Episode 11: Why Being a Veteran is Not an Excuse with Kameron Delaney

Chris Albert 00:00:01 (link to this point)

Good afternoon. This is Chris Albert, and I'd like to welcome you all to episode 11 of the Warrior Soul podcast. We've got a really special show for you today, and I've got a very special guest. But first, I wanna read a couple of different quotes for you. The first one comes from Ernest Hemingway, and a lot of you might already know this quote.

It goes like this. Certainly, there is no hunting like the hunting of man. And those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it never really care for anything else thereafter. You will meet them doing various things with resolve, but their interest rarely holds because after the other things, ordinary life is as flat as the taste of wine when the taste buds have been burned off your tongue. There's an interesting aspect of serving in the military.

You enter the military when you're in your prime years, usually at the age of 18, but sometimes a little bit older. And you spend some of the formative years of your adulthood really acting for a higher purpose. And so for those of us who get out, a lot of times the rest of life seems a bit flat. And we find ourselves just kind of wallowing through. Just kind of steering around in a holding pattern looking for that next kind of thrill to do with our lives.

But what should we be doing? Should serving in the military be the only great thing we do with our lives? Or should we be seeking something better? Something higher? And of course, there's not gonna be a lot of things that could compare.

There's not gonna be a lot of things that could compare to serving your country. There's not gonna be a lot of things that can compare to being around brothers and sisters who you love, who you put your life on the line for. But at the same time, do we just give up? Do we just sit there and wait for that thrill to repeat itself? Our guest today has done a lot of work in the veteran community, trying to help people to find their way and to try to help people to find their next big purpose.

And I'm gonna read you something he wrote a while ago, and it's called the challenge. It goes like this. There is a common theme that keeps being addressed amongst the veteran military community. It's an almost silent cry that is being ignored by all those that have failed to experience the great tragedies of war. It's a recognition of gaping disconnect that grows between two different classes of citizens.

More importantly, it is a desperate plea for a purpose and a way to heal. I am one of many in a generation of warriors that have fought in over a decade of combat, spread out in two main battle fronts that are attempting to assimilate into a world we do not understand nor does it understand us. A society that we fought for and love, yet is breaking our heart. This social disconnect and post service way of life has forced most of us into a sense of loneliness and solitude, into a desperate question of what to do next. And for some 22 of our brothers every day, it has forced them to end their suffering by their own hands.

We are honorable warriors that no longer have have a war to fight. We are the modern day Ronin in this generation. Tens of thousands of angry voices that cry travesty, yet few of us act and fight back. I hear so much from the veteran community, even from my own mouth. There are these things that are wrong with the world.

There are all these problems. No one is doing anything. No one cares. I am lost, and I have no purpose. Well, guess whose fault that is, gentlemen.

It's ours. I recently heard a perspective on why veterans miss war. The answer is summed up with, it's not that veterans are psychopaths. It's not that they miss killing or watching their friends get killed. Veterans miss the brotherhood.

In some ways, they miss the opposite of killing. They miss the connection. That's the major design for Ronin Veteran Network. I just don't I don't just think I know for a fact, and I believe with strength of conviction that a major step in the right direction for healing and regaining our purpose is networking and bringing together all of us veterans. Reestablishing that brotherhood, that camaraderie, that love gets so easily lost when we separate from service, but that we so desperately need back.

Like you, I have been there, brothers. I have failed myself and had those dark, horrible thoughts, Those sick, perverted emotions on and off the battlefield. Oh, and I have been there. I have been a slave to my environment and my dark emotions. It's a monster that will always be inside, but I now control that monster.

I am the master now, not the slave to him. I have failed miserably both in my obligations as a marine, a warrior, and a protector, and also in my responsibilities to my family and loved ones. But that is why I now fucking succeed. Those mistakes are the fuel to my fire. Are you going to pull the trigger of that gun to your head and take the easy way out?

Are you going to let the world tell you what to do? Or are you going to prove yourself and the rest of the world that our voices will be heard, Our power will be seen. Our positive effect will be felt. As self proclaimed warriors, as strong, powerful, wise men, we have an undeniable obligation to the service of our of our people. If we dare ever claim the titles of alphas and elites, then the truth is it is a lifelong journey, and it must be proved in positive action.

Our duty never ceases the same way that honor, valor, respect, and courage should never fade out. We should never think that our duty is over once our service is up. We have proven ourselves in battlefields and conflicts in far off lands, in vicious combat, and against incredible odds in austere conditions. But you didn't think that was it, did you? You didn't think that you could just be a hero overseas and then live the easy life after that.

You claim to be a warrior, a Spartan, an operator, or anything or any other like title? Will then prove it where it need where it is needed here at home as well. Don't let your best days be behind. Don't keep falling into desperation and depression. Stop feeling lost and hopeless.

You were not broken, just wounded. So heal yourself. You are better than the life you are living now. You should always strive to become stronger, not just physically, but mentally and emotionally as well. This isn't about reading some quotes and becoming inspired for a workout.

This is about moving beyond motivation, beyond belief. This is about showing who you really are inside, the type of person you know you are capable of being. This is a movement for the countless angry voices out there that refuse to quit, that refuse to see what they truly love and have fought for, be pushed to the wayside and be run over. This is an organization of all those veterans and warriors out there giving giving them the tools and resources by which to become powerful. Give them the means in which to first heal and then use their power to benefit those others in need.

This is about healing those internal wounds and mastering those demons within. About learning love in order to become the strongest warrior possible. About giving positive energy in order to receive it. About making not a change, but an impact. If you have the capability in any format to make positive change, why not do it?

Especially if you call yourself a warrior. How do you not see this correlation? If you have the ability to save a life, to protect an innocent, to mentor, to aid, to fight for good, to do anything that can help those weaker and less fortunate than you, then why not do it? I, for one, will not stand idly by and wallow in my own self inflicted misery while a powerful man such as myself has the means to do good. I will not feel lonely again.

I will not allow another brother to give up on the gift that is life, to waste the potential he possesses and all the light and positive energy that is capable of giving this world. I chose to open up, to learn, to grow, and become more powerful in my capabilities in not only violence, but more importantly in love. I am prepared to do whatever it takes to show that my best days are not behind me. I am prepared to yet again make the necessary sacrifices in order to fight my fight. I know deep down you want to heal, but we'll give you the tools to do so.

Rally together, improve ourselves, combat the issues that are plaguing us. Stop just recognizing and complaining about all the things that are wrong. It's time to fucking act. I choose to fight back. I choose to say my life has meaning.

I am a fucking warrior, and I will not stand idly by and allow everyone and everything I love and hold dear disappear into the darkness. It's who I am, and it's what I do. There will be a fire that will defiantly rage. I challenge every person that sees the truth to join me, to join in this fight, come together again, bring back that camaraderie and that feeling of brotherhood we all need and miss, to become a master of themselves and then spread that light to others. I challenge you to step up as this generation's warrior class and prove who you are.

I know who I am. I am Kameron Delany. I am Ronin One, and I know my answer. So what is yours? Is that the first time you've ever heard that read by someone else?

Kameron Delany 00:12:10 (link to this point)

That's actually what I was gonna say, man. That's it was pretty trippy. Pretty trippy reading listening to that back, but I like it. I absolutely like it. Even a couple years later, I don't think there's anything I would change.

I really don't. I I like that message.

Chris Albert 00:12:24 (link to this point)

Absolutely. I'm actually tearing up over here, and I got goosebumps just from reading it.

Kameron Delany 00:12:29 (link to this point)

Yeah. I kinda started looking off and and yeah. I know what you mean.

Chris Albert 00:12:32 (link to this point)

Yeah. For those who don't know who's on the line right now, I have Kameron Delany on the line. I'm gonna go a little bit through his bio real quick. I wanna make sure that I get this right because Kameron is an absolute stud. And he's I got don't know about that.

He's got a lot of fans in the Warrior Soul community. And if I screw this up, people are going to absolutely kill me. So hold on one second. Just need to pull up his awesome bio.

Kameron Delany 00:13:04 (link to this point)

I don't know about that, man, but I appreciate it.

