Dual Military Couple on Mental Health and Deployments
Heath & Jamie Britt talk to me about their podcast, E-14 Podcast, being a dual military couple, grief, loss, PTSD, and so much more!
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Transcript
Scott DeLuzio: 00:00:00 Thanks for tuning in to a Drive On Podcast where we're focused on giving hope and strength to the entire military community, whether you're a veteran, active duty, guard, reserve, or a family member, this podcast we'll share inspirational stories and resources that are useful to you. I'm your host, Scott DeLuzio. And now let's get on with the show.
Scott DeLuzio: 00:00:22 Hey everybody, today, my guests are Heath and Jamie Britt. Heath and Jamie are a dual military couple both serving in the Navy. They have a podcast called the E-14 podcast where they discuss real-world topics ranging from marriage, mental health, self-care and a whole lot of other topics. So welcome to the show. Heath and Jamie, why don't you guys tell us a little bit about yourselves and your background. Jamie, if you want to go first, maybe then we'll hop over to Heath.
Jamie Britt: 00:00:51 Thanks. Thanks so much for having us, Scott. We're so happy to be on your podcast. I'm Jamie Britt, I'm one half of the E-14 podcast and I've been in the Navy for 16 years and recently have converted from air traffic controller over to Navy career counselor. I'm really excited about this new opportunity in finishing my time as a Navy career counselor or “recruiter.” I'm really happy to be here to chit chat with you and Heath.
Heath Britt: 00:01:29 Hey Scott. Hey, thanks brother for having us on, man. I'm Heath Britt, originally from central Louisiana. I've been in the Navy about 25 years, electronic technician by trade stationed at Naval special warfare command here in south Mississippi. I may retire soon, but you know, I love it. I want to be in for 25 years, man. I love your show, man. Thanks for having us on man.
Scott DeLuzio: 00:01:51 Yeah, no, absolutely. And I'm glad you guys were able to make time to be on the show. When I was on your show a few weeks ago, one of the questions that you guys asked of me was about the name of my podcast Drive On Podcast, which for new listeners and anyone who might not be familiar with the term “drive on,” it's a phrase basically, meaning to continue with your mission despite any setbacks or hardships that you might encounter along the way. Since we talk a lot about the issues that veterans face on this podcast, it seemed like a fitting term to have for this podcast. Now I want to flip the question around to you guys and ask where the name E-14 came for your podcast.
Heath Britt: 00:02:35 Brother, I love the name of your podcast by the way. You know it speaks to me. Our podcast came because Jamie's at E-6. I'm an E-8 and we used to joke around when we got married, Hey, we're like an E-14; we're like officers pay over here. Right? So, I did the simple math because I'm a simpleton. So I did eight plus six, I think it was 14. And that's how we got the E-14.
Scott DeLuzio: 00:03:01 All right. All right. That makes sense, it's a fitting way to put those two together and combine your experiences here and everything. I think that's great. Cool. And so I definitely want to get a chance to talk a little bit about your podcast and the type of stuff that you guys talk about on the podcast too. I briefly mentioned some of the topics, but what are some of the things that you guys talk about on your podcast?
Jamie Britt: 00:03:28 So when we first started out, when we were just beginning, we thought, oh, well, I'll take a nautical term or a nautical idea, and we'll just kind of put it into civilian terms or everyday life so we did a show about ballasting your ship, which means balancing your life with work and family and all of that stuff. And then we quickly realized that we're going to run out of nautical terms if we keep doing this every single show. So we decided to start doing different series. And so we'll do like a four-part series mixed in with just different veterans that we connect with along the way, fun episodes, where we talk about alcohol or whiskey or beer or whatever it may be that's interesting to that veteran. And then, mixed in with that, we do our series.
Jamie Britt: 00:04:27 So we've done a series on “hold fast,” which I did tell you that was our term for “drive on” our Navy term for drive on, which just means, hold on it, give it everything you've got, hold fast through the storm. We've done another series, which was “to hell with the stigma” and that focused primarily on mental health and mental health in the military and how you can deal with it and seek help while in, and then coming up, we haven't started on it yet, but our new series will be the “charge of leadership.” So a lot of leaders in the military have, I won't call them problems, or burdens, but sometimes leadership is hard. So we want to tackle those topics that come along with leadership. So that's our new series that will be coming up with mixed in, sprinkled in with some fun episodes, I think.
