How Medal of Honor Vet Dakota Meyer Treats His PTSD | Joe Rogan

What kind of resources are available to you when you do come back? Like how do they treat people that are suffering from PTSD? Well you gotta be careful with it, right? Because I mean the last track you want to get on is all the pharmaceutical drugs, right? Like the pills and stuff. And you'll get on that real quick. The VA is notorious for it. So you know we- What are they trying to give you? I mean I've- Collodipin, Xanax, I've been on tons of blood pressure medicine. I mean you go down the list, right? And uh- And I went down that road and it got me nowhere. But now you know there's tons of non-profits out there who are doing a lot of great stuff. Trying to help out. You know what's one thing that we found out and actually studies are starting to show that this helps is it's called a stella ganglion block. It's called SGB, it's a stella ganglion block. And you get a shot, it goes in your neck. And I'll tell you this, like when I got that shot, it instantly, 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. Really? Instantly. Instantly. What is it doing? 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 this 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. Like it, there's no, nothing that lasts long in it. It goes in and it basically, I think it gets on, it's called a sciatic nerve and it basically gives you a rest to heart and it just, it took away all my anxiety. I mean, it just, it instantly like just melted it away. How long does it last? So it comes down to, I mean, sometimes I get one, 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 like a, it's a, it's a solution to, to, I call it the flashbang of anxiety. So like 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, I can make decisions to get, get things back together. What is the actual chemical that they're using? I don't know. I would have to look, he's got an article about it. That's crazy that it's so effective using stellate ganglion block to treat post-traumatic stress disorder. Yeah. Okay. Make that a little bigger Jamie. Post-traumatic stress disorder develops in response to being exposed to extreme stress. Doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo. Okay. 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. Wow. Leading to elevated levels of norepinephrine and 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 be, that may persist for years. So part of the sympathetic nervous system called the stellate ganglion, a collective nerves in the neck seems to control the activation of the amygdala. A recent innovation offers potential and 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 can relieve the symptoms of PTSD in as little as 30 minutes. And for you, it's just a few seconds. Before the needle is out. And lasts for years. The SGB reboots the sympathetic nervous system to its pre trauma state, similar to a computer reboot in the brain, norepinephrine levels are rapidly reduced and the extra nerve growth is removed. Wow. SGB is anesthetic procedure that has been performed since 1925 and is considered a low risk pain procedure done under x-ray guidance. That's insane. Yeah. They use a, uh, so Dr. Sean Mulvaney is the guy I've been to other doctors and he's Dr. Mulvaney is the only guy I would go to who does it the way he's got the whole procedure set up. He's a doctor and he does it out of DC and, and, um, but nobody, you know, most people hadn't heard of this, you know, I've never heard of this. Yeah. And it's, um, I went in and he called me the next day and he was like, so how do you feel? I said, man, I caught myself singing in the shower this morning. Like I caught myself singing in the shower. I can't remember, but I was like, man, I caught myself singing shower. Like I actually, like I walked out there and I, and to me, you know, I got to a point at that point, like I got to a low point and I just, there was nothing, like there's nothing in my life I can complain about. Like there's nothing I have. This country has given me a life that I could have never dreamed to ever have. Um, I have no problems, zero. And I just woke up every day and I was just like, I just don't want to wake up feeling like this. And so he's like, come do this, come do this. And I came out there and did it. And it, it changed. It changed my whole life. That sounds infinitely better than therapy or talking through it or any, any of the other methods I've ever heard of. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think all that, I think you, I think all that matters. I think the therapy, like if you want to go do talk therapy, that's, that's good. Like you, you should do that. But I always tell people who go do talk therapy, like go in there with a plan of where you want your life to be. Like it's like going to a nutrition coach or a workout coach and not giving them goals. Right. You know, don't go in there just to go in there, like go in there with a plan, you know, Hey, how, how, and have them help you get to that plan. But this, this is instantly just like that. That's incredible. Now did they, did they try to do that in conjunction with medication? Does it, does a standalone thing? Standalone thing. Wow. Standalone thing. You know, the only thing I do to help mine and my anxiety is like, it can get bad. Like I'm talking bad. And when you say that, like what happens, like what's, what's the process? You know, I usually feel it building up. Um, over days. Yeah. Days. Like, it's almost like a, like it'll come and it just builds up and then it's like, you know, you'll have like a little, little bit of an anxiety attack or whatever. You'll start feeling anxiety or anxious and that becomes your new baseline. And then it keeps building. People don't recognize it. And for a long time I used to, like, I used to drink a lot and I didn't, because I didn't, I didn't know what anxiety was. I mean, what do you mean? Like this is how I feel all the time. And then, you know, then what usually happens is at night, it'll just, when I go to sleep, it'll just, it'll rock me. It'll rock me. I'll start throwing up. I'll be sweating. I'll be crying. Like, I mean, I'll be in the floor. Now are you thinking things when this is happening or is it just an overwhelming sense of anxiety just all encompassing? I just, I don't know where it comes from. I mean, obviously I know where it comes from. But are you thinking about war while this is happening? No. 