Chris Albert 00:13:07 (link to this point)

Kameron is the CEO of Ronin Veteran Network. He served with the Marine unit second battalion fifth marines and third battalion fifth marines. Post service, he moved into private security contracting where he spent the better part of three and a half years in The Middle East and Central Africa. During this time, he realized the importance of camaraderie and the significant impact it had on his life and those of his brothers. Upon returning back stateside and starting his career as a firefighter, he began Ronin Veteran Network as a way to help his fellow vets rebuild the much needed camaraderie they once had in the military.

Now Ronin Veteran Network helps organize vets and chapters, and they participate in charity drives, workout training groups, outdoor trips, and other rewarding events. And just to note let you guys know, I I met Kameron Delany through a a mutual friend while I was running Metroflex Gym in Long Beach. And, they told me a little bit about what Ronin Veteran Network was doing. And this was just as I was starting Warrior Soul up. And we had Kameron and his team fly out to Long Beach, and we we held a veterans event at Metroflex Gym.

And so many guys showed up and and so many guys got touched that day. You know, we had CT Fletcher out there, Mike Rashid out there, a few other fitness superstars. But really, hearing Kameron's story and hearing his reasons behind putting together the Ronin Veteran Network really touched me. So, Kameron, why did you start Ronin, and what is Ronin? And what what does the word Ronin mean?

Kameron Delany 00:14:59 (link to this point)

Alright. I'll start with the the meaning of Ronin, man. I actually got with one of my my buddies from three five, and we we brain brainstormed about how would we title our company. And there's so many so many different options we can do about out there as far as, you know, how we wanna describe the company. But we chose Ronin because it comes from Japanese history where it was a very honorable culture, the samurai, and a very honorable type of warrior.

And whenever they they lost their master or whenever their master died or they no longer had a fight, they they wandered. They because of how the culture was, they went off on their own. And so they were titled Ronin. I'm not directly comparing what we're working on to them, but I couldn't find a better analogy of how I view our veteran community now where we have these powerful elite guys with so much capability and and so much potential to give back to the community and it's not being utilized. They they don't have a purpose just like the ancient Ronin of Japanese culture.

There there's not a purpose. So I'll try to summarize as as far as the history of why why I started Ronin and why we started Ronin Veterans Network. I was in the marines. I did three tours there. As soon as I got out, I went right into private security contracting, did a couple years in Iraq, came back for a couple months, and then went over to The Middle East, Israel, and then Central Africa is kinda where I posted up for little while.

And slowly over time, especially as a private security contractor, my eyes really started to open up as far as what was going on in the paramilitary community and the type of effect it had not only on myself as a younger guy joining the marines at 17 and security contracting at 21, but how it affected my brothers. You know, we had guys that had terrible abuse issues in the military and in the private security contracting world. And what I mean by that is, like, alcohol abuse, drug abuse, basically just living life below their potentials. Best way I can kinda summarize that up. And I saw this and I dealt with it myself too.

I I knew that I was wasting my life, you know. I was having a good time as a security contractor, but I didn't have a purpose other than to make a paycheck and spend it on to boys and and just fuck around, you know, doing stupid stuff, buying motorcycles and and crap like that. Yeah. It sounds fun. I'm not really pitching a good start here.

It's a good start, but I I didn't have any fucking purpose, bro. I didn't really have any purpose. So when I went and finished a couple years in Iraq, I actually completely funded myself going into Israel and Africa. And I did protection for pastors and religious folk that were going through Africa, they basically had threats on them, bounties on their heads, stuff like that. So I I funded myself and I funded a small team over there doing private security work for those guys.

And I I did it because I wanted to prove myself that I wasn't just a gun monkey. I wanna prove to myself that I wasn't just doing this for money and that I would sacrifice, you know, all these cool toy things and all these cool guy things for a bigger purpose. And it it was it was a small step in the right direction for me, part of my healing. And while I was over there in Africa, you know, I was talking to my brothers about, you know, this journey that I was on and the things that I was working on. And, you know, a lot of us kinda came to the same conclusion that a lot of guys, we don't have a purpose whenever they're done with whatever their paramilitary work is.

And and we kinda came to the conclusion that we we we need a way to get guys back together. We needed a way to get guys purpose again. And the biggest thing was that we felt the issue was I'm trying to trying to stumble on my words, but one of the biggest things that we realized that was an issue was that there was a lack of camaraderie once guys got out of the military, once guys got out of the military community as well, prior security contract. And it was it was causing all these other issues, causing family issues, causing the alcohol abuse, causing guys to, you know, turn into junky monkeys and blood type pudding and, you know, alcohol abuse and all this other stuff. So I started up Ronin Veterans Network right when I came back to United States.

I paired up with some my really close vet friends and a few other guys from a local gym. And the idea was we're gonna do workout groups. You know, we started off with these this idea of, hey you know grandeur basically. Hey we want to do these big workout groups and chapters all over The US and this is what our stuff is going be designed as non profit. Over the last couple of years we've shifted from these workout groups and get guys together to have fun and and pair them up with resources like service dogs, drug rehab, stuff like that.

And it's turned into a completely different thing now. And you and I have had this conversation back and forth as far as what guys need and what they're willing to put forth. And we've actually gone from bigger all the way down to almost individual level as far as helping people out. Kinda like how you're working on things where you focus on the quality. That that's kinda where we're at right now.

We have chapters in different parts. We have others in California, Oklahoma, and a few in Texas, and Missouri actually as well. And they're actually getting we focus a lot more on the quality of the individual rather than just getting a ton of guys together. But as of right now, I'm trying to think of best way to describe this. We try to focus on the quality of the person and the the purpose that he is doing in his life rather than a big huge picture of just getting guys together.

I'm I'm kinda starting to drift, but Yeah. That's that's that's what we're focused on right now. It's been we've been together for, I think, about two years. Ronin Veterans Network.

Chris Albert 00:20:34 (link to this point)

Well, let's talk about this a little bit. Yep. You know, one of the things from your speech there that I really liked is the understanding that if our lives are screwed up in post military service, it's not the world's fault. It's our fault. Right?

And if something screwed up, it's because we're allowing it to become screwed up. Yes, a lot of us are facing loneliness. A lot of us are facing isolation. A lot of us are facing a lot of different issues. But in my mind, and and why I like you so much and why I like your organization so much and your approach so much, if we approach civilian life with a massive chip on our shoulders, and we just continually say that the world is screwed up or that society owes us something or that, you know, civilians are all crap and we're above them, then we're never actually going to get any help because we're not helping ourselves.

We're basically sitting there feeling sorry for ourselves. And you know, and through our offline conversations that I know some of the challenges you've gone through in trying to help people and some of the things you've gone through in in trying to help people. Can we talk a little bit about that and and possibly talk about a little bit about why this is occurring? Why why we're not getting guys to really wanna help themselves?

Kameron Delany 00:22:20 (link to this point)

Yeah, man. This has kind of been a hard lesson for me to learn and especially recently in the past few months. I mean, I'm not ashamed to say it's been heartbreaking, man. You know, I kinda described as why I started Ronin and I had these ideas of grandeur and, you know, I didn't know a lot about business making and wasn't near as savvy as I with that kind of stuff as you are. And it's been a hard lesson learning the last two years as far as, hey, wanna help these vets and here's my hand and I'll I'll pull you into the lifeboat and what do you need, man?

And then I really started to realize, man, like, can't fucking help people that don't wanna fucking help themselves. I've worked with so many guys that just you know, it's like, hey, man. Come here and this is what it'll do for you. My hands out. I wanna do this for you.

And the guy's like, nah. I don't I don't really care. No. I really don't want to. I wanna continue living my my easy life of living off the government's tit and getting my big fat paycheck for disability in school.

And I'm not really doing anything with school. I'm doing the easiest degree possible. You know, I I bullshitted with all my disability stuff. I'm getting as much money as I can and, you know, basically just bitching, complaining, spending all my money on alcohol. And it's just I see that so much, especially the area.

I'm in there's a lot of there's a lot of colleges. You know, there's A and M in Houston, San Marcos, Texas, all those places. And, you know, obviously, there's a lot of veterans there. And so it's when you meet and start talking to these guys, it's like, alright. Cool.

You know, what are you working on? Well, I'm just doing this degree and I'll figure it out. Well, hey, why don't you try to work on this? You know, you start learning about someone's background, start learning about someone's history. Obviously, you guys can relate, you know, hey, combat vet's this or hey, you know, we went through similar life stories in the military.

