Episode 130
Unlocking Mental Strength: A Courageous Journey with Sam Peterson

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Description

In this episode, Chris brings Sam Peterson, a combat veteran and the founder of Mind Spa Denver, to the show. In this compelling conversation, Sam shares his inspiring journey and dives deep into the vital importance of mental health for everyone. With raw honesty and transformative stories, this conversation reveals the realities of military life and a life-altering moment that reshaped Sam’s perspective. Whether you’re seeking insight or inspiration, this episode is a must-listen! For more information on Sam and Mind Spa Denver, check out mindspadenver.com.

Talking Points

1. 
   
2. Introduction to Sam Peterson (0:25)
   
3. The motivation behind Sam’s mission (1:20)
   
4. Joining the military (3:45)
   
5. Connection and community in the military (7:45)
   
6. Leaving the military and reintegrating (13:12)
   
7. Sam’s story (14:32)
   
8. Outcomes and personalized care (20:50)
   
9. Approach to treatment (22:44)
   
10. Response from veterans (25:15)
    
11. Talking about “healing” (29:25)
    
12. Disrupting the industry (34:00)
    
13. Final thoughts (35:10)
    
14. mindspadenver.com (38:47)
    

Quotes

“You would think that being deployed overseas, in these combat zones and high-stress environments all the time, would actually be really bad for your mental health. But, it turns out the opposite is true”.

