Robert used to be a law enforcement officer, and after major life events including working on a task force arresting adults seeking to sexually exploit juveniles through social networking sites, and a debilitating injury, he found himself in depths of addition and with an unmanageable life. His story is one of great loss, and an amazing recovery. These days you will find him working in the recovery field with fellow warrior first responders and veterans at Warriors Heart, as well as hosting The High Speed Chicken Podcast, a show dedicated to sharing the stories of fellow warriors.
For links to listen/watch elsewhere and more about Rob, Warriors Heart, and The High Speed Chicken Feed Podcast visit
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Chuck LaFLange (00:01.853)
Hello everybody, watchers, listeners, supporters of all kinds. Welcome to another episode of the Ashes to Awesome podcast. I'm your host Chuck LaFlange checking in from Krabi, Thailand. I have a special guest with me today in virtual studio coming from Texas. It's Robert Greer How you doing today, Robert?
Robert Greer (00:16.72)
Doing okay man, how are you?
Chuck LaFLange (00:18.999)
I'm just fine. I'm just fine. It's 1130 at night here and it's still, I guess, I'd be about 85, 87 degrees in American. So...
Robert Greer (00:29.39)
Hehehehehe
Chuck LaFLange (00:33.647)
Listen, you know, we were talking pre -recording here, Robert, about kind of how we like to do things. Before we get into a lot of recovery stuff, and I do, there's definitely some things we've got to talk about in that. We kind of get an idea of your story and kind of where you're coming from. And something I failed to mention to you, there's a couple quick questions that I like to ask to kind of kick that off. And that is to say, do you remember the first time that you got messed up?
Robert Greer (01:00.944)
Very clearly, yes.
Chuck LaFLange (01:03.701)
Yeah, I could do it myself, what the...
Robert Greer (01:05.872)
So I grew up as a teetotaler. I'd always wanted to be a cop and I kind of lived my life a certain way, right? So my oldest brother, I kind of credit for keeping me away from drugs and alcohol when I was a kid. He would tell me stories about these parties he would go to and people would just be, you know, hammered, messed up, throwing up on themselves. And I don't know, I just kind of had a healthy fear for it. A very healthy fear for it. First time I can really remember even trying alcohol, I was, I don't know, probably 21.
Yeah, 2021, somewhere in that area. But even then, I didn't get drunk.
Chuck LaFLange (01:37.591)
Oh, so you're late bloomer by our standards. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
Robert Greer (01:41.168)
Well, very late bloomer because even then I didn't get drunk. I just had a couple of sips of Long Island iced tea. I think it was, you know, uh, and it wasn't until after I was in detectives, I was on a training trip over in Meridian, Mississippi at a Meridian Naval Air Station. And, you know, I was with some guys at that little shitty bar on base there and they kind of encouraged me to have a few drinks. And, um, I was.
Chuck LaFLange (01:46.073)
Okay.
Robert Greer (02:08.688)
2005, I was probably 26, almost 27 years old. That was the first time I got show enough drunk. I mean, I got hammered. I mean, it was, you know, it was beer. It was something called a snake bite, which is a hard apple cider with beer. You know, I didn't know shit about drinking back then. I just wanted to drink something that would taste good. And somebody recommended that. And saying, you know, I'm a hammer.
Chuck LaFLange (02:14.149)
Wow, okay.
Chuck LaFLange (02:28.279)
Yeah.
Chuck LaFLange (02:35.895)
And so, and there's a couple more follow -up questions here. Do you remember how it made you feel?
Robert Greer (02:41.552)
Um, kind of happy, kind of loose. Yeah. I mean, just happy, loose, joyous, you know, having a good time. You know, I heard later on in life, you know, you're supposed to drink, uh, when you feel happy, not to feel happy. And at that point I was, yeah, you know, never drink to, to feel better. Only drink when you do feel good, you know, something like that. And at that time, you know, everything was fine. Everything was going well. I was.
Chuck LaFLange (02:43.479)
me past just the drunk side. Okay, okay.
Chuck LaFLange (02:56.599)
Ooh, that's a keeper. Yeah.
Chuck LaFLange (03:03.197)
Yeah.
Robert Greer (03:09.488)
You know, had been with the sheriff's office about four years. I was a new detective. Uh, the wife and I had bought a house, uh, you know, had a kid, had another one on the way, you know, just a lot of good things. Actually, we had two kids at that point. Uh, just a lot of good things going on in life. And I was in a safe environment and didn't have to worry about driving was with good people. So why not? The wife encouraged it. And matter of fact, she, I remember her telling me that she was proud of me, you know, cause I'd always been scared of it. And she's like, well, I'm proud of you. You know, you did great.
Chuck LaFLange (03:16.983)
Thanks for
Chuck LaFLange (03:40.375)
Wow. Wow. Okay. Okay. Okay. So being a late bloomer, that kind of adds my, there's this whole kind of line of questioning that I do, but it's like, I don't even know what to do because you kind of caught me by surprise with that. But so tell me how does one go from, if you give me kind of the Reader's Digest version, from really getting messed up for the first time in your mid twenties to being on a podcast about recovery. Like there's some stuff happened in between then and now. And, you know, let's, you know, kind of give me the...
What's going on?
Robert Greer (04:11.92)
Yeah, definitely a late bloomer. And when I did catch up, I caught up in a big way, you know, kind of made up for lost time, I guess you could say. But like we were talking earlier, I am quite used to telling my story and through the recovery work that I've done and just in life in general, I guess I can pinpoint exactly when all this happened. And I can tell you the cause of it. You know, I can tell you why it happened, when it happened, how, where, et cetera. And when it came to the alcohol, you know, that was in.
Chuck LaFLange (04:19.703)
Yeah.
Chuck LaFLange (04:30.519)
Okay.
Robert Greer (04:41.616)
Oh, so five, oh five. First time I got drunk, right? I was working in financial crimes with the sheriff's office and about a year later, a lot of things were going on in life. 2006, 2006 was kind of the red letter year for me, the perfect storm as it were. We were adding on to our house, trying to expand it. You know, that's the hell of a project. Stressful. I had just been assigned to the Northwest Louisiana internet crimes against children task force.
If you've seen Dateline to Catch a Predator, you know exactly what I'm talking about. I began seeing some of the most heinous things involving children that I've ever seen in my life. That was a stressful type situation. Just dealing with the trauma that I would see on a daily basis with child pornography and internet predators.
Chuck LaFLange (05:11.159)
Oh.
I do, yeah.
Robert Greer (05:36.208)
And then at the same time, I was in the process of being evaluated for what ended up being Crohn's disease. Yeah, I mean, looking back, you know, it was probably always there in dormant, but there's always something that kind of kick it off, right? And the stress of everything I was going through that particular time in 06 just kind of made it amped up a little bit.
Chuck LaFLange (05:42.767)
Okay.
Robert Greer (05:59.664)
In August of 06, I was to the point where I was shitting blood, losing a lot of weight, lots of ulcerations in my mouth. I was in bad shape. I was supposed to have a colonoscopy. The insurance company canceled it because I was so young. I wasn't even 40 yet and wanted me to get a second opinion. And before that could happen, I was on my roof during this construction project. It was raining. I messed around, got on a tarp and slid off the
Chuck LaFLange (06:00.215)
you
Chuck LaFLange (06:11.447)
Wow. Wow.
Robert Greer (06:29.072)
The roof lost my grip and slid off the roof and hit the concrete below. Uh, mess up. My ankle is pretty good. Uh, fractured my left wrist, broke my back again. I say again, cause in Oh one in a car wreck, I had crushed the L two vertebrae. This time I crushed the L three and then busted my head open, uh, you know, back of my head bounce off the concrete. So I ended up in the hospital and, uh, the short version of that story, I mean, it's a whole story to it, but the short version of that.
Chuck LaFLange (06:38.039)
you
Chuck LaFLange (06:46.839)
Oh.
Robert Greer (06:58.288)
You know, I was there with the injuries and I'm like, Hey, you know, since I'm here, why don't y go ahead and knock out that scope for me? They did. I was in bad shape about a week later, my colon perforated and it's kind of like an appendix. You know, if you don't get that shit out, uh, you're going to die. So they did emergency surgery in the middle of the night. I woke up with a 50 staples in my stomach and a colostomy bag. Um, it was a horrendous experience to say the least, you know, broken back, broken wrist stitches in my head and now 50 staples and a colostomy and not know.
Chuck LaFLange (07:03.721)
you
Chuck LaFLange (07:20.791)
Oh. Oh.
Robert Greer (07:27.856)
you know, what was going to happen next. Uh, they took out all, but about 18 inches of my colon. And I was in the hospital for 19 days and lost 45 pounds. Um, and when I came out, you know, I was a shell of a person. There was a lot going on, not just with that, the uncertainty of the future, wearing a class, me, all this other kind of stuff, um, added with the stress of the internet task force that I was, you know, I was off for a few months, you know, recovering, but then I went.
right back to that work. So there was a lot going on at that time. And I can remember early 07, I had a, about seven months after I had another surgery to remove the colostomy and reconnect what was left in my colon to my small intestines, right? But sometime during that time,
I'd also had a couple of kidneys. So sometimes during that time, I remember sitting with my wife at a Mexican restaurant, trying to remember everything that happened in those 19 days in the hospital. Cause there was, there was large gaps. It was days I just couldn't remember. And I decided I want to have a drink and I wasn't much of a drinker. I didn't know what to drink, but you know, margaritas look good. Okay. Let me have a margarita. And that kind of started it right there. You know, I guess I began to drink to forget.
Chuck LaFLange (08:22.551)
Mm -hmm.
Robert Greer (08:49.168)
And somehow within the next five years, I went from that one margarita to I'm going through three liters of tequila in a week for my margaritas. And I drank them on the rocks and kept them in the fridge. My triglycerides were in the 700s. I was about 285 pounds five years later. But at the same time, that's the alcohol aspect of it. It went just that quick, it seems, from that one margarita to I'm going through three liters.
Chuck LaFLange (08:54.935)
you
Hmm
Chuck LaFLange (09:07.215)
Yeah.
Chuck LaFLange (09:19.127)
So if I can interrupt for a quick second, Robert. My original line of questioning, because typically, and the reason you kind of stumped me with that when I was asking about your first time you got messed up, was because it almost invariably comes down to it made me feel a certain way, and then I'll ask somebody, was that, were you self -aware enough at the time?
Robert Greer (09:19.248)
But sure.
Chuck LaFLange (09:43.767)
The answers vary because, like to understand what it was doing for you, the answers vary because of age and self -awareness and all those things. At this late stage in life, I feel now that that line of questioning, now that I have some context to your journey, at that point, did you realize what you were doing when you started drinking? Or is it with benefit of hindsight that you can say that that's why you were drinking, right? Okay, okay.
Robert Greer (10:07.504)
It's the benefit of hindsight. You know, it's I think it's Kierkegaard said life can only be lived for but understood in reverse, right? And, and looking back, and looking back that I began to understand that I didn't know what at the time, you know, at the time, I'm just doing normal shit, right? I'm just having a drink. Everybody has a drink. Now,
Chuck LaFLange (10:15.543)
Yep. Oh, I like that. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
Robert Greer (10:28.624)
And I built up to all that to say that it wasn't because it tasted good. It wasn't because I was hanging out with the boys. It was because I was beginning to have some memories and some thoughts and some feelings that I did not want to feel, that I wanted to escape from. You know, I was off for a few months, had some surgeries, you know, this and that. But I went right back to work in financial crimes and work in the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force.
Chuck LaFLange (10:41.983)
Yeah.
Robert Greer (10:54.928)
And eventually after, I don't know about a year and a half of that, they moved me to use services full time to where I would be working at the task force as well as regularly assigned crimes against children in the parish. So it, my drinking experience came along right at the time when I was under the most stress and seeing the most things that I wanted to not see. Now I'm not going to run from my duties. I'm not going to run from my responsibility. When you see kids suffering, shit, I'm all in, I'm going to do everything I can.
Chuck LaFLange (10:59.607)
you
Chuck LaFLange (11:07.967)
Hmm.
Robert Greer (11:24.112)
bring about a successful conclusion in these cases. But at the same time, what was going on in my head, I did not want to feel, I did not want to see, I did not want to hear the memories, the nightmares I began to have, you know, I began to escape all that. And at the same time, Chuck, it was pain pills as well. Now I didn't have a pain pill problem until 07 probably is when it started. And I can remember then when it started too. It's kind of a funny story in my opinion. Other people think maybe not.
Chuck LaFLange (11:27.083)
you
Chuck LaFLange (11:43.831)
Yep.
Robert Greer (11:52.496)
but I think it's funny. Like I said, in 01, it was when I broke my back the first time, I had four wisdom teeth extracted on the way home. I was high as a kite and I was distracting the wife and we got T -bone on both sides. But they gave me pain pills then, but it wasn't that big a deal, I guess. But in 07, after I had that second surgery,
Chuck LaFLange (11:53.623)
you
Chuck LaFLange (12:08.659)
Oh
Robert Greer (12:17.872)
Um, I had that colostomy for seven months, right? And after I had that second surgery, I was at my office one day in financial crimes and I tried to fart, right? I tried to fart and I shit all over myself. Uh, what we would say on the firing line and police world, I had a negligent discharge, right? Uh, I mean, it is what it is. If you're. Yeah.