And, you know, guys just don't wanna fucking don't wanna heal, don't wanna help themselves. And it's not that they don't have the resources available to them. Yes. There are things that are pretty limited out there as as far as some things with the VA and some things with different schools and, you know, veterans administrations and stuff like that. But, you know, if you really wanna heal and help yourself, you gotta seek out these things, man.

You gotta go out and and and find these other other people that wanna help heal and that wanna help put a positive impact on the world. And, you know, I I addressed a little earlier as far as why our groups are are getting actually smaller. And it's because you start challenging guys. You start saying, hey, you know, why don't you start working on things? Not in a self righteous kind of way, but in a hey, brother. Do this with me kind of thing. Anxious guys are like, no, man. I don't wanna go workout.

No, man. I I don't wanna take a step in, you know, start my own company or take a step and do school and, you know, and improve my personal relationship, romantic relationship. It's just guys wanna coast through life. You know, you addressed it earlier with this. Hey, we we have our military background and we ride on the coattails of that ship for the rest of our lives.

And it's it's sad. It's sad in the veteran community to see that kind of shit. You know, in one of my latest videos, I went down to Houston National Cemetery and I was still hot and pissed off as far as a fishing trip we just did that was sponsored by a really a really good other company, a veteran's company, Project Healing Waters. And there was there was over a dozen vets that went down there from various backgrounds, you know, guys with, you know, you know, I should say different backgrounds, different veteran's backgrounds. And so many of them act like assholes.

You gotta think, man. You're going out on a couple thousand dollar charter. You're meeting up with some really good veteran friends, guy civilian guys that wanna help you out and, you know, you're forgetting the purpose of of this whole thing. You're you're not paying attention to what this whole idea of this is and that's to improve your life and help heal and to to progress. And just guys didn't wanna do shit with their with with progressing forward in their personal lives.

It was sad, man. I mean, you know, again, I'm kinda stumbling on my words as I'm thinking about it and it just fucking pisses me off because it's such wasted potential, man. I imagine you can you can understand that working with guys as well.

Chris Albert 00:26:09 (link to this point)

Absolutely. Absolutely. And that and that's the thing I I think that bothers me the most is that we all know better. You know, we were taught to be independent. We were taught to to think for ourselves and to think on our feet.

And we were taught right from from wrong, more so than most civilians. And then for some reason, you know, when we get out, we let that go. You know? And and my point's always been, you might not be in the military anymore. You might not be the person you were physically.

But at the same time, you have to have some core values attached to you. Who you are as a person and how you're going to act in this life.

Kameron Delany 00:26:54 (link to this point)

Mhmm.

Chris Albert 00:26:54 (link to this point)

And when you let those core values go, you lose a real piece of yourself. And you're not the best person you can be. And on top of that, I almost feel like in our culture and the way we treat veterans in this country, there is of course the people who really couldn't care, right? You know, that didn't even realize that there was a war going on over the last decade.

Kameron Delany 00:27:27 (link to this point)

Yeah.

Chris Albert 00:27:27 (link to this point)

But there's other people too. And there's people out there who really want to help. And I think that in some ways, of the things that we've done and some of the things that people have done to really try to help veterans have almost created this infallibility perception amongst the veteran community, where people can act like a fool and get forgiven because they're a veteran. Or people can go out there and act like an asshole and get forgiven because they're a veteran. Or they can use the PTSD excuse or they could use any one of those excuses. The thing about PTSD is I've always said that it's not really a disorder, it's an impact that the environment has had on your brain. And by going through that, you are probably more human than most humans that exist today. You've been through things that human beings have been through throughout history. Okay. And, you know, it's part of you. It's how you're going to act.

You're gonna be smiling and happy all the time.

Kameron Delany 00:28:36 (link to this point)

Mhmm.

Chris Albert 00:28:36 (link to this point)

But at the same time, if you act like an asshole and you contribute nothing positive to society, then you can't really expect anything good in return.

Kameron Delany 00:28:46 (link to this point)

Mhmm. Right? Absolutely, man. Absolutely. I wanna steal something from somebody. Hope I'm pronouncing his name right.

Sebastian Junger, j u n g e r. I don't know if you've heard of him, but he does TED Talks. And the the speech that you said earlier as far as why veteran miss war and it it's not related to the psychopath side of stuff or the killing. It's it's more related to the love and the camaraderie. I got that from one of his talks.

And it's it's something that, again, I I kinda based when I started Ronin, I thought the same thing. So when I heard this guy talk about it in one of the the TED talks online, I was like, holy shit. This guy really knows what he's talking about. Anyways, one of his ones that he did in the last six months was and I'm not good with spelling words here. Overvalorizing.

That's a that's a rule. I I think that's what he said, but overvalorizing vets. And, you know, we as veterans, we use this excuse of, well, people of our age or people in our our society are entitled and they're assholes and I don't get along with them. Hey. You know what, man?

It's true. It's it's true that there are things we're not gonna get along with and, you know, people excuse me, people we're not gonna get along with and we're not gonna get along with our environment. But we can't use that as a fucking excuse. I got out of the the military four weeks after coming back from Afghanistan, went to college station, town of 50,000 college students. Most of them were were rich and spoiled.

And that that bad attitude instantly went on to me too. I was I was pissed off. I was angry. I was picking fights and vice versa. I was encouraging them.

And I let that that negative environment beat me down even though I came from the reins and I should have been better than that. But I let that beat me down and it took me a while to kinda pull my head out of my ass. But going back to what his latest talk was of over valorizing vets. So he goes in there and he says, it's not a I'm trying think of the best way to put this. It's not the fact that all of civilians suck or that all of veterans are assholes, but you gotta look at the correlation between the two and you gotta look at how we interact.

So we go to battle and we we have such a different view and perspective of how the world works than most anybody else who's here in The States, you know. We go over there and we fight war. We see deaths, we see kids getting killed. It's always horrible terrible things. And we see the the truth of it.

We see that a lot of the stuff on the news is bullshit. We see that, hey, you know, the reason why we're over there is different than what everybody thinks in The States. We come back to The States and we're talking to people or at least there's stuff on Facebook or news or whatever about the right and the wrong and it kinda beats us down and that's that's a big failure of assimilation on the veterans and of this the civilian society. And he kinda compares it to, I guess, Navajo or the the Native Americans where their warriors would go out and they had to do something. They had to fight in order to protect their land, protect their people.

Warriors would go and do horrible things, you know, in order to get the mission accomplished. They would have to kill and hurt. And then they come back and there wasn't, like, PTSD. There wasn't, these major fucking issues and suicide amongst the or, you know, higher suicide rates. And it wasn't a significant thing, I guess, I'm trying to get a when these warriors came back.

And it's because they fit into their society so well. They fit into their tribe. They fit in with their people so damn well. The the tribe understood, hey. If these warriors wouldn't have gone and done this, then we wouldn't have what we have now.

We wouldn't be able to go hunt and fish and live on our TV and, you know, hopefully, that's not racist to some of my rep friends. But, you know, they they would do would do what was necessary in order for her preserve their society. And I think that's a big failure on the part now these days of, hey, when our vets come back to The United States, we don't understand. They they went over there, not necessarily for the government agenda, but they went over there because a job had to get fucking done. Because this this one way or another, somebody had to fucking do this job.

Somebody had to go do the humanitarian work in the Mew or go in, you know, help with this or go to security security on on the the embassy. Embassy. Somebody had to fucking do this. Somebody had to fight the war. And it it's a failure of us getting along that's causing all these issues.

You know, when you come back and you can't get along with your entire environment like how I did when I came back from Afghanistan, you're gonna have issues. Gonna have stress. You're gonna turn to the bottle. You're gonna turn the needle. You're gonna you're gonna have solitude.

You're gonna have these fucking issues. I think guys aren't using that that not just introspective but extrospective. Is that a word? You know what I mean? Like, looking from the outside in.

You know, they're they're not they're not looking at the big picture of this shit, man.

Chris Albert 00:33:09 (link to this point)

Yeah.