– Sam Peterson, Mind Spa Denver

Episode Transcripts

Episode -130- Transcripts

[Music] hey everybody and welcome to another amazing exciting and important episode of Finding Peaks your host founder President Chief Executive Officer Peaks recovery centers Chris Burns so grateful to be here today and joined by combat veteran Sam Peterson EOD technician two tours in Afghanistan Masters in Business Administration owner and founder of uh Mind Spa Denver the list goes on and on I’m really grateful and humbled to have you on the show today talking about what is so near and dear to your heart yeah absolutely man uh you know appreciate appreciate you have me here um you know I think that it’s really important that we’re we’re having these kinds of conversations about mental health and particularly about what we can do in the Mental Health Community to treat more effectively yeah I love that moment I sat down um with Sam I identified and connected with a true champion for mental health for combat veterans veterans in general and First Responders I had never sat down with somebody who was more impassion and more directional I think even the first time I sat down with you I said oh you don’t have any kids I got to meet your wife and you’re like I’m trying to change the world one day at a time and I can’t have kids because this mission is Mission critical for you and it means everything yeah yeah it really does like it I you know I know that I can’t be the the founder CEO and change maker that I want to be and be a present like present father at the same time there’s just not enough hours in the day and um and you know that’s a decision that me and my wife are very very aligned on and and I I no regrets it’s it’s really it’s really fulfilling because you know I think it’s one thing you know being a parent is great you’re especially being a good present parent you’re giving a gift to the world of raising a great citizen that’s really great but where I get where I get that kind of cup filled is you we lose so many great fathers mothers sisters brothers to suicide in the veteran and first responder Community every day these are people who who have disciplined selfless service and Community just like grafted onto their skeletal structure they are they are service they are providing you know the protection and the the healing on your literal worst day especially with First Responders they’re they’re providing that to you and giving giving that piece of themselves has some serious baggage um just especially when we’re talking about trauma and I think it’s just it’s the most incredible thing to be able to see a happy family when you’re done when you help someone get through that worst time in their life get to the other side and actually get healing and you get to give the gift of that parent brother sister mother father back to their kids yeah like back to their community and you know it’s not just about healing that trauma but you have the ability to grow from it and to take that negative input and turn it into positive output in family systems that never thought that was possible which is just really really beautiful and we’re going to get into what you guys are actually doing down there which is Cutting Edge bucking the status quo Innovative and so much more but I wanted to kind of check in on your early career and like why did you decide why were you impassioned to join the military what was it for you uh I mean I just wanted to get the hell out of my hometown yeah um and you know one of the things I really didn’t realize so my my father had a traumatic brain injury uh you know from when I was before I was born my dad D was a roofer and he fell off or three-story roof and landed on a bed of concrete the only reason he was alive is because the wooden Step at the bottom where his head hit just you know growing up with the emotional equivalent of a 15-year-old who like if he didn’t like what I said it and I’m a very loud opinionated person uh you know my my head would go through a wall so um I wanted to get the hell out of that situation as fast as I could so we we went to the recruiter and we took the ASVAB and and uh after we took the you know took the test he the recruiter kind of pulled pulled us to the side he’s like you guys uh you guys scored in the kind of upper seven higher than the 75th percentile are you sure you want to go into a job that has a score requirement of the lower right 20 the 25th percentile and I was like keep keep keep talking uniformed man and so he’s like well there’s a couple more options that you qualifi for and so he started showing us video the first one he showed us was Counter Intelligence and I was like that was a trailer of people sitting in a tent looking at a computer screen not you not my gig I I want to be Action Jackson here yeah and the second one it was like explosions bomb suits robots and I was like you just checked literally every box I didn’t know I had let’s go yeah let’s go oh I’m guaranteed this yeah yeah you’re guaranteed it and enter into the hardest Academic School in the Department of Defense with an 85% drop out rate yeah oh yeah man it’s it’s over 50 tests and if you so you if you fail like you can get rolled all the you can get rolled back or just kicked out oh wow yeah yeah it’s it’s uh you not to get into like how the whole system works but it’s a very it’s a very rigorous selection process to really get to get to people who have the the cognitive capability to take on some of the most complex and dangerous problems that we have especially when we’re talking about counter Insurgency and that especially at that time in uh that was in like 2008 2009 when uh you know Iraq was entering that that really heavy IED phase um that that was the biggest threat that was facing our troops so hell yeah I was like yeah let’s do it yeah I love bombs I like explosions and uh you know that was all well and good but you know one of the things they don’t tell you going into EOD is how high the suicide rate is and EOD has one of the highest suicide rates in the entire Department of Defense because of that relationship to traumatic blasts it was interesting when you were telling me about this the other day I was shocked to hear that not only the blast but potentially you know what what is the cost benefit analysis done on the mental health that people like searching for these things I mean I I don’t like to step on cracks on the sidewalk Sam you know what I mean I’m like oh whoa hey that’s my mother’s spinal cord we’re