Unseen Battlefields: Matt Spaid's Journey with Combat, PTSD, and Healing

Jerry Dean Lund: 0:15

Welcome to today's episode of Enduring the Badge Podcast. I'm host Jerry Dean Lund and if you haven't already done so, please take out your phone and hit that subscribe button. I don't want you to miss an upcoming episode. And hey, while your phone's out, please give us a rating and review. On whichever platform you listen to this podcast on, such as iTunes, apple Podcasts and Spotify. It helps this podcast grow and the reason why, when this gets positive ratings and reviews, those platforms like Apple Podcasts and Spotify show this to other people that never listened to this podcast before, and that allows our podcast to grow and make a more of an impact on other people's lives. So if you would do that, I would appreciate that from the bottom of my heart. My very special guest today is Matt Spade. We'll just go by Spade, because it's really cool. I like that.

Matt Spaid: 1:01

I like the thing so.

Jerry Dean Lund: 1:03

Spade, tell the audience a little bit about yourself.

Matt Spaid: 1:07

Oh well, I'm a Marine Corps veteran. I joined just out of high school, also married with two kids, got married while I was in the Marine Corps, very young, still married. Going on 16 years, we've got a nine-year-old son and a four-year-old daughter. I'm a strength coach. I've been in the fitness industry basically since about 2012. And I got in the fire service in 2013. And I've always done a little bit of both, and now currently I'm a full-time firefighter, the rank of captain at my department, and I do personal training out of my garage gym now.

Jerry Dean Lund: 1:48

Yeah, it's quite. When you see his Instagram page, it's quite the garage gym. I was checking it out. Yeah, it's pretty nice, pretty nice. So you joined the Marine Corps really early.

Matt Spaid: 2:04

Yeah, it was pretty much. It was honestly kind of eerie when I first looked up information for the Marine Corps. I did it. I was working two jobs at the time. My senior year of high school looked up online and the next day at my other job, a recruiter showed up and just he just happened to be what I was working at, an orange Julius in the mall, and he just happened to be walking by and I kind of felt like they were watching me or something. But yeah, I joined the day after I turned 18. And then, yeah, right out of high school, pretty much back in 2006.

Jerry Dean Lund: 2:40

Yeah, that was quite a change. And then you got married and had some kids during that time.

Matt Spaid: 2:47

Yeah, well, we waited a little while to have kids, but, yeah, I got married in 2007. So I've been in the Marines for about a year and, as I got married, my wife is one of the few. She was, like, extremely dedicated to me with all the deployments and everything I went through after the deployments as well, and it's something that are you married, yeah, yeah. So then, marriage it takes a lot of work, so we've had our ups and downs, but we've both grown together. I think that's a big part of marriage, where you're not going to be the same person when you first married, and it's helping each other and I think we've both done a good job of that. But yeah, we waited until 2014 until having kids, so seven years before I had my son.

Jerry Dean Lund: 3:46

Yeah, and then getting married young, and then I'm glad you waited to have kids, because that probably throws a whole other challenge yeah, it's a whole other challenge and to things that you do grow and you do change. You're not the same person when you started the Marines as when you ended being in the Marine Right. What transpired between there? A lot of growth, I'm sure.

Matt Spaid: 4:15

Oh yeah. So yeah, when I was in the Marines for one thing I was infantry I served with 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines, lima Company. I did one deployment to Iraq and one deployment to Afghanistan Two very different deployments too. Iraq it was 2008. So the war was kind of winding down in Iraq then it was a lot more of a hearts and minds sort of thing. They did some cool missions. Still, I was all around Al-Ambar province. The highlight of that deployment was we got to do some boat ops on the Euphrates. So we did some stuff in Zodiacs looking all sneaky squirrel and found some weapons caches on some islands and stuff. It was pretty cool. Not everyone gets to do that sort of thing, especially in Iraq, and I always think it's pretty cool that it's one of the rivers of Babylon, so how people can say that they've been in that. So that was a cool experience. Came back from that deployment and I wasn't too different. Obviously I changed a little bit. There was some more experience. That way I'd gotten a deployment under my belt. Now it's kind of the time for me to step up and be in more of a leadership role. So then I became a team leader and a workup for Afghanistan. That was when I went to Afghanistan. It was a much different deployment. That was literally the start of the surge in 2009, 2010, that President Obama called for, and I was a team leader, made squad leader when my squad leader was incapacitated early on in the deployment, and so I took over the squad and I was in Helmand province, which a lot of people, if you're familiar with the war in Afghanistan, they're more familiar with Helmand, specifically now Zad, and at the time it was the hottest area of operations. Lots of IEDs. That was. Our biggest threat was IEDs, and yeah, the training up to that was just. I always tell people I mean, yeah, I was back for I don't know, maybe 10 months or maybe a little bit longer between deployments, but I was gone training almost that entire time. We did a big workup for it and I'm grateful for it, because I'm a big believer in the saying of sweat more and training, bleed less and more. We did have some casualties on that deployment, but we did really well overall. Just my squad alone found probably over 20 IEDs, and that's not necessarily me trying to say like our squad was so great, it's just that there were that many of them. And thankfully, though again with our training we found them instead of stepping on them. But yeah, so you know I won't go too much into like my deployments, because you know I'd like to kind of get more into the first responder side of things Again like we were saying earlier, talk more about solution than just what happened to me.

Jerry Dean Lund: 7:34

Yeah, yeah, definitely, and just want to give the audience kind of a little bit of a backstory about you and where you've been and some of the things you've gone through. So let's dive into your story a little bit and start where you feel like you should begin.

