January 14, 2019 • 25 mins
Imagine an amputee with amnesia who needs to be reminded daily that he has no arms — and no eyes. Now imagine you have to treat him. Max Moore did. A former Marine Corps–medic–turned PTSD-addled vet, Moore found redemption in a simple idea: keeping his ass clean.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
I was gonna blow my brains out, but it was.
It was raining. Welcome to confidential. I'm your whole stwit
the most Eugene is s robbins Son. Okay, all right.
(00:37):
So there's this guy. He's in a cage. He's what
you know as a cage fighter, and he is kicking ass,
you know, proverbial literal, figurative heavy measure of the way
kicking ass after the first round. These for fights are
typically broken down into three rounds. After the second round,
(00:57):
something strange happened, something you don't expect act. He looks
out at the audience. It looks back to the ref,
looks at his opponent. The ref says fight. He says,
open the gate. Refs is no, no, you're you're your
head on points. What are you doing? What you can't
he says, open the gate or all climb over the fence.
(01:19):
They opened the gate. Man walks out through his teeming,
screaming crowd, never to return. I asked him why, He said,
I didn't come here for that. Flash forward to to
a Tuesday, Tuesday in September. I'm finishing up Brazilian jiu
(01:39):
jitsu and this guy walks into the academy is hanging
around random chatter, and it's somebody dawns on me why
he's there. He's hair very specifically to fight me. Now
I'm rushing to work. I say, cool. Sure. Strip gets
(02:00):
down to his shorts and we roll for about ten
to twelve unscripted minutes, him, me alone, no one else
in the school, locked door lights off. At the end
of it, he turns him he and says, you know,
I've got a soap company. Max More a guy who
(02:26):
knows a little something about life. It may be a
lot more than most of us about death. I actually
really enjoyed being in combat. Yeah you heard that right,
A combat medic who actually enjoyed combat. Yeah. I look,
(02:47):
I'll just let him tell it. You know, the Marine
Corps are our stormtroopers, right, and they go in and
they kicking the doors are the worst places that we
can come up with. Well, when they get shot or
blown up, the core men as the guy who goes
in and picks him up. And that was my that
was my job. The day I took my licensing exam
uh to be a medic was September eleven, when the
(03:10):
when the towers fell. This justin you were looking at
obviously a very disturbing live shot there. That is the
World Trade Center, and we have unconfirmed reports this morning
that a plane has crashed into one of the towers
of the World Trade Center. As as a corman, you'll
you'll usually do three tours in the field and then
you'll do one tour back in a hospital. They want
(03:31):
you to keep your medical skills relevant and fresh, you know.
And uh, and so I got assigned to the ICU
in Germany at Launched Tool Hospital. It's this um. It's
the biggest American hospital outside of the United States. It's
a massive facility, and it's where when guys get shot
and blown up, they get they get stabilized in the
(03:51):
field and then they take a flight to Germany where
they are reevaluated and made sure they're stable enough they
can make the big trip back to Texas or elsewhere
in the US. I was working there after having been
in you know, multiple combat deployments, and I got assigned
to working with guys who were you know, double triple
(04:12):
sometimes amputees, blind, some guys that you know had lost
their sex organs from explosions and um and that was
that was actually the most nightmarish part for me was
knowing as I was in that space that my next
assignment was going to be Afghanistan, and so I was
dealing with you know, guys who were you know, walking
(04:33):
around on burnt up drumsticks for legs, you know, and
like and seeing these guys who we're smarter and stronger
and more put together than I was, and now they
are a very different person after that incident. My PTSD
was was mostly actually from that and I would I
would have these these these nightmares that I would be,
you know, next in the bed. I would keep my
(04:53):
ship together as I was dealing with these patients because
I didn't want to crumble in front of them. I
worked night shifts. I'd get off in the morning, and
I would get these um these moments as I'm brushing
my teeth and looking at my own face in the mirror,
where I would see it as if it was real
that like my arm wasn't there or my leg wasn't there.
In those moments, all I could think about was that
(05:13):
I knew my next asidement was going to be Afghanistan,
and uh, and I didn't know that I was going
to make it back in one piece. I had a
patient that really crumbled me. The next the next bit.
It's hard. So if you're prone to have a hard
time with hard, keep listening, because in the end you're
(05:37):
just listening. Max lived it. I had a patient that
really crumbled me. He was an explosive organs disposal guy,
and then he was actually a Australian fellow. And he
was working on a piece of ordinance and it blew
up and blew both of his hands off at the elbows,
(05:58):
and it also blew out his eyeballs, and and the
strange thing was that outside of that, he was virtually unscathed.
I mean, like you, I mean a little bit of
bruising and pepper on his on some on the skin,
but like nothing else. The morphing that we were giving
him would cause him to have like an amnesia effect
um through his sleep, and then he would wake up
(06:18):
and he would forget that he had lost his arms
and he had lost his eyes. Every day and he
would wake up like trying to claw what he thought
was something covering his eyes, but of course he can't
reach his face because he has no arms. And then
having to explain this man every fucking morning, Hey, it's Max.