playing with here so I mean just the the the compounding effects of not just what’s potentially going to happen but what I’m searching for what I’m walking over and who I’m potentially doing it with or not you know well there’s a big a big distinction to make there uh most of the time EOD techs are not searching we are responding to we are responding to found unless you’re in a special operations environment where you’re running with you know a team of Green Berets that that’s the scenario where they you know you get put at the front with the uh with the metal detector going around okay oh yeah okay that it’s all the wrist it’s all the wrist it’s all the wrist um it’s all the wrist in the ear you know we had talked earlier and I think we’ve talked um quite a bit about the connectivity and the Brotherhood that you had over there and maybe you can share for the viewers what that’s like I know we’ve had Sebastian Junger on the show he speaks to kind of hanging out with you guys and kind of just taking notes and how you guys are connecting and mental health is is generally pretty well establish and connected throughout those processes and so maybe touch on that a little bit for the viewers and then what it felt like coming home yeah uh that I mean that’s a great question so what what is it like to be in that deployed environment you would think that being deployed overseas in this combat zones in these high stress environments all the time would actually be really bad for your mental health but it turns out that the opposite is true you are over in you know basically you’re kind of living in a jail you know big big high Towers you know with Barb Wire the only difference is you’re the one with the guns even they’re on the inside yeah but you would you know you think that this would cause a lot of issues but the reason it doesn’t is because you’re around a bunch of your compatriots you’re around your brothers and you’re there for a shared Mission so you know we know that one of the the leading indicators of suicidality is that lack of purpose that loss of purpose and and I’ll get into that in a second but when you’re over there you have a mission you are there for a reason you are following direct command directives to execute this larger operational plan of the battle space that is incredibly good for your mental health in fact you know you might be under this stress but you’re all in it together there it is this glue that binds you to each other in a very very profound way um I’d be interested to see you know if there was any way to get inside the brains or measure the oxytocin that’s actually excreted by by uh troops during war it’ be really interesting to see if there’s an upregulation in that because you know you really kind of get that pair bonding with your your team and when you come back especially if you come back from that environment and then leave the military like that’s like taking that would be like the equivalent of taking a kid away you’re you’re losing your entire support structure because these you know these individuals the people on your team the people on your squad are who you you know eaten with you know slept in the same tent worked out with operated with in a dangerous environment and and got through the other side with like you know from a mental health perspective losing that [  ] off my arm first please yeah that’s what it sounds like man and you don’t you know I I can only relate it to like the relationships I had and do still have in like early recovery we’re fighting through this very very difficult thing lives are on the line certainly nobody’s shooting at us so not as intense but I remember like those are my brothers like we walked this path because we kind of needed food water and shelter together yeah and I love what you said It reminds me in Gabor me’s book The Myth of normal and he talks about pretty sure it’s myth of normal pretty sure it’s Gabor mon um but he talks about the mental health of uh London city center when in World War II they flew bombers over Great Britain they called it the blitz yeah they were literally bombing this city to shreds and psych visits before the blitz were up around 70% and when the blitz happened the psych visits were single digits 8% or something because now I need food water and shelter just the same as Sam does and it doesn’t matter how much money you have or don’t have we’re connected with family community and culture in this very intense way and that’s kind of what it reminds me of is this this coming together in a profound way that I don’t know that we can necessarily experience here State Side I I you know I think there’s a few places that we can uh Combat Sports is a great is a great place like you were you were in that you know we were talking about Jiu-Jitsu the other day so it’s a great place to find it kind of that shared struggle also business I mean yeah I I’m sure with you know you and your business partner I can tell you this me and the partners that I have in business like man you you get tight especially once you’ve gone through some really heavy [  ] together it it bonds you and and that’s an important thing like you are being a good mammal by a game with that and in being a good mammal you are creating a positive mental health outcome and and a good pair bond whether you like it or not yeah and it’s so important you know I was I was reading a study the other day maybe I shared it with you but you know we grow up thinking don’t do drugs don’t smoke cigarettes there was a study the other day I think it was one of the ivy schools who said that being disconnected from your brothers from family community and culture um is Sy symbolic and if not worse than smoking two packs of cigarettes a day yeah the loneliness epidemic yeah and so you guys come back having been like really rooted in this connection and you get back over here and you realize some things to just be extraordinarily disconnected and I wanted to move into what you started to learn about yourself what it took to get there and kind of what you’ve started to create um with some of the the modalities that You’ moved into yeah um yeah where do you want to start let’s start with I think not just the the disconnection when you got back home but maybe where you found yourself in that disconnection and where you started to move into your recovery yeah so I mean when I it really really hit me like when I had just gotten back from my second deployment I got hurt I got sent back early I lost lost that connection