Matt Spaid: 7:52

Okay. So yeah, I kind of already gave a little bit of a background with the Marine Corps, but grew up a fairly normal family. You know everyone has their problems growing up and stuff. I won't go too much into that. Had loving parents, did a lot of various sports growing up, had one older brother and again joined the Marine Corps right out of high school. I was very excited to go. I wanted to help fight in the war and serve my country and I just saw it as a good way to better myself as well. So joined the Marine Corps and about a year in those when I got married and still married and the two deployments when do I rack, when do I have Afghanistan and it was really kind of like what I was saying. The Afghan deployment was where I came back very different and my wife recognized early on too, and especially because she had been married and been with me early on in the Marines. We also saw the change in all of the guys I was in with as well. We all came back a little different. Took us a little while to recognize that, especially at first, and I think honestly almost longer for some other guys. I had been in recovery before joining the Marine Corps, which I'm not really grateful for, you know. At the time you know I was going through a hard time in high school battling some alcoholism and addiction problems and but with that, you know, I dove into recovery and I was clean and sober for about two years before joining and then when I joined the Marine Corps, I started drinking again. You know, the Marine Corps is kind of known for it. But by that time I had also gotten older and I had realized, you know, there were. I had a lot of issues, but the thing is with addiction and alcoholism is, you know, that's your solution when you have these problems. So I got to the root core of my problems and I was able to get a lot better. I was able to get more control over my drinking. There's a saying in alcoholics and on myths that there are those of us that are able to turn their drinking around and our hats are off to them. And I ended up being one of those guys. I can. My drinking is completely different now I was able to turn around. Now I definitely had some times in the Marine Corps where I wasn't drinking like a gentleman, but it wasn't the same thing. Still, I wasn't trying to fill in this hole and it wasn't to the point where it was like I'm just drinking in order to block out this pain. But anyway, so a little bit of background with that. I wanted to add that in there because that's really a big part of why when I did get out of the Marines, so I got back from Afghanistan and about a month later I was out of the Marine Corps. I didn't have a whole lot of transition time. I was going through squalidators course right before our pre-deployment workups and so I kind of got missed in the paperwork because they are supposed to have you extend about 90 days before getting out, if that is when your EAS or end of active service is, and that just kind of got missed with me because I was going through that school. So basically I was in Afghanistan, came back home on post-deployment leave and then was checking out of the Marine Corps and so it was kind of like, you know, combat and then all of a sudden civilian, which is like a huge, huge change and still not recognizing some of the what was going on in my head. So you know, I got out and kind of struggled a bit. At first I ended up a rough-necking in the oil field as my first job, which was actually a really good transitional job. I was always busy, always had something in my hands. I was outside, able to take out some aggression with a sledgehammer, you know. Like it was a but again. So there was no doubt that I was dealing with PTSD. Then I had come back very different. I was having recurring nightmares. I would have sleep paralysis where I just couldn't move, couldn't talk. A lot of times my nightmares, always there was always this kind of same dark, shadowy figure that when it would show up I just couldn't move and I would wake up screaming or punching, you know, and it was happening about like two to three times a week sort of thing. And then I was just, you know, constantly on edge, the hypervigilance I was constantly trying to assess for some sort of a threat that might come in and just I couldn't. I just couldn't shut down. You know that down regulating just wasn't happening and I'd be constantly thinking about setting up positions and whatnot. But again, thankfully, I was able to kind of recognize that, my wife was able to recognize it and so I went and sought help at the VA. Unfortunately, when I first went to them for help, they were really more interested in telling me about like the different sort of benefits I could get and disability stuff, and I was like that's great and all, but you know I need some help right now. You know I wanted to help with my marriage, help with functioning again, and I just wasn't really getting that. You know, I think the VA has gotten better, but at the time when I was there, this would have been like 2010, 2011,. It was still having some problems, at least where I was. So I ended up seeking some private counseling after the VA didn't seem like it was really doing anything, and that was when we did some cognitive behavioral training with my counselor then and it was really helpful and a lot of other stuff. But you know, and I stopped drinking for a while again because I was like you know what, this is just making this a whole lot worse right now. So put the drinking on hold. And it was originally the counselor I saw was for like alcohol and drugs, usually in youth. It was someone I saw when I was in high school and now we had kind of switched gears, though, to where it was like okay, because we had kind of a group of us that had been there when we were younger. Now we were all like early 20s adults and still had a good group and for me they were like, well, you know, keep coming here. Once I started drinking again and they were like you can just come here for your PTSD stuff, because it was like, yeah, I put it on hold but there was no doubt that I had the PTSD problems. So that was more of what the focus was this time. So, yeah, she was able to help me figure out more of. We did like the tapping. Are you familiar with tapping? Yeah, so, yeah, she did that and it was still pretty new then and you know it was helpful. It was kind of weird where it would. She would go from, you know, whatever particular thing was bothering me at that moment to tap back, and then it would bring me back into Afghanistan and then from Afghanistan to Iraq, iraq, to you know, and it was just kept bouncing back until going all the way back to like my childhood, which was I was molested around the age of like six or seven, and you know I wanna bring that up too, because the more I've read about PTSD, especially in veterans, there was some sort of childhood trauma and a lot of them. It's not like that's a requirement, but it definitely seems like there's some sort of a connection there, so.

Jerry Dean Lund: 16:12

Yeah, there's definitely a science out there backing it up and it's pretty high. Don't quote me on this. I think a number I heard was around 70%. Yeah, had some kind of childhood trauma.

Matt Spaid: 16:26

That sounds right to me and yeah, because I, and when I was at Camp Hope too, I mean the amount of guys that mentioned some sort of childhood trauma, like it's just it's insane. So that you know it makes it to where, like if you have something like that, and I think that's what led to my, like, early alcohol problems in high school and I didn't realize it then but that's why I got to the root of the problem and kind of solved it. But then when I got out okay, well, now I have this post-traumatic stress problem and it was difficult to figure out at first Things did get better. So when I was seeing my counselor and stuff you know there's all these different tools you can do to try getting better and honestly, for me I got to do a lot of them. You know I can't and I think that's probably everyone that has this kind of stuff. you know you can't just do one. I can't go to counseling and poof get better, cause, just like you know, I'm a strength coach. You can't just go to the gym, you know, one hour and then get better. It's really all those other 23 hours in the day that make the difference.