I'm still your corman. You've been here for a little while. Um,
(06:40):
you know you're safe and your arms and your eyes
are gone. Every morning he would have he would just
have this crushing defeat and I'd get him up and
i'd you know, walk him around in the room to
get him to get him mobile, and he would be joking.
He'd be joking and and and and he'd be talking,
you know. Uh, he'd be he'd be asked me if
my dick is still okay, because that's all it really matters.
(07:01):
And I tell him it was, and we would have
and we would laugh about it and it would be
funny and uh, and I put him back into the bed,
and at the end of my shift, I would be crumbled, thinking,
there's no way I'm as hard as that motherfucker. There's
no way I'd have that sense of humor. And I
just did not believe that I had it in me
to be as strong as he was. And knowing that
(07:21):
I was gonna have to go back to Afghanistan and
put myself in the position of this person who was
stronger than me on my best day, I just, um, yeah,
that was That was where my PTSD came from. It
wasn't patrolling, you know, on on a mission. It wasn't
seeing guys get blown up in the field. I was
used to that I had something I could do there,
(07:41):
you know. But for me, that that waiting time between
my hospital assignment and finally getting to get off the
plane in Afghanistan, that was the hardest part of my life.
It's the waiting that's the fucking terrible part. It's like,
once you're in it, once you're in it, you're just
sucking in it. You're just responding, reacting, you're flowing, You're
doing you know how to do, and you know that
you're well trained to do it. It's the waiting that
(08:02):
caused me to nightmares, and that's what really I think
sort of fractured my mind. Stitch Fix is an online
personal styling service that finds and delivers clothes, shoes, and
accessories to fit your body, budget, and lifestyle. Just go
to stitch fix dot com slash azzi that's o z
(08:23):
Y and tell them your sizes, what styles you like,
and how much you want to spend on each item.
You'll be paired with your very own personal stylist who
will hand pick five items to send right to your door.
Then you try them on, pay only for what you
love and return the rest. Shipping, exchanges and returns always free.
There's no subscription required. You can sign up to receive
(08:46):
schedule shipments or get your fix whenever you want. Stitch
Fixes styling fee is only twenty dollars, which is applied
towards anything you keep from your shipment. Get started now
at stitch fix dot com slash z e y and
you'll get an extra percent off when you keep all
five items in your box that stitch fix dot com
(09:07):
slash Azzi to Get started today stitch fix dot com
slash oh a Zy. I was thinking about the transition
from from Afghanistan back to l A. How are things?
How are things right at back? Wasn't strange? Or was it?
I think I was? I don't think I know is.
I was in denial about a lot of the mental
(09:29):
scaring that happened to me in Germany, and I figured, well,
I'll just tough it out. I'll just I'll just keep
baring it and it'll it'll eventually subside, you know, And
it really didn't. And Uh, I was self medicating with
booze and uh and that was not helping at all.
It was strange, and it was really hard to relate. Actually,
(09:49):
you know, it was really hard to relate because you're
surrounded by a community there that's sort of all encompassing everybody.
You know, it's military and uh and and all that.
And then you get out and you're running buy you know, um,
privileged to college kids who who um who you know,
God bless them. They just they just don't know any better.
(10:10):
And I had more in common with the professors than
I had with the students. It was intoxicating how free
you can, you know, I was, and how I can
I can write my own own orders, I can do
what I want. Um. But it was also really hard
not having that constant brotherhood, that constant management, for lack
(10:31):
of a better way to say it, um, and having
a clear purpose and having confidence in in in your leadership.
I really missed all of that a lot. Actually I
still do. I still do, you know. Um, it's like
leaving a family behind. I'd spent so much time getting
(10:53):
really used to my own mortality that I wasn't even
sure if I was even alive. I thought, what if
my perspective is all just my imagination sharing what if
I am actually a comatose patient in the hospital bed
and this is all just some extrapolated dream and I'm
not even really here. I was totally dissociated from my
own life, you know. And and that was and that
(11:13):
was how I was sort of that was my normal,
that was my walking around. You have to really accept
your um mortality in order to be effective on the battlefield,
you know. And and I accepted it so much that
it was more comfortable for me to be dead than
it was to be alive. My father was was long distant,
(11:34):
he was living back in Tennessee, out of communication with us,
and uh suffering his own mental uh, his own mental troubles,
his own mental problems. And I got news that my
mother had passed. She had a heart attack. And before
I could even uh really get my head around that,
her house burnt down. Her house burnt down after she died,
(11:55):
My family's home burnt down. I have a sister who
has a drug issue, and her tweaker boyfriend come at
arson on the house, and uh and and away it went.
And so I came home to burying my mom and
rebuilding this house. So I had three sisters looking at
me to fix this, you know, in the midst of
you know, sort of burying my mom and seeing this
burnt town house, I was, I was really ready to
(12:17):
put my forty five in my mouth and just blow
my brains out. I was just exhausted. I was already
I was already exhausted. And then I felt like um
by note and I was exhausted from ship that I
had chosen to do. And on some hand, I I
could take responsibility for that, and I could, I could
manage that in my own way. But then having to
take responsibility for burying my mom, you know, being the
(12:38):
leader of this family through this tragedy, and then rebuilding
a house that was just it was just more than
I could bear, really, And uh, I remember I was
I was gonna blow my brains out, but it was
it was raining. So I'm gonna let that sit with you.