Kameron Delany 00:33:10 (link to this point)

And I'll I'll finish with one other thing. It's a little silly. I looked into this study and it's it's pretty fucking fascinating. He talked about how, like, scientists or whatever would would torture this rat. It's a little fucked up, but they would torture this rat and would toss it in a cage after a day or two of torturing on its own.

This little bastard would would sit there and he'd freak out and didn't wanna eat, didn't wanna do anything. And, like, they they did this to a lot of mice. Yeah. I know it's fucked up, but they it was for a purpose. And they did this to a lot of different mice and the mice never would would really pull their heads out their asses.

You they never would eat. They never would some of them would just die in a cage. They they tortured some others and they tossed it in a group of mice that were doing just fine, pet store mice or whatever. And those mice that were tortured that went back into the community after a week or two, they're perfectly fine. The handlers could pick them up and everything like that.

I know it's it's mice versus humans, but it is a really interesting thing to think about that in this study. I encourage people to to look it up because they relate it to humans and relate it to, you know, PTSD and, you know, military personnel coming back. But it's a fascinating concept to think that, hey. If we have a support network and we have, you know, each other that, you know, the fellow veterans and we help each other out, that we can we can we can stop these fucking issues out. We can help each other out.

We can heal these fucking wounds. But anyways, ran over on that one and also It's it's on, dude. It's on, I it's our dude.

Chris Albert 00:34:33 (link to this point)

So coming off of a couple of things you just said.

Yeah.

The first is this. As far as PTS is concerned, you know, I've I've talked to a number of different different brothers, and they, you know, they were talking about the symptoms that they were expressing. And, you know, people scanning the parking lot for enemy, you know, worrying about snipers, things like that. I think one of the things that could really help as far as healing is if we stop necessarily looking at that as a bad thing. You know, and hear me out on this. If you're scanning the parking lot, awesome. Right? You should be. You're more aware than most people are.

Kameron Delany 00:35:16 (link to this point)

Right?

Chris Albert 00:35:16 (link to this point)

Yeah. The problem I see is that people are out there being like, oh, I scanned the parking lot this morning. It was horrible. Yeah. You know, and it I'm not trying to make fun of anybody here or anything like that.

But, you know, I get jumpy. I don't like being around crowds and things like that. But in my mind, that's an advantage. If I'm scanning the crowd every time I go in someplace, if I'm looking around every time I go in someplace, that that keeps me that much more secure. That keeps my girlfriend that much more secure when I'm with her.

But at the same time, I also don't want if if somebody keeps telling me that, you know, there's something wrong with you. You know, you're not right. You're not normal. Which pretty much is how the media has acted a lot of times. Every time a veteran gets in trouble, it's PTSD.

Every time a veteran does something wrong, it's PTSD. You know, when you're alone and you're not around people and you're not around people who understand your situation and you forcibly isolate yourself, a lot of times you start to think, well, maybe I'm not normal. Maybe there is something wrong. Maybe I'm fucking crazy.

Kameron Delany 00:36:30 (link to this point)

Right?

Chris Albert 00:36:32 (link to this point)

Do you think that that's an issue?

Kameron Delany 00:36:35 (link to this point)

I I think it's an issue as in it's been perpetuated in our society, but I don't think that that's that should be you're crazy or that there's something wrong with you. I I definitely don't. I don't think that because I have stress from seeing combat and seeing these issues or even if you didn't see combat, you just see military experiences or any kind of trauma you've gone through, you know, child abuse or any of those other things that some of us have gone through. It's it's it's not wrong for you to have these emotions because of that. No.

I I don't I don't think so at all, man. You know, I don't think that veterans need to be perpetuating it like how a lot of us a lot of us fucking do where it's like, yeah, man. I I heard fireworks. I just laid down on the ground, started low crawling in front of the family. It's like, dude, come on, man.

Like, you're you're probably one bullshit, and if you do have this issue, you shouldn't be fucking handling like this. You shouldn't be going to your family and be like, yeah, man. It's because I saw so much combat and I'm such a fucking badass. And it's like, Jesus Christ, man. Like, there there's no fucking reason.

If you really took your shit seriously, if you really saw this kind of trauma and stuff overseas, and if you really dealt with these issues and you're dealing with these issues currently, you shouldn't be fucking joking around about them where it's like, I'm a damaged veteran. Let's fucking perpetuate things. So no. I I don't think it's bad that people have them. I just think how it's fucking handled is what what really fucking pisses me off.

There's nothing wrong with being damaged, nothing wrong with hurting. But fucking, it drives me nuts when guys think it's a fucking cool thing to fucking have and do.

Chris Albert 00:38:01 (link to this point)

Yeah. Yeah. It's almost become like a it's almost become like a trend.

Mhmm. Yeah.

Then the other thing that I experienced too is, you know, it as far as my tours in Iraq and and my service in Iraq, I really had an awesome deployment. Like, really uneventful. Didn't didn't, it was stressful. But, you know, as far as everything goes, the worst thing that absolute that happened to me was, you know, we were we were taking a small boat up the Euphrates River, and I was looking out to make sure my saw gunner was up. And I got hit in the face with a fucking fish, a flying fish.

Almost knocked me off the boat. I I you know? And I I I could have died from that. If I didn't have my Kevlar on, my mom would have got a really weird letter. You know?

Kameron Delany 00:38:47 (link to this point)

Shit, man.

Chris Albert 00:38:48 (link to this point)

But at the same time, you know, when I came back and I was was going through civilian life, I had my own issues. You know, I I I had my alcoholism issues. I I really couldn't stand when people would come up to thank me for things because I didn't feel like I did much at all. And and, you know, after a few years I didn't even want to go to the VA to get medical care and I didn't until I absolutely had to because I had some issues with ulcerative colitis. When I went down they had me take this survey. And at the time I was, you know, broke. I was living out of my car. I was in a really freaking stressful situation.

And they gave me this survey about PTSD. And, you know, I fill out the survey and they come back to me and they're like, well, you have PTSD. We're gonna make you a primary care in the outpatient psych unit. And, know, we're gonna expect you to go for treatment for that. And it was like, from what, dude?

Like, you know, I but in my mind, it seems like we're all we're often over diagnosing it and that there's other issues that can come into play. Now, my hormones could have been seriously screwed up because I was abusing alcohol. I was not getting much sleep. I was under a lot of stress. I was experiencing quite possibly depression.

But at the same time, they diagnosed me with PTSD. And as much as I protested, they still put me in outpatient psych. So I was like, you know, I think there is some misdiagnosis going on. And after a while of dealing with this and, you know, going to going to the appointments, I started to question it myself. And I was like, do I have PTSD?

Am I actually dealing with this right now? And, you know, I was like, you know, it was almost like PTSD was imposed on me And when I didn't even have I hear a lot about this. I hear a lot about how easy it is to get diagnosed. And I think that there's a danger there if PTSD is not what you're experiencing or what's actually going on, and you're actually experiencing depression, or you're actually experiencing a hormonal imbalance, we could be quite possibly treating the wrong damn thing.

Kameron Delany 00:41:23 (link to this point)

Yep. I agree with you, man. Absolutely. I think regardless of background in the military or regardless of branch or anything like that, guys are gonna have fucking stress. Guys guys are gonna have their issues whenever they get out.

You know, some people will really suffer through through boot camp or air force boot camp. You know, some people Yeah. It's a it's a joke to go through any of the marine corps training and you laugh at all the, you know, sleep and food deprivation and, know, any of the other stuff. But, you know, everybody's gonna handle things differently. And I I think that, you know, we can get into why, you know, people's background and childhood and all that shit.

But it it's just it's we're all gonna handle things at our own in our own ways. And by the time you get out of your four years or twenty years or thirty years or wherever the hell it is, you're gonna have some kind of fucking stress. Like, look look at the difference between the military community and the civilian community. Course, when you go into the civilian community, you're gonna have stress. You're gonna have anger issues.

You're gonna have problems. And I don't I don't like the idea of trying to solve a problem from wherever it came from. So taking the military approach to solve solving PTSD because it came from the military. I'm I'm a firm believer in the whole, you know, love side of things. I know it sounds a little little, you know, cushy and weird and everything like that, but I'm very big into, like, kinda what I talked about earlier about Sebastian Junger and camaraderie and and tribal and, you know, finding these things that that will heal you and finding the the love in the world and that's what's gonna heal you.

