Dakota Meyer, a decorated Marine and guest on The Joe Rogan Experience #1363, recounts losing 10 comrades in Afghanistan’s 2011 firefight while fighting alongside Afghan troops against Al-Qaeda and Taliban oppression. His PTSD—triggered by subconscious trauma—improved after Dr. Sean Mulvaney’s medical procedure, blending CBD, vape therapy, and daily alpha stimulation. Now, Meyer empowers veterans through Own The Dash, runs a cannabis-infused art company (Flipside Canvas), and collaborates with Jocko Willink on Discipline Go. Despite polarizing views on hunting, he defends conservation, contrasting ethical wildlife management with past market hunting disasters like California’s grizzly bear eradication. Their discussion underscores the tension between trauma recovery, personal discipline, and societal misconceptions about service and conservation. [Automatically generated summary]
Well, if you hear all those, like, you know, when you're listening to that podcast, that was by far the most...
I mean, he, like, Jocko just pulled it out of me, like, right?
Like, you know, most everybody hits, like, the high points of it, but, you know, me and Jocko just made that connection.
It was the first time we'd ever met.
Oh, really?
Face-to-face, yeah.
We just went, like, you know, he actually picked me up from the airport, and we went there, and we sat down and did the podcast, and...
I don't know.
I think he knew the questions to ask because I think it was good for both of us.
Because, you know, if you got to the point kind of in the middle of it, if you start hearing those silences, it was both of us trying to keep from tears falling, right?
Well, there's a cliche, you know, that comes up when people talk about military, you know, that, you know, people will say things and sometimes it's hard to understand whether or not they grasp exactly what they're saying, but that people make sacrifices so that you could be free.
It's hard to truly internalize that without having experienced what you've experienced, what Jocko and Tim Kennedy have experienced.
When I'm listening to it, I know that it's correct.
I know that it's true.
I support it 100%, but it's almost like an alien thing to me because I've never experienced it.
So when hearing you guys talk about it and climbing inside your head for a bit and listening to you describe it, That cliché, the land of the free because of the brave, it gets highlighted where you understand, like, this is why America's not like it is in other places because of this strong military.
And one of the things you guys talked about in that podcast was this idea of us invading Afghanistan.
And I think, you know, the perspective that I get to come back, and I think all these guys telling their stories, you know, from Rob O'Neill to Marks Latrell, like, I think every warrior out there has to tell their story To make people understand, right?
Like, it's so important for that because we've got a perspective of the world that a lot of people don't get.
And, you know, I mean, I stood next to people that we couldn't, like, you talk about not believing, not being raised, not coming from the same place, not having, you know, we could have found every reason not to be on the same ground, but we stood next to each other and were willing to die for each other.
We found, we chose to find the common denominator.
And that was because there's only two types of people in this world.
Yeah, so, you know, basically Afghanistan, and it was the same thing in Iraq, too.
I mean, you know, that's where these terrorist organizations were, right?
And, you know, we're over there fighting alongside Afghanistan.
We're over there fighting alongside Iraq.
We're not fighting Iraq and fighting Afghanistan.
We're fighting alongside both of those countries and trying to rebuild it up and trying to get rid of these terrorist cells that are inside those countries, you know?
Like you said, I mean, everybody thinks that, you know, we're fighting Iraq and we're fighting Afghanistan, and it's not the case.
We're alongside them, helping them rebuild their countries.
But when you live in a country like America, we're so fortunate.
It's so awesome here.
Even when it sucks, it's awesome.
In comparison to the rest of the world, a It's very rare that you have a place where you really can start at the bottom and make your way up to be a successful person.
I mean, literally, you can start here and come from nothing and within your generation be the president of the United States.
You could literally start from that.
And it's the only country on the face of the planet.
And I tell people all the time, like, you know, just because, you know, we get so caught up.
Like right now is like an emotional time for America.
Right.
It's getting ready.
I call it the draining time.
You know, from now until, you know, November, you know, until the election time, it's going to be draining.
Right.
And everybody's getting so emotional and fired up.
And, you know, and it's like, you know, like it's going to be whatever.
But the cool part is, is that this country, like from all of us in the military, from all our first responders, our police officers, you know, we're the only country on the face of the planet that doesn't swear allegiance to a person We swear allegiance to a document to a piece of paper and And that's what allows us to be us.