Heath Britt: 00:05:29 Yeah. Scott, Jamie hit the nail on the head brother that to hell with the stigma really hit me hard because I've mentioned other times I suffered from a stroke back in February and it changed me a little bit. You know, I was a little more angrier, a little more or less tolerant. And I was that guy back in the day, it was like, Hey, I deal with that. Why can't you deal with that? You know, I was that asshole I was like that, but everybody has their own triggers no human is the same. No humans are the same and it really opened my eyes. And then it just happened to be when we decided to do that. May was military mental health awareness month. And there's a lot of bad SOBs that deal with when I say bad, I mean, tough SOBs that deal with mental issues for stuff they've seen in the day. And to me, dude, you're an American hero and you dealt with it, we all dealt with it. And we need to highlight that because 46% of Americans deal with mental health issues. And it's important to highlight that.
Scott DeLuzio: 00:06:43 And a lot of people deal with it and sometimes it just goes unchecked. People think, oh, well, I'll just toughen up. And I'll be a man and deal with it or whatever, I'll just suck it up. But you know, that's not always the best way to do it. So I really did like your series to help with the stigma. And let's get it out there and let's start talking about it and make this a thing that people are aware of. And we'll actually talk about, so I'm really glad that you guys did hit on that topic and covered that as well as you did. So anyone who hasn't listened to that series yet, go check out their podcast, see E-14 podcast and check out some of those episodes. I think you guys really did a great job on that, too.
Heath Britt: 00:07:24 So for all your listeners, you were gracious enough to come over to our show. I think it was episode two. There was a part two of that series, which really highlighted a lot of stuff that you went through dealing with your brother. And I couldn't imagine what you dealt with brother, but you turned out damn good. Yeah.
Scott DeLuzio: 00:07:47 Well, I put on a good front anyways. Yeah, exactly. So, Jamie you had talked when we recorded the episode on your podcast last time, you had talked about the loss of your mother while you were deployed. And first of all, I want to say, sorry for your loss there. That's a hard thing to do, to go through no matter what the circumstances, but then add that on top of being deployed thousands of miles away from home, and that just makes it 10 times worse. Losing a loved one, like that's never easy, but if you could talk a little bit about that experience and how you were basically forced to compartmentalize grieving for your mom and dealing with getting back to your deployment all within a matter of what was it like a week or so seven days?
Jamie Britt: 00:08:37 Yeah, so my deployment was a year long to Djibouti Africa. And when we began this deployment, I actually had just gotten married. So we were a new marriage and with a new combined family of step children and learning the ins and outs. And then I get the word, Hey, you've got to go to Africa. And what a jab in the side that was, because I was like, well, that's a terrible timing, you know? It was actually because one of the air traffic controllers had committed suicide and they needed a hot fill. So I found out in August, they wanted me to leave in October. I literally could not get all of the predeployment things, training and medical and all of that stuff done in that amount of time.
Jamie Britt: 00:09:42 So they had to extend me. I actually started in November. I left in November of that year and said goodbye to my mom, dad and my children and my husband, and went to Africa. It's a whole lot of waiting for things to happen there, which later we discovered is actually a contributor to PTSD. Just kind of waiting for the bomb to be at the front gate or waiting for the terrorist attack, but it never happens. It nine months into my deployment, my mom passed away. She had an aneurysm that was unexpected. She wasn't sick. I was shocked to say the least, and I just stayed one night.
Jamie Britt: 00:10:48 And then the next day they had me on a plane headed back to America. And from Africa to America, it was about a 26 hour commute or flight altogether. I got home, of course, family grieving. I actually beat my sister home who lived in San Diego. So yeah, I was like, how'd I beat you here. And I came halfway across the world. but you know, it was heavy and it was tough and we had to bury my mom and then my command only gave me seven days in country. And so it was kind of just like I would like to say it was a rest from the deployment, but it wasn't because it was just, let's go to my hometown. Let's get my mom taken care of. And then, I mean, shortly after that, it was all right. See you later, I got to go back and I was back boots on ground. I think it was like a two day turnaround.
Scott DeLuzio: 00:12:10 It's not like you're back home, kicking your feet up on the beach or relaxing. Like you didn't get that decompression time. You were continuing to have a stressful experience.