Chuck LaFLange (12:21.271)
you
Chuck LaFLange (12:39.347)
I'm taking that one too. Yeah, okay, yeah.
Robert Greer (12:43.376)
I mean, if you're in a, if you're in the military law enforcement and you can say that you never shit yourself before you're fucking liar. Right. But anyway, it is what it is. But I bring it up because, you know, I, I, it's a normal thing. You know, I'm sitting at my desk. I try to pass a little gas because I have 18 inches of colon now and you know, gas hurts. And I defecated on myself. I was embarrassed. I got in my car.
didn't say anything to anybody, got in my unit and drove home to clean up. And it was bad too. It was one of those start your day over kind of things, you know? And on the way home, those pain pills, the hydrocodone, Percocets, whatever they were at the time, were in my SIDRA console. And I took two of them. And I can tell you, man, I was not in any pain that day. It was the mental pain. And I can pinpoint that looking back as the moment that that pain pill addiction started because man, they made me feel great.
Chuck LaFLange (13:34.167)
Yeah.
Chuck LaFLange (13:39.667)
you
Robert Greer (13:40.762)
They made me feel warm and fuzzy. They made everything right with the world again. And on that day, I couldn't stand to feel the way that I did, and that made me escape.
Chuck LaFLange (13:47.575)
Ah.
Chuck LaFLange (13:52.725)
That's interesting to me because you said in 2001, there wasn't a problem. Now with all this stuff going on, it's happened and that's happening in your life, now it turns into a problem, which kind of speaks to so many things when it comes to addiction, right? Why some people can take it, some people, you know, whatever. That's interesting. Continue though, continue please. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Robert Greer (14:12.212)
Yeah, you know, some people, you know, have experience with alcohol and or pills and it never becomes an issue. And it seemed like for me, I mean, I knew addiction ran in my family and I've been warned all my life, you know, to stay away from it. And I did. And then by accident, it just kind of happened. I mean, it's prescribed by a doctor. Right. I mean, I had 50 staples in my stomach on that first surgery.
Chuck LaFLange (14:21.783)
you
Chuck LaFLange (14:37.623)
Yeah. Yeah.
Robert Greer (14:40.624)
Uh, you know, just all these in the, the colostomy itself, you know, all these different things going on. So it was a legitimate need for this med. Uh, but then sooner or later, it began to make me feel good. And then the pain was psychosomatic. The pain wasn't really there. It was the mental anguish, uh, combined with the stuff that I was doing at work, you know, and like I said, eventually I got transferred over to use, uh, use services and I was full time.
Chuck LaFLange (14:41.847)
Yeah.
Chuck LaFLange (14:56.663)
Yeah, of course, of course.
Robert Greer (15:07.83)
for five years, work in the Internet Task Force and the crimes against children cases. So there was a lot going on in that time. Plus, you know, just the normal stressors of life. So before I knew it, I was addicted. Before I knew it, I was having these horrendous nightmares and night terrors and stuff from stuff I was seeing at work and on
Chuck LaFLange (15:24.987)
Yeah.
Chuck LaFLange (15:32.567)
you
Robert Greer (15:36.7)
antidepressants, I was on prescription sleep aids. I mean, I was on Ambien, you know, and I would be, you know, consuming, you know, these huge mugs, three of these every night of hardcore, you know, strong margaritas, taking that and watching TV until I just passed out and then waking up in a puddle of urine every time, not every time, but more often than not, knowing that my central nervous system was so depressed, I was probably that close to death.
you know, that's how rapidly with me it progressed, you know? And then, you know, there was some other things that happened in the career. I was a cop for 16 and a half years, deputy sheriff for 16 and a half years. And, you know, there were some other things that continued to make it worse. You know, we see a lot of stuff on patrol. We see a lot of stuff in detectives just in general. I had two fatal shootings, the first of which was a suicide by cop scenario where
Chuck LaFLange (16:10.807)
Yeah, yeah.
Chuck LaFLange (16:28.631)
Fuck.
Robert Greer (16:34.608)
A methamphetamine addict was at the end of his rope and tried to commit suicide, but lacked the means and forced me into a situation where, you know, it was me or him. And I killed him in front of a son. His son was about eight, 10 years old at the time. You know, just it, it struck me in several different ways. You know, initially I did what I had to do, you know, to, to get home to my family. But the man was at the end of his rope. He pulled out a pair of pliers, but.
Chuck LaFLange (17:04.047)
you
Robert Greer (17:04.4)
in a shooter stance after saying, I have a gun, I have a gun, I have a gun. And, you know, at that time I had no choice, but looking back, looking back, it was, you know, my oldest brother, unfortunately, you know, he was a methamphetamine addict at that time. And it was like, I killed my brother. And then later on, as my own disease progressed, it was like, I killed myself, you know? And it took me a long time to reconcile that one. The second one was a little bit different.
Chuck LaFLange (17:10.263)
Yeah. Yeah.
Chuck LaFLange (17:22.071)
you
Chuck LaFLange (17:27.535)
you
Robert Greer (17:31.504)
It was a paranoid schizophrenic off his meds and he actually shot at some officers and you know, long story short, you know, we chased him and you know, he forced us into that situation. You know, he was trying to shoot at other officers when we shot him. That one wasn't as bad, but still it wasn't great, you know, along with just a plethora of dead babies on patrol, dead people, you know, just the things that we see in law enforcement that we just can't escape from is every day.
Chuck LaFLange (17:46.875)
No, no.
Chuck LaFLange (17:54.583)
you
Robert Greer (18:01.136)
You know, it's not deployed overseas for three months at a time, maybe see 15 days of combat. I mean, it's, it's every damn day. Um, while, while being in the community with it and. You know, like I said, I didn't sit out to be an addict or alcoholic, but before I knew it, I was, and I couldn't admit it. You know, um, it was normal, I guess you could say in that.
Chuck LaFLange (18:02.103)
Hmm.
Chuck LaFLange (18:09.819)
Yeah, right.
Robert Greer (18:30.096)
that brotherhood in that world with law enforcement or first responders. When I was in the academy, when first few years of my career, I don't know, maybe I wasn't that well liked, but I didn't go out drinking with the guys, choir practices, they call it, right? They knew that I didn't drink and I didn't go with them. And then before you knew it, I'm out drinking everybody else at some of those parties and doing other stupid shit, but that's a whole other story.
Chuck LaFLange (18:59.095)
Yeah.
Robert Greer (18:59.984)
So it was a rapid progression for me, it really was.
Chuck LaFLange (19:03.639)
No kidding, man. I can't, yeah. The trauma, oh, the trauma's there. You just keep knocking them off, right? That's a hell of a checklist.
I have to ask, and you're the first cop I've had on, or ex -cop, I guess, right? Which is just, I gotta say this, funny timing. Three days ago, my arresting officer reached out to me to say, hey, I see what you're doing, I'm really proud of you, right? From my days in active addiction, so pretty big deal for me, right? Like, because I was a hard case, right?
So to be sitting here now with a cop and doing my first it was just kind of crazy timing right so In that brotherhood I I can I can only assume and that that alcoholism and whatever Self -soothing behaviors, whatever they might be run rampant, right? It's it's the trauma
Robert Greer (20:00.848)
Yeah.
Chuck LaFLange (20:07.383)
in your time in law enforcement, have you noticed a shift? Because I think that there'd be, at least from where I am, what I would assume again, more assumptions on my part, is that that kind of toxic masculinity thing would make it hard for people to admit, hey, I've got this problem, right? Or not even toxic, I'll say this, perceived toxic masculinity. Where your brothers, you're worried what they would think, and in the end, they probably,
would support you had you admitted. But can you kind of speak to that whole realm, that idea that you know what I'm trying to say, I think, right? Yeah.
Robert Greer (20:43.248)
Yeah, it's the stigma, right? And I get what you're trying to say with the toxic masculinity part of it. It's that I think would be a more harsh way to put it, but it still, it puts it in the proper context. It puts it in the right frame of mind of that competitive edge that we have. You know, we're the ones called upon all the time to handle everybody else's problems. We're trained to be stoic. We're trained to show up on scene, keep our emotions in check and handle everybody else's problems. But we're not really
trained on how to take a step back and to deal with our own issues. At least at that time, it weren't maybe some, some departments are changing that now, but we're not trained on how to really let go of those emotions and deal with our own needs. We're here to take care of everybody else before we take care of ourselves. And when it comes to that stigma, there's a lot of people, a lot of agencies where, you know, you're considered weak. If you take a step off the line and say, Hey man, I need a break. You know, I need some help. I need to take care of some issues with myself. Right.
Chuck LaFLange (21:27.383)
Okay. Yeah.
Robert Greer (21:40.54)
That's part of it. You don't want to be perceived as weak. The other part of it is, sometimes that angst gives us that competitive edge, that fuel, that drive, and we keep it regulated with substances sometimes to where it doesn't get out of control, but we don't lose it and it doesn't overwhelm us. That's of course one way to put it.
But, you know, in the practical world, in the real world, I'm a law enforcement officer. I have a gun, I have a badge, I have arrest powers, the power to take somebody's life. And if I raise my hand and say, hey, boss, I can't control my drinking or my pill use. That's a problem for my career. You know, can I be trusted to have that gun, that badge, that authority, that power? And most of us in that world in that in that realm,
Chuck LaFLange (22:22.039)
you
Yeah, it is. Yeah.
Robert Greer (22:36.002)
You know, we've worked very hard to get where we're at. We don't want to lose that. You know, we don't want to say, hey, I got a problem I need to take care of because I need this job and I'm trying to advance my career. But we go to extreme lengths to hide it. Not only was I hiding my substance use, but hell, I was PEC'd on duty, not on duty, but Physicians Emergency Commitment Order. In 2016, I mean,
Chuck LaFLange (22:36.765)
Thanks for watching.
Chuck LaFLange (22:48.615)
Yeah, yeah. P E C D. Oh.
Robert Greer (23:04.208)
Yeah. And you're a danger to yourself or others in 2016. Um, I had switched, uh, anti -depressants and went to Prozac and I just, I spiraled, I plummeted and you know, as law enforcement officers, if I pull you over and you say, Hey, I'm going to kill myself or I'm going to kill this person, you know, click, click, I'm taking you for a mental health evaluation. And at this point in my life, I had spiraled so far that the suicidal ideations were just.
Chuck LaFLange (23:26.223)
Yeah.
Robert Greer (23:33.904)
I couldn't control them. And I went to the doctor with my wife, my personal physician with my wife. I was in uniform. My patrol car was out in the parking lot, pistol on my hip. Doc, I can't stop thinking about blowing my fucking head off. And, you know, she gave me the option, either you go to the emergency room right now and call me when you're there, or I'm calling the coroner and having you committed. What choice did I have? You know, so.
Chuck LaFLange (23:35.203)
Wow.
Chuck LaFLange (23:49.943)
Wow.
Robert Greer (24:01.52)
I called my lieutenants, I need some personal time. I ended up being an inpatient on a 72 hour hold. You know, I there three and a half days. That's the lengths I went to to hide what was going on. I couldn't tell my boss, hey, I can't stop thinking about killing myself. Now I need to go to the hospital. I told him, hey, I need some personal time. And knowing that it would have cost me my career if I got PEC, you know, but I didn't want to lose what I thought I had. Now, looking back,
Chuck LaFLange (24:02.167)
Wow.
Chuck LaFLange (24:20.863)
Wow.
Robert Greer (24:31.232)
damn that, you know, my life is way more valuable than that. My family is way more valuable than that. I was combat ineffective in so many ways and I couldn't I couldn't let go. I was I was hanging on too tight. It's like that old rock and roll song, you know, hang on loosely. If you hang too tightly, you're going to lose control, man. I was losing control. You know, I really was. But I just couldn't let go.
Chuck LaFLange (24:36.207)
Of course.
Chuck LaFLange (24:50.783)
Yeah.
Yeah, you know.
Robert Greer (24:59.976)
Looking back, you know, obviously I would have done things a different way. But I thought I was, you know, trying to maintain that career.
Chuck LaFLange (25:00.951)
you
Chuck LaFLange (25:04.379)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. That's, oh, man. There's so much there. There's so much. So is that, like, is that enough now? You've had, you've been almost P .E. seeds, right? You've got the 72 -hour hold. Tell me that that's where it stops. Or no. No.
Robert Greer (25:19.304)
No, no, and I was VEC. I went to the emergency. I went home, put my patrol car, you know, parked my patrol car, took off my uniform, grabbed some clothes. Wife drove me to the emergency room and I said, I'm voluntarily checking myself in. Doctor said why? And I told him and it was the physician's emergency commitment. I had no choice at that point.
Chuck LaFLange (25:32.919)
you
Chuck LaFLange (25:45.655)
Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, so And do they know this at work then? Like is that an automatic thing that I'm not sure how that works right or how much level of privacy there so So your PEC, you know Yeah, yeah, right
Robert Greer (25:47.568)
Ah, yeah, ah, no.
Robert Greer (25:57.152)
In all honesty, it should have been. It should have been something that they knew about, but I just couldn't let go, you know. Now, and I will say this, and this is me being perfectly honest these days, that was just my perception at the time and the way that I was holding on.
Chuck LaFLange (26:03.315)
some sort of mechanism right? Because yeah, right? You've got a lot of power. You know, yeah. So, okay.