Jerry Dean Lund: 17:35

Yeah.

Matt Spaid: 17:35

So same thing and I eventually. So I left rough-necking and then I began contracting for a brief time period with the Defense Department Like Triple Canopy was the name of the company. I did the training with them and I was waiting to. My plan was to do a year contract in Iraq and I still wanted to be a firefighter then. But I bought a house rough-necking, had a mortgage and everything. So I was like, okay, well, I'll do this year contract in Iraq, make a good amount of money and then I'll use my GI bill. But unfortunately this was right around the time when the army had pulled out of Iraq, so they weren't giving out work visas. So basically, I did this training with Triple Canopy and then was waiting to deploy. So the guys that were in the States were stuck there and the guys in Iraq were stuck in Iraq. And to me it was kind of funny because I just remember seeing on the news where everyone was all celebrating that we were out of Iraq and I was just kind of laughing because it's like what they're really doing is just hiring more contractors and got the military out of there.

Jerry Dean Lund: 18:45

Yeah, switching the day.

Matt Spaid: 18:47

Yeah, we were still over there, but just in a different way, but anyways. So I was kept on retainer and that's when, after I'd been there for like a few months, that was when I started going to a gym it was a CrossFit gym and I started using my GI bill. Then I was like, oh, am I as well like do a class or two while I'm sitting here waiting. And going to that gym was extremely helpful because at the time that was when I'd stopped going to any place that was kind of crowded or loud noises, things like that, and CrossFit gym is crowded with loud noises, and all that so. But it forced me to get out of my comfort zone, interact with new people. And then, of course, with the strength training, I was doing some stuff that I'd never really done before, and now I know more about how strength training affects mental health. I'd always been into fitness, but I hadn't really dove into strength training that much, yeah. So that was kind of the start of that, and I started to feel better with that and realized that that was almost becoming a form of meditation for me, because when you're squatting with a bunch of weight on your back, you're not really thinking about whatever else is going on in the world. You're thinking about that present moment. So that very much became like my therapy and so this kind of time period where I was contracting and waiting to deploy, and at the time I was really frustrated. But now I look back and it was really a mixed blessing where I could really find myself. You know, I found the gym, found some a good community, and I'd always been a spiritual person, but I'd never really found a religion that seemed to connect with me. I was raised Catholic but just it just wasn't for me. I knew there was some sort of a higher power out there, but I just wasn't sure what. And there actually ended up being a Buddhist temple in my neighborhood and I did some sort of like online survey and it said like Buddhism was kind of like the religion for me. So it was just kind of strange that it ended up being in not the middle of my neighborhood but right down the road for me and it wasn't at all what I think most people think of when it's like a Buddhist temple or very modern and you know everyone like, when I had told my dad about it, he asked me if I was gonna shave my head and wear robes and stuff. And I was like, well, that would be becoming a monk. But anyways, I immediately felt comfortable there. I'd always meditated and so it just kind of made sense for me to pursue Buddhism as my religion. So, you know, I was able to dive more into that, find a religion, find a community aspect and get a lot of help, you know. So I had my counseling again. I was going to, I had the gym, and then I had my religion and things were going really well. And eventually now it had been like I don't know how long maybe it was like seven months and they finally called me up like, hey, you know, if you're ready, you can deploy. And I was like, well, now I'm, you know, got all this going on. And I was like I'm good, and so I just took more classes, I dove into the GI Bill, pursued my associate's degree for fire municipality. I was like, you know, I'm just gonna try my best to get hired on somewhere. And then I started coaching as well, because more of the time in the gym I started realizing how much I loved like helping people, cause you know anybody in there, you kind of you get training partners and kind of blend in. And someone had suggested to me to be a coach. So I went and got my little CrossFit L1 and started coaching and that was definitely the start to. I mean, I already had a love of fitness, but then a love of coaching and helping people in so many aspects, whether it's just through fitness. But a lot of times people come in and they're not even talking about their fitness problems, they're talking about other problems. So a lot of times you kind of end up becoming almost more of a therapist sometimes with it. But I liked it and just helping people in so many different ways too. It was something that I enjoyed and I had a lot of knowledge on it and so I was coaching and going to school, eventually got my degree and all my certifications and ended up getting hired by a pretty small fire department. They were a combination. I was one of the full-time guys and I loved it. I loved the city. It needed a lot of growth and help at this department so I figured I was kind of like maybe the guy that could do it with my Marine background and then I was coaching as well. So I had kind of weird hours, though that not a lot of people realized I wasn't doing regular like 24 on 48 off stuff, it was admin hours. So I was working Monday through Friday, seven to four or five. I think it was seven to four, because then I was coaching in the evenings and sometimes in the mornings too. So my day was starting around like five AM coaching and then firefighter all day and then coaching in the evening, get home at like 8, 8.30 and do it all over again, usually, yeah. So and I was like this department the starting pay was absolutely horrific. Like the starting pay was like 9.50 an hour and I hear some people sometimes talk about how well firefighters are paid now and there's definitely some places, but anytime, someone thinks that I always want to tell them what my starting pay was there and that ended up being a big struggle too, just because I mean I was poor and like had to have all these second jobs like a lot of firefighters and EMS people do. You know like that's more of where you really get your money as your side gig, at least for some people.

Jerry Dean Lund: 25:21

So yeah.

Matt Spaid: 25:23

So, but with that work schedule and trying to improve the time, I was doing so many things that I was really burning myself out very early on, and some of it was just. I was new too. I thought it was just how it was Like. I was also like the maintenance guy, for we had like eight different pieces of the Vaporados and I was the maintenance guy for that. I became a training officer. I was training our volunteers, started an academy for them, I was working on grants, I was doing fire prevention stuff. You know it was just tons and tons of stuff on top of just being a regular firefighter.

