just having a moment of fucking lots of people

very fucking busy noise and lots of kind of things happening

and thinking, fuck, I'm sort of in my own world

still processing the day before.

And the guy in front of me just,

I can hear him, he's getting louder and louder.

And he's fucking complaining about his lukewarm chai,

fucking latte or whatever the fucking ordered.

And I just thought, what, and I just sort of snapped at him

at a moment of, what the fuck are you doing?

Get a grip of yourself.

Look at where you are.

You know, and it's just having that perspective

but I'm sort of very quickly pulling myself back like,

God, that could have been the worst thing of his month.

Yeah, and now it's the worst thing that happens to me

when I look at the fucking stuff once.

But, you know, just again, having those,

that realization of, yeah,

the difficulty is in trying to go through that process.

And then you finish, you come back out,

you almost don't want to go home

because you're in that zone and in that kind of mentality.

And then you're sort of thrust back into,

just been normal again and now you're back to dad

and husband and what the fuck's going on here?

And not actually all you're doing is marking time

and clock watching before you can go back out

and you're sort of still in communication with your mates

that are out there and, you know, almost feeling bad

if you've missed a good job.

Like, a fucking hell, I'm at home while left,

fucking out doing that and very, very odd and peculiar.

And then you come back and then have the old integration thing

and they fly you off to somewhere else

for decompression.

Obviously call it.

Yeah, decompression.

Basically, just get, I can shite us for two or three days

which can't be helpful.

Good for them at the time, but surely can't really be helpful.

At things have got better now.

I think the old British Nioh Shines,

they used to fly to Australia and New Zealand

and they get off the plane and get steaming

because they said, if we land and we drink 16 pints,

we won't wake up jet length, we'll wake up hungover.

So maybe the hangover will help them get back on time.

But nice, it's crazy to think like the kind of decompression

period, the things that you've got to do.

Like Monday, I need you to be ready to kill or be killed.

Wednesday, you're in the same space.

And just like, oh, cool, the mixture between the two.

The one thing, again, I don't know if you're allowed

to answer this, but it comes to PTSD and military veterans.

Have you heard of much to do with IBEGAME?

Yeah, yeah.

I watched it in Waves and War recently,

which is a good documentary on Netflix

but it's specifically sort of touches on.

Is it IBEGAME?

I think it is IBEGAME that I like to touch on the plant medicine.

Yeah.

People do do a bit of the frog.

Yeah, and it's supposed to really help military vets

with their PTSD depression.

Like I think even in America, there's a sanitary in Texas.

She's very conservative.

She's looking purely because he wants people from the military

to have access to anything that could help them.

I think the success rate is really high in the percentages.

The day is not fucking excellent.

Even if it was 50%, fucking some people.

If it's not going to cause harm,

and it's essentially going to help people,

it's one of the things for me, I'm like,

to even worry about filming that fucking box,

but I feel fine.

I'm fine.

I'm fine.

I don't need help,

but I know genuinely I touch wood.

Never really had it.

Maybe it's manifested in other ways, you know,

drinking heavily and everything else,

but I just think, yeah, if it's not broke,

don't fix it, but I don't think there's any harm to it.

So, you know what I mean?

Or is that because we had these horror stories

of people maybe going too far in MDMA assisted therapy

and insurance?

Is it in the podcast in America?

Yeah.

So I could be bitching this.

Listen to him.

And his friend, I've really got PTSD for me

in another tree, he goes, I'll go with you.

And he did the process of I began

and he came out there and was on an alcoholic.

So I didn't even realize.

And Rogan was like, how much you drink in his life?

Half a bottle of water per day?

Wow.

To him, that wasn't, that's just me.

But then he came out of the side and he was like,

stop drinking.

So, I've heard amazing, I won't mention his name,

but a good friend that I served with at the time,

he was the demolitions instructor and works out in Dubai now

and sort of kept loosely in touch with him

and he came back to Paul visiting families around me

and I was, yeah, cool, cool, come to the office

and we'll have a chat.

And he walked in immediately when you look at somebody

that I've known for years but not seen for a while

so slightly disconnected and thought

something's different about this kind is all,

it's not being super nice and everything,

I thought, I don't know what fuck's going on,

he was like, we need to sit down, we need a chat.