you know got into a new unit and and I was just I had an X fiance that kind of dear johned me while I was over there so complete loss of that unit like the support structure was fairly well gone and you know it it damn near caused me to kill myself like I had my 45 in my mouth ready to pull the trigger and that it was because of that and a few other reasons but at the end of the day like it was a couple of friends reaching out that saved my life and kind of got me on this path really introduced me to this path uh and it was MDMA that was the vehicle for that during that time period and and I went from you know having a a pretty I wouldn’t say like it wasn’t completely abusive but just like I could probably count on one hand how many times I got hugged by my dad as a kid like and the the man Had a Brain Injury like and a brain injury and sleep apnea so it can’t completely fault someone who’s in that compromised state but you know that [  ] doesn’t wash off sure yeah um and you know after that really started to I I so basically I’m sitting there I’m sitting there in my in my house at the time got my 45 in my mouth I’m about ready to pull the trigger it’s the day before day before Christmas uh Christmas Eve and I get a text message on my phone that was like Hey man come over we’re having to get together I was like oh [  ] this great all right cool well I’ll just I’ll shelf this for later and uh so I went I went over to one of my buddies house um um another bomb Tech and uh he had he had some pure MDMA we know CU we had a Ramen spectroscopy laser you guys in yeah you guys yeah got cool technology um he’s like hey man you’re [  ] up take what’s on this counter and pour some out sit down on that couch and tell me what’s bothering you and and I did and it was the that experience saved my life hands down no question I got to feel Joy for really the first time in my life just unadulterated joy and it literally it felt like someone took my soul out of my body washed it really well with bleach and stuck that [  ] back in wow and it it just changed my entire Paradigm because I used to be I used to be really Evangelical Christian I was thought I always thought the darline was telling the truth that you know drugs are putting holes in your brain yeah right and everybody who did it was a bad person oh yeah yeah really opened my eyes like oh no this isn’t the case and I had been on a Litany of of mental health drugs of psychiatric drugs plenty ssris beta blockers and everything the world was numb I was like I’m done and and I was having panic attacks all the time so not a good situation and this was like oh my God like there is there is a substance out there that can give me this peak into Bliss and the cool thing was that it wasn’t just the you know this oneandone experience afterwards was like I could breathe again and it gave me that space integration yeah it gave me that space to go okay maybe life’s not so terrible and not only is life’s not so terrible but I can I can claw this this scenario back into my favor and really use it uh and and I didn’t I didn’t really understand the mental health implications until later uh it was about five month it was about five months later when this whole thing just really hit me square in the chest and it was uh I was I was uh it was right before Memorial Day the weekend before I was talking to one of my mentors we’re in the motorpool just smoking and joking having a great time there a and I was the last one I ever talked to Neil at the unit that was the last time I ever saw him uh on Memorial Day walks out into his backyard and blows his head off with his three-year-old kid in the house and it just floored me and it’s like oh my God he was he was in that same spot and he didn’t get that text like I did he didn’t get to have that experience like I had and I know that if he had he’d still be alive I have no question about that and from that point forward it was like just out of that grief and out of that pain it’s like you know it wasn’t quite that the sky opened up there was just this little voice inside was like hey [  ] this is your job now like you’re going to learn everything you can about this and you’re going to do this for other people CU someone saved your life and we lost a really amazing dude true because this wasn’t available yeah and yeah that’s that was the pivot point that was it holy SM and from that on it’s just been how can we how can we treat traumatic brain injuries post-traumatic stress disorder depression anxiety and that that also bleeds into substance abuse how can we treat these things more effective how can we stop taking this monoamine approach to these complex issues and really just bring in the Cavalry like attack these problems from all sides just like we would attack an enemy mhm like I’m not just going to if you know if I’m in a if I’m in a war with an enemy am I just going to am I just going to use one howitzer no right no I’m going to bring in the Abrams Tanks I’m going to have artillery backing them we’ve got you know OverWatch from Air assets I’ve got my infantry and that model is you kind not to emerge mental health and War but it kind of is you know taking taking a force on Force approach to a force on Force problem and that’s what we do in in all the programs that I’ve founded since is let’s not look at this through a single lens because our brains and this is a quote from John Kell’s a CEO of s metric great great dude uh one of the Pioneers in neuroimaging here in Colorado and uh what he said to me really stuck out uh our brain is the most complex organ that we know of in the universe right now it is its own pharmaceutical company it reacts to stimuli it makes its own drugs in taking a monoamine approach to treating that complex system isn’t just stupid it’s bad medicine yeah yeah and it’s medicine that we’ve been doing here in the United States for a really long time and I even think back to 15 16 years ago in treatment oh yeah I mean we’re going in here you go here’s the box over your head that was one of like the biggest breasts of fresh air when I first sat down with you was you know you start talking about MDMA you know Peak started out 10 years ago of treating substance use disorder and all substances were bad we’re beginning to learn that that’s just not the truth and I love what you say about complex individuals we should treat them complexly and individually and each individual needs a certain type of RX and that’s what I loved connecting when you told me that