Jerry Dean Lund: 26:05

That's what you get in those small towns is you work. Exactly All those hats.

Matt Spaid: 26:10

Yeah, and I mean even like some of the bigger ones were. You know, it's just kind of the way of the fire service now and there's just, you know, you're not just putting out fires, you're doing the EMS, hazmat, rex, you know. You know the list goes on, but yeah, especially true in the smaller towns and stuff. So it was very busy. You know, part of me wonders if I was staying that busy to block out some things or if it was just how I was. I think it's kind of a combination of both, you know. But eventually, after I've been there for a little over a year I think it was like a year and a half I promoted to Lieutenant and had a new firefighter with me and we had a pretty bad wreck and this was where, you know, things have been pretty good with my post-traumatic stress. And then this incident made it come roaring back. So we had a wreck involving one of our police officers where he was t-boned on a highway by a garbage truck and came in actually before our shift started. It was like 6.52, I think when it came in, but me and my new firefighter were already there Ran the call, discovered what was going on. He was kind of barely breathing. But the ambulance supervisor came on scene with us. We were able to pop the door open, assist them with stabilizing him. But this Mack truck and his vehicle had gotten to where they just became one and his legs were pinned in the dash and of course they ran off the road in a muddy ditch as well. So the rain and everything, I mean it was just a horrible mess. Pretty much Tried pulling the vehicles apart but just couldn't. The brakes had locked up on the garbage truck. So just me and one other firefighter, and the whole time I thought some more help was on its way because it was the start of the shift Never really showed up. At times I wish I had called on the radio for it. But at the same time it's a scenario I've gone over a lot in my head and in my mind the chief was gonna be showing up, seeing the engine was gone, hearing the radio, traffic, and I still don't know why he didn't show up. But he didn't, and I won't go into all that. It doesn't necessarily even matter now, but at the time I was pretty angry about it.

Jerry Dean Lund: 29:02

Yeah, I mean it's super hard to run a call like that was probably. I don't know if you knew him, the officer, but I mean, is it local jurisdiction? I mean there's good chance that you know him. And then you're so focused when you're short-handed to just get the job done that you assume that the normal things that are happening the chief's responding or getting mutual aid or whatever is happening just isn't happening because you're working as frantically as you can to save this person's life.

Matt Spaid: 29:30

Exactly, and I mean I beat myself up a lot unfairly over that, yeah. So yeah, we showed up in there. Obviously I had to take command of that scene and had so much going on, especially because we're short-handed anyways that yeah, you kind of assume, especially because we weren't in a big department, when you walk in, if none of your crew is there and an engine's gone, I mean you should probably check on them and see what's going on. And I don't know why he didn't show up. I don't know if I ever will. But and yeah, I did know him the police officer I actually had. We had a really good relationship with the police officers there. I was working on trying to develop a rescue team with our PD and he was the guy that hung out a lot at the station and he actually reminded me a lot of my squad leader in Iraq too, which probably just helped bring that post-traumatic stress back even more. But we got him stabilized and eventually someone worked the air brakes down in the garbage truck to where we were able to separate the vehicles. Then I could do a dash lift and get him out. But it took us about an hour and then, once we loaded him up, wasn't sure if he was going to be alive or dead. And it's funny when I used to tell this story too, especially when I was still dealing with my trauma like people thought that he had died in that wreck and I was like, oh no, he came back, made a full recovery and whatnot. But so everyone was like, well then, you did good, you did your job. But I just constantly had this feeling and some of that was because back at the station I wasn't getting that support. I wasn't getting that you did a good job. I was feeling very alone at that time and again I unfairly beat myself up over it especially and I just was like man, I should have been faster, I could have done this. But the goal was accomplished. He wasn't hurt further Extrication the goal is cutting around the patient, not causing further injuries. So thankfully I actually hadn't done any formal vehicle extrication training I think I missed that day in the academy or something. So I had taught myself by watching a whole bunch of stuff on YouTube and then teaching it to our volunteers, and that ended up obviously being another good blessing in disguise, because I don't think that's one of the best ways to learn anything, anyways, just by doing it. But anyway, so things were. After that call happened there was definitely a big change in me. I had a lot of stress and then, just I mean, after that call we were still busy it was the beginning of our shift and then had another busy day and then after that I was coaching CrossFit class. But after this call I remember like there was some sort of a rowing workout and I just could not function. Things just weren't working right in my head. I couldn't focus and I had to have one of my good friends that he was a coach as well, was there and I was like and he was also in the EMS world, so he knew what happened and everything and I was like, dude, you need to take over for me. Like I can't, I can't coach today. So he took over and kind of did whatever I could, I guess, to de-stress and then back to work the next day, and it was just kind of this endless cycle that went on for a while until eventually. So there were. There was obviously a lot of problems with that department and I won't go into too much of that, but I me and another firefighter filed a complaint against the chief and basically two days later we were fired by the city manager. So he tried to force a meeting and it was pretty obvious what he was trying to do. We just asked to reschedule and he said if we walk out the door we're fired. So that was what we did. And then it was this huge like media storm too, because people had heard about these two firefighters getting fired. And it was just I remember leaving and you know it was a route I'd driven a billion times to get back to my house, but I was completely lost. I had no idea where I was, and that's where you know you could tell I obviously had like a mental break. My son was also. He had just been born, like three or four months before all this so newborn baby, on top of all this stress of being wrongfully terminated, and I was still dealing with issues from that wreck that I'd just never really gotten over. So, yeah, not a good combination for everything. And so, yeah, I was got home, I was dealing with all that wrongful termination, newborn baby, and I tried to just push through it, but there were times that I had to go to the VA for help. At least I realized that not a lot of people do that, I guess try to get myself a little bit of credit with just like hey, I was like something's wrong, I need to go get help. So I started seeing that counselor again. The same with that I had seen. But now you know, it'd been a while, when I'd been working for almost two years, I was doing just that. I was working and coaching, working and coaching, you know, didn't? You know I was still doing my strength training stuff, but I wasn't doing a whole lot of meditation anymore and you know, just a lot of other things, self care, even just you know taking the day off, kind of thing, you know cause a lot of times I was off Saturday and Sunday well, that's when I was coaching. And then Sunday was like kind of, I either had a strongman class to teach or I was doing a workout on my own, which was good but, you know, not resting.