And I've said his name and he was like,

just to beat that.

That's fine.

And he was like, I've just done the most incredible thing

for like the last six months.

And he said I had really bad issues

and I didn't, I realized but I didn't realize

or I realized but I wasn't prepared to face it in such a way

and tried therapy, tried different stuff, didn't work

or work slightly that ended up going back into sort of,

you know, drinking and just, you know, doing all sorts

and he just said, I went and did,

similar to I began but but the frog and all this sort of stuff

and had a huge fucking transformation like experience

and he was like, we've got to do it, you've got to do it,

you've got to come and try it and do it

and I said the fucking loop slowed down, I'm fine.

You know, I don't have an issue,

you don't have any problems, he was like, I know, hey, hey,

listen, we've all got fucking snacks.

So why don't you try it?

And it's something I am genuinely thinking about

trying just to see kind of what all of,

I can't find something to do.

I don't know if I could tell it before.

Yeah.

So I decided to have kids on psychedelics.

I, I'm still in magic mushrooms in North Bond

over some friends and every trip I have,

I always have one vivid memory from it

and before I was a bit undecided

but I did this one magic mushroom trip

where the whole time I was just thinking

of my lineage being a flame that was kept alive

for hundreds of thousands of years.

I was thinking just vividly about

how difficult it would be to keep a flame alive for that long.

Then if it was to reach me and I'm like,

nah, I'm not gonna have kids, the flame would go out

and considering I'm adopted as well.

So like my mum from Ireland, my biological mum,

she had a very good opportunity to give me up for adoption,

you know, abortion adoption,

we know which one gets the fucking vote now,

make adoption call again by the way people.

No, you know, let's get rid of the stigma, please.

So yeah, it could be very easy for her to extinguish it

and I was like, oh, it's kind of selfish

if she did all that for me to get here.

To go one step removed and to remove it.

Then there was another trip where I came to the conclusion

to people like me for who I am or why I do.

Yeah, that's interesting, man.

That one took me months.

That's interesting.

And then about six months later, I mean, that doesn't matter.

Yeah, it doesn't matter.

Don't worry, why does it have to matter?

So there's always these kind of like little feelings

that I can have.

They've always helped me kind of solve problems

but interestingly to any person that was considering it,

often I would get an answer to a question I haven't thought of yet.

So that to me is how it explains psychedelics.

To get an answer to a question I haven't thought of yet.

So that to me is the way that maybe people that do go to this,

they get answers to a problem

they may not have even realized existed.

Yeah, so you get access to a door

that you didn't even know existed

or required opening I guess is where I would kind of move into that.

But look, there's all sorts of traumas

and there's kids and you know, me losing my mom

and sort of all that's, there's got to be stuff there.

I don't know, but I sort of saw it as thankfully as a positive

in an odd way.

I kind of really set a fire in my belly

and at the time I was quite resentful, very angry as a kid

and fucking why me and hated their kind of spot-might

and as if I can, they're kind of pity.

I just made me fucking feel sick.

But it's for sure helped kind of shape and develop

the person that I am.

Most people I've taken care of,

but they've never taken it for long enough

to actually get the benefits,

which is at this dose five grams a day, about three and a half weeks.

That's when the magic unlocks.

That's when the benefits kick in.

That's when you actually start to feel the difference.

So the problem is increasing.

It's how long you take it for.

That's why we made the sachets.

One a day, mixing water, taste bloody amazing.

It doesn't just make it easy, enjoyable, effective.

It makes it something I look forward to doing.

Now, I would just say that because I own the business

but don't you take my word for it.

If you don't absolutely love it

and reap the rewards and the results,

you send me an email at jamesanutonic.com.

You don't love it, I'll buy the box back.

Tell me about Everest.

Oh fuck, it's just a big hill mate.

One of the, one of my problem,

I was going to say the problem with climbing big hills

is people massively over and flate it.

I'll probably get vilified for this.

Look, one of the co-founders at Threwdark

were a high performance outdoor clothing brand.

I mean, Louis, Tinsley, the co-founder.

We left special forces.

He was also in special forces.

Our kind of lives and careers overlap

to neatly throughout that home.

Kind of my 13, his 14 years service.