Robert Greer (26:19.056)
Now for anybody listening out there before it gets to that point, go to your agency, talk to your employee assistance program manager, talk to your supervisors and say, Hey man, I'm having some difficulty. I need to address this. There are mechanisms in place to get you the help that you need, get you back to work, maybe in a different capacity until you can get back to full duty. It's not worth doing what I did. It is not at all worth doing what I did. I did it exactly the wrong way, but I just with.
Chuck LaFLange (26:22.363)
you
you
Chuck LaFLange (26:44.103)
No.
Robert Greer (26:47.696)
The short version is I felt like with my agency that I couldn't. It's that old school mentality, brotherhood of, you know, suck it up, buttercup, you know, get your ass back to work. A little bit of both. It was my perception, but there were not everybody there was the same.
Chuck LaFLange (26:52.087)
Yeah, yeah.
Chuck LaFLange (26:57.247)
Yeah. And I guess that's kind of what I was asking about earlier there, Robert. Was that your perception or was that the reality? And has that evolved over time in your experience?
Chuck LaFLange (27:15.095)
Thanks for watching.
Robert Greer (27:17.648)
Uh, there were some people that had a good hold on it and could say, Hey man, this is what you need to do. This is who you need to talk to. And there was other people that were just as much of a drunk as I was. They just hadn't spun out of control as I was, you know, as I had, uh, and absolutely it has progressed. I was chatting with a guy I just went to warrior path path with, uh, he works for an agency over in East Texas and they are contracted with a, uh, a group of counselors where.
Chuck LaFLange (27:18.255)
Yeah.
Chuck LaFLange (27:30.327)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Robert Greer (27:46.832)
you just go and they send the bill to the agency. They don't tell the agency why they don't hide the information from you. The way that it was with me, if I wanted to go and see the shrink, the agency paid for it. I didn't get a copy of the report because I wasn't the client. The agency was right. And so it wasn't very conducive to me going to seek and help. So I sought help on my own with, um,
Chuck LaFLange (28:05.047)
Oh. Oh.
Robert Greer (28:17.114)
with my own counselor out of my pocket, right, instead of going to the agency. But it's.
Chuck LaFLange (28:23.415)
And as a public servant, first responder, that is insane. That would even be an option to come out of your pocket. And yeah, I'm glad to hear that it's evolved. I'm really glad to hear that it's evolved. Yeah, yeah.
Robert Greer (28:28.976)
It is.
Robert Greer (28:36.72)
Now I can't say that for everywhere in Louisiana, but there's agencies all across that it is evolving. Like I said, my buddy has the agency he works for, it's a separate entity from the agency. They send the agency a bill that somebody received services. They don't say for what. Now, of course, if there's a threat to life, you know, they have to deal with it or a crime committed, et cetera. But true. Right.
Chuck LaFLange (28:57.655)
But that's across the board. That's just the medical profession in general, right? So, yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Robert Greer (29:05.168)
But it has evolved, but it has to evolve from the top down, right? It can evolve from the bottom up. The agency heads have to be the leaders in that. The agency heads have to be the ones that say, look, man, I've been in law enforcement for 40 years. I have troubles. I have nightmares. I've had, I've dealt with alcoholism. You know, I've dealt with this and I go see this person and these are the things that I do for mental health wellness. The agency that I worked for, I love those folks to death. The sheriff just retired.
Chuck LaFLange (29:09.303)
Yeah.
Chuck LaFLange (29:19.159)
you
Robert Greer (29:33.872)
It's got 51 years in law enforcement, 51 years. Now you can imagine dating back 50 years, you know, this, the stuff that we're talking about right now isn't stuff that would be openly talked about, right?
Chuck LaFLange (29:37.063)
Oof.
Chuck LaFLange (29:43.843)
No, no, not at all. Of course not. Yeah. Yeah. No, no, no. Yeah.
Robert Greer (29:50.384)
So of course the perception, you know, if this guy he's bulletproof, you know, I got to be like this guy, you know, but what does he really like? Is, is he somebody that does struggle with these things? And what does he do to alleviate that? And there were other people in my law enforcement career. Um, the Bossier city marshal, Johnny Wyatt, he has passed on now he is, he was marshal for a long time. He was very open about sobriety. He was very open about his struggles early on in his career.
And looking back, I wish I had set and really talked to that man. I really do. He was just a lion. He was a rock. Um, but he had, you know, the right mindset. So, you know, it changes and it evolves.
Chuck LaFLange (30:21.847)
Yeah.
you
Chuck LaFLange (30:30.903)
Of course it does, of course it does, right. So, okay, let's get to it here. Where is enough enough, man? Tell me what happens, you know, the transition from that to recovery, right? And it's often that's not a straight line or even a clear line, but do your best, right?
Robert Greer (30:50.176)
Yeah. And you know, I go, this is trust me, the reader's digest version of all this. Uh, there was so much more that happened in my career. So many traumatic events personally, professionally. Um, and you know, I talk about that on the podcast that we do, but you know, I'm open about it because it helps others. But the short version, I'm stubborn. I rode that to the bitter end. I kept getting in trouble. Uh, my.
Chuck LaFLange (30:55.855)
Yeah.
Chuck LaFLange (31:10.871)
you
Robert Greer (31:16.304)
substance use was affecting my mental health and my mental health was affecting my ability to do my job. I kept getting in trouble and it got to the point where they didn't know what the hell to do with me because I wasn't admitting I had an issue. And there at the end, I spent eight months on paid administrative leave while they were trying to figure out what to do with me. They were sending me to their shrink and I'm just arrogant, self -righteous, you know, I'm blaming everybody else for my problems and not me.
Chuck LaFLange (31:25.979)
Cool.
Chuck LaFLange (31:37.067)
you
Robert Greer (31:46.704)
uh...
I get the opportunity to get a second opinion from my own psychologist and my counselor and they diagnosed me with PTS, but I didn't accept it. You know, and I wasn't honest about how much I was drinking in the pill use. I wasn't honest about any of that. So it became a difference in opinion between their professionals and mine. And they had no choice but to fire me. Now in Louisiana, it's a right to work state. Deputy sheriffs are fired at will. There's no
There's no civil service for deputy sheriffs. There's no union. It's a job and they can fire you for whatever they want. Yeah. Minor policy violations are major and I'm not blaming it now. Let me say this. I want to be clear about this. Initially, I did blame them for everything, but looking back, working the steps, I saw where I had everything to do in that resentment. Um, but that's later on, uh, but they had no choice, but to terminate my employer.
Chuck LaFLange (32:25.727)
Wow.
Chuck LaFLange (32:42.807)
you
Robert Greer (32:48.176)
January, 2018. And they advised me to apply for a disability through the sheriff's pension relief fund or retirement system. And I was able to do that. We were in a bankruptcy at the time. Um, and I couldn't afford to make the bankruptcy notes. So I just lost my, my career and I had to surrender the house in July of 18. Everything that I had ever worked for pretty much was now gone. Right. So.
Chuck LaFLange (33:00.803)
Mmm. Mmm.
Robert Greer (33:17.008)
Career's gone, house is gone. We moved two hours south back to where we grew up and lived with her parents. We had three kids. My family was a mess. I was a mess, but I wasn't tapped out yet. Right? Things kept going. My son, I'd gotten in a fight with him one morning and because of that, I was in the wrong. But because of that, he went to school, got himself expelled. My oldest daughter at the age of 13,
Chuck LaFLange (33:25.815)
No.
Robert Greer (33:46.096)
Life was such a shit show. She attempted to take her own life. Um, my baby girl was just terrified of me, you know, and all my friends were gone. I pushed them all out of my life. Uh, I was getting on everybody's nerves. I was drinking heavily. I was taking a lot of pills and at this time I was on the marijuana maintenance program. You know, I was smoking a lot of weed and it all came to a head, uh, July 4th of 20.
Chuck LaFLange (34:06.519)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Robert Greer (34:15.408)
Uh, the wife had been, uh, upset with me. We weren't making any progress. I was spiraling hard, even though I was looking for help and that was it. She was done. She asked me to leave. And, uh, I went and moved into a buddy of mine's house after he had just moved out, moved into a new place. And I'm sleeping on a mattress on the floor of his old house. You know, I'm going to be a handyman while I'm renting it, right. And, and kind of fix the place up.
very grateful to him for that, but it was a bad situation. Made it about a month looking at retreats and stuff like that to put a bandaid on the problem, thinking I could fix this on my own. Right. And, uh, I couldn't, you know, in fact, with this computer, I was, I had looked into, um, the first responder support network, West coast post trauma retreat for cops, a two week retreat to deal with PTS and whatnot. And they want you to be sober.
So I'm doing their online meetings on Wednesday night. And while I'm doing the meetings, I got a big mug of beer behind the computer. I'll lean over, take a drink and lean back. I wasn't taking anything serious. August, no, July 31st, I made a very long drunken Facebook post that I thought was somewhat poetic, but whatever. The next morning, the wife had...
Chuck LaFLange (35:37.015)
Yeah.
Robert Greer (35:40.144)
had looked at it and she sent me an email saying she was in fear for her safety. She was going no contact with me and filing for divorce. Dude, that was the worst day of my life, August 1st of 20. And I flipped out, you know, but fortunately that night I'm sitting there and look, there had been multiple times when I had the pistol in one hand and, you know, beer in the other, just daring myself to do it. Uh, and that night though,
Chuck LaFLange (35:54.359)
to me.
Robert Greer (36:10.594)
Instead of pulling the trigger, I picked up the heaviest object in the world at that time in life, the telephone, right? I picked up that phone and I started making calls and looking for treatment centers. And I had been listening to a podcast called, uh, friends in recovery. It was, uh, I don't know if you've ever heard of it, but it's, uh, the one of the hosts, Mike, he's a, uh, he was retired cop turned clinician.
Chuck LaFLange (36:18.071)
Yeah, yeah.
Chuck LaFLange (36:29.535)
Okay.
I haven't.
Robert Greer (36:39.756)
And his buddy Jersey Ed, a long time drug addict and had gotten sober and they started this podcast. They were sponsored by a group down in Florida called the Genesis House. It's a 30 day retreat for cops. And okay, that was the first people I called and they needed 10 grand and I was like 40 grand short. That math just don't work. Right. And just, you know, by the grace of God, they referred me to this person who referred me to that person who referred me to warrior's heart.
Chuck LaFLange (36:50.071)
Okay.
Robert Greer (37:10.192)
And I looked at warrior's heart and I'm like, man, this is for military and I don't know. It's for first responders too. Well, I don't have insurance because I was fired without insurance. My pension is very small. I didn't have any resources whatsoever. And fortunately, uh, I made application to the foundation. I was able to go to warrior's heart and checked in on scholarship. Now I did have to pay some.
Chuck LaFLange (37:10.327)
Okay, okay.
Chuck LaFLange (37:21.303)
Mm -hmm.
Chuck LaFLange (37:33.207)
on scholarship.
Robert Greer (37:37.456)
But I was willing at that point, you know, we talk about willingness and AA, right? We talk about knowing that when life is unmanageable at that point in my life, I had finally tapped out life was unmanageable. I was done. I had nothing left. Everything that I'd ever cared about was fucking gone. You know, everything I was at odds with most of my family. None of my friends wanted to talk to me. My career was gone. My house is gone. My possessions were gone. Now my family's gone. You know, so.
Chuck LaFLange (37:41.559)
Yeah. Yeah.
Chuck LaFLange (37:54.217)
Wow. Wow.
Chuck LaFLange (38:05.655)
No kidding. No kidding.
Robert Greer (38:07.376)
I was willing to do whatever it took. You know, I started to go fund me applied for foundations and I did whatever it took. So that's that's when it started.
Chuck LaFLange (38:14.903)
Yeah, yeah. That's crazy. This isn't my story, so we're not going to get right into it, Rob. But I'm in Thailand because I came to a trauma treatment center here called Yatra. Mike Miller, who's 20 years clean, it was the first time on my show, was his 20 year sober date, actually. He's a devout 12 step, I should say devout, he's a 12 stepper, and he's probably the most knowledgeable person I've ever met when it comes to the program.
Robert Greer (38:28.046)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.
Chuck LaFLange (38:46.049)
He came on the show. We did the episode. And at this point, I'm like four, four, five months I've got under my belt. He came on. We did the episode about trauma specifically. I hit stop record and he went, you have some shit you need to deal with. And he offered me a scholarship to come to Yatra here in Thailand. And so begins my healing journey, like the real healing journey, right? Up until that point, I've got the show. I'm living recovery for four months. I think I got things dialed in, but I don't, I'm a hot mess.
Robert Greer (39:05.168)
Oh wow.
Chuck LaFLange (39:16.183)
You know, my trauma is very different in years. It's on the other side of the law. Some of the things I experienced in the last couple of months, a couple of years of my active addiction, right? But it's horrible. But yeah, that scholarship, that help just meant so much, right? And well, once I was here, I just, why go home? It's so much like, it's so much less expensive to live here and it's beautiful. It's a paradise, right? So that's why I stayed. But I just, I found that kind of cool. Warrior's Heart.
Tell me about Warrior's Heart. Actually, you mentioned the podcast first. Let's talk about that right away. And then let's talk about Warrior's Heart. So your podcast, what's that called? Tell us a bit about that.
Robert Greer (39:56.24)
It is called the HOSPY chicken feed podcast.