That's what allows us to not have one person come in and be able to change up this idea that we have of democracy, of freedom.
And that's something that's just, it's incredible.
That's what keeps our country the way it is, right?
Like, there's not, you know, the people will always be in charge here.
And you know what?
Most of America, most, 99% of America is incredible.
It's incredible.
And you know what?
They're stopping and they're helping people and it's just the loud ones that make it look like it's all chaotic.
Well, people love to point out the horrible aspects and they love to ignore the good aspects.
They love to dwell on the bad parts.
And I think ultimately that's going to prove to be good for everybody because those people that are Highlighting all these bad things, then everybody else has to think about it, and we'll slowly but surely evolve and come to an understanding and make the world a better place.
It's a way better place now than it was 100 years ago or 200 years ago, and I think this is a – I mean, Steven Pinker talks about this all the time in his books, and he's criticized for it because a lot of people don't like the idea that things are getting better.
They want to I think the most important focal point if we want to have a good world is concentrate on the good aspects and how amazing it really is that we have this incredible ability to express ourselves, this incredible ability to prosper.
I mean, people don't get the same share or the same stake in life.
A lot of people get a terrible opening hand of cards.
But you can improve.
And this is one of the rare places in the world where you can, if you're so inclined, if you have the discipline, if you can figure it out emotionally, if you can figure it out in terms of what you want to do in your life, you can live a healthy and successful life in this country.
Like, there's no other country that has more opportunities than the United States of America.
Especially, I mean, for anybody.
And I agree with you.
I think that this society has gotten into this place of where we're trying to out-victimize each other.
Like, who can be the bigger victim?
Who's had it harder?
Yeah.
And, you know, it's – the thing that I also believe is that with technology and all this is the empathy, like suffering has became normal for people, right?
Like it's became entertainment.
Look at reality TV. People's messed up lives.
That's entertainment for people now.
Video games.
I talk about this all the time about war.
We came back and war has now been romanticized.
It's been romanticized that it's this cool image of like, I hear people say, I just want to go kick in doors and shoot people in the face.
And it's like, well, you've probably never done it then.
And it's like, we've got our kids playing video games of the stuff that keeps me awake at night.
And it's like, you know, at what point do we start humanizing these things?
You know, I think that what's not put out there is, you know, I hear kids talking about, hey, you know, did you use this or did you use this or did, you know, you hear people say, well, did you kill somebody, right?
It's like kids.
To me, that bothers me.
Because there's nothing cool about taking another human's life.
And when you're playing video games and it's like, oh, I got this many kills.
These kids are just watching this screen over and over.
And the more graphic it gets, the less desensitized that we have to another human being suffering.
Like, the more desensitized, and then you start, you know, the more the movies go, and the more, I mean, you know, I think that, like, we've just, like, we've pushed ourselves away from, you know, from being empathetic to, hey, these are real people.
These are real people's lives.
We've stopped looking at people and saying, this is someone's child.
This is someone's mother.
This is someone's son.
We've gotten away from that.
The old art that I was always told to live by is treat someone as you'd want to be treated yourself.
And if you were in those shoes, and every time I pass somebody, every time I see somebody suffering, I always look at that and be like, well, what would I want somebody to do if they see my daughter suffering?
Or my son suffering, right?
I mean, look at all these times that I see these people holding their video cameras up in their video and somebody, like, getting just beat.
And it's like, how do you do that and not help?
How does that not just suck everything out of you to not want to do something?
Yeah, there's a thing called diffusion of responsibility that happens to people in crowds, unfortunately.
And it's also the same thing that I think when you're filming something that's happening in real life is the same thing that you've seen in these video games and on television shows.
I mean, we have never had more violence in film form and in video game form ever.
I'm ready to method act that actually happened in a movie called brown bunny It was a long time ago.
There was a movie with Vincent Gallo and there was an actress her name is Chloe I forget how you say her name Svenji.
How do you say it?
Svenji, it's really good actress and he's a really good actor and for whatever reason they decided to do a sex scene where she gives him a real blowjob.
Yeah, and And everybody who saw it in the theater was angry.
Yeah, I wouldn't even post anything on my Instagram of hunting because PETA would just, like, people would just tell you, like, oh, we should hunt you.
We should shoot you with a bow and arrow.
I mean, you know, but they can go watch people get killed.