And when we sort of,

I remember being sat on a fucking drop zone

at a DZ out in America in Blythe.

They all send a nowhere.

All that, it's just a fucking runway,

keep lifting, drop,

just getting in loads and loads of parachute junks

because the weather's fucking great.

But there's nothing going on there.

There's literally the air field, a hotel,

and one fucking Starbucks.

And we're thinking,

we're both at the kind of same position

in our careers and in our lives.

Like, done so much.

I'd professionally ticked all the boxes.

I'd used up eight of my fucking nine lives.

He was a very similar situation,

although being medically discharged with his lower back,

which I then found out when I left another MRI,

the same issue as him.

I think, you know, obviously with the stresses

and strains of that job,

it just absolutely smashes you.

Most guys who have had hip replacements

by the time they're 40, you're like fucking allisations.

But we're starting this little Starbucks

and I'm like, well, fucking great.

Look, I'm ready to leave.

The wind's out on my sail.

What can we do?

Not even as well.

Fucking what's make cool outdoor clothing, right?

How can it be?

And I think for us, we'd operated and thrived

in all the world's worst, most inhospitable,

like places and conditions,

the Arctic, the jungle, the desert,

all of these things and fucking Scotland,

which is worse than all those places combined.

And we thought, look, we've got the authenticity,

the credibility to sort of back this up.

We've wore what we think or feel is the best kit

and equipment for the task at hand,

depending on the environment.

And we thought nobody else is gonna,

is doing it like that.

Everything's bright colors.

It's all fucking, people looking like power ranges

running around the mountain and actually wears the cool stuff,

like wears that kind of transition

between technical outdoor performance

and fucking cool stuff that you could wear off the mountain as well.

They're not like a fucking power range

or a human highlighter, I think GQ said.

And so we thought, we had this idea

for the vision around kind of through luck

on what it would be,

but it was born out of our kind of our background, right?

And again, we'd have just stand by,

they kept me standing in it

and we test, design, validate everything ourselves.

And I had a parachute malfunction.

I remember exiting an aircraft,

perfectly functioning aircraft,

but we're jumping out at night.

So formation, profile means I'm wearing all the kit

and equipment that I would do for a real-time job, right?

So I got, it's 18,000 feet, oxygen mask on.

Night vision goggles, I've got my sniper rifle

strapped all the way down my side.

My plate carrier kit equipment,

my carbine pistol, comm system, everything that I would need

to operate on a fucking job.

Exit the aircraft, nothing to do with my terrible exit,

but immediately I'm into a malfunction.

I've got what's known as or referred to as low twists.

So the risers that are attached to my parachute,

the things that then are attached to the parachute

above you, the risers were twisted,

all the way from my neck all the way up to the top

of the parachute.

And I immediately, now I'm in a fucking,

I'm in a bad place.

It's a bad night at the office.

It's a really violent exit.

My oxygen masks are ripped off, my coms have been ripped out.

And I remember sort of dangling.

You imagine picking up a frog and pulling it,

and my fucking legs are sort of dangling them.

Pulling at the risers, trying to rewrite the wrong

that's above me.

This isn't fruitful.

No, so this was a static line jump.

So we exit the aircraft attached to a static line.

As you exit, that pulls your shoe.

And there's lots of people behind us.

I'm in a stack of about 10 to 12 people.

And I'm number whatever, six in the stack.

Exit out.

And what should have been a perfectly forming parachute

above me, which typically takes about eight seconds

to form, just fucking look like a bag of washing

above my head.

And I sort of started feeling like I'm

getting out of the twist.

I'm trying to rewrite the fucking wrong that's above me.

And it's sort of now forming.

But as I look up at the kind of right

inside of the shoe collapses, and it

puts me into a real bad spin, like a real heavy G4 spin.

The kind of protocol is to look at the two handles that

one cuts you away from that shoe and one then

deploys your reserve parachute.

And I couldn't fucking reach the handle to cut away

because of all the position of the kit and equipment on me.

I was sort of, imagine how I'm sort of

knightly spinning in this fucking circle.

And again, I need to get out of this.

I need to get off the ride and deploy my part of my reserve.

And I just couldn't fucking reach it.

It was like something out of a film where you're looking at,