Chuck LaFLange (40:01.079)
High -speed chicken feed podcast. I saw something about that on your Facebook, but I wasn't sure what that was all about. Now it all makes more sense to me. Okay, okay, so high -speed chicken feed. Yes. Okay, okay.
Robert Greer (40:04.334)
Yes.
Robert Greer (40:10.352)
And you can, yeah, and you can kind of see the, uh, the outline of the logo there. Now that wasn't something that was immediate and that was not my brainchild. Uh, one of the guys I went to treatment with at warriors heart seems Kyle Miller, uh, I don't know, is a year, year and a half after we left, uh, that he hit me up and said, Hey man, we're doing a podcast. Come tell your story. And that morphed into.
Chuck LaFLange (40:16.535)
Yeah. Yeah.
Robert Greer (40:35.92)
Uh, me being one of the co -hosts, cause the other guy he was doing it with, you know, one of our friends from, um, from treatment, he just wasn't able to stay sober during that timeframe. Uh, so it morphed into me and Kyle, you know, kind of doing it. Uh, now the name, okay. So the name, yeah. High -speed chicken feed. Yeah. Uh, in some circles, that is a derogatory terminology for methamphetamine, right? It's that high speed chicken feed, baby. You never heard that. Yeah.
Chuck LaFLange (40:38.263)
Okay.
Chuck LaFLange (40:51.893)
Yeah, let's.
Chuck LaFLange (40:59.927)
Oh, okay, I've never heard that one before. It makes perfect sense now that you say it. Yeah, yeah, right, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Robert Greer (41:05.584)
I guess it depends on what part of the country you're from or what country, as it were. But in this area, the high -speed ticket fee, baby, that's a good myth, right? Which was Kyle's DOC.
Chuck LaFLange (41:11.063)
Yeah. Yeah.
Chuck LaFLange (41:16.983)
That makes perfect sense. How about you say it, right? Continue though.
Robert Greer (41:22.544)
And, and yeah, well, that was not only Kyle's DOC, but, uh, drug of choice, but, uh, and what tore him down, but, you know, growing up where he grew up, you know, a lot of, uh, cock fighting, you know, the rooster fight and, you sometimes they would give those, those roosters a little bit of meth, you know, to, uh, to, yeah, to, to make them, uh, fight a little bit better, a little harder, you know, I mean,
Chuck LaFLange (41:36.695)
Okay. Okay.
Chuck LaFLange (41:41.589)
Really?
Chuck LaFLange (41:46.487)
That's crazy. My next door neighbor has fighting cocks, fighting chickens actually. This fucking rooster's waking me up every fricking morning, let me tell you about it. Anyway, I can't get into it. He invited me to the fights. I was like, man, I know it's never gonna happen. I'm not gonna bring my Western shit here to your country, but no, I'm not gonna go to a chicken fight. It's not gonna happen. Anyway, so continue, continue though. So.
Robert Greer (42:00.88)
Yeah.
Robert Greer (42:12.016)
So yeah, it started with that. They had the name, had the image, and basically it's, in short, the way we describe it is about our lives of service, how that service broke us and how it came back from that brokenness. And it's a podcast for the military and first responder community. Those who have lived a life of service and then ended up just being broken from it. We're kind of long format. We tell...
Chuck LaFLange (42:35.255)
kidding.
Robert Greer (42:39.792)
our stories and kind of like what we were talking about earlier, we concentrate, I mean, it's long format, so we get a little bit more in depth, but we talk about our life of service to kind of qualify ourselves for our audience to let them know, hey, you know, we've been there, we've done the same shit that you've done. You're not that different. You don't have that terminal uniqueness. It gets everybody, we can't come back from it. We tell that part of our story and then we talk a lot about what works in recovery, talk a lot about how we got to recovery.
what that recovery looked like in life after recovery, what keeps us sober. And everybody seems to have a little bit something different, uh, for that, uh, for that healing modality, whether it be acting, whether it be motocross racing, whether it be doing podcasts, you know, everybody has something a little different. Uh, and we've, we've, we've told a lot of stories, you know, we're, we've only been in it a couple of years now and we will record a batch of episodes, uh,
Chuck LaFLange (43:08.311)
Right, right, yes.
Chuck LaFLange (43:27.191)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Robert Greer (43:38.032)
for a few months and then edit and push them out and take a few months off. Cause we have full time jobs, you know, families and whatnot. And then we'll come back and do it again. And when at the end right now of a big batch of episodes that we're recording, we're about to edit and push them out during the summer months. But yeah, it's, it's been a good ride.
Chuck LaFLange (43:44.407)
Yeah. Yeah, of course.
Chuck LaFLange (43:57.015)
And for anybody that's listening, if you check out our Facebook page, I just now shared the high -speed chicken feed out to the Ashes to Awesome, so make sure that you check them out. Of course, there'll be some more in the show notes as well. But yeah, that's awesome, man. That's awesome. Yeah, yeah, no, no, by all means. And the thing is, is there's this community, and I'll speak to this real quick, and maybe it's something that you've become familiar with. Well, I'm sure you have, but the online recovery content creation community.
Robert Greer (44:11.546)
I appreciate that.
Chuck LaFLange (44:27.383)
is massive and unbelievable. We're at a place now, or my show after a year, where I have heavy involvement with other people, and I'm a little bit different because I started the podcast and that's all I've done since I started it. That's been my, I've eaten mayo sandwiches, it's been a rough go for the first while, but this is what I do for a living now.
Robert Greer (44:29.104)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.
Robert Greer (44:43.088)
Mm -hmm.
Chuck LaFLange (44:53.983)
wherever you are in the world, it really doesn't matter. Whatever part of the US, Canada, South Africa, Thailand, Australia, Ireland, these are all places that have helped people find help because of the online content creators, right? These people that are, it has changed the game in the coolest way, right? So, and now that you and I are talking, Robert, there's like, now you're gonna be part of this whole little thing where you just, your thing gets pushed out because it's like, people are beautiful, man. It's one of the coolest things to me is, is,
is that social media can be toxic in so many ways, but it can be awesome in so many ways as well, right? So how often do you represent? Are they released with any sort of regular schedule? Or... No, no, okay.
Robert Greer (45:37.36)
Not a regular schedule though. What we'll do is most of our stories are like a three hour story. So we'll bust it up into two episodes and we'll push out like, like say Monday, we'll release part one of one guy's episode. Then the following week we'll release part two. And then the week after we'll do part one of the next guy. We may have six or eight guys that we, that we interview. So that's what 16 roughly different episodes that we'll push out for a few months.
Chuck LaFLange (45:44.469)
Okay. Yeah.
Robert Greer (46:07.408)
and then take some time off. Yeah.
Chuck LaFLange (46:07.863)
Yeah, yeah, fair enough, okay, okay, okay, I see, I see.
Robert Greer (46:12.08)
Yeah. And, and they, they go with different links to, we recently interviewed Tom Spooner. Tom Spooner, uh, is one of the co -founders of warrior's heart, but he was also in Delta for 20 years, you know, uh, Delta force. Well, I say, I say he was in Delta force when he was in the military for 20 years, but he was also part of Delta did some really hardcore stuff. But the more interesting thing about Tom is he's got 35 years of sobriety and everybody wants him to tell war stories. And then.
Chuck LaFLange (46:25.719)
OHHHH
Robert Greer (46:41.744)
He spoke to us for five hours and in five hours he didn't put down that big book. And he talked about sobriety almost for five hours, you know, about recovery for five hours. Yeah. And it was some really good stuff, you know, but in the military community, in the military world, Tom's the man. And not just because of what he did in the past, but because of warrior's heart, because of his YouTube videos, everything else. Uh, but he's a humble guy, you know, so that episode, we may have to split up into three parts, you know, cause it was five hours.
Chuck LaFLange (46:50.199)
No kidding, eh? No kidding, yeah. Yeah.
Chuck LaFLange (47:10.967)
Yeah, my rule has always been the recording stops when the content stops being engaging. So if you can keep me going, if you can keep my attention for five hours, we'll do five hours and we'll put it in as many episodes as we need to, right? That's kind of my rule about the whole thing, right? I mean, yeah, anyway. Warrior's Heart, let's talk about that, your experience here, right? Yeah.
Robert Greer (47:21.008)
Yeah.
Robert Greer (47:33.456)
Absolutely. Uh, and I will give you a tie in in a minute with, if you remind me with the podcast and what I do now for warrior's heart. Gotcha. I will, I will try to come back to it and tell you how it all ties together, but it's a beautiful story, right? You know, at West 11 step, we, uh, sought to improve our conscious contact with our heart power, praying only for his will for our life and the power to carry that out. Right. So.
Chuck LaFLange (47:39.543)
I'm a reminde, I'm not a reminder. Let's get that established in this relationship right now. Okay.
Chuck LaFLange (47:50.071)
All right. Yeah.
Chuck LaFLange (47:54.839)
you
Robert Greer (48:00.656)
from early on when I was at Warrior's Heart, I prayed for his will for my life and the power to carry that out. And how it all ties together is an interesting, beautiful story. But yeah, Warrior's Heart, right? It's not your average rehab, you know, and I'm not giving you the sales pitch. I'm giving you the, hey, I went there pitch, right? It's for the military and first responder community exclusively.
Chuck LaFLange (48:11.095)
you
Chuck LaFLange (48:20.343)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Robert Greer (48:26.768)
You know, and I'm sorry for those that we exclude, but you know, I may be sitting around telling stories about things that I've seen and done that makes most people have a traumatic experience just hearing the damn stories, you know, same thing with a lot of the other military guys, you know, uh, some people will go into treatment because, you know, they had a bad breakup marriage, bad car wreck, and other guys are coming into treatment, say, man, I burned a kid in combat. You know, I had to kill 15 kids or, you know, whatever.
Chuck LaFLange (48:51.041)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.
Robert Greer (48:55.504)
So it's, it's a different type of environment. Not only that people like us, we don't feel like we can open up to somebody unless they've been there. They've done that, you know, and how many people have done what we've done? Uh, we're a very stubborn community. You know, we have that terminal uniqueness pretty bad. So this place was created for that warrior community, for the military and first responders. Um, and I was so very blessed to go there. Uh,
Chuck LaFLange (49:07.447)
Yeah.
Chuck LaFLange (49:21.431)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Robert Greer (49:25.456)
We're here in Bandera, Texas, which is near San Antonio, the Texas Hill country. It's, it used to be a resort, a corporate retreat for a big oil company. Uh, so it's not a lockdown environment. It's not a psych unit or anything like that. I mean, it's a beautiful place, but a six week inpatient and it's dual diagnosis. You know, we handle the, uh, the substance abuse while we're also dealing with our traumas. And that was the first place I ever admitted that I had PTS.
Chuck LaFLange (49:30.039)
Yeah.
Chuck LaFLange (49:36.437)
Okay. Okay.
Robert Greer (49:55.152)
Right. Uh, in my opinion, at that time, I wasn't a combat vet. I wasn't a soldier at all. I was just a cop. I had bad days. PTS was for those guys who were overseas, you know, killing lots of people. And, you know, that's just the way that I viewed it. And then I'm sitting around the fire pit, you know, smoking cigars with the guys and there's seals, there's Marines, there's, you know, all these hard chargers and I'm
Chuck LaFLange (50:10.999)
Yeah, yeah, right, no, no. Mm -hmm.
Robert Greer (50:24.944)
they encouraged me to open up and, you know, I'm talking to them about some of the things that I've told you and a lot of other stuff. And they're like, dude, there's no way I could do what you did. And I'm like, hold up. You know, that's, I'm supposed to be saying that to you, dude. You were in combat and stuff with the kids, man, all this other. No, you were a cop 24 seven, you know, for 16. Yeah. There. That's when I really accepted, you know, the
Chuck LaFLange (50:31.735)
Yeah.
Chuck LaFLange (50:35.415)
Right. Right.
Robert Greer (50:52.08)
the diagnosis of PTS and really acknowledge the trauma. And that's the only way you're going to heal from any of that shit is to really accept it, own it, and then start to wage your way through it. But some of the, uh, we call it training rather than treatment, but some of the trainings they do, there's very specific, uh, for example, the lifeline. Now a minute ago we were talking about how, you know, I was real specific with when my addiction started and how it started.
A lot of that is due to the Lifeline project. We get assigned that when we first get there and halfway through we present it to our small group. It's a long butcher sheet of paper that they give you. On one side is your positive core values, positive people in your life, and the others are negative core values, negative people. And you go through from birth till now of positives and negatives. And I can see, absolutely, you're supposed to be on both sides of that list.
Chuck LaFLange (51:43.127)
Can a person be on both sides of that list?
Okay. No, no, I meant like if, yes. Yes, okay, okay, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Robert Greer (51:48.24)
or people in your life. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, because there's positive qualities to and negative qualities just about everybody, you know, my parents. My parents loved me very much growing up, but were there some things going on that weren't great? Yeah, looking back.
Chuck LaFLange (51:59.063)
Of course, right? Yeah. Yeah.
Chuck LaFLange (52:07.159)
Which is immediately that reference, I'm glad that you said that, because that is kind of like, that's immediately what I thought, right? Was, you know, in all the traumas, not in all the traumas, often trauma is a result of some things that have happened in your childhood, but there are these parents that you love so much who you want to defend, and you have a really hard time acknowledging that maybe there was something that happened there, right? So that's why I asked if they could be on both sides of that, right? But continue, please, continue. Yeah.