Jerry Dean Lund: 35:40

Yeah, gotta rest mentally and physically. I mean, I think you tend to get in these cycles of just right work like you can constantly just work right. It's just like a get up, I gotta be there to the gym and then I gotta go to work, and then I gotta come back and teach, and then you're just so good at that habit right Of creating that habit of work, and then almost right falls into a trap where it's just mind numbing.

Matt Spaid: 36:09

Well, that's what I have to watch now. Even just like good habits Like sometimes I was like man. I think I'm doing too many good habits where it doesn't become a good habit, it becomes just added stress. You know where it was like all right, I'm gonna do my cold plunge in the morning, then I'm gonna do some breath training and then I'm gonna do this 10 minute walk and then I'm gonna meditate and it's just it turns into like like how many different things am I gonna do? That's supposed to be positive.

Jerry Dean Lund: 36:36

Sure.

Matt Spaid: 36:37

And then, you know, it ends up just having a negative effect instead. And I know that now. But yeah, so at the time and when I was working, I was trying so hard to make the department better too and I was just, like you know, kind of thinking like I'll just work really hard right now and things will get better. But you know, you can't do that as one person either and these sort of things take a lot of time, and that's definitely always been a weakness of mine. I'm not a very patient person, but I've definitely learned over the years now to be a little bit more patient. But yeah, so I had this going on where I got home trying to figure out what to do with new baby, you know. But you know my wife would ask me to like go, you know, get my son like some milk or change diaper or whatever, and I would end up wandering off doing some random sort of thing that something had triggered me into doing whatever and wasn't a good situation at all. I eventually, when I went to the VA, I was actually first waiting on my counselor. I was saying and she was late, I got this email about active shooter training, but in my mind it went to that there's an active shooter after my family and you know I thought you know they were in danger. So I started like screaming in the middle of the road on the phone with them, telling them to like go to a fire station. My wife's telling me I'm crazy, she's not going to a fire station. And eventually, you know, one of the guys that worked at the counselor place came out, heard me yelling all the random things in the street and asked me if I was, you know, had an appointment. Was I okay? Like then my counselor came pulling up fast and she recommended I go to the VA, went to the VA and I was able to calm down some. But that was when they first gave me some sort of mild anxiety medication and I'd never been on medication at all in my life. But that was kind of the start of a downward spiral and I really didn't take it much, but things were just continued to get worse. I eventually got hired fairly quickly by another department, but I still had all these stressors going on. You know, now I still had the new baby, still had just all the trauma I was dealing with anyways, and now I had a wrongful termination lawsuit going on and just everywhere I went is like people were talking to me about it sort of thing, and it was, yeah, just a ticking time bomb basically Compound effect right, you can't escape it, it's just compounding wherever you go, whatever you're doing. Right, yeah, and I knew quite a lot of people because of my coaching job. It was right and like downtown Oklahoma City, so I knew a lot of different people and everyone had heard about what happened to me and stuff and so, yeah, it was just very tiring. I wasn't sleeping pretty much at all and sleep deprivation will obviously do a lot anyways to you. But I eventually went back to the VA after having like another mental break, and then they diagnosed me saying I was bipolar and schizophrenic, and I got like this gallon-sized ziplock bag of tons and tons of different medications and I wasn't bipolar or schizophrenic. We've had a pretty short interaction, but you can probably tell already I'm a fairly calm, mild-mannered person, but I just kind of thought like, well, I guess I'm bipolar now, which isn't usually how that works. It's usually a long time period over the years that you can have to assess that. But I tried it. At first I had okay, I was trying to stay positive I had actually switched gyms. I was working at a different gym, new department, and with that though there's still even stressors to and I had two new jobs. Now I was working at a new gym, learning new names, same thing with this new department. And now I was on this new medication that I've never been on in my life and I started to have horrible side effects from it. When you're not psychotic and you get put on psych meds, it tends to make you psychotic. I started having blurred vision. I was so stressed out that I shit myself twice, and then on top of that yeah, did I already say blurred vision?

Jerry Dean Lund: 41:42

Yeah.

Matt Spaid: 41:43

Okay. So yeah, I had the blurred vision and I was supposed to be a new driver too. I would get muscle spasms, I mean it was just, it was bad. And I'd call the VA and I'd tell them like I'm having all these side effects and they're like, well, it's just part of the new medication, just keep on taking them. And they weren't really listening or paying attention. And it eventually got so bad where one of the days I was at work and I still to this day like don't really know what necessarily was real and what wasn't, but I became very panicked that someone was trying to kill me and I just was not functioning. I still hadn't really slept. They had called me to come back in a little early before my actual shift started. And again, I still don't know what was going on. I was trying to work still, but just they could tell something was going on with me, and so I eventually told my captain like hey, like I went to the VA recently, they put me on a bunch of psych meds. It's messing with my brain chemistry. I think I need to go to the hospital. So you know they were like all right, well, that makes a lot of sense because I'd been doing all kinds of weird stuff and so I tried driving to the hospital, but I couldn't drive on my own. I kept thinking that someone was trying to kill me. I kept thinking someone was following me. So I pulled over, called 911, and I actually got the department that I'd just left because they did their own dispatch too. So they were like, oh, is this Matt? And so they came and got me and, honestly, if I wasn't in better shape, I feel like I possibly would have had a heart attack, because my blood pressure was like 200, something over like 130 or 140, it was yeah, and but eventually kind of calmed down. They actually, instead of driving me to the VA, because it would have been a long drive from where I was at, my mom came and picked me up and when she did and we were driving back and her car, her stereo said no audio because it wasn't connected to Bluetooth or something like that. But in my mind I took that as like someone was trying to send me a message telling me no audio, stop talking. So I stopped talking at that point and would only use like hand and arm signals pretty much I thought everyone. Are you familiar with brevity codes?