Not well, hey. Let's let's go ahead and do medical marijuana and and drink and here's extra money for your 100% disability to PTSD and all this other shit. And we're trying to solve it in the military way of, oh, this is your issue, black and white. This is what you fucking get for it and you're expected to just fucking deal with it. So I I I think most anybody is gonna have fucking stress.

Mhmm. You know, just talking to people and knowing people from all different backgrounds in military, like I say, everyone's gonna have fucking stress. Whether it's, you know you know, I kinda don't always like a minute, but whether I'm having trauma experiences like, hey. Remembering things that happened in battle, remembering things that happened in combat, whether it be failures or just, you know, bad issues, or whether it's like, hey. My life is completely fucking different because I'm going through, you know, airport boot camp or navy boot camp or whatever the hell it is and this is just stressful as fuck.

So yeah. I mean, I think guys are gonna have issues regardless and how we're dealing with it is is I think pretty fucking stupid. Yeah. You know, in such eloquent word words here, I think it's fucking dumb how how we're handling it. Of course, we're we're gonna make it fucking worse.

Of course, we're not gonna solve anything because we're doing it we're trying to solve it from the same way it's coming from.

Chris Albert 00:43:57 (link to this point)

Right. Right. And I think that in a lot of ways, even though we we criticize a lot of us in this community are on a certain side of the political aisle, and we criticize the other side of the aisle because of their view of welfare and aid and things like that. But a lot of us don't like to take our own medicine when it comes to that either.

Kameron Delany 00:44:21 (link to this point)

You know? Yep. Yeah. Yeah. The one of the biggest things that that I've been laughing at recently is when I'll talk to somebody and they'll be like, yeah.

I'm a 100% disabled. And I've been getting these letters, you know, saying that I don't have the right to do this or I'm not able to get this job. And, you know, some of the guys are trying to go into, like, law enforcement work or firework or whatever. And they're like, you know, thought the ADA was protecting me when, you know, I'm when I'm a 100% disabled and, you know, I I wanna go work as a firefighter. You know, I've been trying to convert a lot of my friends to be be a firefighter with me.

Chris Albert 00:44:52 (link to this point)

Mhmm.

Kameron Delany 00:44:52 (link to this point)

And they're like, well, you know, I claim PTSD and I got a 100% and TBI and all these things, but now I can't become a firefighter. I'm not passing my psych stuff. I was like, well, no shit, man. Like, you know, you you you go and you fucking claim you're having all these severe issues, and then you're wondering why our police department doesn't wanna take you and and issue you a firearm to go protect people. You know, you you can't do your job when you don't have your own shit together.

Like, you you you can't help other people in the best way. I'm not saying you have to be perfect, but you you can't go and try to protect your society and go and try to help it, you know, in whatever level if you have all these major fucking issues. So you got no shit. You know, no no shit the the system is gonna tell you no. What do what the fuck do you expect?

You're you're not being screwed and shafted. You did it to yourself.

Chris Albert 00:45:38 (link to this point)

Mhmm. So but anyways So let's let's get into what people can do and Yeah. How we avoid a lot of these issues. What in your mind is the most important step for for a vet to take once they come back? What what do you think the first thing they need to do is?

Kameron Delany 00:45:58 (link to this point)

Realization that you have an issue and start taking steps in the right direction. Whatever the fuck your plan is. I'm not saying your plan doesn't matter, but you just need to be willing to work on things and you need to start stepping in that fucking direction. I I don't believe in making things real complicated. I believe in the fundamentals of stuff.

Know, brilliance in the basics. And I don't think life needs to be a thousand step plan, but you gotta you gotta be willing. Your your mentality is by far the most important part, It really is. You have to be willing to help yourself and heal yourself.

Chris Albert 00:46:28 (link to this point)

Awesome. Awesome. Yeah. And I I I think that comes first and foremost in my in my mind by taking care of your body. Yeah.

You know, seeing to your physical fitness, not letting yourself go to shit because if you do let your body go to shit, eventually, your mind's gonna go to shit. And then and then if that happens, you don't really have anything to work with. You're gonna be consigned to the couch. You're gonna be consigned to bed and things like that.

Kameron Delany 00:46:54 (link to this point)

Yeah. Where where one goes, the other follows. So I'm I'm a big believer in that. You know, so I think you talked about self self actualization self actualization. Yep.

I'm I'm I'm not good with spelling it. But, yeah, you know, if if you have a bad mentality about something, then, of course, that stuff's gonna gonna come your way. You know? It's it's gonna fucking happen. If you treat your body like shit, you're fat, you're nasty, and, you know, your chemical imbalances and all this other stuff, of course, your mind is gonna fucking follow that as well.

You know? So I I believe in taking care of yourself physically. Like, I'm not the poster child angel of that, but I work really hard on my physical fitness.

Chris Albert 00:47:30 (link to this point)

You do those strongman workouts. Yeah. I mean, for those of you who who can't see Kameron right now, Kameron Kameron's actually a strongman athlete. He competes in strongman. He's done a lot of different strong man events, and and he's been working at it for a while.

Kameron Delany 00:47:44 (link to this point)

Yeah, man. I I tried the the bodybuilding thing, you know, nothing against it. It's just I I like doing strength based sports. I like going in there and testing my mentality in that way. And so I progressed to power lifting and then and the strong man.

And really enjoy the go out there and just test myself mentally. Like, when I go to the gym, it's it's not necessarily a physical based thing. It's a mental based thing. You know, I'm smoke check from doing 24 shifts at the station. Can I go and lift?

And do I have the dedication to really put my heart into it? I I love strongman. I love just weight training in general. I I respect the the lesson of iron. I respect how much it it it benefits me.

You know, I've sold a lot of other people on it, is why we we started doing workout groups as our first inaugural thing for for the Ronin chapters. And, obviously, it's progressed to other things as well. But, you know, lifting weights and physical training is such an important part of not just you're taking care of yourself physically, but mentally as well. You know, when you're testing yourself weekly or daily or whatever your schedule is, you know, and you're you're testing your limits and you're you're proving yourself and working through these issues and, you know, especially when you get time just to to dedicate to yourself and your own well-being, then that's part of your healing right there, man. That's that's part of going taking that step in the right direction of, improving your life and working on things.

Know, you don't have to be a badass and, you know, have 22 inch pythons or anything like that and be able to lift a 400 pound stump. But if you go in the gym with the mentality of, hey, I'm here for a reason, man, the the benefits of of that, especially when you look back after few months is is phenomenal, man. I think a lot of guys need to move more towards that. A lot of guys need to move more towards getting out, putting your running shoes on and going and being one with the environment or going to the gym and rocking out to some fucking music and and and doing things to help yourself in that way.

Chris Albert 00:49:34 (link to this point)

Absolutely. And when you control your fitness, control more aspects of your health. We were talking about before we got on and started recording, we were talking about different types of hormonal deficiencies that can happen just from being in the military, just from doing your military service. You're spending four plus years out in the field, lack of sleep, lack of really good nutrition. That's going to have a big impact on your hormones on your mind.

And so it's really, it's almost more important that you take care of your body after you get out of the military than while you're in, because what a lot of guys will notice is you'll get out and you stop moving. All of a sudden, all those things start to take effect. The low testosterone, stress hormones start to take over because you get a pregnenolone steal. And I don't want to get too super scientific on everybody here, but yeah, your stress hormones can actually steal testosterone precursors. Mhmm.

And they can cause low testosterone, and low testosterone can cause a lot of symptoms that look like PTS and depression.

Kameron Delany 00:50:41 (link to this point)

And Oh, yeah. Good. I'm I'm glad someone finally fucking talking about that stuff, man. Like, I'm I mean that sincerely. Shit.

Like, I work as a firefighter, and we have fairly stressful job. I'm on a great department. We don't we don't really get slayed as other places like Houston, but we definitely stay busy. And and when you come back from a twenty four hour shift or forty eight hour shift and you're smoke checked or, you know even on other things, you know, you're dealing with a family trip or vacation or whatever it is, man, all that shit builds up and fucks with your mind. I mean, you're a lot more eloquent with the science of it and the words of it but no, it absolutely does.