Everybody's got their own, it's interesting, like their own thing that gives them a sense of purpose that makes them feel like they're doing something that makes a difference and makes a change.
Anthony Bourdain used to get really angry about this.
And one of the things that he said was, this is a first world problem.
He's like, we are so fortunate that we have this problem.
And in other countries, they're just trying to get enough protein to feed their family.
They're just trying to get enough food to feed people.
You know, and he was, it wasn't like he was indifferent to animals, but he was deeply concerned about people.
You know, because of all his traveling, he had like a great deal of empathy for all these different people in these different cultures and their cuisine, and he had a tremendous amount of respect for it.
Like, he would talk about it like it was religious to him almost, you know?
How do you wake up when all you do is focus on problems, right?
It's kind of like...
When you're working or you're at a job or you own a company, you're always just fixing, I call it putting out fires.
And if that's all you do is constantly put out fires, at what point do you become grateful?
At what point of the day do people stop and look around and they're grateful for what they have and they're appreciative of...
I had a guy tell me, when I was going through my divorce, I was a train wreck.
Just call Tim Kennedy and he'll tell you.
You know, I'll never forget a guy sat me down.
I was talking about all these problems and just nitpicking and fighting over the small stuff.
And I mean, literally just, well, she worded it this way and she needs to do it this way.
Like literally just every little thing.
And a guy finally sat me down and he looked at me and he goes, look, Dakota, he said, if you can make choices or decisions to change it, Then it's not a problem.
It's an inconvenience.
The day that you can't make a choice, you've got cancer, your kid's sick, or something like that, he goes, that's the day you've got problems.
And the thing is, I think I'm so fortunate to have gone through the experiences that I have because each one of them...
It's all perspective.
It changes my perspective on the way I look at things.
It changes the things that are important to me.
I always call it, everybody's got their lens of life.
And that lens of life, your lens of life looks different than mine.
Mine looks different than yours.
We all have our own lens of life.
And at the point, we get so focused and get into autopilot And it'll focus on, you know, it's kind of like your camera.
You pull it up and you got it on autofocus.
It never focuses on what you want it focused on, right?
Until you go back to the manual focus and you push where it's at.
And I feel like all these problems that we have are just made to, hey, we need to tighten our lens back up to focus on what really, really, really matters.
I mean, every one day I got an opportunity with, right?
And it just, you know, it was just a...
It was so chaotic.
I think about it all the time, obviously.
It's something I could have never experienced.
I trained for war every single day when I was in the Marine Corps.
It was what my job was.
I still could have never imagined that day the way it was or anything to turn out.
I could have never pictured it.
I think every day it goes by, I think there's a reckoning of it.
The way that I've seen it that day is not the way I see it today.
And, um, I think that comes with, you know, just, just sharpening and just your body, you know, you change and you, you see different things in perspective, but yeah, I mean, you know, I, I, I, you know, that day, I mean, it's still, I mean,
it's still, it's just, you know, just, it's just, there's so many lessons that come from that day that, that, you know, I look at people complaining about stuff here in America and it's like, I've seen him one day, the best of humans, the worst of humans, and nobody thought they were wrong.
Like, I walked in there that day, and I was the guy who was cocky, who would tell you, you know, I love fighting.
You know what I mean?
Like, I... Like, I just want to go fight.
Like, you know, but every fight I had before that, it was like, you know, I always had airplanes sitting, you know, or helicopters sitting around.
I always had, you know, it was like, I'm going to go in there and start the fight and then I'm going to call in all this other stuff to win, right?
And that day it wasn't there and literally I walked out of there and I just think about all the time today, I just think about all the time of how many generations just that day were changed.
How many generations of people's lives were changed.
You know, all my teammates died, so they'll never have kids.
That generation stopped.
Their families forever existed.
So many lives were changed that day by that piece.
And guess what?
Everybody in America had no clue what was going on.
Like right now, there are US troops.
Somebody wondering if they're going to be able to come home and see their family again.
That's reality.
Whether you want to ignore it or not, that's reality.
And that was me, September 8, 2009. And it was just a chaotic day.
And you know, the further I go on, I look at it different.
I always talk about this story of...
You know, whenever this guy came up behind me and I ended up killing him with a rock.
And...