Jerry Dean Lund: 44:17

I'm not. I'm not.

Matt Spaid: 44:19

So the easiest way for me to describe them is like so an example when we were in the Marines say, we're on a patrol and someone spots an IED, instead of just saying hey, there's an IED over there because there might be some sort of trigger man, you'd say avalanche or something. Use that instead of like hey, did you hear about that avalanche? And that would mean IED. So people would be talking in regular conversations but I'd be thinking, okay, they're meaning some sort of other thing. And that was so the start of the no audio quit talking, doing these random things in my mind that I think are missions and stuff. And I got home and I basically completely tore apart my parents' closet because I saw something that I thought was telling me to look for something old and there. And I actually found my Glock that the VA had told my dad to take away from me after one of my visits. So then I thought even more that someone was trying to have me do some sort of a mission or something that I just didn't wanna do. But eventually I went to the VA the next day. My dad drove me and I checked into the psych ward there. They actually thought I had brought a bomb to the VA because I had my gym bag with me and I just sat it down because I heard someone say drop the bag, like in a conversation, like he dropped the bag or something. And so I dropped my gym bag and wandered off, thinking I was like doing who knows what. And yeah, my dad found me before I went in and he said the police were trying to find me. They thought I brought a bomb to the VA and I just still wasn't talking either. So it doesn't really look very good for me. But they eventually got me in to talk to someone and then that was when they took me up to the psych ward and that was a whole other traumatic experience in itself. They were trying to have me committed while I was in there. Thankfully there was a couple of good nurses there and they talked to my wife and were trying to explain to her like she needs to try to get me out of there as fast as possible, because what they were doing to me in there just wasn't right. They weren't really trying to help me and just I mean just the overall treatment of not just me but other veterans in there was not what you should see in a VA hospital but yeah, they wouldn't let me leave. Eventually I was able to get out after 10 days, mainly because I think I quit taking the meds they were giving me. I was just pretending to take them and flushing them down the toilet and then I got some of my senses back and was kind of like not as crazy. So you know weird how that works, but I was able to get out and by the time I lost my.

Jerry Dean Lund: 47:30

I lost my other Go ahead. I just can't imagine you doing that and then putting things together, realizing where you're at.

Matt Spaid: 47:40

Exactly.

Announcement : 47:41

That would be, and when?

Matt Spaid: 47:43

I first got in there too, like I thought that they were gonna be, like someone was gonna be extracting me or something, that I was gonna go out a window or someone was getting me. I'd go do this mission and I kept thinking, like if I do this one thing, that's when they'll get me or something. I thought I had to change my name. So I started like to say my name was Noah when I was in there and of course they know I'm not Noah, but you know and I did some other name while I was in there too, but yeah, it was just, it was bad. And then, yeah, eventually kind of realizing, like once I got off the meds of like man, how am I in here, you know? And but I did get out and I'd lost my other job now which you know I understood losing that one because I was not ready to get back on the job yet, you know, and especially because I'd been gone for 10 days in the hospital. You know they probably didn't have any idea where I was sort of saying or they probably were like he's probably in the hospital, but anyways. So I felt extremely hopeless all over again and thankfully my family heard of Camp Hope, which I don't know if I'm gonna be able to do that Camp Hope, which I don't know if are you familiar with it at all, or A little bit about it and I've heard a lot of like it's pretty popular right. It's gotten way bigger compared to when I was there.

Jerry Dean Lund: 49:11

Yeah.

Matt Spaid: 49:13

Like now it's kind of a nationwide thing, it's with the PTSD Foundation of America. They're just kind of different residences. Where's it? Yeah, I said that weird.

Jerry Dean Lund: 49:27

Sounded good to me.

Matt Spaid: 49:28

Yeah, all over the nation now. But yeah, camp Hope when it started it was just like pretty much a couple of houses just kind of ran by veterans, that kind of just veterans helping each other out. Now I mean they got like this huge multi-story building. There's like probably hundreds of veterans at Camp Hope. It's this whole very well-organized thing that it's grown into from just kind of a house where when I got there I was sleeping on the couch, kind of thing. So. But yeah, my family thankfully heard of Camp Hope. I still had no idea what was going on though. I thought maybe they're like we were driving down to Houston from Oklahoma and I thought maybe they were gonna be like sending me to NASA and studying my brain or something. I mean I was just still not talking, yeah. And when I got to Camp Hope too, I thought that everyone there they're veterans and stuff. But I told you I did some contracting work. Well, I kind of thought, okay, everyone here is a contractor and they're trying to extract me. Okay, maybe I'm the principal now. Okay, I get it, so I'll play along or whatever. So but they actually lost me when I first checked in, because I had wandered off and found this room that was just dark and was just hiding in there. But eventually the guy that ran the place found me and I was just standing there in the dark and he was just kind of like what are you doing, man? And I just wasn't moving at first and then just kind of walked out and eventually went into one of the houses and I hid in the bathroom because I thought that now I was the principal, so that's like the safe room, and eventually one of the guys came to the door and their tradition at the time was any new guy, they've cooked a mistake. So came in and he just knocked and he was like amen, like you want to come out and have a steak? So kind of lured me out with the food, which is a good thing for me. So came out and obviously I think part of what makes Camp Hope work so well is just the fact that you're in a safe environment and there's other veterans there helping each other, like it has this whole program and everything. But I think so much of like the magic of what makes it work is just other veterans and there's other first responders there too and actually when I was first there I'd been there for maybe getting close to a month and I almost left because I was like, hey, I need to talk to a firefighter. You know like I'm dealing with, like I dealt with my Marine Corps trauma stuff and Iraq, afghanistan. I have something different now that unless you've been a firefighter you don't really understand. You know, you kind of do, but it's not the same. But thankfully they found a guy that he was with HFD and he had gone to Camp Hope before me and he came visited with me. I actually let me like stay in his house for a few days and that was where I really started to heal because I talked to this other firefighter with yours on the job and you know he reassured me that I did the right thing, not only with the wreck, but I felt a lot of guilt filing that wrongful termination lawsuit or not the lawsuit, but the off the work environment complaint that I filed against the chief, because you know I felt like I had like stabbed him in the back and that was the way he definitely took it as. But you know, and I told him, you know it wasn't personal, it was professional, but there was a lot of stuff going on at the time that was not safe and wasn't right, and so you know we were just trying to make some changes and it got handled horribly. But you know, talking with him, you know talking to your peers was able to. You know that's the magic, I think, of the fire service anyways. When guys are, you know that morning coffee or sitting around the kitchen table and doesn't even necessarily have to be actually talking about the trauma but just talking, you know so.