You know, you come back and maybe you don't wanna deal with personal stuff in your relationship or maybe you don't wanna really spend time with your kids. I know it's fucked up to say, but, you know, this stuff stems from places. I I hear these things or I deal with these things. You know, when you don't have one thing squared away in your life, it's going to affect something else, man. It's going to have an impact on other parts of your life.

Everything's tied together, man.

Chris Albert 00:51:36 (link to this point)

Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think that after after you take care of yourself, you take care of your physical and mental well-being

Kameron Delany 00:51:44 (link to this point)

Mhmm.

Chris Albert 00:51:45 (link to this point)

And and not use disabilities as an as an excuse, you know, there's guys out there with no arms and no legs who still train.

Kameron Delany 00:51:51 (link to this point)

Fuck yes. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, man.

Like, some of the biggest fucking whiners I see are guys that have have all these blessings and have all these things. They have all their limbs. They have really no major medical issues and they're the biggest fucking whiners and bitches.

Chris Albert 00:52:06 (link to this point)

Yeah.

Kameron Delany 00:52:06 (link to this point)

You know, in my unit in 35, we took quite a few amputees. We really did. And there's so many of those guys that just blow my fucking mind. I'm like, holy shit, man. You're a double amputee and you're just you're kicking ass.

You're running marathons, climbing Mount Everest, one of them just did. And it's just like, they're they're running their own companies. Another another buddy of mine runs their own companies. The same guy that helped start Ronin Veterans Network. And it's just like, damn, man.

Like, how can we sit here and bitch and complain about these issues when these guys are missing limbs or, you know, missing, you know, these different parts of themselves and they're just doing these phenomenal things in life? It makes me feel like a fucking shithead for not doing more, but it's it's awesome seeing it, man. It's so inspirational and I think more guys need to focus on, hey, we had a brother lose a limb in Afghanistan or we had a brother who got severely hurt and look at look at how good his mentality is and all the things he's working on. Why the fuck am I not doing it? So why not go talk to him?

But anyway

Chris Albert 00:53:04 (link to this point)

Absolutely, man. And and, you know, the thing is, I've really this year, I've gotten really into practicing gratitude and being thankful for everything I have. You know, I I have this this is my little Moleskine notebook. I have a little Moleskine notebook that I keep near my desk and near my bed. And first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is I write down three things I'm grateful for.

And when I go to bed, I write down three things I'm grateful for day and night. And that's helped me so much because whenever I'm in a stressful situation, I just go back to my gratitude. I go back to thinking about the fact that I have a roof over my head, the fact that I have two arms and two legs, 10 fingers and 10 toes. And I'm happy about that. I get to go outside.

I live in Southern California. It's beautiful. It's warm out. I get to experience that. But even if you don't live in a place like that, just look around, look at nature, look at the world we live in.

And on top of that, if if you can't find something to be grateful for, two things I suggest you do. One, open your eyes because in the world around us, there's a lot of people who are less fortunate than anybody who can who has the means to listen to this podcast. Because if you listen to this podcast, it means you have a cell phone or or an iPhone or a computer or something. There's a lot of people who don't have that. And two, crack open a book.

You know, I I listened to Jocko Willing's podcast, and he went over this book called The Forgotten Highlander. And it was about a British soldier who was kept by the Japanese for six years in an internment camp. And this guy went through absolute hell from basically living in his own sewage to dealing with prisoners who went cannibalistic on each other to try to get nutrition, completely starving. And after I read that book, I said to myself, I'm never gonna complain about a damn thing again in my life. And, you know, if if you can't find something to be grateful for, look at other people.

Examine other people. Examine what what's going on in this world today, and you'll find it real quick. You'll be real grateful for the position you're in.

Kameron Delany 00:55:25 (link to this point)

Absolutely, man. I talked to her a little bit earlier about private security contract, and this is that for about three and a half years. And first couple years in Iraq, and I don't really tell too many people about the the other part of it, but I described it at the beginning of this episode where, know, I got paired up with a really good pastor who traveled to Africa. And then I I I went from one to the other and, you know, helped them out. And a place that I went was South Sudan.

For some odd reason, it called me talk called to me. And I'm not a religious guy, but I am spiritual. I do believe in a higher power. I do believe that there's definitely something bigger than myself out there, and there's a lot of other things that are in play that we don't know about. And I was drawn to South Sudan.

So I I went in there and that's when the genocide kicked off in 2013, 2014, I think is when that was. And the things that I saw there was completely different on the impact it had on my mind and heart and stuff that was going on in Afghanistan, you know, with with my brothers and the the fighting and the combat there. Because these were people I didn't know. This was something I didn't have to do. This wasn't something, like, in the military where you're told to say, hey.

Here's your deployment. This is what you do. You go with your brothers. You do your thing. This was I went there to learn.

And the things that I saw and in the refugee camps and the the the fighting, it just it it was oh, man. I'm stumbling on the words again here. But it made me my entire perspective, my my entire heart, my entire mind changed, man. You know, I I show people pictures of of these things I talk about. The the I was all fucked up about, like, the piles of bodies of families that were mowed down.

The the the refugee camp where the people didn't have shit and they're all killing each other. And I I I have evidence of that kind of stuff. And it it drove me nuts. And the reason why I took the pictures wasn't for any kind of, you know, self self, you know, building or self whatever. It was because when I go watch the news, you know, I'd I'd look it up on the Internet, you know, when I'm flying or, you know, at the airports, people would talk about there's nothing really going on.

Yeah. A couple 100 people died. Well, when a couple thousand people were were killed in a village, you see it firsthand. It's just it changes everything on your perspective on what's going on. Man, I really wish I could describe it more, but that's why I was so drawn to that place.

That's why I was so passionate about it. You know, my time in South Sudan living living out in in, you know, the capital or outside the capital, and it was it was just incredible, the the things that I saw. I mean, I'm I'm really stumbling. I apologize. But just because it's it's kinda coming back to me and thinking about it.

But, you know, I wanted to help and I wanted to do these things, but kinda like how we talked about, there's only so much I could do at the time. I helped out start up an orphanage when I was over there, you know, and it I hate to admit it, but it kinda failed and it was due to the the people I was working with and due to my own failures as well. But that lesson, the thing that I learned there, the gratitude, the time that I dropped down on my knees and I was like holy shit, what did I just see? Why am I not more phased by this or why am I phased in the way that I am phased because of this? It was just I think about it all the time.

That's why just throughout my day, and I should do it more often. Admittedly, I should do it more often, I just give thanks. You know, I'm out and I'm having a stressful time at work or having an issues with personal stuff, personal relationships, and I'm just like, thank you, man. Thank you for this because of those things that we've seen. And I think that's a perspective that a lot of veterans don't have is that there's no gratitude.

There's no, hey, man. I come back and I I can easily let the world beat me down and my civilian community around me and my environment around me beat me down. Well, look, take a step back and think about the things you've gone through and how fortunate you are. You know, lot of us have been overseas regardless of whatever, you know, combat tour or whatever it was. We've been overseas and we see how terrible some of these places are and we forget about it so easily when we come back to United States because we pull on this trap of of, you know, the entitled environment of the of The US.

And it's it's sad that we forget it. And I wanna encourage all vets to just do do as you said, write things down in a journal or just stop a couple times throughout the day and just be like, thank you. Thank thank you for this. I mean, I'm in a I'm in a wonderful house in an air conditioned environment and, you know, in a great neighborhood and all this other stuff. I got a great job.

And it's just we so easily forget it when we get stressed out and we get upset and I think that causes some issues too and, you know, it's one of the many factors that causes issues. But I really think if we had more gratitude, we took more time to just say thank you and be appreciative for what we have, it would help solve so many of these problems or at least it would help take us a step in the right direction. That's absolutely

Chris Albert 01:00:00 (link to this point)

amazing, man. And and, you know, just to echo that, I think that one of the biggest things that I I took from from my time in Iraq was that even though I was there and I hated it and I couldn't stand the place, I would see children around who had to live there for the rest of their lives.

Kameron Delany 01:00:19 (link to this point)

Hell, shit.

Chris Albert 01:00:20 (link to this point)

You know? And, you know, in a few months, I would be back in The United States. And I would actually always think of that while I was there, and that that's what got me through my days. Yeah. To hear about you in in in the South Sudan and and going there voluntarily, you know, that's that's extremely touching.