Robert Greer (52:36.29)
Absolutely. And, you later on we learned about, you know, adverse childhood experiences and how all that played into it, which is why they go back to birth. Right. And those things kind of set the stage for all that. But going through all that, going through the lifeline, I was able to see exactly where things got off track. I was able to list those major events in my life. And by 2006, I saw that shift. And by 2015, that wasn't a damn thing. Positive. It was all negative.
Chuck LaFLange (53:05.335)
Yeah.
Robert Greer (53:05.424)
You know, I could not find any positives from 2015 until 2020 when I got the treatment, you know? And for the way that my brain works and a lot of other people, if I can understand where and how it broke, I can begin to fix it. I begin, I can begin to put it back together in some way or another.
Chuck LaFLange (53:12.311)
No kidding. Wow.
Chuck LaFLange (53:24.279)
That math checks out.
Robert Greer (53:27.536)
So yeah, there's, there's, you know, that's one of the big projects. There's a lot of other projects that they do, but they also have a lot of other healing modalities too, man. Stuff that I had never really dabbled in before and, but kind of wanted to like art, right? Art therapy. And I'm not talking about finger painting and macaroni art or some bullshit like that, right? I mean, we do sculpting, pottery work, airbrush, watercolor, oil -based, pour paintings.
Chuck LaFLange (53:44.151)
Yeah.
Robert Greer (53:55.856)
whatever you can think of. And I don't have them with me there in my office, but I did some paintings that were dynamic to me when I came into Warrior's Heart. The image in my head, the attitude that I had was from a Metallica song, right? I believe it was the Unforgiven Three. Yeah, the Unforgiven Three and the lyrics of it, but one part in particular where he's saying,
Chuck LaFLange (54:12.087)
find that one.
Chuck LaFLange (54:18.199)
Oh, Metallica song. Sorry, I misheard you. I thought you said Motallica. I was like, what the fuck is that? Okay, no, of course, unforgiven. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, yeah.
Robert Greer (54:22.)
Ah, yeah.
And in the unforgiven three, he's saying, forgive me, forgive me, not forgive me, forgive me, not why can't I forgive me? And I could not forgive myself for failing those kids. I mean, I had a stack of cases of kids that I'd rescued people I put in jail, but I had a smaller stack of kids that I could not put the perpetrator in jail. One in particular blame me personally, you know, after she attempted suicide, and I just could not let go of that shit. And I could not forgive myself. Right. And the.
image in my head, which I was able to put on a canvas was of a revolver, a six cylinder revolver with an empty chamber around an empty chamber around kind of like Russian roulette, but forgive me, forgive me not the empty chamber was forgive me not the round was forgive me. That was the, what was playing through my head, right? So pull the trigger. If it doesn't go off, oh man, I'm not forgiven. Pull the trigger. It goes off. I'm forgiven, right?
Now, it was a black background. It was, but that's what we come in with sometimes, right?
Chuck LaFLange (55:26.039)
That is some messed up way of thinking, man. Hey, right light.
Chuck LaFLange (55:32.823)
I get it, I get it, I get it, yeah.
Robert Greer (55:34.864)
and had red blood splatters or red splatters on it like blood, right? Now, I'm not an artist, but Dan, the art instructor there helped me put that onto canvas because that was what was going on in my mind. Now, when I left there, I was able to do a second one. And while I was still there going through treatment, but when I left, the new version of me was a lighter background. It had lyrics from a song called Tear by the Red Hot Chili Peppers about loving living life.
Chuck LaFLange (56:04.093)
Yeah.
Robert Greer (56:04.14)
it was reversed the revolver was reversed to or the cylinder was reversed to where the Empty cylinder was forgive me and the round was forgive me not right? So it was that shift in the way that I was thinking at the time. That's just one of the Electives that I was able to take and there's so many there's wood shop metal shop. There's fishing cooking the canine program We talked a minute ago about the canine program
Chuck LaFLange (56:15.639)
Yeah.
you
Chuck LaFLange (56:31.531)
Yeah, I want to know about that. Right? Is that something that you got into? Yeah? Okay, let's talk about that. Yeah. Yeah.
Robert Greer (56:33.776)
Well, I'll go ahead and jump into that. It is. I had a dog. Let's talk about that. I in 2018, November of 18, my wife, now ex -wife got me a dog. Uh, and I raised her up as a puppy from a puppy and she was supposed to be my service dog. And I was working on trying to get, getting her trained when I had to go to treatment or when I got to go to treatment, I should say, um,
And it's like a bad country song, right? I lost the house, lost the family and lost the dog, right? She didn't take her, but I felt it was best to, to let her, the dog stay with the family. Uh, but when I got to a treatment, um, I applied to be in the, uh, canine program and on the very first nature hike, I met baby. Uh, she is an 85 pound bulldog, a mix between American standard bulldog and blue pit bull.
Chuck LaFLange (57:04.073)
Yeah. Yeah.
Robert Greer (57:31.504)
And she was just happy to see me and I was able to train her up to be a service dog for me. I was able to work with her and I was able to apply to foundations to be able to pay for her because unfortunately they're not free. So but she is a full service dog and she is a beautiful girl. Now I'm going to move my camera a little bit for the video. You see that picture on the wall.
Chuck LaFLange (57:31.767)
Okay.
Chuck LaFLange (57:38.295)
Mm -hmm.
Chuck LaFLange (57:50.791)
Aww. Aww, I wanna see it. Yeah, I do. Yeah, I do. Yeah. Aww.
Robert Greer (57:56.922)
That's one of the pictures that one of the executive directors took of me and her laying down on the grass deer and treatment, waiting for somebody. I don't know. And let's see, that's her snort on the couch right there. Hey baby.
Chuck LaFLange (58:07.895)
Oh, she is baby. Ah, what a doll.
Robert Greer (58:13.486)
Baby. Yeah, she ain't even going to get up. She's a lazy bulldog. So she's snoozing on the couch there, but.
Chuck LaFLange (58:18.263)
That's awesome. Oh, I love me a dog. There's there's few greater privileges than to have been loved by a dog. All right, you know, oh man, man. Yeah, right. So anyway, so how does that work? They assign you a dog. You something you have to figure out. Like, tell me a bit more about that at Warriors Heart because we do want to talk about Warriors Heart. So yeah.
Robert Greer (58:25.392)
Ain't that the truth?
Robert Greer (58:40.368)
Well, they get dogs from various places. Some are surrendered. Some are from the vet. Some are, you know, from kill shelters and they're not all purebreds like you would think, but they're all vetted. We also get a lot of dogs from their TSA washouts or retired military service dogs, transportation security administration. So they'll TSA will get a bunch of dogs and try to have them trained up for bomb sniffing, drug sniffing for airport security.
Chuck LaFLange (58:44.631)
you
Chuck LaFLange (58:57.143)
CSA.
Chuck LaFLange (59:01.079)
Okay. Yeah.
Robert Greer (59:09.488)
They don't make it. We evaluate them. They're excellent for emotional support or service dogs and other dogs that are donated through the community. We evaluate them and some of them are just excellent dogs for ESA or for full service. Baby was donated by somebody here locally and she was deemed to be an excellent candidate for a service dog. And
Chuck LaFLange (59:32.407)
That is so awesome. That is awesome. Yeah.
Robert Greer (59:34.896)
Now, when you're there, if there's a dog that nobody's working with, you can make application to, you know, train with that dog. And baby had worked with a couple of other warriors who were unable to take her home for finance reasons or whatever other reason, clinical denial. Um, so I was able to start working with her and we, we bonded like that, man. I mean, she was just fantastic. Uh,
Chuck LaFLange (59:56.919)
When you know, you know, right? Yeah. Yeah.
Robert Greer (01:00:00.656)
She was, she's one of these dogs that likes to jump up and kiss on the face, but she's an 85 pound bulldog. So initially I'm terrified. Is she tearing my throat out or what? No, she was just happy to see me. Right.
Chuck LaFLange (01:00:05.719)
Okay. She doesn't know she's an 85 pound bulldog. She just wants to love.
Robert Greer (01:00:17.072)
She thinks she's a lap dog. You know, you'll see pictures of her on our Facebook pages. You know, she thinks she's a lap dog, but she's she has been tremendous in an early recovery, man. She went everywhere with me. She helped ground me. She helped keep me normal. She was trained to mitigate anger issues because at that time in my life, I had explosive anger two or three days a week, man. I was just in one of those. I'd wake up in a mood due to the antidepressant I was on in the substances to where.
Chuck LaFLange (01:00:33.687)
Yeah.
Robert Greer (01:00:46.326)
Everybody had to be on eggshells around me and because the slightest thing I would fly into an absolute lunatic fucking rage She was trained to help mitigate that as well as the negative sad emotions, but one of her
Chuck LaFLange (01:00:57.847)
How does she do that? How does she do that?
Robert Greer (01:01:00.496)
So she hasn't really, fortunately hasn't really ever had to mitigate the anger emotions. Right. But what I trained her to do was when I'm just in that rage, I'm pacing back and forth. I'm amped up my Fincher Cliffs. I'm ready to, you know, whoop somebody's ass. Uh, she's was trained to recognize that and jump and kick me in the chest. Right. To get my attention. Yeah. I trained her to do that. And that gets me focused on her as opposed to whoever's ass I'm about to wolf. Right.
Chuck LaFLange (01:01:21.719)
Really? Okay, okay.
Robert Greer (01:01:30.32)
Now at that time I was about 50 pounds heavier and I had this long beard, you know, this stay the fuck away from me look on my face all the time. Right. And she was trained to recognize that and to jump and kick me in the chest. Uh, and then with the negative emotion, you know, they can smell the pheromones. They get in all up in your face. They lick. Yeah, they know they want to cuddle with you, but surprisingly one of her best functions, and this is completely untrained is.
Chuck LaFLange (01:01:30.487)
Yeah. Yeah.
Chuck LaFLange (01:01:38.997)
Yeah.
Chuck LaFLange (01:01:45.847)
you
Oh, they know, they know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Robert Greer (01:01:59.92)
she helps me open up, right? I would stay closed off. I wouldn't talk to anybody, but I would go into a store, Walmart or whatever, and people see her and they want to engage with her. Now, you know, the vest, you're not supposed to, but if you ask, right, then maybe the owner will let you pet her. People would say, Oh my God, that's a beautiful dog. Tell me about your service. Tell me about her. Initially. I'm like, leave me alone. She's working, you know, whatever. But as time progressed, as I began to heal,
Chuck LaFLange (01:02:16.151)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Robert Greer (01:02:30.266)
people wanted to talk to her and by default talk to me. And next thing you know, I'm having beautiful conversations with people about recovery, about life, about service, about whatever. So her untrained function is helping me open up to people, you know, just not being an asshole anymore.
Chuck LaFLange (01:02:45.751)
I'm gonna draw up, I'm gonna do another parallel to you here, because I'd like to do that. Sunny, my dog here, my rescue. I'm in a country where I don't speak the language. I don't really know anybody. I know some people that are at the treatment center still, but about lives, you know, full -time, whatever. I'm in a place where grocery shopping can be extremely isolating. Because you can't read anything, you can't like, you know, every, everything's a little hard.
Robert Greer (01:03:08.4)
Oh yeah.
Chuck LaFLange (01:03:11.445)
harder than it has to be. And meeting people, I don't know who speaks English, who doesn't speak English. I'm just another Farang, a foreigner, as they call him here, right? But Sonny, Sonny gets, everybody wants to say hi to Sonny. Everybody wants to, and the kids want to come say hi. They see him in his sidecar. He's like, he's, they all think I'm crazy, right? They all, the neighbors think I'm crazy. But the amount of friendships I have made because of that dog would just blow your mind.
Robert Greer (01:03:34.736)
I love it.
Chuck LaFLange (01:03:40.983)
Right? When we're driving now in the neighborhood, like in my part of the city here, all the time, honk, honk, hello people, thumbs up. They just, they absolutely love it. He has given me more opportunity to connect than any other thing in my life. Right? So I can totally appreciate what you're saying. That untrained function is just like, wow, man, what a great side effect. Right? What a great side effect indeed. You know? Yeah. Yeah.
Robert Greer (01:03:41.166)
Yeah.
Robert Greer (01:04:04.656)
It is. And at that time in my life, man, before I went to treatment, I had this big beard that was part of my mask that stay the fuck away from me mask. I had this angry scowl in my face all the time. I walked around with my sleeves cut off of my t -shirt. I was big bowed up at the time and I was ready to fight anybody. And every, I mean, it's like you look at me and say, you know, the hell with that guy. I'm not going to talk to him. Right.
Chuck LaFLange (01:04:16.311)
Yeah.
Chuck LaFLange (01:04:27.639)
you
Robert Greer (01:04:31.696)
As I progressed in treatment, one of the things that they said was smile, even when you don't want to smile. And it took a lot of work, right? So that combined with having her with me helped me to have more positive engagements. Yeah. And.
Chuck LaFLange (01:04:43.255)
I totally see it. 100 % of course it does. Yes. Oh, I love that. That makes my heart happy. Yeah.
Robert Greer (01:04:48.91)
and
And suddenly the world wasn't such a shitty place anymore, right? Everybody wasn't an enemy anymore, you know? So...