Jerry Dean Lund: 53:49

Community back to the community. That you're right. They're close to right. The people that you work with and spend so much time with you. I hate to see that tradition ever really, you know go.

Matt Spaid: 54:02

Yeah, I feel like it's a bit harder now with, honestly, like the smartphones and everything, because now people are able to just go get on their phone and connect with whoever. When it used to be, you know, you were just there and had to find something else to do.

Jerry Dean Lund: 54:20

Right.

Matt Spaid: 54:21

But now, yeah, and hopefully, you know, I feel like it'll always stay alive, at least a little bit. You know I hope at least. But but yeah, that was again. So much of what actually helped me was I got to talk to this other firefighter now try to get my life back in order. And then, after I'd been there, at one point I heard a guy tell his story where he talked about just flushing his meds down the toilet and he was dealing with more of like an opiate addiction. But still, you know, I never, like sometimes when I tell my story, people think that maybe I got addicted to the muscle relaxers they gave me or something, but I never even took them. It was just I was told early on too with the psych meds of what it does to your brain waves, that it's a bad idea to just stop taking it abruptly, that you can have some pretty serious side effects, seizures, you know, who knows what else. So you kind of have to wean yourself off. So when I was at Camp Hope I basically just started doing that kind of on my own until eventually she wasn't a nurse. Now they have an actual nurse handling the meds, but the way at the time was handling the medications was like you seem like you're doing a lot better lately and I was like, yeah, stop taking my meds. Like again weird, like. I wanted it not psychotic, stop taking their psych meds. And you know I started talking again and, you know, just being more of my normal self. You know my wife hates to think about that time, cause she always says my eyes just looked, you know gone. You know she didn't that she was ever gonna get her husband back. But you know she was a superstar during all this staying with me, being supportive, cause especially when I was as crazy as I was, there's a lot of women that would have just been like, well, he's gone, oh well, you know. True, so but she, stuck by me, was very supportive. So while I was at Camp Hope, I was able to get off the medications and we decided that we wanted to stay in the Houston area, just kind of have a new start, cause I had too many reminders when I'd go back home, and so I eventually got a job at another gym and started volunteering. So that was huge for me. At first I was having a pretty difficult time finding a job, which was just, you know it sucked. It kind of made me question my self worth and everything, and. But eventually this guy at a it was CrossFit West Houston gave me a chance. You know that's what it felt like and I was so glad to get back into the coaching world and it again. That had always kind of been my therapy. And now I had this new community that was very supportive and so I was able to start coaching again and then start volunteering again and get, you know, get my feet wet a little bit, cause my family and myself I was worried that, you know, I'd never go back to the job when I was all crazy, anytime I'd hear like a siren or something, I'd start doing some random thing, cause I'd get triggered. And you know, like at one point I thought there was a sniper in my parents attic and I'd climbed up in there and had all the lights off and everything and climbed all the way up to where I was about to climb out, side of like where their chimney is, until I kind of came to and realized what I was doing made zero sense, you know. So that was kind of a regular occurrence then, but was able to, you know, start volunteering and start trying to figure out, like, what I was gonna do with my life from there. So I was coaching for about a year until I eventually got hired by another department and went full time and, unfortunately, then I moved out of Houston and I'm now in Orange, texas, which is like Southeast Texas and yeah. So now back to full time firefighting. I've been here since 2016. Now and now I'm a captain and started doing a personal training on my garage, which I love. I still miss coaching at a regular gym sometimes, but I've always liked the one-on-one interactions more, and so I became one of power athletes coaches. I'm not sure if you're familiar with power athlete or not.

Jerry Dean Lund: 59:08

I've seen stuff on your Instagram and stuff like that.

Matt Spaid: 59:11

Yeah, lots of good. I've been following them for like forever, so like, and actually the guy, rob that owns the CrossFit gym became one first and that was kind of like my inspiration of like you know what I need to go ahead and do this to just get some more knowledge in me, and it's a great network of strength coaches, all kinds of good people and just a cool thing to be a part of, you know, and yeah, but that's a very condensed version of my story, I guess.

Jerry Dean Lund: 59:43

So it's a long, long journey of ups and downs, right, that's just. Our lives are full of these journeys that are ups and downs and I can't imagine right going through what you went through like that and your family and your wife like just the ripple of effect of that, and then being able to get to where you are today. What words would you tell somebody Like if they have any of these thoughts or feelings and stuff like that, what words of advice would you give them?