I always remember just like I remember it like I see it every night like I remember like I just see his face and I got just because there was a point There's a point that I feel like that anybody that when they whether they're injured or Anything like they realize they're defeated like they like it like I don't know I just think there's a point when you look at somebody and they know they're gonna die and I'll never forget that and I you know now I look at it and I see it and I always think that like This
guy is a son to somebody.
His mother and father are gonna miss him.
This guy...
He believes in his cause as much as I do.
He doesn't believe he's wrong.
This guy...
This guy...
He...
He could have had a wife or kids that are never going to see their father again.
Just like, you know, my dad might have never seen me again if it was switched.
And really, I don't even know.
I don't hate him.
I don't even know this guy.
We're just here at this place right now because we were born in two different countries.
He had a weapon, and I ended up shooting him from the ground.
I thought he was dead when he fell on the ground and I kind of moved down and got down with Dada Lee because we I was still getting shot at from this machine gun up on this hill and I was trying to make myself small as I could and This guy ends up coming up and choking me like I thought he was I thought he was dead and he ends up choking me out he starts trying to choke me out and Eventually let up a little bit and I end up getting around him and I just got we were fighting back and forth and I can remember all I was thinking about was like don't let his legs get on me
like you know these guys their legs are I mean they've been crawling up mountains her whole life and he was a he was a pretty big dude and I I just remember getting on top of him finally got on top of him and I was rolling on top of him he didn't have all the gear on I did and I remember getting on top of him like I was straddling him and I'm just reaching up trying to grab for anything I can and I'm holding him and holding him down with my forearm and I'm just grabbing anything I can and finally I ended up grabbing a rock and I just
started beating this dude's face in and I started beating and beating and beating and I remember just like Finally like after hitting him, you know, I don't know three or four times four or five times whatever I Remember him like finally just kind of looking at me and like just it's it's like he's like just I'm just looking him in the eyes like obviously closer than me to you right now and You just see all the you can tell like he knows where this is going And I always think about that, you know?
Obviously, I would kill him a million times over again, right?
He was the enemy.
Like, I don't feel bad about that part of it.
But I just think about, like, in that moment, if I can find a way to relate to him in that moment, a man I'm taking his life, we all in America can find a way to connect with each other.
If we don't connect with each other, it's because we choose not to.
I don't care what your differences are.
Like, don't, like, find a reason of why we can get along, not why we should not get along.
And I always think about that moment, you know, of this guy and, you know, he obviously ended up dying.
And what it showed me was, is that no cause that you have that's built on hate will survive.
I didn't hate this guy.
I didn't even know him.
But I was willing to take his life because of what I loved.
And that's what we have to build our lives and our foundation on, is not being angry and hating each other, but because we love the cause that we believe in so much.
Well, that's something that a lot of people who experience war...
have said that this is where they felt the most connected because their life was literally in danger and because they knew because they had lost loved ones to this thing they had lost brothers to this thing that this was real and that to this day that is the most exciting and happiest time of their life because they were so connected Sebastian Junger wrote about this in a movie book Tribe yeah have you read it?
It's very good and it probably would speak to a lot of the exact same things that you say But you know, I find the same thing, not the same thing, obviously, because my life's not in danger.
And I hope that I never have to go a day where my life's in danger again.
And I find the same appreciation back here in a country that...
That I love.
I can...
You know, I narrowed it down because I had to come up with a reason of, like, why, you know...
I mean, it's hard to sit here and watch the valleys that you fought for and then the government go and give those valleys back to the Taliban, you know?
There's this one video me and my buddy were laughing about the other day.
A base that he had been on and he shows me this video and it's, like, literally the treadmills that were in the gym there.
It's a Taliban guy running on our treadmills, right?
Like, they had left it there.
And we're just like...
Whoa.
And I always think about, because if you get down in the weeds of it, you'll get upset about that valley.
Did my teammates' sacrifice really change your life?
If they hadn't sacrificed that day, would your life be changed?
Because that's what we're fighting for is America.
I always looked at it like this, and I came to peace with it.
All we were trying to do, anywhere we went when I served and I wore the nation's cloth, I got the best opportunity.
When people thank me for my service, I'm like, don't thank me.
I appreciate you letting me represent America, be the away team for the United States of America.
I got to wear the nation's cloth in so many countries.
But I always...
I justify it as all we tried to do, no matter whether we were passing out soccer balls to kids, or we were going in and providing security for a whale, or we were taking out an enemy combatant, all we were trying to do was make that part of the world that we were in a better place.