What do you think about that for a second. And
(13:00):
while you're thinking I'm gonna be chattering, I'm gonna chat
a specifically, I want to go back even further because
how I met Max is super compelling. I get a
call from a friend in Los Angeles, Marcy. Marcy says
to me, Hey, Hey, listen, there's this guy that I
think you should meet. She gives me the rebop about
(13:20):
the cage fighting, which is enough. She goes, yeah, yeah,
And he's also a former kind of punk rock guys
and skateboarding, you know, stuff that you kind of like.
I go, yeah, okay, Well what's he done? She goes, Also,
he's a nice Jewish boy. So imagine my surprise first
time I meet him when he shows up and he's
(13:41):
African American. It never came up. I guess it wouldn't have.
But mother's Jewish, his father's African American, and he grew
up in the Deep South. Yeah, so I put my
pistol away and and I did, and I said it,
I'll just do it tomorrow. And the v A told me, look,
(14:05):
you know you're drinking too much, you're fighting too much.
You need you need a hobby. And I said, well,
I like to Well, I and I know how to
make soap, and they said, we'll go do that. Was
where are you from. I'm from Knoxville, Tennessee, and I
have a family in Gatlinburg as well. In Tennessee. People
in the Hills Country, people can survive. Man Like, I
(14:27):
don't think I ever saw my mother or father call
out for like like a mechanic or a plumber or
an electrician or a painter. Ever, they never hired out anybody.
They just figured it out. You know. So, um, very
very d d I y people and very self sufficient
people and uh and so among other things. Um, you
(14:50):
know everything from moonshine to soap. Yeah, I can. I
can make those things. I mean I knew how to
grow weed and make soap by the time I was
in I don't know, the third grade. So it was
like a family activity. It's a family activity. I have
a Milton Poor process cooking my soap down, poured into molds.
I mixed mine with oats, milk, alow, coconut oil, and
coconut flakes essential oils. Put it into molds, chop it up,
(15:13):
wrap it up in plastic, put stickers on it for labels,
and uh and that's it. It's surprisingly simple. If you
can tie your own shoes, you can make soap. So okay,
so so at one point, so you're in l A
said we make the soap, and um, uh did did
this initially? How much did this help? Initially? It was everything?
(15:35):
I mean, I don't hands with the Devil's work. Man.
If if I don't have a tool or or or
a project in my hands, I was just as likely
you know, drinking and fighting, you know, so like it was,
it was. It was really really good for me. It
helped me get past um a lot of addiction stuff.
It helped me get past a lot of uh PTSD stuff,
(15:57):
self pity stuff like having purpose is everything to me.
The podcast world is growing bigger every day, and Himalaya
wants to help you navigate it. Himalaya is a brand
new podcast app where you can find every single podcast
you love and some future faves. Whether your podcast or
a fan, Himalay has got your back. Discover personally curated
(16:20):
playlist and show your favorite podcasters some love with Himalaya's
tip jaw. It's free and it's the easiest to use,
and they're adding cool new features every day. Go to
your app store download Himalaya. That's h I Am A
L A y A, and don't forget the follow asie
(16:42):
Confidential once you're there. The military is an organization where
everybody just decides to mentally get on the same sheet
of music. At the same time. They decide to all
pull on the same rope with the same intensity at
the same time. And what that means is that you're
(17:02):
gonna learn a lot, and like, if you can bear it,
you're gonna learn more faster than you could possibly imagine.
If it doesn't kill you or drive you completely crazy,
you come away from it light years ahead of your competition.
If you can bear it, then what is amazing is
you're gonna get really intimate with your own mortality and
kind of a Tibetan Book of the Dead kind of way.
(17:26):
That's gonna mean you're gonna approach life with a kind
of intensity that most people don't ever understand. The slogan
for the company is don't be nasty, and I stole
that that's a direct rip off from the Marine Corps.
When and it's not just when your body is nasty,
but like if your bed isn't made, or like if
your rifle isn't oiled and cleaned, they'll say, oh, you
don't don't be nasty, don't be nasty you and my
(17:47):
mother used to say the same thing when I wouldn't
wash my ass. Don't be nasty. But the the for me,
part of the meditative centering process for me in in
in in war Is, I would always find just a
moment every day, if it was only a teacup worth
of water, I would dab my handkerchief in it, and
(18:09):
I would wash my ass with soap every fucking day,
because I had this thing after being in Germany, where
I was like, the last thing I want is to
die smelling like feet, and the last thing I want
is some guy to have to pick me up and
put me on a litter and onto a helicopter, onto planes,
and like, I'm wearing dirty, dirty, dirty underwear and I
smell like balls. And so when I came home to
(18:30):
the to the States and I saw, you know, veterans
living on the street, living nasty, it it clicked for me.
You know, I didn't I didn't know how else I
could make a difference, but I did know that, like,
I don't want people in America to have to be
dirtier than I wasn't war. You know, I can't get
everybody a fucking house, but like with a soap company,
(18:51):
I can damn sure try to get everybody a shower.
People think that like, um, I've moved quickly with this business,
or people think that I've gotten a lot done, and
and and and I always feel like I'm I'm behind
because I'm all after seeing as much death and pain
as I've gotten to see. Um, I feel in a
(19:13):
rush to live a full and complete life without excuses.