Matt Spaid: 1:00:16

Definitely try talking to someone a professional. It takes a good balance. I think we're just talking about like talking with your peers and how much that helps, but I think you still need a good balance of peer and professional support and find someone that you can build a rapport with, that you trust, that you're comfortable with talking to. It's not something that you have to do for forever, but a good analogy that I've heard from someone is it's kind of like getting the oil changed on your vehicle. It's just this kind of yearly maintenance that you need to do for yourself too, just every now and then Go check in with someone, talk. And that's something I discovered after I'd been on the job here for a while was around, I think, around 2020, when I started having recurring nightmares again, and it was kind of this like okay, what's going on? Why am I having these again? And it was just, I guess, maybe all the calls I'd ran recently and then the stress of everything going on then just made it to where, okay, I need to check back in with myself. But now I realized this and it was kind of like, okay, hit the brakes on some things, check in with someone, you know, do some maintenance. Do some good meditation. You know I've always done my strength training and I credit that a lot with one of the reasons you know I never became suicidal. I know that tends to be a big symptom with PTSD and it always. It tends to always get associated with it too. But I try to always tell people to, you know, because some people think they have to be suicidal to have PTSD and it's like no, you know, that's not the case. It definitely can get that bad, sure, but if you do certain things then hopefully it never does reach that point. Yeah, and yeah, that's kind of my advice now for people is like check in with someone, do some mindfulness training, make sure you're eating the right foods, you know. Get some movement in. You know sleep too. I mean, you sleep better, everything's better.

Jerry Dean Lund: 1:02:37

That is for sure.

Matt Spaid: 1:02:38

And that's a huge problem for us now. And that's again kind of what I realized when I did kind of a reevaluation of myself because I wasn't getting good sleep. Most firefighters don't, you're definitely not, even if you're on shift, and you might have gotten like eight hours, but those eight hours was not good quality sleep. Right and that's why I really hammer home when guys are on their days off, like do something to get better sleep, and it's hard because it's your days often, especially with younger guys. You know they want to go party and have fun and it just it eventually catches up with you, you know it definitely does.

Jerry Dean Lund: 1:03:24

my excuse me, spade, where can people follow you and see what you're doing and, you know, get some additional inspiration from you.

Matt Spaid: 1:03:35

Yeah, I guess my Instagram is probably the best one. It's just spade SC, spa ID SC. I have like so many different emails now from getting a different phone and stuff. It's just yeah, I got like five different emails, so email is not the best way to get a hold of me. But, yeah, that are like my Facebook page is spade strength and conditioning or just look me up. However, you know, matt spade, there's not a whole lot of us out there and yeah, and yeah, just. I'm usually like you know. I love some of our interactions. We've had to.

Jerry Dean Lund: 1:04:10

Yeah.

Matt Spaid: 1:04:11

You know, it's just kind of usually very responsive if someone reaches out and has a question or anything.

Jerry Dean Lund: 1:04:19

Yeah, I think some people may have some questions that they might want to reach out to you with, or maybe filling some things and not quite sure and get your opinion on, because we all we all experience the first responder world in a different way and have our different triggers and symptoms and different likes and dislikes and everybody's perspective is completely different. So I think they might reach out to you and you know some, maybe some things that they're struggling with and I really appreciate you being on today and telling your story.

Matt Spaid: 1:04:53

Yeah, and with that, I totally forgot to mention the PTSD.

Jerry Dean Lund: 1:04:56

Oh yes.

Matt Spaid: 1:04:57

Yeah, so I'm doing a campaign. Yeah, the whole reason I reached out to you. Yeah, so I'm doing a campaign. It's called PTSD Sember, so look that up on Instagram or Facebook. It runs during the month of December, so just went well with the name to one thing.

Announcement : 1:05:16

But it was originally.

Matt Spaid: 1:05:20

I think you're familiar with devote December. I don't know if that's how I originally started following you and listening to stuff or not. I don't remember now at this point, but you know I took that over from Annette Zapp and Chris Morella, kind of made it my own thing. Now it's for all first responders, whether you're police, cms, dispatch, fire, and my goal with it just like what we were saying earlier is basically for it to be a more eventually turned into having a more proactive approach to mental health instead of reactive. You know we're always oh, so-and-so ran a bad call. Now let's do all this stuff for them. You know and it could be, I get you know you're still going to have problems in this job. It's still going to come up. But if you start out with some tools and some good habits, then you know my goal is that hopefully it won't get as bad as it did for me and for many others. There's stuff that's way worse too. But if we start out, you know, and the whole goal of the PTS December is that you take action too. So there's the 5-5-5 that you do every day, which is five minutes of mindfulness training, five minutes of mobility work and a five minute walk. You can combine them all into one 15 minute walking meditation If you want. You know, kind of hit all three of them however you want to do it and if you want to do it even longer than that. You know it started out and the way I got this idea too, was for one of the devotee December's. I did 15 minutes of silent meditation every day for it and just the change that I got from that doing it every day and then it became back into an everyday habit for me. You know, that's kind of my goal with this. It's just real short, real simple. Get it done and then hopefully it will turn into a better habit and you know you'll be more prepared for when you know the stressors come up because they're going, you know.

Jerry Dean Lund: 1:07:29

Yeah, yeah, definitely, definitely. Well, well, make sure we have that in the show notes, the information for that, and people can look to your Instagram page to find out more about that. And then I'll also be sharing some of your posts about that during the month and joining in on some of the activities as well in December.

Matt Spaid: 1:07:50

Awesome.

Jerry Dean Lund: 1:07:51

Cool, thank you. Yeah, thanks, faye, for being on. I appreciate it.

Matt Spaid: 1:07:56

Yeah, thank you.

Announcement : 1:07:57

Thanks again for listening. Don't forget to rate and review the show wherever you access your podcast. If you know someone that would be great on the show, please get ahold of our host, jerry Dean Lund, through the Instagram handles at Jerry Fire and Fuel or at EnduringTheBadgePodcast, also by visiting the show's website, enduringthebadgepodcastcom, for additional methods of contact and up-to-date information regarding the show. Remember, the views and opinions expressed during the show solely represent those of our host and the current episode's guest.