That's all we were trying to do.
We're trying to leave it better than we found it that moment.
And if we take that same concept and we apply it here, And we all go over and do it for the person on the left and the right of us.
And if we use that same concept, you can apply it here in America every day.
Every single day, you can make this world just a little bit better.
There's a lot of people in this country that don't think we should be nation-building in other countries.
Including people like Tulsi Gabbard, who served, but then you got people like Dan Crenshaw, who I've had on the podcast, who, his perspective is, you have to go over there.
Like, you can't allow these groups to get more powerful and gain more control.
And the thing is, is America's a beacon of hope across the world.
America's a beacon of hope.
And you can notice when America's strong, everybody hates us.
When America's weak, the world suffers.
And I'm not saying we need to go in and fight everybody's battle, obviously, right?
But on the backside of it, you know, we're not necessarily going in and fighting for other countries, but we do have an obligation to go and help People.
Like you take Syria when they are gassing.
When they are gassing kids and women.
If nobody else is going to go send rockets in there, if nobody else is going to go hold somebody accountable for it, there's nobody that's serving, that's wearing the uniform, that's not gladly gassing.
Doing that and gonna go hold them accountable for it has nothing to do with anything other than good and evil and If we don't go fight the evil then who's gonna do it?
Who's gonna do it?
And we don't want the evil to get bigger You don't want the evil to get bigger You don't want the evil to to to progress and you don't want the evil to to think that they can I mean imagine you see what they're doing right now and and I think the world knows that that America will come and show up and And you see how they're still going.
Imagine if they didn't have to worry about us doing it.
That's part of the problem is that when you're in Catlabasus, You know, going to the mall, you know, getting yourself a fucking smoothie.
It doesn't seem real.
You know, and you can have all these opinions about what we should be doing, you know, and that we need to stop these warmongers, we need to stop this and stop that.
And I've had those opinions myself in the past and gone back and forth.
And the only thing that's changed my mind is I listen to people that actually know.
I think it's one of the most important things you could ever do.
And don't try to form an opinion if you don't really have any facts or any real understanding.
Thousands of people died and none of them volunteered.
To give their country for their life that day, except obviously the first responders.
You look since 9-11, besides a couple attacks that's been in America, but you look since 9-11, everybody that's given their life overseas has volunteered to do that.
They volunteered to go fight the evil.
And for us to go over there and do that and keep it off the country, to keep it out of our country, to keep it to where our kids and our families and our mothers and fathers don't have to worry about this.
I mean, obviously it could happen anywhere, but I can't think that us being over there and giving them a place to fight us Has not helped this country keep from being attacked multiple times if we had not gone over there.
Because people want to think that the reason why it'll never be resolved is because the military-industrial complex wants to keep us at war and this is just a big money grab and that's all they're trying to do is the reason why they have us over there is they're sending people over there to die so they can make money.
I think it's just because everybody wants to find a reason.
Everybody wants a reason that they can touch, feel, and blame.
They want something to blame.
And they...
You know, there's nothing to blame except the people who are doing this.
And it exists.
And it's real.
And these are real people.
And you know what?
We're just so lucky that we have an all-volunteer military with some of the greatest people that's ever walked the face of the planet who are willing to go do this.
Yeah, I mean, I wake up, you know, a couple nights a month and just, you know, an anxiety attack, throwing up.
I was actually speaking last week.
I was on the road.
It's the first time, you know, I always, like, I'm always nervous.
Like, if in the middle of the night my daughter gets scared or she, you know, she comes down and gets in my bed, like, I'm always really, like, nervous about that because, like, I don't, I would, like, I was so nervous about it because I was just, gosh, I never want them to see me in that state, right?
The other day we were on the road.
I was speaking out in North Carolina.
We were in a hotel, so she was staying with me.
I don't know.
I didn't feel good that night, so what I did is I put a pillow between us.
Gosh, I had one.
I knocked my tooth off.
I knocked my veneer off.
It was so terrible.
She just looked at me.
She's three.
She just looked at me and said, It's okay, Daddy.
You're not a bad dad.
At three.
At three.
And I was like, gosh, you know?
But yeah, I mean, you still...
I mean, this is...
That's why you look at it and I see these people who play these video games and they get nothing from it.
Like, there's no emotional attachment to it.
And it's like...
This stuff's real.
There's nobody who...