Chuck LaFLange (01:04:55.319)
Ah, right, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. That's so awesome. We could do a whole episode on the dogs, man. We really could. I just, yeah, yeah. You know what? It got so, so often that people were doing this that now I had a couple signs made for the front and back of his sidecar with Facebook and the QR code. So you can follow, because it was just like everywhere I went, right? Whether it's other foreigners or whether it's locals.
Robert Greer (01:05:15.984)
Mm -hmm.
I love it.
Chuck LaFLange (01:05:25.175)
You know, they just fall in love with them. What other modalities are they offering at Warrior's Heart? Types of therapy, is there EMDR, is there cognitive behavior, I'm sure, right? EMDR for me was the most amazing thing for my trauma. So is that one of the things that they offer there, or is it something you have experience with, right?
Robert Greer (01:05:47.44)
Yes. And with EMDR, let me address that. Then I'll talk about the modalities. EMDR was something I did with my counselor before I went to treatment. Uh, and yes, it is fantastic. Uh, eye movement desensitization, reprocessing, restructuring. Yeah. Um, I always forget the R, but at that time, before I went to treatment at that time, I was having, uh, the horrendous night terrors and nightmares and the recurring nightmare that I would have was from my first fatal shooting.
Chuck LaFLange (01:06:01.121)
Reprocessing. Yep, yeah, reprocessing. Yep, yep.
Robert Greer (01:06:16.848)
I would be squared off. Yeah. I called it the 10 ton trigger pull dream every night. It seemed I'd wake up in a cold sweat because I'm squared off with the suspect and I just cannot pull the trigger on my pistol and either he shoots me or I wake up right before I get shot. I was having that nightmare just nonstop, which is why I was drinking and taking pills to escape that. Right. So I do EMDR with my therapist and a couple of sessions of EMDR with that, maybe one.
I have never had that dream since, and that was probably 10 years ago. Never, never had that dream since.
Chuck LaFLange (01:06:50.871)
Fuck, right? I'll tell you, my first EMDR session, so when, like, Yatra is only trauma, it's what they treat, right? Often it's a result of addiction, and so the addiction is kind of part of it, but it's the only kind of facility of its kind in the world. They're title sponsor on today's episode as well, but they, when you first get there, it's a little while before you get to EMDR and CBT and all that, because there's all sorts of other things. He wants to get you relaxed and in a place where, you know, this stuff is really gonna take hold. My first session with Mike,
Robert Greer (01:07:05.314)
Thank you.
Robert Greer (01:07:10.032)
in a little while before we get to you.
Chuck LaFLange (01:07:21.047)
Um, as you know, the process, I just had to name that first trauma. I didn't actually have to speak it out. I just, you know, like they do that, you know how it works. Writing the name down and I call it hostage. I melted down completely, completely right. Cause now it's fresh in my mind, completely melt down. 20, 25 minutes later, I've done the session with them. I looked at Mike and I said, fuck you, Mike.
Robert Greer (01:07:27.952)
Mm -hmm.
Chuck LaFLange (01:07:50.583)
because all of a sudden I could talk about it. Like it was a trip to 7 -Eleven. It was just like, what have you done? And it was just this feeling, and I'm sure just what you just described, this weight, this like, oh my, right? And then we start ticking shit off. It was like, okay, make a list. Okay, well, here's some stuff that we're gonna, what an amazing thing that is, right? And yeah, yeah, so. Okay.
Robert Greer (01:08:17.826)
That's fantastic. Now...
Chuck LaFLange (01:08:19.575)
Yeah, man, it's something else, but yeah.
Robert Greer (01:08:22.448)
Now, some, like I said, that was my most dynamic experience with EMDR. And I've done it with, you know, the nightmares I've had with, you know, the raped kids and whatnot, and some other things. But that was the most dynamic example of EMDR. Now, some of our clinicians at Warriors Heart are certified in that, some are not. Dialectical behavior therapy, cognitive behavior therapy, exposure therapy, talk therapy. That's, you know, there's a whole list. Not just that, but...
The electives, right? The art elective that I told you about so much of what was in my head, I was able to put on a canvas. That's healing in and of itself. The wood shop, same thing, metal shop, right? Here's a quick example of metal shop. Even though it's not typically a therapy, it still is. One of the big projects we do is a tomahawk, Native American artifact, because we're not making weapons and treatment, right? Okay. Let me give that disclaimer. Uh,
Chuck LaFLange (01:09:10.743)
hahahaha
Robert Greer (01:09:18.736)
We're rich in Native American history on our campus, right? So we take this old railroad spike, we heat it up in a forge, and we hammer the head out into the shape of a blade. And of course, the spike goes into the handle, we make this beautiful tomahawk. And the idea behind that is even an old discarded piece of metal that has no value to it, with the right amount of reshaping the heat, the struggle, as it were, can be shaped into something beautiful, which is what we do with people. So.
Chuck LaFLange (01:09:31.223)
Oh
Robert Greer (01:09:49.84)
Right. So even the electives have a therapeutic process behind them. The group therapies that we do, and I'm speaking also from my own experience, not just, okay, I work here, I'm selling this program. When I presented, yeah.
Chuck LaFLange (01:09:50.167)
Yeah, yeah.
Chuck LaFLange (01:10:04.079)
No, no, I understand. They're my sponsor, but I talk about my experience at Yacht. It's the same way that you talk about it. So I completely understand where you're coming from, right? 100%. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Robert Greer (01:10:10.606)
Exactly.
Robert Greer (01:10:15.088)
Right. You know, even when I presented the lifeline, you know, I'm talking about all these things I never wanted to tell anybody about, or I'm going into great detail on juvenile sex crimes with this small group. And how can this possibly help anybody? Well, a quick story about that. Kyle, for example, his daughter was raped and all he could focus on was the suspect. And something I said during that presentation of my lifeline was,
Chuck LaFLange (01:10:25.887)
you
Chuck LaFLange (01:10:38.199)
Right, yeah.
Robert Greer (01:10:44.08)
I would have to tell dads all the time, your baby needs you more than you need vengeance. I know you want to go out and kill this son of bitch, but you need to stay with your baby and heal her. If you go to jail, you can't be there for her. And that just flipped the script for Kyle. And same thing with another buddy of mine who was a victim of child sexual assault. The feedback that they gave me from me telling my story, the disclosure, was healing for me. So it's not just what we do with the therapist, it's what we do in the groups, it's what we do with each other.
Um, you know, when, when everybody comes in, they're assigned a licensed chemical dependency counselor, as well as a trauma therapist. They have two appointments per week with those guys. So that's like four appointments a week times six weeks. That's 24 appointments in that, in that inpatient, uh, timeframe, that six week timeframe. That's a lot. Plus, like I said, the, uh, uh, and the campus itself is great. I'm not going to lie, man. There's, I've heard stories of treatment centers that other people have gone to.
Chuck LaFLange (01:11:14.127)
100%. Yeah.
Robert Greer (01:11:42.672)
And I'm so blessed and fortunate to have been able to go to warrior's heart. I mean, we played pool volleyball almost every damn day. You work out in the gym, run around the track, got canines, got good food, got good people to hang out with, fire pits to smoke cigars around. And what's not the fucking love, right?
Chuck LaFLange (01:12:02.231)
that again.
Chuck LaFLange (01:12:06.177)
paradise experiencing this, right? So very.
Robert Greer (01:12:11.504)
But as far as, I appreciate that, but as far as Warriors Heart, yes, they do have clinicians. It depends on the clinicians that we have available, but yes, they are trained in EMDR, CBT, DBT, exposure therapy, talk therapy, you name it, they're dialectical behavioral therapy. Now don't ask me to define it. Yeah, I wish I could. I wish I could explain it a little bit better, but you know, I guess.
Chuck LaFLange (01:12:20.791)
Thanks for watching.
Chuck LaFLange (01:12:26.063)
What's DBT? I haven't heard of that one. Can you explain that a little? You know what? That's fine. I often say I bastardize things when I start talking about them, right? So I like, here's kind of my like very brief experience with it and look into it. Right? Yeah.
Robert Greer (01:12:39.64)
Yeah, yeah.
Robert Greer (01:12:47.096)
Exactly. I can tell you that we offer it, but do I know exactly what the hell it is? Well, I mean, now some of it is probably and I may be completely off base here, but it ties into something else. Some of it is about our behaviors, you know, why we do what we do and then changing our daily behaviors. Now being in recovery, you know, you got to, you can't just change one thing. You damn right got to change everything about yourself. Right. And one of the first things that we do every day is one of the
Chuck LaFLange (01:12:51.319)
Yeah, you
Robert Greer (01:13:16.592)
And one of the things that I did every day was, you know, kind of owning the morning as it were. We start with what we call experiential, whether it be yoga, mindfulness, nature walk, you know, something like that. And one of the things that we practice, me and Kyle and a bunch of other guys that we were taught and we practice and still do is called savers. It's from the Miracle Morning Book. It's an acronym for silence, affirmation, visualization, exercise, reading and scribing. Right.
Chuck LaFLange (01:13:45.685)
Okay.
Robert Greer (01:13:46.128)
Now, I'll give you an example of how we did that while we were there in treatment. So we would get up every morning and be at the kennels by six to tend to the dogs, feed them, water them, walk them, clean their kennels. And then we would go out on the flight line. There's an airstrip out there. We don't use it anymore, but there's an air strip. We go out on the flight line and we would sit and watch the sun rise over the hills there in Bandera. And it was always a beautiful sight. So we would sit in silence. We would practice our affirmations of
Chuck LaFLange (01:14:10.071)
you
Chuck LaFLange (01:14:15.543)
Mm -hmm
Robert Greer (01:14:16.176)
I'm good enough, you know, I'm loved, I'm worthy, I can heal. We would visualize how our day was going to go. And then our exercise would be walking back and forth from the kennel to the main campus. We would of course be doing a lot of reading and scribing throughout the day. Right. Uh, so that's a practice that we're taught, but it's also a practice I continue to use today to keep myself grounded and on track. Right. So it's those little things that we do, uh,
Along with the yoga, which I'd never done yoga before. I mean the hell with that shit, right? Yeah.
Chuck LaFLange (01:14:46.735)
Fuck, that is not relaxing at all. Somebody lied to me about that.
Robert Greer (01:14:55.152)
And right. You know, some guys like me, you know, excuse me for putting it this way. Some guys like me, you know, view as yoga is like, you know, some kind of pussy bullshit that those hippies do or whatever. And, and now. Right. And now I'll knock you over to get into yoga, right? Give me a chance to get into some yoga. I'll be right there with you. I freaking love yoga. In fact, my oldest daughter, when she lived with me in the summer of 21, we did trapeze yoga together. Freaking loved it.
Chuck LaFLange (01:14:59.831)
you
Chuck LaFLange (01:15:05.975)
Okay.
Robert Greer (01:15:24.752)
You know, it's awesome. Yoga is beautiful, man. Yoga, Transcendental Meditation, all that stuff that I used to turn my nose to. I fucking love it. It's so helpful and healing.
Chuck LaFLange (01:15:25.687)
That's crazy, man. Yeah, it's... Yeah, I used to call it all urban voodoo, was kind of what I used to call it. And then, you know, now, I'll tell you, for 10 years, I didn't do a damn thing physically, right? I was a drug dealer, I was a whatever, you know? And then all of a sudden, somebody's asking to like, origami myself and like, stay like, you know, focused at peace while I'm doing it. I was like, what the fuck are you doing?
Robert Greer (01:15:36.746)
Exactly.
Chuck LaFLange (01:15:55.479)
Right. And so my first week, week and a half, even two weeks, I would find resentments not to go in the morning. You know, I would, I'd find reasons not to go. And, and, and really I was not, I was not doing myself a service in doing that. Um, I had to go to the water first. So I got the instructor to actually, he would, he would come in a bit early. Um, and instead of me going to yoga, him and I would go to the pool and, and just do things. Cause I just had to get myself more flexible and just in a little bit better shape. Right. And then.
Robert Greer (01:16:18.414)
Mm -hmm.
Chuck LaFLange (01:16:26.743)
And now it's the one thing that I probably miss it most about actually being at the center. And Mike's invited me.
to drive out there if I want to do it but it's definitely something that I need to get back into because wow I started embracing I just loved it after a while right but it's uh it's something else so yeah.
Robert Greer (01:16:47.632)
It's yeah, it's great practice.
Chuck LaFLange (01:16:51.447)
been relaxing about that at all.
Robert Greer (01:16:54.384)
No. Now, I will say this about myself. Let me interject for a second. I'm sorry. When I first got there, I'll be very honest, but I have been very honest about this over the years. When I first got there, I was going to save that marriage. I was going to put my family back together. I was doing it for all the wrong reasons. And they kept telling me, you got to do this for you, not for anybody else. So while I was there,
Chuck LaFLange (01:17:02.391)
too. Yeah.
Chuck LaFLange (01:17:12.687)
Yep. Mm -hmm. Yeah.
Robert Greer (01:17:20.944)
I did a family session via Skype or Zoom with the wife and she told me she did not want to have any form of reconciliation with me. And it shifted and it shifted from, I got to do this for them to no, I got to do this for me. And I drank the Kool -Aid. I 100 % dove in head first, which is the only way to do it. And if it was yoga, all right, let's do it. If it was meditation, all right, let's do it. Whatever. I did it.
Chuck LaFLange (01:17:34.067)
Yeah.
Chuck LaFLange (01:17:39.215)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. I'm glad that you found that because it's almost cliche, you know, you can't do it for anybody else, but most of these cliches come from somewhere and that's one of them, right? It's just, yeah, right? No, no, exactly, exactly, exactly. So, so.