I feel in a rush to get as much done
as I possibly can. That is the kind of intensity
I was talking about that makes me feel like I'm
I'm summoning and I'm I'm I'm passing by my competition.
Um and it puts me and it puts me in
a constant My competition really isn't even other people. It's
(19:37):
it's the it's the lesser version of myself. Does that
make sense, Yeah, it does. It's easy to make soap,
it's hard to make a soap company. And in order
for me to make a soap company, I'll just give
you a little secret. I just copied terrorists, terrorists, and cartels,
is what I did. I copied their business models. Terrorists
(20:00):
and cartels. We have a tremendously hard time defeating them,
and as an intelligent specialist, I'll tell you one of
the biggest reasons is because they keep all their operations portable, scalable,
and trainable. Right, So, if it's It's like the craft
of making cocaine not very difficult, the craft of making
explosives not very difficult. Uh. And if you can keep
(20:22):
it scalable, and you can, it's already trainable, right. If
you can keep it scalable and you can keep it portable,
then it comes really hard to shut it down. So
like a cartel can move a drug lab in the
time it takes to pack a truck, a terrorist network
can move a bomb making facility and the time it
takes to pack a truck, you know. So like I
(20:43):
wanted to apply what I learned about asymmetrical warfare as
an intelligent specialist to my business. One of the little
secrets I've been doing is I've been going all over
the country and training veterans on what I'm doing. So
I kept it really easy to make. I kept it
really easy to move the factory anytime I feel like
(21:04):
And um, and now I'm just going around and empowering
to their veterans to make and sell this soap. No
problems come back to me. They just they just have
a job now and they can sell locally. I make
my money on my online site anyway. And uh, and
we're currently in talks to turn into a to a
nonprofit and UM, and just keep on pushing UM to
(21:29):
affect positive change in veteran joblessness. I'm trying to push
this idea UM that like we can affect positive change.
And that's and it just so happens. I make really
good soap. I really didn't expect it, Eugene. I didn't
expect for there to be this ground swell of interest
and this ground swell of support. But it's happening. I
have all this love and support in my life, and
(21:51):
I'm able to affect all this love and support for
other people. And I didn't blow my brains out, and
I'm so happy. That was raining that day I was
in India. Uh, this was gosh, three months ago, I guess. Now.
I had this this experience where I had, you know,
(22:11):
I had this traffic accident where I thought this baby
had died and uh it turned out to be okay.
And um, these these gangsters that I had made friends
with sort of showed up to uh to bail me
out of jail and paid off the bribes to get
me out of there and then took me over to
the mosque and and I I knelt down and prayed,
(22:34):
and I just started, um crying out of happiness and
gratitude that like, for all the ship that I'd seen
that I've I'm in one piece at least physically, you know,
and that like I've never had to I've never had
to do anything that I really regret, and and like
I find that to be mostly true in life. You know,
is that is that you have this idea, this image
(22:55):
in your head of what things are supposed to look like,
and um, and it often doesn't really work out quite
the way you think it will. But overall, I feel
like it still does work out, at least for me.
I've I've been really fortunate. I've gotten to do thunk,
I've gotten to do everything I wanted to do in
this life. I just feel really lucky that, um, that
I am where I am, and all I want to
do is just give back. You know, there's a part
(23:17):
of me that just wants to run away, Eugene. There's
a part of me just wants to fucking move to
Bali and you know, uh, smoke weed until I can't
see straight and just fucking be left alone. And then
there's another part of me that feels like, um, I
didn't have these experiences at a coincidence, you know, and
and it's not an accident. And I feel like I owe,
(23:38):
I owe what I've learned, and I owe to give
back my My service doesn't stop because I'm out of uniform.
My service stops when I'm sucking dead. Speaking of dead,
you ever know those cats who like, uh, you know,
took way too many of a certain drug, way too long,
(24:02):
way too hard, pushed it as far as they could
humanly go for no discernible reason. I have. It's me
next up on Nazi Confidential, Me on Me. Ozzie Confidential
(24:23):
is produced by who Else Make Eugene S. Robinson, an
executive produced by Robert Coolers and this episode the sound designed,
edited and mixed by Jamie Cohn and Nick Johnson. For
more Ozzy Confidential, check us out on Ozzie dot Com.
(24:43):
That's o z y dot com slash Confidential. We published
editorial companion articles on Ozzie and the photos videos for
every single store, so to check them out, go to
ozzie dot com slash Confidential That's o z Y dot
Calm slash Confidential and you can see behind the scene.
(25:03):
You can learn more about the stories we tell and
even become an official o S where you'll be kept
uh in the note on all things Us the Advential
and if you want to get in touch with us,
learn more or just generally event get us up at
confidential at ozi dot com. Will send over a T
(25:24):
shirt if you did what you gotta say, good, bad,
or ugly, or maybe we'll get too lazy to do
any of that. Thanks this issue, this version. This edition
go out to Natty Bumpo Tango in Cash and Little
Debbie spin Wheels. Thanks
I was gonna blow my brains out, but it was.