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, consciously it doesn't bother me to talk about it. Like 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 is 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, you look at the October 1st shooting in Vegas, you know, you could, you can go through anything, right? Like whatever. I think it'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. That makes sense. That really makes sense that it's, they're taking in all this information. They think it's not effective at all, but it really is. It is. And I think it'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 where, 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 subc- like your body will, I always say you can either exercise your demons or they're going to exercise you. That's a great way to put it. What do they recommend when, when, when you, I mean, do they check on you to see if you are having anxiety or do you have to come to them and explain it? Yeah. I mean, you, you just, you go to them. Does anybody get through it without anxiety? I mean, I, like I, I would worry about the people that got through it without it. I mean, you know what I mean? Right. If you can go kill people and not get through it without nightmares or anything, you know? But I think, I think some people do. I mean, I think, I think people just deal with it different ways. Right. But me, you know, like I used to drink a lot and, and, but I was doing it not because I was an alcoholic. I was doing it as a, I just, I had rather, I could regulate my drinking better than I could the effects of what medicine would do to me. 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 promise 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, you're, you're, or the military, I'll just say military wide, you know, they, they, they look at you as, well, now this person can operate. Everybody, 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. Brilliant. Really? Yeah. That's the biggest source of PTSD. Yeah. You can, you can Google it. See the biggest source of PTSD is car wreck victims. Wow. Well, there's probably a lot of those, right? A tons of them. Yeah. So when you do have an issue, how, how do you go from having an issue to getting treatment? What's the process? Well, you, you mean if you, if you, if you tell your command, I mean, you know, there's, there's all types of resources there. I mean, you know. But you have to speak out. Yeah. That's the problem, right? That's the problem is nobody wants to talk out because, you know, you start talking and, you know, how quick's your job going to be gone? You know, I got out, I was out before, you know, I was out so fast after, after all this happened, I was out, you know, seven or eight months afterwards and I didn't realize what was going on until I probably never started dealing with my PTSD until 2016. You know, I just, I thought this was just normal. What made you change? My daughters, my daughter, sailor. I can remember the day I was in a, I was actually in the floor, like just having an anxiety attack like crazy. And I was like, I gotta do something. I've got to do something because my daughters, they deserve the best father possible. Like they, like they had no choice in coming in this world. You know, I might not want to, I might not want to deal with it and face it for myself, but I, they deserve for me to wake up every single day and give them the best father that they could possibly have. And that, that is my responsibility to them. Is that when you first got this shot? Because block. So I ended up getting it in 2017. Yeah, 2017, I think. I didn't know anything about it until, you know, once I found out about it, I did. How did you find out about it? Just another, another warrior that had gotten it and it worked for them. Wow. And I also use, so I use, I use three methods to maintain all of it. I use the stellaganglian block, which is, it's kind of, when it gets real bad, I'll go get that. That's like the whole reboot, right? For maintenance I usually use, it's called an alpha stem. And so it goes on your earlobes. I've heard of that. And you quit smoking with that, right? I don't know about it. I don't know about that. It's for usually for pain, anxiety, depression. But I use, I use an alpha stem and it goes, I put it on, clip it on my ears and it like, I usually do it every day and it just, it melts. It melts it away as well. And then the last piece is, and this is not obviously in our community, it's probably not the popular side of it, is, is, is using a pen at night. Yeah. Yeah. Do you CBD? So it's the, it's the, I think, indica. Mm hmm. Yeah. And that, like that pretty much eliminated all my drinking. Really? Yeah. Why is that not popular? I don't know. I think it's kind of like still like the taboo, right? Like the town I come from, they just made alcohol legal in it. What? A few years ago. Yeah. The tiny front man. Columbia, Kentucky. That's crazy. They just made alcohol legal? Yeah. Wow. That's a good place to study. That's like an uncontacted tribe. Yeah. Well, you know, you look, if you, if you do, if you, if you make it legal, the bootleggers will go out of business. Right. Oh, okay. It's dukes of hazard style. Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah. Wow. They just made alcohol legal. Holy shit. So yeah, vape pens are out of the question. Oh yeah. Show them the pot leaf t-shirt. They'll shoot you. Oh, oh listen. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.