Robert Greer (01:17:57.996)
Smarter people than us. I mean, you can't pour from an empty cup. You can't give away what you don't have.
Chuck LaFLange (01:18:08.183)
I try not to put too much emphasis on my clean time or anybody else's, but so how long you got now, man? How long you been sober? Good for you. Good for you. Yeah. Oh. OK.
Robert Greer (01:18:16.048)
Three and a half years, just over three and a half years. I appreciate that. And just to put the final cap on the warrior's heart experience, I was there seven and a half months. It was six weeks inpatient. And then I transitioned directly into sober living intensive outpatient and in intensive outpatient, which we have it on campus now, equine therapy and jujitsu we have on campus. But at that time, jujitsu and equine therapy,
Chuck LaFLange (01:18:38.643)
Of course, I kind of want to go back to North America and check this out. Of course, I'm not a first responder, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Robert Greer (01:18:47.28)
Let's do it, man.
Well, you can come get a tour anyway, but I stayed in, I stayed at the sober live in lodge for another five months after the residential center. I stayed over there for five months and then participated in two months of the intensive outpatient where I continued that healing. I took a pass from there and went to a program in Hillsborough, Ohio called save a warrior.
Chuck LaFLange (01:19:07.287)
Yeah
Robert Greer (01:19:15.728)
And it was all about continuing to heal those wounds that save a warrior. We dealt with a lot of ACEs adverse childhood experiences. Uh, that was in February of 21. And I say that now, uh, because you know, yeah, I did six weeks at a rehab, right? But that's not what got me sober or kept me sober for three and a half years. It would, I had so much stuff that I had to work on that I had to continue working on it. The only way I've made it three and a half years was.
Chuck LaFLange (01:19:39.211)
Yeah. Yeah.
Robert Greer (01:19:43.408)
I didn't, as soon as I left, go back home and try to put the pieces back together. I knew I needed more work and I didn't really have a home to go to. I would have been going back to whatever apartment I could rent, staring at four empty walls with no job and no real career or anything. I would have relapsed. I would have relapsed hard and fast. So if you have the opportunity to do something like a sober living house, I can do it. Intensive outpatient, do it.
Chuck LaFLange (01:20:06.895)
Right? Yeah, yeah. So is Save a Warrior a first responder? Like kind of same idea, it's the exclusive to or the catered to maybe.
Robert Greer (01:20:09.008)
If you could find a retreat, like Save a Warrior, Warrior Path, Mighty Oaks, whatever that fits the bill for you, freaking do it. It's all about that continued healing.
Robert Greer (01:20:23.888)
Yeah, it is catered to and you know, most of the stuff that I'm able to talk about and stuff that I'm able to participate in. Sorry for those out there that don't fit into that category, but the stuff that I'm involved with and the stuff that I've done is specifically for the warrior community, for the military and first responders. First responders at Warrior's Heart, for example, cops, firemen, EMTs, emergency room nurses, World Trade Center guys, you know, stuff like that.
Chuck LaFLange (01:20:37.591)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I would say that unapologetically.
Robert Greer (01:20:53.392)
But yeah, all these are specific to that category, to that community.
Chuck LaFLange (01:21:05.015)
It is a specific thing, and if you don't... Okay, there's an experience that I'll share with you here, Rob. When I was, and I haven't been to a 12 -step meeting in a very long time, my path has gone different. I support 12 -step, 100%. Mine was more about logistics, and I found some resentments early on, and things just didn't work out. But...
When I first got sober, I was going to meetings every day, every day, every day, every day that I could in the community I was in. It was five out of seven days where I could go to NA, because that was my path. Those other two days, they had a couple different AA meetings in town, and I walked into an AA meeting, and it was, I might as well have been in a swap meet with my grandpa. Right, it was just, you know, and I just, I walked in and went, I,
nothing in common with any of you people here and there is because recovery is recovery, right? So but my experience, if you've been out there in the last five years dealing with the new realities of fentanyl and meth together and what that's done to the scene, the level of violence, the depravity, the heartbreaking, that all of that, it's if you if you've been sober for longer than five years I feel like maybe it's harder to relate to what's happened.
right now because the reality is very very different than it's ever been right and that is it is just is right the the death all of it but anyway i remember i walked in and went nope i turned around because i just couldn't relate to it maybe or maybe not that was right i don't know but so what you're saying right now is like i can totally understand right you're going to walk into a room where you don't feel like you can relate to anybody
then it's not going to be the same experience for you. So I can completely appreciate why it's for first responders only, right? Because I just, I can try like hell to empathize with you, but I will never understand what it's like to take a man's life at work, right? Or to see the things that you've seen. I will never understand that, right? So yeah, I can completely appreciate that, yeah.
Robert Greer (01:23:17.562)
And to that extent, I dabbled in AA in 2019. And I say dabbled, I went for the wrong reasons under the guise of trying to help my brother get sober, right? But this was after my daughter's attempted suicide. It was after I broke my back for the third time. Yes, it was the third time. And the peel addiction was really fucking me over.
Chuck LaFLange (01:23:23.073)
Jesus.
Robert Greer (01:23:41.072)
Summer of 2019, I walked into those rooms. Yeah, I didn't identify with anybody there. I saw the 12 steps on the wall, saw God all over it. And I was at war with God at that point. Fuck this. I didn't read the 12 steps. I didn't buy the book. I went to the meetings and I heard some amazing stories, but I never spoke. I talked to a sponsor and he told me, if you're still smoking weed, you're not going to get sober. Well, I don't need this guy, right? How right he was. But yeah, I didn't identify with anybody there. Now looking back,
Chuck LaFLange (01:23:43.287)
you
Robert Greer (01:24:10.928)
I can say principles before personalities. And that's the beautiful thing about what we're doing right now. You and I were on the opposite sides of the wall, but the disease still got both of us and brought us to the same place where we're sitting here having a great conversation about life in general. Right. So how many parallels exactly. Right. But to address that, you know, warrior's heart, they sell that. Uh, so warrior's heart teamed with, uh,
Chuck LaFLange (01:24:22.423)
Yeah. Right. And how many parallels, how many parallels in the recovery side of this? Right. It's crazy, man. It's crazy. Right. Yeah. Fucking. Yeah.
Robert Greer (01:24:39.308)
Alcoholics Anonymous World Services and they started Warriors Anonymous. Now Warriors Anonymous is an AA group, right? But it's sanctioned by AA World Services and it is an AA meeting, but to be in that meeting, you have to be of the warrior community, law enforcement, military, you know, first responder community. We have meetings Tuesday through Saturday at 1800 hours on Zoom. And then there's a couple of other meetings. We have
Chuck LaFLange (01:24:42.871)
Oh, okay.
Chuck LaFLange (01:25:07.259)
What time zone? 1800 hours? Okay, okay, okay, great, great, great. Yeah.
Robert Greer (01:25:08.048)
in -person meetings all over central standard time. And if you go to warriorsheart .com and look for warriors anonymous, you can find the links to the meeting and the passwords and everything. We've got WhatsApp chat groups. So, you know, it's our own community because sometimes we can't find that commonality in the regular groups. Now me, I love AA.
The meeting I go to in town on Tuesday nights, there's a lot of us in there, but there's a lot of the regular population there. My sponsor is a construction guy. You know, he wasn't military. I love him to death. But after I've been in AA for a while, I really began to understand that principles for personality because it gets everybody. And it's not always about the carnage. It's about the hope, the strength, the future, right? Which is what our podcast is about on, uh,
Chuck LaFLange (01:25:39.763)
Yeah.
Chuck LaFLange (01:25:57.075)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.
Robert Greer (01:25:59.824)
you know, high speed chicken feed. And it's about what we do here. And, you know, as much as we can, as much as you have time, I want to expound on a few things that I have done in sobriety, uh, that have brought me to this beautiful place, you know, but it started for me, it started with AA at in 2019. I quit drinking beer for like four and a half months. I didn't stop taking pills and stop smoking weed, right? I didn't take that shit serious. And what happened? 2020, I lost everything.
Chuck LaFLange (01:26:09.815)
Yeah, yeah, please do, please do. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Robert Greer (01:26:29.072)
And then I went and I took it serious, right? It's all about finding that rock bottom. I had found mine in 2020, but ever since then I had been on the way back up. Now, you know, we talked about being at warrior's heart for seven and a half months. I went home. I started back up this little food truck business. I was running with a buddy of mine. I started trying to heal those wounds, uh, from just the carnage of my life. And while working the 12 steps, while
Chuck LaFLange (01:26:39.767)
Yeah.
Robert Greer (01:26:58.768)
mending relationships and beautiful things began to happen, man. You know, I went to save a warrior, but also repaired relationships with family, with former employers, debts were forgiven. Just everything that's promised in the 12 steps of the big, you know, or in the big book of AA began to happen, but it took a lot of hard work. It was sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, as they say, it took a lot, but it began to happen.
Chuck LaFLange (01:27:09.463)
Yeah.
Robert Greer (01:27:27.952)
So my journey, August of 20 took me to Bandera. February 21 took me to Columbus, Ohio for Save a Warrior. I had the opportunity and I sent you a link to it to contract with a company called Resilient Minds on the Frontlines. It's a company that teaches a three -day course in resiliency. I had the opportunity to go up for their training to the Jersey Shore, March of 22. Another beautiful trip, another beautiful experience to continue to heal.
Chuck LaFLange (01:27:42.907)
Okay.
Chuck LaFLange (01:27:54.323)
Okay. Yeah.
Robert Greer (01:27:58.362)
Um, and then April of, uh, 23, I was able to come back to warrior's heart as an employee, all the while, repairing my relationships with my kids. I went through the divorce. She's remarried now. Um, I've been able to make peace with all these things, you know, um, been able to experience all these people and go to all these beautiful places. You know, I've been very fortunate in that regard. Um,
So April of last year, you know, I came to work, I came back here to Bandera and it's more of a healing experience than a job. It really is. Because all the while, after I lost my career, all I wanted to do was to be of service to guys like me, to be able to help them find the healing that they needed. So I got a job with Warrior's Heart working in missions, answering the crisis line. And, you know, so when people call up, I'm a vet, I'm fucked up, I need help, I need treatment. Can you help? Yeah, man.
Chuck LaFLange (01:28:35.875)
Yeah.
Chuck LaFLange (01:28:41.815)
Yeah.
Robert Greer (01:28:56.976)
I know what you're going through. I've been there and I share my story with them and I tell them what they need to do to come in and I get them signed up. Right. I get them, get them in the process of coming to treatment. Now the tie in that I mentioned earlier with the podcast, you're going to love this. All right. Right, right, right. I think you might like this because I sure as hell like it. So we've been doing the podcast for a while and we've been hearing different stories and I talk about different people's healing modalities. We, we aired an episode with Keon Joel.
Chuck LaFLange (01:29:10.903)
Okay, okay, see, I'm a reminde, not a reminder. So good, good, good. Yeah.
Chuck LaFLange (01:29:23.767)
Yeah.
Robert Greer (01:29:27.47)
Keon was a Marine and it was his very last deployment, or excuse me, very last patrol. The next day he was on a plane going home, right? And it was his very last patrol. He caught a seven, six, two round right here underneath his right eye, four inch exit wound out of the back of his head, right? He was able to survive that. But of course, when he came home, he was messed up.
Chuck LaFLange (01:29:49.783)
Wow. Yeah.
Robert Greer (01:29:52.28)
Before he went into the military, he was in theater. He got a scholarship to go to Stephen F. Austin University for acting. So during his healing, he got back into acting and that was his healing modality. Getting outside of himself helped him heal a lot of his trauma. So we're airing this guy's story and you know, we had had it out for a while.
And I'm sitting there at work one day answering the phones and this guy calls. He's up in Ohio somewhere. And he says, yeah, man, I'm a vet. I'm a Marine. I'm messed up. I'm drinking. I'm using drugs. My family's going down the toilet. I need help, brother. And I said, okay, I understand. And he said, I've been listening to this podcast, this dude I served with. And man, I kept hearing about warrior's heart. So I quit mowing the grass and picked up the phone. I started looking to see what you guys were about. So that's when I called. I'm like, okay, cool.
And I start sharing my story with him and he cuts me off and he goes, wait a minute, just say your name was Robert. Do you do this high speed chicken feed podcast? Did you interview Keon Joel? And I'm like, yeah, brother, that was me. And he goes, dude, that was the podcast I was listening to, man. Wow. So you wonder, is my story ever going to make a difference in somebody's life? Am I ever going to have any kind of reach? And that was proof right there. That dude, he was able to come into treatment.
Chuck LaFLange (01:31:04.727)
How awesome is that, right?
Chuck LaFLange (01:31:11.959)
Yeah it is.
Chuck LaFLange (01:31:16.631)
Amen.
Robert Greer (01:31:17.36)
I sat down in the chow hall with him and had supper with him one night and he was so very grateful for Warrior's Heart, for us, for telling the story and for me helping him get there. It was just a beautiful experience, you know? Validation of purpose. 100%.
Chuck LaFLange (01:31:26.263)
Yeah, right. Validation of purpose is what I call that right there. Yeah, yeah, that's, yeah, yeah, right. Something similar, I have a lady that's very much, she's been supporting the show, Tabby Preston, out of Brockville, Ontario in Canada. Her daughter's in it. So a big part of our focus, Robert, is on the family members of people who are suffering an addiction, right? Often, and in your story, I kind of zoned in on that one part where you said you had been listening to this podcast.