It was raining. Welcome to confidential. I'm your whole stwit
the most Eugene is s robbins Son. Okay, all right.
(00:37):
So there's this guy. He's in a cage. He's what
you know as a cage fighter, and he is kicking ass,
you know, proverbial literal, figurative heavy measure of the way
kicking ass after the first round. These for fights are
typically broken down into three rounds. After the second round,
(00:57):
something strange happened, something you don't expect act. He looks
out at the audience. It looks back to the ref,
looks at his opponent. The ref says fight. He says,
open the gate. Refs is no, no, you're you're your
head on points. What are you doing? What you can't
he says, open the gate or all climb over the fence.
(01:19):
They opened the gate. Man walks out through his teeming,
screaming crowd, never to return. I asked him why, He said,
I didn't come here for that. Flash forward to to
a Tuesday, Tuesday in September. I'm finishing up Brazilian jiu
(01:39):
jitsu and this guy walks into the academy is hanging
around random chatter, and it's somebody dawns on me why
he's there. He's hair very specifically to fight me. Now
I'm rushing to work. I say, cool. Sure. Strip gets
(02:00):
down to his shorts and we roll for about ten
to twelve unscripted minutes, him, me alone, no one else
in the school, locked door lights off. At the end
of it, he turns him he and says, you know,
I've got a soap company. Max More a guy who
(02:26):
knows a little something about life. It may be a
lot more than most of us about death. I actually
really enjoyed being in combat. Yeah you heard that right,
A combat medic who actually enjoyed combat. Yeah. I look,
(02:47):
I'll just let him tell it. You know, the Marine
Corps are our stormtroopers, right, and they go in and
they kicking the doors are the worst places that we
can come up with. Well, when they get shot or
blown up, the core men as the guy who goes
in and picks him up. And that was my that
was my job. The day I took my licensing exam
uh to be a medic was September eleven, when the
(03:10):
when the towers fell. This justin you were looking at
obviously a very disturbing live shot there. That is the
World Trade Center, and we have unconfirmed reports this morning
that a plane has crashed into one of the towers
of the World Trade Center. As as a corman, you'll
you'll usually do three tours in the field and then
you'll do one tour back in a hospital. They want
(03:31):
you to keep your medical skills relevant and fresh, you know.
And uh, and so I got assigned to the ICU
in Germany at Launched Tool Hospital. It's this um. It's
the biggest American hospital outside of the United States. It's
a massive facility, and it's where when guys get shot
and blown up, they get they get stabilized in the
(03:51):
field and then they take a flight to Germany where
they are reevaluated and made sure they're stable enough they
can make the big trip back to Texas or elsewhere
in the US. I was working there after having been
in you know, multiple combat deployments, and I got assigned
to working with guys who were you know, double triple
(04:12):
sometimes amputees, blind, some guys that you know had lost
their sex organs from explosions and um and that was
that was actually the most nightmarish part for me was
knowing as I was in that space that my next
assignment was going to be Afghanistan, and so I was
dealing with you know, guys who were you know, walking
(04:33):
around on burnt up drumsticks for legs, you know, and
like and seeing these guys who we're smarter and stronger
and more put together than I was, and now they
are a very different person after that incident. My PTSD
was was mostly actually from that and I would I
would have these these these nightmares that I would be,
you know, next in the bed. I would keep my
(04:53):
ship together as I was dealing with these patients because
I didn't want to crumble in front of them. I
worked night shifts. I'd get off in the morning, and
I would get these um these moments as I'm brushing
my teeth and looking at my own face in the mirror,
where I would see it as if it was real
that like my arm wasn't there or my leg wasn't there.
In those moments, all I could think about was that
(05:13):
I knew my next asidement was going to be Afghanistan,
and uh, and I didn't know that I was going
to make it back in one piece. I had a
patient that really crumbled me. The next the next bit.
It's hard. So if you're prone to have a hard
time with hard, keep listening, because in the end you're
(05:37):
just listening. Max lived it. I had a patient that
really crumbled me. He was an explosive organs disposal guy,
and then he was actually a Australian fellow. And he
was working on a piece of ordinance and it blew
up and blew both of his hands off at the elbows,
(05:58):
and it also blew out his eyeballs, and and the
strange thing was that outside of that, he was virtually unscathed.
I mean, like you, I mean a little bit of
bruising and pepper on his on some on the skin,
but like nothing else. The morphing that we were giving
him would cause him to have like an amnesia effect
um through his sleep, and then he would wake up
(06:18):
and he would forget that he had lost his arms
and he had lost his eyes. Every day and he
would wake up like trying to claw what he thought
was something covering his eyes, but of course he can't
reach his face because he has no arms. And then
having to explain this man every fucking morning, Hey, it's Max.
I'm still your corman. You've been here for a little while. Um,
(06:40):
you know you're safe and your arms and your eyes
are gone. Every morning he would have he would just
have this crushing defeat and I'd get him up and
i'd you know, walk him around in the room to
get him to get him mobile, and he would be joking.
He'd be joking and and and and he'd be talking,
you know. Uh, he'd be he'd be asked me if
my dick is still okay, because that's all it really matters.