I would go out on a limb and say there's nobody who sees this stuff and you don't come back and deal with it.
It's a normal process to being part of not normal situations.
But now, there's tons of non-profits out there who are doing a lot of great stuff, trying to help out.
One thing that we found out, and actually studies are starting to show that this helps, is it's called a stellagangling block.
It's called SGB. It's a stellagangling block.
You get a shot.
It goes in your neck.
I'll tell you this.
When I got that shot...
Before the needle came out of my neck, Dr. Sean Mulvaney is the guy that's putting all this together.
When the needle came out of my neck, it instantly took me from being like my whole life was downtown New York City in rush hour traffic, 15 minutes late to a meeting that my life depended on, to instantly being driving down a quiet country road with nowhere to be.
So basically what it does is, this is how it was described to me, and you have like two systems.
You have like your automatic nervous system and then you have your manual, right?
So your automatic is like your eyes blinking, breathing, things like that.
Your manual is like, hey, I need to reach over here and grab this bottle of water.
And what happens is, is fight or flight gets stuck in your automated, like there's no longer do you say, I recognize this as a threat and now I go into fight or flight.
So what it does is you've been in that so long that it gets put over into the automatic side.
And so what this does is it's kind of like a restart.
There's nothing that lasts long in it.
It goes in and it basically, I think it gets on, it's called the sciatic nerve, and it basically gives you a restart.
So it comes down to, I mean, sometimes I get one a year, one every six months, but it just comes down to, do you go back and expose yourself to these chaotic situations, right?
Like, do you go keep making bad decisions?
But for me, I look at it as a solution to...
I call it the flashbang of anxiety.
So it's that flashbang that gives you the moment, the separation, to where now I can make decisions that I don't feel like I'm out of control.
Now I can make decisions to get things back together.
Using stellate ganglion block to treat post-traumatic stress disorder.
Make that a little bigger, Jamie.
Post-traumatic stress disorder develops in response to being exposed to extreme stress.
The sympathetic nervous system, fight or flight, has been known to play a part in PTSD. It's believed that extra nerves of the system sprout or grow after extreme trauma.
Leading to elevated levels of Norepinephrine, an adrenaline-like substance which in turn over activates the amygdala, the fear center of the brain.
This chain of events results in PTSD symptoms that may persist for years.
So, part of the sympathetic nervous system called the stellate ganglion, a collective of nerves in the neck, seems to control the activation of the amygdala.
A recent innovation offers potential in rapidly treating symptoms of PTSD for a prolonged period of time, placing an anesthetic agent on the stellate ganglion in an anesthetic procedure called the stellate ganglion block.
No, I think it just in my subconscious, I think, you know, obviously your brain is always trying to Like when you're asleep trying to file things and process things and I think that's what happens is like consciously you know You know consciously it doesn't bother me to talk about it Like yeah,
I went back and I was in another gunfight four days later and I mean literally I was Packing up all my teammates stuff and getting ready to go back to fight again and I got into another gunfight and I think that, you know, coming home, your brain's still trying to process all that stuff.
And I think it happens to anybody.
You don't have to go to war.
You could be in a car wreck.
I mean, you look at the October 1st shooting in Vegas.
You know, you can go through anything, right?
Like, whatever.
I think that's what people are dealing with, and it's just...
I think that's why you see so much anxiety across the world is because of all this desensitization consciously and people are processing it subconsciously.
It is, and I think that's why you see all these people feeling like their lives are out of control.
And it's because, consciously, like, we're not sitting here talking about it.
Like, well, yeah, yeah, you know, I seen a car wreck the other day, or, you know, so-and-so died, or, you know what I mean?
And it's like, they're not ever processing it consciously, but their body will, like, your body will, I always say, you can either exorcise your demons, or they're going to exorcise you.
Now, do the Marines have a system that they, will they check on you and make sure you're okay or guide you into a specific type of treatment when they know there's something wrong?
Yeah, yeah, but you know the problem is for all these war fighters is like they don't want to go talk about it or tell the Marine Corps because then they're, you know, or the military, I'll just say military-wide, you know, they look at you as, well, now this person can't operate.
Everybody's too worried to talk about this because they're afraid of not being able to do their job because they're afraid that somebody will look at them and say, oh, well, you got PTSD, so you don't need a gun.
And it's like, you know, Most people that have PTSD are car wreck victims.