Often that's not the case. Often people who are suffering are not tuning in. They're trying to survive. They're trying to whatever, right? Well, their families are on a constant hunt for resources. So a lot of our content gets directed that way because I feel it's a great way that we can reach people. Tammy, her story is just epic. She's been a part of the show. She's been a supporter of us. She goes to get her haircut last week and her hairdresser is telling her about this grandma.
who's raising her kids, she was listening to this podcast and it's all about this grandma who's raising her daughter's kids because her daughter's an addict and how like just inspiring it was and Tim was like, that's me. You were listening to me tell my story.
just right there and they had this amazing moment together. Tammy had to make sure that I found out about it, right? But validation of purpose, right? Just absolutely validation of purpose. So what you got coming up? What you got coming up on the high speed chicken feed, Rob? For episodes, what do our people need to know, right? Yeah. You can, of course you can. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Robert Greer (01:32:49.36)
I like it.
Robert Greer (01:33:04.164)
Before I forget, can I jump on that real quick before before I talk about the podcast? So with with the family, right? All I wanted to do was try to find a way to heal my kids because my kids were suffering. My son had gotten expelled. Baby girl had not maybe girl, but my oldest daughter was struggling mental health, which she'd been to numerous mental health facilities and struggled quite a bit. My youngest was having troubles as well. And how do I heal them?
Chuck LaFLange (01:33:13.591)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you do. Yeah.
Robert Greer (01:33:32.112)
The only way that I have found was by healing myself, right? All I want to do is try to, try to help fix them, but I had to fix me first when amazing thing happened and that they saw me fixing myself and they began to follow suit in some ways. Right. My son, he finished all of his welding certifications and VOTEC just got a fantastic job making more than I was making when I left the sheriff's office after 16 and a half years. He's doing fantastic. Baby girl is doing great in school and everything.
Chuck LaFLange (01:33:50.487)
Thank you.
you
That's awesome. Yeah.
Robert Greer (01:34:01.776)
My oldest daughter, the one who had struggled the most with mental health, she moved out as soon as she was 18, moved in with her boyfriend, which I did not like. And she struggled for a while around Christmas, around Thanksgiving. You know, I wrestled with the idea of coming to work over here because I was leaving them eight hours away back in Louisiana. But around Thanksgiving, she had, she came to me and was like, dad, I'm drowning. I don't want to be with this guy anymore. Can I come live with you? Absolutely little girl, come on.
Chuck LaFLange (01:34:31.959)
Yeah.
Robert Greer (01:34:32.048)
So she comes to live with me at Christmas and then she ends up getting a job at warrior's heart. She works in intake, right? So I get them signed up. She checks them in and the progress and the growth that I have seen in her specifically over the past few months has been tremendous. She came in at 18 at 78 pounds, right? She's now almost a hundred pounds. She's opened up. She's.
Chuck LaFLange (01:34:40.427)
Wow, man
Chuck LaFLange (01:34:52.275)
Oh man.
Robert Greer (01:35:00.176)
Blossom so much she's doing so much better. So when we heal ourselves We heal other people around us because they see that right program a is a program of attraction People see what we have and they want that what's not just sobriety. It's healing. It's that post -traumatic growth. It's the It's the getting our lives back together that people are attracted to and they want to be in our life again and my kids My my youngest told her mom a few months ago. I want to go live with dad
Chuck LaFLange (01:35:12.471)
Yeah.
Chuck LaFLange (01:35:26.143)
Absolutely.
Robert Greer (01:35:30.192)
Right? My son, the only reason why he's still there is because baby girl is still there. Right? So to go from being booted out and my kids not really wanting to have that much to do with me to the point where one's living with me and the other two can't wait to get over here. Man, that's huge. Now that ties directly into the.
Chuck LaFLange (01:35:30.967)
No.
Chuck LaFLange (01:35:35.423)
Yep.
Chuck LaFLange (01:35:48.343)
That is huge, man.
Robert Greer (01:35:49.744)
I appreciate that. That ties directly into the podcast because this is the kind of stuff that we talk about with the podcast, right? I just got back from warrior path, which is a week long intensive through the Boulder Crest Institute. And what we talk about is post -traumatic growth and it's centered around the studies that have done around guys like Charlie Plum that were at the Hanoi Hilton for six years, right? What they experienced was worse than anybody could imagine for six years.
Chuck LaFLange (01:36:12.533)
Okay.
Robert Greer (01:36:19.248)
But in every area of life since coming home, they are surpassing everybody that, you guys that may have spent a month or two or a year or two in theater, these guys are doing better in every aspect of life and they're studying those guys. So, you know, I've taken some of those lessons and the other lessons that I've learned from Save a Warrior, from Warrior's Heart, and that's what we incorporate into the podcast. So what's coming up now, we've, uh,
Chuck LaFLange (01:36:35.563)
Yep.
Robert Greer (01:36:46.544)
The episodes that we've recently recorded, uh, Lonnie Masterson is, uh, in, uh, Southeast central Texas. Uh, he was a Marine Corps medic, greenside medic had a hell of a lot of experiences. He is big in the vet court in his community and trying to get the vet court up and running veterans court.
Chuck LaFLange (01:37:04.279)
I feel like I know that name. So has he had some big appearances on other shows or something?
Robert Greer (01:37:09.552)
He probably has. He probably has.
Chuck LaFLange (01:37:11.671)
Yeah, I think I've heard that name. I'm almost positive that I have. So continue, continue though. Yeah. Yeah.
Robert Greer (01:37:17.168)
Um, so we got him coming up. Uh, we, uh, recently recorded Mikey harden Navy seal who went from seal team three to a, uh, out of control method. I can loss everything and is now doing very well up in Colorado with foundations that are helping guys get Merck treatment, magnetic, uh, resonance therapy treatment. Um, Dick Hall was a Vietnam era fighter pilot, not fighter pilot, but Ford operating.
Chuck LaFLange (01:37:38.775)
Okay.
Robert Greer (01:37:46.224)
Polly, he was one of the guys that was in the spy planes in Vietnam, has a hell of a story. He worked his career all the way up to the Pentagon. And when everything came crashing down for him, he got sober and stayed sober solely in the rooms of AA. He is huge with Warriors Anonymous. He is a tremendous guy, lives over in Georgia. He's coming up. As I mentioned, Tom Spooner. Tom Spooner is one of the co -founders of Warriors Heart.
Chuck LaFLange (01:37:50.263)
Okay.
Robert Greer (01:38:13.284)
And we spoke with him for about five hours. That episode is going to be big as well. We're about to record Mark Nicholas. He was also a Navy medic that is a super smart guy. When it comes to psychedelics and alternative treatments for PTS and whatnot, he's very educated on that. So we're going to have him coming up pretty soon. But every one of these episodes that we do,
Chuck LaFLange (01:38:18.039)
No kidding.
Robert Greer (01:38:38.832)
you know, the guys tell their stories of what got them to where they are and tell their stories of what is bringing them back from that and how they're able to help others. You know, whether it be vet court, sponsoring other guys in AA, Mert treatment, uh, psychedelic therapies, you know, just, just a whole lot of other stuff. I mean, we have so many episodes that, uh, not just episodes ready to come out, but also also, uh, just a long list of plethora of people that,
Chuck LaFLange (01:38:46.423)
That's, yeah.
Robert Greer (01:39:07.984)
we have to interview, Brad, we'll call him Brad W, cop up in Jersey, went to the, was it West Point or there? I think it was he played football for West Point and he ended up becoming a cop up in the New Jersey area. Fantastic dude. Thomas Clark was also Delta. We got him coming up pretty soon that we got to do an interview with. Yeah, I mean, we got some.
Chuck LaFLange (01:39:32.225)
Wow, man. Wow.
Robert Greer (01:39:35.472)
some really good content ready to come. We're, we're, I don't want to say we're doing it just yet, but, uh, Tom Satterly and his wife, Jen, we're working on trying to get them on the podcast. Tom was also Delta for a lot of years. He has a book called all secure. I just finished it. I can phenomenal, but he also has a foundation called the all secure foundation and we hope to have him on pretty soon. Uh, we've talked with him before. So, you know, we're, we're getting some good content out there, but.
Chuck LaFLange (01:39:58.039)
Thanks, Mockley.
Robert Greer (01:40:05.22)
Bottom line, it's not just about the war stories. The way that we kind of do our little promo or our intro, it's not about the war stories. You know, we're giving you the fuel that you need to survive in that fight of life. You know, that high speed chicken feed fuel, right? By letting people know that, yeah, it's okay to ask for help. It's okay if you're in these fields. Look at it this way. I was a cop for 16 and a half years. I couldn't raise my hand and say, I need help.
Chuck LaFLange (01:40:18.167)
Yeah, man.
Chuck LaFLange (01:40:26.487)
straight.
Robert Greer (01:40:33.2)
But if I was out there on the side of the road, getting my ass handed to me for by a suspect, I wouldn't have any problem jumping on the radio and calling a signal 70 officer needs assistance, right? Same thing with the military guys. You're in combat, you're in theater calling for QRF, you know, getting somebody in there to back you up, calling in for an airstrike. But when it comes to fighting our demons in our head, that is the toughest fucking battle. And we have such a hard time actually calling out for help.
Chuck LaFLange (01:40:42.451)
Yeah.
Chuck LaFLange (01:40:57.119)
Yeah.
thing I ever did was ask for help. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Robert Greer (01:41:02.136)
Exactly. And that's, and that's the thing we talked about that stigma a while ago of looking weak. I can assure you, you will never become more of a bad -ass until you fight those demons in your head and connect your head and heart again. That is the real battle. That is real struggle. You've done it. So many people that you've interviewed have done it. That is the real fight. And you will find bravery that you've never knew that you could possibly have.
Chuck LaFLange (01:41:16.309)
Yeah. Yeah.
Chuck LaFLange (01:41:21.943)
Yep. Yeah.
Yeah, asking for help is the refusing to give up. Right. Is what that is, you know, right. So huge, man. Huge. Listen, this is the longest episode I've had in months. I love it. We're going to move. Don't be sorry, man. Like I said, the content runs out when, you know, the time runs out when the content, you know what I said. Hey, listen, that brings us to my favorite part of the show. That brings us to my favorite part of the show. And that's the daily gratitude. So what you got for us?
Robert Greer (01:41:30.606)
Yeah.
Robert Greer (01:41:34.776)
Absolutely.
Oh, sorry.
Robert Greer (01:41:46.254)
Yeah, I mean what you know.
Robert Greer (01:41:54.192)
So I recently got back into daily gratitudes as part of the warrior path thing, but it's also something my sponsor would have me do in AA. So the one that went out this morning, I'm grateful for the awesome people in my life. I'm grateful for a sense of purpose for God's will for my life and the power to carry that out. And I'm grateful for a great meal that I cooked last night. Right? That sounds simple, but I could tell you one of the most empowering things that I have been able to do.
Chuck LaFLange (01:42:16.727)
Yeah, man.
Robert Greer (01:42:23.216)
is take care of myself and take care of myself is cooking a decent meal. I'm not talking like fast food or microwave a bullshit. What I cooked last night was in a crock pot was chicken breast with fresh cut green beans, baby red potatoes with a sauce that went over it that had minced garlic had paprika had salt pepper, lemon juice, olive oil went over it. Oh my God, it was so good. I'm fixing to finish it off for lunch here in a minute. But that
Being able to cook for myself and being able to take care of my kids with decent or good home cooked meals is important. Self care is important. And so that was part of my gratitude right there.
Chuck LaFLange (01:42:57.143)
Yeah. Damn straight it is. Yeah, it is. Yeah, it is. Okay, you guys, that's awesome, man. For myself, I'm grateful for air conditioning. I live in a country now where you desperately need air conditioning all the time. I'm gonna echo yours on the good food thing. I also live in a country where processed food is much more expensive than healthy food. Like, you have to be wealthy to eat processed food here.
Which is crazy if you can imagine like that. How's that for a polar opposite of the way things are in North America, right? Very grateful for that. I don't even own a microwave. I have a air fryer and I have a rice cooker. There's like nothing I can't cook in both. It's just amazing. And it's also, yeah, it's wonderful. I cook some really cool stuff in there. I'm also grateful to every single person who continues to like, watch, listen, share, comment on the posts, all the things you guys are doing to support.
Robert Greer (01:43:38.352)
Nice.
Chuck LaFLange (01:43:55.319)
I appreciate it so much because every time you do any one of these things, you're getting me a little bit closer to living my best life. My best life is to make a humble living spreading the message. The message is this. If you're in active addiction right now, today could be that day. Today could be the day that you start a lifelong journey. Reach out to a friend, reach out to a family member calling to detox, go to a meeting, pray, go to church. I don't care. Do whatever it is you have to do to get that journey started because it is so much better than the alternative. If you have a loved one who's suffering an addiction right now, you're sick, it's time to listen to this.
really great conversation. If you just take one more minute out of your day and text that person, let them know they are loved. Use the words.
Robert Greer (01:44:31.984)
You are loved.
Chuck LaFLange (01:44:33.275)
That little glimmer of hope just might be the thing that brings them back. Boom.
Shattered Stigma
Yatra
Morning Cup
