Drive On: Helping Veterans Navigate PTSD & Life After Military Service
Are you a veteran struggling with PTSD, combat stress, or adjusting to civilian life? Tired of feeling isolated and unsure where to turn for support? You deserve solutions from mental health experts, veteran nonprofits, and fellow veterans who truly understand what you're facing. Each week, host Scott DeLuzio, an Army veteran and Gold Star Brother, shares interviews and practical steps to help you regain purpose, rebuild confidence, and thrive after military service. Find hope and take the next step forward.
Episodes
The uniform comes off, but the pressure can stay wired into your body, your habits, and the way you react to everyday life. This conversation touches on something many veterans know all too well: being trained to push through anything, only to realize that the same mindset can break down when the fight becomes internal.
Chris Irwin shares how his path from Navy SEAL to...
Post-traumatic stress can keep the body running at full speed long after the immediate danger has passed. Dr. Eugene Lipov describes how Stellate Ganglion Block (SGB) may calm that response and reduce symptoms such as sleep problems, anxiety, hypervigilance, and a persistent feeling of doom.
His interest in trauma treatment is deeply personal. His father lived with the ...
Twenty years of war left many veterans with a range of reactions, including frustration, uncertainty, and unresolved questions. Retired Army officer Paul Darling offers his perspective based on a 27-year career, a 2009 deployment to Afghanistan, work at the Pentagon, and his book Taliban Safari. He discusses how decisions are made about equipment, how budgets are managed, and why accountability at seni...
Broken after a career of service and out of answers, a retired Air Force officer stepped onto a path he never expected. Benjamin Forest shares the road from military success to treatment-resistant depression, a Veterans Day crisis, and a healing mission that forced him to face what years of service, family pressure, and survival mode had pushed deep inside.
This episode...
A fighter pilot's mindset meets the hard reality of life after the military. Dave Berke spent 23 years in the Marine Corps, flew fighters, taught at Top Gun, and now helps leaders through Echelon Front. His message hits especially hard for veterans trying to rebuild their sense of purpose, communicate better at work, stay present at home, and stop letting past failures define the next chapter.
Getting out of the military can leave a man with skills, drive, and discipline, while still feeling disconnected from everyone around him. This conversation cuts straight into that gap. Jason McNamara shares how a rough start, Navy service, veteran employment work, sales success, family pressure, and financial choices led him to build the No More 9 to 5 Club and Foundation.
Taking off the uniform can leave a man wondering where he fits next. The rank is gone. The built-in mission is gone. The people around you may respect that you served, but they do not always understand what that service cost or why civilian life can feel so strange afterward.
John Smith knows that feeling. After 20 years in the Marine Corps, retiring as a Master Sergean...
Addiction does not always arrive as a dramatic collapse. Sometimes it slips in through grief, depression, isolation, trauma, old friends, or the belief that one more time will not matter. For veterans carrying PTSD, transition stress, and family pressure, that danger can hit even harder.
Marine Corps veteran Adan Castaneda shares a direct conversation about fentanyl aw...
There's often pain behind the person who makes everyone laugh. TK Moyer shares what it was like to be separated from his family as a child, how he turned to humor when honesty felt risky, and how the Navy helped him find confidence and a new outlook.
This conversation touches on something many veterans understand: the weight carried before service, the weight from serv...
Many military and veteran families are facing tough times. Groceries are more expensive, paychecks do not go as far, and reaching out for help can feel discouraging. This conversation addresses those challenges and offers hope for a better path.
Vicki Sarracino, Vice President of Programs at Soldiers' Angels, explains how the group supports service members, veterans, an...
Some men leave the military and still notice the empty seat at the table. The mission has ended, the unit is no longer there, and civilian life often lacks the honesty they once shared with fellow service members.
Historian and Marine veteran Bryan Rigg offers a unique perspective on this struggle. He draws from his research on World War II, Holocaust history, his time...
A solid transition plan does not guarantee a clean landing. Guest Taamir Ransome left the Army with advanced education, real-world experience, and a strong résumé, but he still felt the loss of identity, purpose, and daily mission after taking off the uniform.
This conversation follows Taamir from joining the Army after 9/11, serving in the 82nd Airborne, moving into EO...
Silence can linger long after a veteran has returned home and taken off the uniform. For Eric Gillis, one of the toughest challenges after leaving the Army was learning to function in a world without the structure, purpose, and brotherhood that once held everything together. He kept his inner struggles to himself, feeling he had no right to speak up because others had paid a higher price.
Pain has a way of taking over every part of life. It follows you into the workplace, rides along during traffic, sits at the dinner table, and keeps you awake long after the house quiets down.
This conversation sheds light on a VA benefit many veterans might not be aware of: medical massage therapy. Samer Hamadeh, founder of Zeel, shares how his company nearly folded wh...
A hospital bed, a trach tube, and a doctor saying the water was gone from his future could have been the end of the story. Joe Gonzalez, a disabled Navy veteran, refused to let that be the final chapter. After years of surgeries, opioid addiction, anger, depression, and the heavy mental weight that comes with disability, he found a new mission through the ocean.
This c...
The hardest battles after service can happen in the quiet places, at home, at work, and inside your own head. Brendan T. Kelly spent 22 years in the Army before stepping into teaching, corporate life, and eventually writing. Along the way, he faced nightmares, PTSD, family strain, and the hard truth that leading troops in battle did not mean he could heal alone.
This co...
Some wounds keep you scanning every exit in the room. Others bury themselves deeper, showing up as guilt, shame, distance at home, and the fear that the people you love would see you differently if they knew the whole story.
Larry Brant brings clarity to that hidden battle through his path from Helmand Province to a COVID ICU to the Aspire Center, where he saw how PTSD ...
Life after service can look calm on the outside, while your nervous system stays stuck in alert mode. Ryan McDermott breaks down the chain reaction that can follow major stress: isolation, fractured sleep, anxiety spikes, and that familiar urge to grind harder instead of getting support.
His story moves from leading troops early in the Iraq war to navigating a civilian...
Some war stories do not stay in the past. They follow you into work, marriage, fatherhood, sleep, and the quiet moments when your mind starts replaying what happened and what it meant. This conversation goes straight at that weight by unpacking moral injury, the kind of wound that hits when combat collides with your deepest values. It gets into why so many veterans carry pain that standard conversation...
Life after the uniform can feel disconnected, even when everything looks fine on paper. The routines change, the circle gets smaller, and the stress stacks up in ways that are hard to explain at home or at work. Michael D'Angelo lived that shift and found a way to push back through standup comedy. He shares how Marine Corps humor shaped him, why he walked onto an open mic anyway, and how the fear of bo...
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