I can remember the day I was actually in the floor just having an anxiety attack like crazy.
And I was like, I gotta do something.
I've gotta do something because my daughters, they deserve the best father possible.
They had no choice in coming in this world.
I might not want to deal with it and face it for myself, but they deserve for me to wake up every single day and give them the best father that they could possibly have.
They just tested some shit that we used to have in the studio, but Jamie went and threw it out.
That's the real problem with this.
It's wild, wild west out here.
Unless you're testing things on a regular basis, you might be selling something.
I had a guy named John Norris who wrote a book called The Hidden War, and the book is all about how he was a game warden, and during his normal dunies, like making sure that people aren't overfishing or hunting without a license, that kind of stuff, they started finding these cartel grow-ops.
And these cartel grow-ops are extremely—the weed that they're putting out is extremely dangerous because it's got these super-toxic pesticides to keep animals away and to keep bugs away.
And so they're putting this shit on weed, then that stuff winds up getting to the hands of people, particularly in other parts of the country where it's illegal, and it's just filled with pesticides.
And, you know, you can get sick from that stuff, and people can get real sick from it.
Investigators at the California Department of Consumer Affairs served a search warrant Thursday, October the 3rd in a light industrial space, Northwest Los Angeles Canoga Park District.
That's over here.
They found an illegal cannabis product manufacturing operation apparently operated by Cushy Punch.
A legal state licensed company, authorities seized a number of finished products including gummies in the Cushy Punch packaging and disposable vaporizers in Cushy vape packaging.
In photos obtained by Leafly, the facility appeared to be performing Petrosolvent extractions where a technician concentrates the active ingredients in cannabis, THC. Petrosolvent extracting is legal with a permit in California.
The extraction method can sometimes have the effect of concentrating pesticides along with the THC. But it says it's legal.
San Fernando Valley facility appeared to be in the business of putting those extracts into professional-looking THC foods as well as disposable vape pen cartridges.
Tall file cabinets held, thousands of boxes of cushy vape pens and cushy punch edibles.
I don't understand this because it says if it's legal, a source familiar with cushy punch accused the adult use licensee of maintaining two facilities, one licensed and one black market.
Okay.
Leafly is granting the source's request for anonymity.
The problem is, that was a different part of the episode.
The B story was that Cartman called Ice on his friends because he just, like, he found out that you could just call Ice and, like, have people suspected.
So he called it on Kyle and had Kyle fucking arrested and his whole family arrested.
It's such a fucking...
Look at him there, lying there mad at Cartman.
And then Cartman got arrested himself.
It was so ridiculous.
What they were worried about was one of the Mexican kids growing up to become the Mexican Joker and killing everybody.
I lit a Honda CRX. And it was like right there in the middle of the seats, like the phone.
But it helped me because I used to get gigs because like booking agents, like if someone couldn't make a gig or somebody fell out or got sick, they would call me.
I actually had a phone.
So I was in my car.
They'd call me up.
And I got a number of gigs because I had this fucking cell phone.
Were you in the right age where you had pager codes?
Did you have pager codes?
You know who had pager was Joey Diaz, forever, deep into the 2000s.
And if he owed people money or if he didn't like talking to them, he'd just throw his pager away.
But I remember I was at the Comedy Store in the back kitchen area, and one of the people that worked there had a page, maybe it was a comic, I don't remember, but they had a pager with a keyboard.
I was like, what the fuck is that?
And they're like, you could send people messages.
I'm like, no!
I'm like, yeah, if you're at a club, you can send them a message, and they can know where you are.
I was like, that is crazy!
Like, that's great!
You're sending messages?
And I remember thinking, I should probably get one of those.
But I mean, the emotional pain that people cause anytime they want, where they could just reach out and say something terrible to people, especially people doing it through anonymous accounts.
The people that you're judging, the people that you're criticizing their lives, that the media chooses to put out there, they're real people going through real problems too.
Do you think that you have, and this is going to be a crazy question, but do you think you have more of an appreciation for life because you've taken life?
And so she talks about, you know, on your tombstone, you have the day you were born and the day you die, which are two of the most insignificant days of your life.
They're both the only two days in your life that aren't 24 hours.
But what matters is that dash in between.
And you don't have control of the day you're born or the day you die, but you have control of what that dash looks like and how you made people feel and how they're going to remember you the day that you're gone.
You have that control every day.