(07:01):
And I tell him it was, and we would have
and we would laugh about it and it would be
funny and uh, and I put him back into the bed,
and at the end of my shift, I would be crumbled, thinking,
there's no way I'm as hard as that motherfucker. There's
no way I'd have that sense of humor. And I
just did not believe that I had it in me
to be as strong as he was. And knowing that
(07:21):
I was gonna have to go back to Afghanistan and
put myself in the position of this person who was
stronger than me on my best day, I just, um, yeah,
that was That was where my PTSD came from. It
wasn't patrolling, you know, on on a mission. It wasn't
seeing guys get blown up in the field. I was
used to that I had something I could do there,
(07:41):
you know. But for me, that that waiting time between
my hospital assignment and finally getting to get off the
plane in Afghanistan, that was the hardest part of my life.
It's the waiting that's the fucking terrible part. It's like,
once you're in it, once you're in it, you're just
sucking in it. You're just responding, reacting, you're flowing, You're
doing you know how to do, and you know that
you're well trained to do it. It's the waiting that
(08:02):
caused me to nightmares, and that's what really I think
sort of fractured my mind. Stitch Fix is an online
personal styling service that finds and delivers clothes, shoes, and
accessories to fit your body, budget, and lifestyle. Just go
to stitch fix dot com slash azzi that's o z
(08:23):
Y and tell them your sizes, what styles you like,
and how much you want to spend on each item.
You'll be paired with your very own personal stylist who
will hand pick five items to send right to your door.
Then you try them on, pay only for what you
love and return the rest. Shipping, exchanges and returns always free.
There's no subscription required. You can sign up to receive
(08:46):
schedule shipments or get your fix whenever you want. Stitch
Fixes styling fee is only twenty dollars, which is applied
towards anything you keep from your shipment. Get started now
at stitch fix dot com slash z e y and
you'll get an extra percent off when you keep all
five items in your box that stitch fix dot com
(09:07):
slash Azzi to Get started today stitch fix dot com
slash oh a Zy. I was thinking about the transition
from from Afghanistan back to l A. How are things?
How are things right at back? Wasn't strange? Or was it?
I think I was? I don't think I know is.
I was in denial about a lot of the mental
(09:29):
scaring that happened to me in Germany, and I figured, well,
I'll just tough it out. I'll just I'll just keep
baring it and it'll it'll eventually subside, you know, And
it really didn't. And Uh, I was self medicating with
booze and uh and that was not helping at all.
It was strange, and it was really hard to relate. Actually,
(09:49):
you know, it was really hard to relate because you're
surrounded by a community there that's sort of all encompassing everybody.
You know, it's military and uh and and all that.
And then you get out and you're running buy you know, um,
privileged to college kids who who um who you know,
God bless them. They just they just don't know any better.
(10:10):
And I had more in common with the professors than
I had with the students. It was intoxicating how free
you can, you know, I was, and how I can
I can write my own own orders, I can do
what I want. Um. But it was also really hard
not having that constant brotherhood, that constant management, for lack
(10:31):
of a better way to say it, um, and having
a clear purpose and having confidence in in in your leadership.
I really missed all of that a lot. Actually I
still do. I still do, you know. Um, it's like
leaving a family behind. I'd spent so much time getting
(10:53):
really used to my own mortality that I wasn't even
sure if I was even alive. I thought, what if
my perspective is all just my imagination sharing what if
I am actually a comatose patient in the hospital bed
and this is all just some extrapolated dream and I'm
not even really here. I was totally dissociated from my
own life, you know. And and that was and that
(11:13):
was how I was sort of that was my normal,
that was my walking around. You have to really accept
your um mortality in order to be effective on the battlefield,
you know. And and I accepted it so much that
it was more comfortable for me to be dead than
it was to be alive. My father was was long distant,
(11:34):
he was living back in Tennessee, out of communication with us,
and uh suffering his own mental uh, his own mental troubles,
his own mental problems. And I got news that my
mother had passed. She had a heart attack. And before
I could even uh really get my head around that,
her house burnt down. Her house burnt down after she died,
(11:55):
My family's home burnt down. I have a sister who
has a drug issue, and her tweaker boyfriend come at
arson on the house, and uh and and away it went.
And so I came home to burying my mom and
rebuilding this house. So I had three sisters looking at
me to fix this, you know, in the midst of
you know, sort of burying my mom and seeing this
burnt town house, I was, I was really ready to
(12:17):
put my forty five in my mouth and just blow
my brains out. I was just exhausted. I was already
I was already exhausted. And then I felt like um
by note and I was exhausted from ship that I
had chosen to do. And on some hand, I I
could take responsibility for that, and I could, I could
manage that in my own way. But then having to
take responsibility for burying my mom, you know, being the
(12:38):
leader of this family through this tragedy, and then rebuilding
a house that was just it was just more than
I could bear, really, And uh, I remember I was
I was gonna blow my brains out, but it was
it was raining. So I'm gonna let that sit with you.
What do you think about that for a second. And
(13:00):
while you're thinking I'm gonna be chattering, I'm gonna chat
a specifically, I want to go back even further because
how I met Max is super compelling. I get a
call from a friend in Los Angeles, Marcy. Marcy says
to me, Hey, Hey, listen, there's this guy that I
think you should meet. She gives me the rebop about
(13:20):
the cage fighting, which is enough. She goes, yeah, yeah,
And he's also a former kind of punk rock guys
and skateboarding, you know, stuff that you kind of like.