I I know a little bit about what was going on there as far as the Janjaweed and the the genocide and things like that that were going on.

Kameron Delany 01:00:46 (link to this point)

Yeah. The the conflict between the Dinka and Nuer and all the shit that was gone, corruption and everything. Yeah. I mean, it's just part part of the I mean, I I hit it a little earlier. I did private security contracting for Department of State for a couple years in Iraq.

And then I came back for a couple months and then I I left to go, you know, work with pastors on my own because I wanted to prove something to myself and I wanted to heal and, you know, do my journey, do my walkabout. And and it took me to some really crazy places, you know. Just I went there not to go do pictures or any stuff. I went there with the purpose of, you know, if I can't do this, then I don't deserve to be back in The United States. This is my I either do this and win or I fucking fail permanently.

Mhmm. And, you know, things change so quickly and and my my life changed so quickly just in the months that I was over there. You know, I remember hitting on my dad after not talking to him for months, you know, when I was over there because I told him I needed to be alone. I was just like, I wanna come home. You know, there's nothing in life in The United States that I can't deal with be and it's because of the things I've seen over here.

It's because of I now realize how incredibly lucky I am.

Chris Albert 01:01:54 (link to this point)

Mhmm.

Kameron Delany 01:01:54 (link to this point)

You know, it was I wasn't in South Sudan for long, maybe about a month or so, a little less. And, I mean, it's just how radical and how much of an impact those those moments had on my life. It just was, I don't know, again, stumbling, but it was just it was so much of an incredible impact on my heart, man. And I I think guys need really need to just take a fucking step back and be like, hey, man. You know, I need to be appreciative of this stuff.

My experiences regardless of wherever they were, whether they were a cush deployment or whether they were terrible combat or lost friends or didn't lose their you need you still need to be fucking appreciative of it, man. You know, there's there's so many fucking spoiled fucking brat veterans that are out there that, you know, they they need to take that step back. They need to have that reality check, that that slap of reality. Maybe not with a hand but with a chair across the face. They they need to fucking have that, man.

Chris Albert 01:02:45 (link to this point)

Yeah. And and keep in mind, guys, Kameron's saying this out of love.

Kameron Delany 01:03:04 (link to this point)

Holy shit, like, I do this and I've tens of thousands of my own dollars ton of my time and quite a bit of my sanity to doing this and it's all out of love. I promise it's all out of love. Like, I went on that walk about everything to learn love. I took time for myself and I embraced solitude and I embraced these things so that way I would have more love in my life. You know these things that I've gone through, the trauma or whatever it is that I know so many of you have gone through too.

Like I don't use it as a way to break myself down. I use it as a way to love. Hey, I've lost friends or I've lost family or I've failed or whatever it is. Oh, well, hey, that's the reason why I appreciate the relationships I'm in so much more. I appreciate the benefits and the blessings I have in my life so much more.

So, no, I'm I'm sorry if I'm I'm kinda rubbing any you guys the wrong way.

Chris Albert 01:03:48 (link to this point)

No. You're not I don't think you are at all. I don't think you are at all. I I wanted to emphasize that though because, you know, this is a Warrior speaking here. This is a guy who's dedicated a lot of his adult life so far, to the craft of arms, you know?

And and beyond that, even after that, he dedicated his life to service, to using his skills to protect people voluntarily. And the reason why I'm emphasizing the love aspect to you guys is because if anybody at home is sitting there and is like, this guy doesn't know what he talk what he's talking about or, you know, he doesn't understand my situation. I promise you this is a guy who does. You know, this is a guy who understands all too well. And, you know, I have so much respect for Kameron and so much respect for what he's done.

And one example I just want to pull out there from what he just said is, and another thing you guys need to do after you start to take care of your body and after you start to practice gratitude is you got to find a mission. Right? And when you start to become grateful, for what you have and you start to understand gratitude and what it really is, your mission is going to be able to unfold itself because you're going to realize that there's people out there who need your help, who you need to provide value for. And that doesn't have to just be through charity work. That could be through business as well.

You know, I think that the best businesses out there provide value for people.

Kameron Delany 01:05:26 (link to this point)

Absolutely.

Chris Albert 01:05:27 (link to this point)

And and that's one of the reasons why I'm not selling designer t shirts. I'm selling military t shirts. Because, my business isn't even really about t shirts. That that's that's how we sell. That's how we make money.

But the reason I do this business is because I want to provide value to the veteran community to give them the tools they need in order to succeed at life and live their best lives. And if if it was just about selling t shirts, I wouldn't be doing this podcast. We wouldn't be sitting here right now. But for everybody out there, you might be thinking to yourself, you know, Kameron introduced me to a young man a few years ago who wanted to run a fitness business, but he really couldn't get past the idea or the idea of making money or running it as a business was kind of foreign to him. Part of it was that he never planned on living past the age of 21.

And he had that kind of mentality. But the other part of it was he was almost kind of abhorrent. He thought that making money was kind of evil. And one of the things I I worked with him a little bit. One of the things, we did was we got him to understand that he's it's okay that he's living a good life. It it it's okay that he excels at something else besides the Marine Corps and that that he finds happiness. And what a lot of what I think a lot of you need to do out there is be okay with the fact that someday you can be happy, that someday you can love, that someday you're going to you you can deserve all the riches in the world. But you just have to understand that one, you have to be grateful for what you do have right now. And two, if you're going to get those riches, if you're gonna live that life, you've gotta be providing value to other people.

Kameron Delany 01:07:24 (link to this point)

Yeah, man. I think you hit the nail on the head with that one. I'll I'll take a quick step back, and I appreciate those kind words that you said, man. But I definitely don't think of myself as as anything noble or honorable. I I I legitimately mean that.

And and it's because of how much I fucked up and failed. I I was not exactly the best kid. You know, I I came from an abusive household, but I I wasn't the best kid either. I wasn't the best marine by any means. I I wasn't the, you know, sharpest tack in the fucking crown box.

But, you know, it's I fucked up so much in life and I failed so much and I've let so many fucking people down, and it's a demon that always stays with me. But I think that's why that's what drives me. I think that's what pushes me. I think that's what, you know, when I'm pissed off and it's like, man, shit's fucked up with the company or shit's fucked up with, you know, work or my personal relationships. And it's like, you know what?

I've made it this far in life and I'm certainly not gonna fucking quit now. It's it's not in my blood. You know, fail failure is not in my blood. You know? And it's again, I appreciate those kind words, man, but I just I fucked up so much that I don't think I deserve that kind of stuff.

And I I know a lot of other guys can relate to that, but I wanna tie it into what you said where even if you have fucked up, even if you have messed up, even if you have had these issues or you still have them, you know, this demon on your back that you have there for the rest of your life, there's nothing wrong with seeking out improvement seeking out a happier life and there's nothing wrong with with having good things in your life, having a nice house or a good girlfriend or any these other things. You know, just because you failed and fucked up in the past doesn't mean you are bound to live that life. Mhmm. You know, you you made the comment earlier, you know, you talked to a guy that didn't think you'd make it past 21, man. I didn't either and I didn't want to.

You know, it's one of my demons that I I I never wanted to come back from Afghanistan. I I didn't think I I should. I think if anybody should die, it shouldn't have been a married guy. It shouldn't have been a guy with kids. It should have been a single guy like me with with, you know, no real no family or anything like that, you know, no relationships.

But and it took a long time for me to really, you know, once I came back to be like, hey. It's okay that I came back. It it's okay with this, but I'm not gonna waste my life. I'm not going to disrespect those guys that that I lost, those 25 brothers I lost in Afghanistan, and those 200 plus that were wounded. I'm not gonna disrespect those guys by living a shitty fucking life.

No. I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna do something with my life and, you know, with what little skills I have and with what little I can offer, I'm I'm at least gonna try to do that. You know, that's kinda why I started Ronin. That's kinda why I well, I'm kinda that is why I started Ronin. That is why I became a firefighter.

That is why I try to work on these things in my life. And it's because I failed. It's because I haven't achieved. It's because I, you know, haven't, you know, had these things in my past and I I want to be appreciative of them now. And I I want to live a life in honor of the people that, you know, don't get to have that life.