you’re working with veterans that have experienced TBI have never had remission of symptoms their whole life or 10 years and then within 17 or 18 days because you’re treating them humanely complexly as they present there having remission of symptoms in a few weeks yeah that’s our average time our average time to to symptom remission and that’s you know for everybody who’s not aware of what symptom remission is that’s at least a 50% reduction in symptoms so we’re seeing more like 75 so we’re we’re having someone come in at the severe level when they’re deal you know dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder with depression with anxiety with with TBI they’re coming in scoring at that severe level and within 14 to 17 days they’re down to mild yeah and then within 21 days that typically that we see that number dropped to zero so like symptom gone yeah and that’s because we are treating the root cause and uh when it comes to traumatic brain injuries PTSD depression anxiety what I don’t hear people talking about is what all those things have in common and the one and the two things that those issues have in common in the brain is one they are highly inflammatory so they are causing an inflammatory Cascade in the brain and two they affect neural connectivity so we talk about PTSD if you were to look at the brain of someone with post-traumatic stress disorder what you would see if you could peel apart the layers and see the firing circuits is you would see an underactive prefrontal cortex and an underactive executive functioning Center and an overactive amydala so you are having your fight flight or freeze function the emotional center of the brain driving your experience constantly yeah and the thing is like we can do something about that we have we have the technology we we can rebuild those neural networks pretty quickly uh and it and it starts by one just taking the temperature down on that inflammatory process that’s going on in the brain and then encouraging the brain to start to rewire with more effective tools how do you do that yeah so you know in our programs we use a combination of ketamine infusion therapy hyperbaric oxygen therapy transcranial magnetic stimulation and culturally competent Psychotherapy so I want to break this break this down a little bit and then talk about why so why do we do it this way if you were to just try to build your own positive mental health outcome it’s like building a house you’re going to come to the table and you basically have a hammer some nails and some Lumber if you try to just build your own mental health outcome chances are you’re going to end up with a half rickety Shack and you know the big bad wolf being life is going to blow that son of a [  ] over pretty easily MH now we add therapy into that what do we do we’re we’re providing a blueprint right all right that’s great now I know how to build it but I’m still you know I’m hand jamming this thing never actually swung a hammer yeah yeah exactly I don’t even know how to swing a hammer so I’m hand jamming this thing it’s still going to take a long time and that is a great uh you know a great analogy for your neurons rewiring it it is going to take you a long time to do this on on yourself and that’s not to say that psychotherapy Y is not effective it’s a very very core piece of what we do but you’re trying to push the boulder up the hill if you’re not if you’re not using these other techniques so when we add in when we add in ketamine infusion therapy when we add in transcranial magnetic stimulation when we add in hyperbaric oxygen therapy now it’s it’s you’re showing up we’ve got power tools laid out we’ve got the blueprint right in front of you and we have a Contracting Company helping you to build this entire thing and that allows us to get to a better place faster and keep it there longer because that’s a nice thing about rewiring the brain is when you get these circuits instantiate in the brain it’s not like okay you stop doing therapy and they go away they don’t there is resilience built into the built into this human model and it’s really cool do you find the veterans because you know being in Colorado Springs for the last 10 years one thing I’ve learned in a pretty um intense way is that veterans are absolutely underserved and the resources are abysmal um do you find what I mean this it’s so lifechanging pretty quickly what is the response you’re getting from these I mean are they like are you can’t believe my ears aren’t ringing and I’m not I mean what kind of responses you getting in community from oh I mean like some of the Vets we’ve treated like I I’ve treated guys who have had who have woken up with a migraine every single day cuz they got blown out of a Humvee in Iraq by an IED like waking up every day for 19 years with a headache imagine waking up every day in the first thought in your head is I’m in pain well I I don’t know about you but uh I wouldn’t play that game for very long no not at all and we’ve been able to take take individuals like that who are you know severe brain fog issues controlling their mood and that’s again because this inflammatory process and just completely wipe those symptoms away because we’re treating the root cause and especially with traumatic brain injury with traumatic brain injury if you are not treating the underlying neurobiology of that issue you are wasting the patient’s [  ] time I love that you said that yeah I love that you said that and if you it’s just a simple fact the brain is in a h it is a hypoxic injury and and I’ll explain why so I’ve got a nice little analogy to make this simple so the blood vessels in your brain especially in certain parts of the brain are very very small they’re so small that a single red blood cell can pass along that vessel at a Time Imagine This like we’re here in Colorado Springs you’re driving up to Aspen you’re going over Liberty Pass you know that that road is super narrow oh Independence Independence Pass yeah you’re driving over Independence Pass it’s pretty much a single aid and there’s a cliff on the other side so you’re you are imagine you’re the red blood cell so you’re a truck that’s full of oxygen and that is your only Pathway to The Village on the other side that Village on the other side depends on your delivery in order to heat their homes in the winter so if all of a sudden there’s a rock slide because of this inflammatory process your truck ain’t getting through so what happens on the other side what happens in Aspen Village well the