I go, yeah, okay, Well what's he done? She goes, Also,
he's a nice Jewish boy. So imagine my surprise first
time I meet him when he shows up and he's
(13:41):
African American. It never came up. I guess it wouldn't have.
But mother's Jewish, his father's African American, and he grew
up in the Deep South. Yeah, so I put my
pistol away and and I did, and I said it,
I'll just do it tomorrow. And the v A told me, look,
(14:05):
you know you're drinking too much, you're fighting too much.
You need you need a hobby. And I said, well,
I like to Well, I and I know how to
make soap, and they said, we'll go do that. Was
where are you from. I'm from Knoxville, Tennessee, and I
have a family in Gatlinburg as well. In Tennessee. People
in the Hills Country, people can survive. Man Like, I
(14:27):
don't think I ever saw my mother or father call
out for like like a mechanic or a plumber or
an electrician or a painter. Ever, they never hired out anybody.
They just figured it out. You know. So, um, very
very d d I y people and very self sufficient
people and uh and so among other things. Um, you
(14:50):
know everything from moonshine to soap. Yeah, I can. I
can make those things. I mean I knew how to
grow weed and make soap by the time I was
in I don't know, the third grade. So it was
like a family activity. It's a family activity. I have
a Milton Poor process cooking my soap down, poured into molds.
I mixed mine with oats, milk, alow, coconut oil, and
coconut flakes essential oils. Put it into molds, chop it up,
(15:13):
wrap it up in plastic, put stickers on it for labels,
and uh and that's it. It's surprisingly simple. If you
can tie your own shoes, you can make soap. So okay,
so so at one point, so you're in l A
said we make the soap, and um, uh did did
this initially? How much did this help? Initially? It was everything?
(15:35):
I mean, I don't hands with the Devil's work. Man.
If if I don't have a tool or or or
a project in my hands, I was just as likely
you know, drinking and fighting, you know, so like it was,
it was. It was really really good for me. It
helped me get past um a lot of addiction stuff.
It helped me get past a lot of uh PTSD stuff,
(15:57):
self pity stuff like having purpose is everything to me.
The podcast world is growing bigger every day, and Himalaya
wants to help you navigate it. Himalaya is a brand
new podcast app where you can find every single podcast
you love and some future faves. Whether your podcast or
a fan, Himalay has got your back. Discover personally curated
(16:20):
playlist and show your favorite podcasters some love with Himalaya's
tip jaw. It's free and it's the easiest to use,
and they're adding cool new features every day. Go to
your app store download Himalaya. That's h I Am A
L A y A, and don't forget the follow asie
(16:42):
Confidential once you're there. The military is an organization where
everybody just decides to mentally get on the same sheet
of music. At the same time. They decide to all
pull on the same rope with the same intensity at
the same time. And what that means is that you're
(17:02):
gonna learn a lot, and like, if you can bear it,
you're gonna learn more faster than you could possibly imagine.
If it doesn't kill you or drive you completely crazy,
you come away from it light years ahead of your competition.
If you can bear it, then what is amazing is
you're gonna get really intimate with your own mortality and
kind of a Tibetan Book of the Dead kind of way.
(17:26):
That's gonna mean you're gonna approach life with a kind
of intensity that most people don't ever understand. The slogan
for the company is don't be nasty, and I stole
that that's a direct rip off from the Marine Corps.
When and it's not just when your body is nasty,
but like if your bed isn't made, or like if
your rifle isn't oiled and cleaned, they'll say, oh, you
don't don't be nasty, don't be nasty you and my
(17:47):
mother used to say the same thing when I wouldn't
wash my ass. Don't be nasty. But the the for me,
part of the meditative centering process for me in in
in in war Is, I would always find just a
moment every day, if it was only a teacup worth
of water, I would dab my handkerchief in it, and
(18:09):
I would wash my ass with soap every fucking day,
because I had this thing after being in Germany, where
I was like, the last thing I want is to
die smelling like feet, and the last thing I want
is some guy to have to pick me up and
put me on a litter and onto a helicopter, onto planes,
and like, I'm wearing dirty, dirty, dirty underwear and I
smell like balls. And so when I came home to
(18:30):
the to the States and I saw, you know, veterans
living on the street, living nasty, it it clicked for me.
You know, I didn't I didn't know how else I
could make a difference, but I did know that, like,
I don't want people in America to have to be
dirtier than I wasn't war. You know, I can't get
everybody a fucking house, but like with a soap company,
(18:51):
I can damn sure try to get everybody a shower.
People think that like, um, I've moved quickly with this business,
or people think that I've gotten a lot done, and
and and and I always feel like I'm I'm behind
because I'm all after seeing as much death and pain
as I've gotten to see. Um, I feel in a
(19:13):
rush to live a full and complete life without excuses.
I feel in a rush to get as much done
as I possibly can. That is the kind of intensity
I was talking about that makes me feel like I'm
I'm summoning and I'm I'm I'm passing by my competition.