And so I'm all about owning your dash.
Own your dash.
Be the best you.
Don't try to be the best somebody else.
Be the best you.
Wake up every day and put it all on the table and put it into making people's lives better.
And so I'm launching this site to where it's like it's helping people, empowering people to owning their dash, to being okay with being the best them.
I think people want to be the best of them.
I think people want to be positive.
I just don't think people have anybody showing them how to do it.
You know, so I do that, and then also, you know, we just, I was telling you earlier, you know, we just launched, you know, Discipline Go with Jocko, right?
I've got a signature flavor coming out called Dak Savage.
I mean, there was one that we played on this podcast that's horrendous where a guy was trying to bridge the gap through the Golden Gate Bridge and he slams into the bridge while these people are watching.
My buddy, Tim's introduced me to a guy named Shane Steiner.
And he got me into flying, so I love it.
Like, I'm addicted to it.
I love it.
It makes my life a lot easier.
I mean, it also, whenever I, you know, if I go to Dallas or Houston, it's a difference in me getting home that day versus me staying another night and not being able to wake up, you know.
And there's so many people out there that don't follow the rules, that are out there shooting animals they're not supposed to shoot.
There's a reason why we have so many animals.
It's because they have this stringent set of rules that they want you to follow.
And if you can get a tag for two animals, great.
That's what you're allowed to get.
You get two animals.
That's it.
And if you get four or five and you store them in your freezer and not let anybody know, you're a criminal and you're part of the problem.
And if everybody did that, there would be no animals left.
And that's really what this country had at the turn of the century.
When market hunting was in full swing, they almost wiped out black bears, almost wiped out white-tailed deer, almost wiped out elk.
To this day, elk in this country are only in a small percentage of the population, including grizzly bears, small percentage of the place where they used to be.
California has a goddamn grizzly bear as its state flag.
There's a grizzly bear on the flag.
There's no fucking grizzlies here.
They whacked them all.
They killed every one of them.
But they did that because they were killing people.
The last guy to get killed by a grizzly bear was in, I think his name was Stephen Levesque, and there's a town named after him.
When you're headed up north, if you're on the way to Bakersfield, there's a town called Levesque, and that's where that guy got whacked.
Yeah, it's a crazy place to live, but it's also like when you're up there, you recognize like, oh, these people have a way closer relationship with the natural world than we do.
Yeah, it's like, you know, and everything up there, like, the one thing I noticed is if whether you're going out to, there was a cabin, there was a cabin at Mount Denali, and so what we would do is we'd ride snow machines.
You'd have to park, and then you'd have to ride snow machines out to it.
And it's like everything you do up there is, it's like serious.
You know what I mean?
It's not, like, you better take it serious or you could die.
And the crazy thing is, is like, you're talking about, I got so fired up because, you know, I mean, I come from a farm and, you know, the deer there, it's not like they're, you know, they're not, we don't feed them, you know, we don't grow deer there, right?
And so you're driving out and literally you're getting out to open the gate, leaving the King Ranch and you look over to your right, you know, 10 feet off the road and there's, you know, a non-typical huge deer right there and you're like, I'd give anything to have that on my wall.
Even if it's a million acres, if it's a million acres in every, you know, 800, 900 yards, you have a feeder, and all the animals gather in the feeder, so you've got a blind that you hang out by the feeder.
I had a bit in my act a couple years ago in my triggered Netflix special, triggered, about Texas and about how there's more tigers in captivity in Texas than in all of the wild of the world.
So these giraffes, I think the story behind them was, and don't quote me on it, but I think the story behind them was the zoos couldn't afford to feed them anymore, and so they brought them in and let them run, and so they feed them.
That makes sense.
Yes, like the zoos, I guess they couldn't afford to keep up with them or something.
This is something oddly perverse about bringing animals that are not supposed to be at a certain place to a certain place.
You got something, Jamie?
What do you got?
In Texas, it's easier to own a tiger than a dog.
Than a dog that's been labeled dangerous.
It's estimated there could be from 2,000 to 5,000 tigers living in the southern state of the United States.
Meaning Texas could have more tigers than roughly the 3,800 tigers living in the wild globally.
globally the um the yeah if you have a dog that's dangerous people think you're an asshole if you got a tiger like oh you're just in the wildlife that's crazy that's crazy that is such a fucked up thing to have in your yard You got a fucking tiger?