cell they’re not just going to die they’re not just going to freeze to death so they the cells switch over from burning natural gas which is what you’re bringing to burning their wood stoves that’s a that’s going from cellular respiration which is a clean way to make energy to what’s called anerobic glycolysis that is how cancer cells make energy so that burning that wood stove if you can imagine all these all these cells all these houses in Aspen are burning these wood stoves they’re increasing the amount of carbon in that Valley and that has negative consequences to the cells in that space to the people that are living there they’re going to end up with more issues that’s exactly what happens in the brain so what can we do about that process well we can one we can clear the inflammatory aspect with things like ketamine with things like hyperbaric oxygen therapy but the other thing we can do is instead of relying on that truck we can create a pipeline that’s what hyperbaric oxygen therapy does it hyper oxygenates your blood plasma so we are no longer we are no longer worried about the truck it’s not a single Lane it goes it’s not a single Lane it’s a pipeline now because you’ve hyper oxygenated the liquid that that red blood cell travels in and you can get it you can get the oxygen saturation of that blood plasma high enough that it has enough O2 in it enough oxygen in it to do the same job as the truck as the red blood cell so you can take an area that has been starved of oxygen that has been in this anerobic state and bring it back into uh a fully aerobic State that’s really beautiful and so basically nothing gets jammed up everything moves through and you’re getting the oxygen or what whatever you need and then your body the great thing is then your body can start to heal itself this isn’t like weren this isn’t rocket science this isn’t rocket surgery I know I used to do rocket surgery this is neuroscience like this is biology and it’s really wonderful and when you especially when you take into account proper nutrition proper exercise you can literally give the body and the Brain all of the resources that they need to heal the injury yeah man we’re talking like with combat veterans First Responders with and talking about healing mhm healing right you don’t we don’t hear that a lot in our medical model it’s we’re in the business for repeat business and come back for more we we’re we’re all about response not about remission MH like no that you know there are enough sick people that we do not have to play that game yeah let’s play get better next get better next there’s a line out the door around the block and down the interstate of people who need this yeah who people people who are just crying out for help for something that can take that burden off and then help them get to the next level and that’s not to say that anything that we do is a magic pill you still have to do the work you’re still showing up to build the house if you don’t pick up a hammer and a saw nobody else is going to on that in that team right you know in your biology so that’s not to put the onus on the treatments themselves I think that’s also a trap that a lot of people can fall into is like oh well you know this one thing didn’t work yeah well it’s not a magic pill you still got to put in the effort what was it that you experien differently than what you’re organizing for the people that need it the most when you went and tried to seek services for your mental health I mean I I ran into the traditional the traditional model like I got thrown ssris um that beta beta blockers was on uh trazodone for a while and it didn’t make anything better it made everything gray and then when I when I got introduced to these therapies you know just really started seeking them out I started a nonprofit for veterans who were struggling and started to kind of piece together all of these disperate pieces they already existed you know ketamine TMS hyper bear but no one had put them together i’ never heard until I met you yeah and like no one had put them all together and I was like man I bet I bet if we just stacked these we could get some really amazing results really fast and so raised money to try it I I tried on myself first uh oh I was like all of a sudden lights hey lights are on and I am home and I’m happy about it and then my my former business partner at the time um he uh he had he had uh been blown up in Afghanistan then got in a car wreck where he lost Consciousness then he fought professional movie thae kickboxing for a year and was having severe postconcussive migraines 5 to six hour long episodes throwing up he’s in so much pain oh my go and we put him through uh we put him through a protocol that we helped develop and gone all that [  ] was gone yeah and that was another real big light bulb moment I like oh wait you know hey I may not be a doctor but we’re on to something here and I bet you we can put together a team around this concept and that’s what we did you know we put started the outpatient Psychiatry Clinic called MPA up in Denver and then that you know that’s still rocking and rolling and then we also have Patriot PowerUp which is you know our inpatient treatment program up in Idaho we can serve the entire United States and we’re doing all this stuff under the banner of the VA Community Care Network that’s beautiful and and are you finding that the VA is coming in and supporting your guys’ efforts because it’s so efficacious you know they’re starting to okay uh you know we’re we’re starting to show the results the program’s only been around for a year sure uh the current environment that we’re in the VA is is over budget right now and you know one of the primary one of the primary causes at least what they’re saying the primary causes is of that is Runaway community care costs um and you know unfortunately we get put in that bucket even though we’re doing what nobody else is doing so it’s been a little bit of a struggle but like I said the providers are coming around we’re seeing the efficacy we’re seeing those 45 degree angles you know increase in executive function complete relief from symptoms we’re seeing these guys come back like come back to life and people are starting to take note yeah it’s a big deal what you’re doing in the community man and I really um connect with it and value it and want to be close to it CU I I can remember when we opened Peaks and my brother coined the core value to disrupt the industry through quality of care and like what that