Um and it puts me and it puts me in
a constant My competition really isn't even other people. It's
(19:37):
it's the it's the lesser version of myself. Does that
make sense, Yeah, it does. It's easy to make soap,
it's hard to make a soap company. And in order
for me to make a soap company, I'll just give
you a little secret. I just copied terrorists, terrorists, and cartels,
is what I did. I copied their business models. Terrorists
(20:00):
and cartels. We have a tremendously hard time defeating them,
and as an intelligent specialist, I'll tell you one of
the biggest reasons is because they keep all their operations portable, scalable,
and trainable. Right, So, if it's It's like the craft
of making cocaine not very difficult, the craft of making
explosives not very difficult. Uh. And if you can keep
(20:22):
it scalable, and you can, it's already trainable, right. If
you can keep it scalable and you can keep it portable,
then it comes really hard to shut it down. So
like a cartel can move a drug lab in the
time it takes to pack a truck, a terrorist network
can move a bomb making facility and the time it
takes to pack a truck, you know. So like I
(20:43):
wanted to apply what I learned about asymmetrical warfare as
an intelligent specialist to my business. One of the little
secrets I've been doing is I've been going all over
the country and training veterans on what I'm doing. So
I kept it really easy to make. I kept it
really easy to move the factory anytime I feel like
(21:04):
And um, and now I'm just going around and empowering
to their veterans to make and sell this soap. No
problems come back to me. They just they just have
a job now and they can sell locally. I make
my money on my online site anyway. And uh, and
we're currently in talks to turn into a to a
nonprofit and UM, and just keep on pushing UM to
(21:29):
affect positive change in veteran joblessness. I'm trying to push
this idea UM that like we can affect positive change.
And that's and it just so happens. I make really
good soap. I really didn't expect it, Eugene. I didn't
expect for there to be this ground swell of interest
and this ground swell of support. But it's happening. I
have all this love and support in my life, and
(21:51):
I'm able to affect all this love and support for
other people. And I didn't blow my brains out, and
I'm so happy. That was raining that day I was
in India. Uh, this was gosh, three months ago, I guess. Now.
I had this this experience where I had, you know,
(22:11):
I had this traffic accident where I thought this baby
had died and uh it turned out to be okay.
And um, these these gangsters that I had made friends
with sort of showed up to uh to bail me
out of jail and paid off the bribes to get
me out of there and then took me over to
the mosque and and I I knelt down and prayed,
(22:34):
and I just started, um crying out of happiness and
gratitude that like, for all the ship that I'd seen
that I've I'm in one piece at least physically, you know,
and that like I've never had to I've never had
to do anything that I really regret, and and like
I find that to be mostly true in life. You know,
is that is that you have this idea, this image
(22:55):
in your head of what things are supposed to look like,
and um, and it often doesn't really work out quite
the way you think it will. But overall, I feel
like it still does work out, at least for me.
I've I've been really fortunate. I've gotten to do thunk,
I've gotten to do everything I wanted to do in
this life. I just feel really lucky that, um, that
I am where I am, and all I want to
do is just give back. You know, there's a part
(23:17):
of me that just wants to run away, Eugene. There's
a part of me just wants to fucking move to
Bali and you know, uh, smoke weed until I can't
see straight and just fucking be left alone. And then
there's another part of me that feels like, um, I
didn't have these experiences at a coincidence, you know, and
and it's not an accident. And I feel like I owe,
(23:38):
I owe what I've learned, and I owe to give
back my My service doesn't stop because I'm out of uniform.
My service stops when I'm sucking dead. Speaking of dead,
you ever know those cats who like, uh, you know,
took way too many of a certain drug, way too long,
(24:02):
way too hard, pushed it as far as they could
humanly go for no discernible reason. I have. It's me
next up on Nazi Confidential, Me on Me. Ozzie Confidential
(24:23):
is produced by who Else Make Eugene S. Robinson, an
executive produced by Robert Coolers and this episode the sound designed,
edited and mixed by Jamie Cohn and Nick Johnson. For
more Ozzy Confidential, check us out on Ozzie dot Com.
(24:43):
That's o z y dot com slash Confidential. We published
editorial companion articles on Ozzie and the photos videos for
every single store, so to check them out, go to
ozzie dot com slash Confidential That's o z Y dot
Calm slash Confidential and you can see behind the scene.
(25:03):
You can learn more about the stories we tell and
even become an official o S where you'll be kept
uh in the note on all things Us the Advential
and if you want to get in touch with us,
learn more or just generally event get us up at
confidential at ozi dot com. Will send over a T
(25:24):
shirt if you did what you gotta say, good, bad,
or ugly, or maybe we'll get too lazy to do
any of that. Thanks this issue, this version. This edition
go out to Natty Bumpo Tango in Cash and Little
Debbie spin Wheels. Thanks
Popular Podcasts
Cold Case Files: Miami
Joyce Sapp, 76; Bryan Herrera, 16; and Laurance Webb, 32—three Miami residents whose lives were stolen in brutal, unsolved homicides. Cold Case Files: Miami follows award‑winning radio host and City of Miami Police reserve officer Enrique Santos as he partners with the department’s Cold Case Homicide Unit, determined family members, and the advocates who spend their lives fighting for justice for the victims who can no longer fight for themselves.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.