Whether it be the guys that were killed or guys that were wounded, you know, it is our obligation to do that, man. It is our obligation to live a full and happy healthy life where we're being productive, where we're doing these good things, you know, for our society. You know, it's just it's a hard lesson to learn, man. It took me a long time and, you know, I battle it every day. I honestly I battle this every fucking day, you know, at work and especially with the stressful job and personal life and moving and all these other stuff and working out, you know.

And it so to the to the brothers that are out there, man, don't feel bad that you're having these issues, man. And, you know, you and I have talked about this too. Don't feel bad that you're having these fucking problems.

Chris Albert 01:10:56 (link to this point)

Mhmm.

Kameron Delany 01:10:56 (link to this point)

But you got to fucking go somewhere in life, man. You you got to you gotta find your purpose. You know, you gotta fucking talk start taking fucking steps forward, man. Like, y'all you you guys gotta do that, man. Do it with us.

Do it with Chris and I.

Chris Albert 01:11:09 (link to this point)

Mhmm. Absolutely. Absolutely. And and, you know, I have to correct you, buddy, because, honestly, I think, you know, with everything, you do deserve it. You do deserve a good life.

Right? And I know I know you have a lot of guilt and everything like that, and a lot of us do. And that's one of the things I struggled with because, like I said, my own deployment was uneventful. But, I got out the next the next year and then went to school. And while I was in school, a lot of guys that I served with went back and lost two marines, you know, captain Brian Letendre and corporal Jordan Pierson.

And their deaths, when I heard about them, I immediately felt guilty. And the the next few years after that were complete hell for me. You know, I I went through everything from alcoholism to, being homeless to to being financially broke. And I would justify it to myself by saying that, I cheated death by, by not going on that next appointment and that I had that this was my help, and this was my punishment. And I know a lot of guys who think like that, but I had to come to a realization.

And it's funny because my realization came at the Oracle of Delphi in Greece. I was leading a student group out there, and I was teaching philosophy at the time. And this is a few years later. And we're sitting out there. And if you ever go to Delphi, it's like a bunch of ruins sitting on a mountaintop in Greece.

It's But they were were off having a discussion about religion. And I'm sitting there on this pile of rocks, and I'm looking around. And I'm looking at the columns from from where the the the Temple Of The Oracle used to be. I'm looking at, you know, this place that was basically the Disneyland of the ancient world. And I'm saying to myself, wow.

You know, people used to come here from everywhere, and they all had problems. They all had issues. They all had histories. But all that's left of them now are these rocks and these columns. We don't even know anything about most of the individuals who came here.

And I immediately started to think about my own death. And I was like, you know, I'm just a fart in the wind. You know, I'm I'm a speck in this vast universe. And all of us are just specks in this vast universe. And this thing we call life is so temporary.

Why would I waste even a minute of it being miserable? Why would I waste even a second being unhappy? Especially when captain Letendre and corporal Pierson and thousands of my brothers can't be here to enjoy it. Why would I give up this beautiful gift in misery? And it was at that moment that I decided I was gonna get the fuck out of academia because I really wasn't doing anything well there.

And that I was gonna go into fitness and and try to live a life of helping people and and trying to live a life, of purpose and doing things that I wanted to do. And and so I guess my question to everybody at home is, you know you're gonna die someday. All of us are. Every single one of us is gonna face that. Why waste even a second of it on not living a life that you wanna live.

Kameron Delany 01:15:17 (link to this point)

Absolutely, man.

Chris Albert 01:15:19 (link to this point)

You know?

Kameron Delany 01:15:20 (link to this point)

Totally.

Chris Albert 01:15:21 (link to this point)

And, you know, Kameron, I can't emphasize enough how much your story inspires me. And for those of you who were on the Warrior Soul page, you know, there's a lot of Marines on that page who served with Kameron. And I hear stories about them all the time. Mostly good.

Kameron Delany 01:15:42 (link to this point)

But Hopefully, of the none of the bad ones are not naked and running around. Which there are somehow.

Chris Albert 01:15:50 (link to this point)

Well, yeah, man. I I mean, you're a marine. So, you know, there's two things Marines have experience with, and that's exposing themselves to other people and drawing dicks on various objects.

Kameron Delany 01:16:04 (link to this point)

Well, Wagner does love the cocks.

Chris Albert 01:16:07 (link to this point)

But seriously, man, you know, where can people find you and where can people get linked up with Ronin Veteran Network?

Kameron Delany 01:16:20 (link to this point)

Ben, the absolute best way is Facebook. You know, we are we have a website as well, roninvn.org and we're rebuilding it again right now but the best way we found is on Facebook and that's just searching Ronin Veterans Network. You'll find the main page and we also have our chapter pages on there. Please feel free to private message me or post on on there as well. See what kind of content we're putting out.

Check out our YouTube video channel as well, Ronin Veterans Network. And we always love input. We always love getting information in from other veterans as far as ideas that we can use to add additional resources or add additional content out there. And hey, another thing, we are always looking to start new chapters, man. We're always looking for good guys to to help lead in their community.

And it's not this scary thing that's so I've talked to some veterans about. We just need a guy that has made that decision to improve his life and wants to help other people as well. We have, you know, four, five chapters right now and we always wanna build more. So if you feel that you wanna take that step forward and you wanna progress forward, hit hit up, you know, Kameron Delany, you know, myself, and or hit up Ronin Veterans Network and we're always we're always looking forward to starting new things now.

Chris Albert 01:17:34 (link to this point)

Yeah. And I'll I'll put the link to the Facebook page on the show notes for this for this episode. And for those of you who at home right now who are looking for your tribe, who are looking for your brotherhood, that's one way to do it. You know, start something. Absolutely.

Start a chapter. You know, start a workout group. Start a running group. Start a hike group. Start a start a shooting group. Yeah.

Kameron Delany 01:18:01 (link to this point)

Absolutely. You know, this You know, Chris Albert and I are are always down to help guys. They're always down to help the veterans community. And whatever guys need, all you have to do is just say something. And Mhmm. You know, we can either pair you up with the resource or one way or another, we'll fucking figure out a way to make it happen.

So hit a hit either of us up, you know, if you have an idea or, like, how we talked about earlier, where you wanna take that step in the right direction, you know, contact either of us and we'll definitely get started. Not not as and I I I wanna say this just because I've run into this before. Not as a superior. Neither of us, you know, are are are trying to get anything from this. Neither of us are are trying to think that we're better.

You know, we're we're just like you, man. We're guys that have failed and fucked up. We've dedicated our life to to taking those steps in the right direction. So we'll do it together, guys. You know, hit either of us up and we'll we'll definitely work on things.

Chris Albert 01:18:48 (link to this point)

Right. And that and that's the thing. And I want you guys to all understand this. The reason why I do this at least is is because it's not because I think I'm better than you. It's because I think you're better than me.

I think all of you are better than me.

Kameron Delany 01:19:02 (link to this point)

Absolutely, man. Absolutely. I I agree with you on that. Like, many of the guys that I meet, I admire the shit out of them. I really do.

There there's so many vets out there that I absolutely admire and that I think so much more highly of than myself. Really do. So any of you guys, man, just any of you all contact us and we'll work together to to do this.

Chris Albert 01:19:22 (link to this point)

Awesome. Awesome. Any last words, Kameron?

Kameron Delany 01:19:25 (link to this point)

Man, just wanna say it was an honor, man. I I really appreciate you bringing me on the show and and let me spread spread my words and, you know, talk about a few things and answer some questions. And I I really appreciate it, man. It was a privilege and an honor to to be on your show and to to do this with you, man. Thank you very much.

Chris Albert 01:19:41 (link to this point)

Thank you. Absolutely, man. And I just wanna say I I'm so grateful to have you as a friend and so grateful that you did come onto the show. And I'm so grateful that James introduced us a few years ago. And thank you for everything that you're doing.

Thank you for your message. Thank you for your service. And thank you for everything that I know you will do to help this community out.

Kameron Delany 01:20:06 (link to this point)

Likewise, brother. I really appreciate it, man. It was a great honor to be on here. It really was, man. Appreciate it.

Chris Albert 01:20:11 (link to this point)

Awesome. To everybody out there, thank you for listening to this episode. And until next week, I will talk to you all soon. I love you all. Have a great week.

Peace out.