meant to me oh yeah and was so near and dear to my heart and I feel it even even more so with you and with your mission and your vision and the minds spawn and your certainly your resume and the people that you connect with like what is your your goal your dream what do you see happening and where do you find yourself in that process yeah uh I mean I I want to improve the way that mental health is treated in this country uh and move toward WS value based care like that’d be amazing yeah I I think that there there is the see the incentives are aligned right if we can treat people more effectively not only can we make their lives so much better in a relatively short period of time if you think about it like you know anywhere from 30 to 60 days that’s yeah I mean dude one to two months come on like in one to two months your life could be so so much better than it is now you can be feeling better and engaging with your environment instead of retracting from it that’s huge yeah you know we have that right here and also people who are feeling better and not in their deep dark cave or having panic attacks all the time or suffering from substance use disorder they use the medical system less they take care of their themselves more what does an insurance company want right spend less money they want you to pay your premiums and not go to the doctor yeah less the visits yeah yeah less ER visits you know less less of these things so you it’s I I think that it makes a lot of sense from every perspective this can be a win-win win-win win across the board we can get people in we can make them better and with a relatively small upfront investment from the insurance companies that I I’m including the VA in this we can stem those Downstream costs because Healthcare is one of the things that’s going to bankrupt our country if we keep on the same track and mental Health’s a huge part of that yeah and I love what you said about it too because you’re fair in your assessment you say it’s it’s not just a payer Source problem there’s a provider problem and the provider problem has the onus on them as well you know to step up and put the not can treatment and create these drop downs for individuals who deserve complex thoughtful curious processes and so I think just as much as we got to continue to put our best foot forward in that integrous foot with what is best for humans um then we can move into this kind of like you know they’ve been saying it for years man as far as value based care and this kind of thing and so we’ve been keeping outcomes for the last five years I think we’re one of only 15 treatment programs in the United States that’s not a nonprofit that lists those outcomes online that’s insane we want to share this message that’s insane you know and we want you to ask good questions yeah you know and so if you’re a viewer out there ask good questions make sure you’re in front of a great provider well I think it’s really important like we should demand as constituents hey you I saw an article the other day that you know the VA was talking about how much better it was than than Community Care and I was like all right cool where are your outcomes I I would love to see them I can tell you right now if I drive down to the if I drive down to the Phoenix Arizona VA and Survey some of the folks in there they’re not going to have the same answers that you put on your website yeah like let’s let’s all get on board with transparency around outcomes yep that’s you know hiding this stuff in a black box is exactly how we got here exactly yeah we need to open open up this dialogue around what makes people better and bring our data together so it’s it’s just it’s a matter of not there’s no way any one organization just like any one person has the answer do I have a a great program a couple great programs absolutely do you have a great program absolutely is my program going to work for every single person in your program no insane like but together we can put together this cohesive picture of what real valuable care looks like real outcomes based care and I think that there are real solutions to billing along those lines yeah that don’t cause favoritism that that don’t put one program over another like we can you know be on the level together yeah I think that’s a beautiful thing man and and and I know it’s so needed and valued specifically in our community here in Colorado Springs I’ve never been around in my entire life more combat veterans more people that have served our country more people that have servant hearts and just just want to show up and at the same time have had a tough time connecting in community as a result of the time they spent um you know in combat and serving their country and so so grateful to have you on the show where do we where do we find you what’s the website yeah so you know if you’re interested in learning more about our offerings uh in the Denver area mindspa denver.com uh you can look us up on there see what we do uh get in contact with us uh you know at that clinic you know we’re doing the Hyperbaric ketam infusion therapy trans cranial magnetic stimulation talk therapy and medication management uh and we are open to just about every major insurance carrier all the big ones um up to an including tracker in the VA and then if you’re a veteran who is suffering with you know PTSD TBI uh sorry PTSD TBI depression anxiety uh and substance abuse disorder to a secondary degree Patriot PowerUp is is a program that is a part of va Community Care we are doing Hyperbaric ketamine TMS culturally competent therapy in a nice homebased U homebased uh inpatient setting it’s it’s very intimate it’s very nice uh it’s a non- lockdown facility and you can come to there if you get a referral through the VA you can come to our program at zero cost wow yeah and and take part in better outcomes sure that’s a big deal zero cost through the VA only you can do 30 60 days there you can transition Community Based resource and move and groove in that direction we’re just getting started here man I’m going to bring you back on for other episodes I want to kind of get into the the real nuts and bolts of what you’re doing in a different episode but it’s just been uh a humbling experience to have you on I appreciate your service I appreciate how you show up in the community with a whole heart we need more individuals and professionals like you moving into Community with true cause and purpose thank you so much for coming on until next time my people peace [Music] you