Jamie Britt: 00:12:22 I was angry. I was angry that I was back in country. It's hot. It's like a million degrees there. It's on the equator. I mean, it's terrible. And I'm mad. I'm mad because I only got seven days to be with my family. And then I had to come back and then I still had three months, three to four months left of the deployment to get through, which doesn't seem like a lot of time. But back in that position, it seemed like an eternity. And every day, as you know, on deployment every day is the same. You wake up, you go to work, you do your job or whatever, you eat, you work out, you go back and so it was the monotony of the deployment just made it seem even longer. I didn't really deal with my mom's death because when you're on deployment, you don't really see your family anyway.
Jamie Britt: 00:13:23 I mean, it's all phone calls, so you don't talk to them every single day. And it just kind of was like, I guess, like you said, compartmentalize, put it in the box. I was like, all right, well, I'll just get back to my job. I got a job to do. I got a big job to do. I was the command fitness leader for the entire camp lemonade and the horn of Africa. So I was like, well, I've got to get everybody weighed in. I've got to do all of this. And you know, all of the airplanes together, I was at the tower chief at the time, make sure that it was manned and it just became like, I just went back to work and it wasn't until after I came home, about two months, I would say, that's when I realized, Hey, my mom's not here. And that was tough.
Scott DeLuzio: 00:14:18 Yeah, I can only imagine how tough that would be having to go back into that. And then come back months later and finally be able to decompress and grieve properly, because that seven days was probably just not enough.
Jamie Britt: 00:14:35 It's so hard to explain. I knew she wasn't there. I knew mentally that she had passed, but I don't know. It's really hard to explain how that shift went, but it wasn't until I got back when I was like, okay, my mom's not here, you know?
Scott DeLuzio: 00:14:56 Yeah. That's tough. Being a dual military couple that's not something that takes place all the time. You know, a lot of times there's obviously military couples where at least one of the two is in the military, but it doesn't always happen where there's two in a couple that are military. So what's that like being a dual military couple? I know it's stressful enough to be away from home on deployment or training for weeks at a time when there's just one person in the relationship, but I can't imagine what it's like for a dual couple. Like when Jamie was deployed that must have been hard for you, especially just being married to a newlywed and everything like that. How was it like being a dual military couple?
Heath Britt: 00:15:47 Scott, luckily I knew her boys, they’re my step kids. Right. You know, I don't think of it like that, they’re my kids, but in real life they are my step kids. And I knew them pretty well before she deployed, because we dated for a good year prior to her deployment before we got married and she deployed. So they knew me, but it was tough, man. You're dealing with the natural father, you're dealing with all that. You're the guy, you're the dude. Obviously Jamie couldn't do it when she's 4,000 miles away, 6,000 miles away or whatever. So you had to deal with all that, which luckily it wasn't too bad. Normally I was the guy that was like, Hey, let's go do this. I'm the fun dude. I'm the boyfriend. And now I have to be the lack of a better term of the asshole. I had a brother that
Jamie Britt: 00:16:41 He had to be the dad and the father figure.
Heath Britt: 00:16:43 No go to sit and do your damn homework. Are you gonna sit there? You're going to do your chores. You're going to do this. You're going to do that. So it was a quick dynamic and it was the right thing to do. But you know, you don't want to be that guy, right. You don't want to be that guy. Obviously as a human being, you want to be liked. But I had to be that guy where I wasn't liked all the time, which I'm okay with because it's the right thing to do for the end game for the better. And so, at the time I had almost 20 years in the Navy, so I knew that they wouldn't always rainbows and <inaudible>. Sometimes I had to be tough and I had no problem doing that.
Jamie Britt: 00:17:28 This actually was his first experience of getting left behind. Because as you know, there's the deployed, deployee and the deployer, or whatever. Now I don't know if that's
Jamie Britt: 00:17:39 my term, but there's the one that goes and there's the one that gets left behind. And so he got the other side of the equation and that was tough.
Heath Britt: 00:17:48 I'm gonna tell you, we went to a deployment readiness training in the Bronx, in New York city. And at the end of it, the guy said all the spouses stand up. So I'm sitting here as a 19 year E8. Been around the block a few times and you've got all these fresh husbands stand up. They didn't know shit from Shinola.
Jamie Britt: Mostly wives.
Heath Britt: hey stand up and they clap for us. You're part of the team too. Like, dude, I've been on like 10 deployments you know but it was eye opening for me, but it was the first couple I was on that side of the rough, you know what I mean? On that side of the fence, it was eye opening. Like it really hit me, hit me in the, it hit me in the gut. I was like, damn, I'm going to be that person. And I think, I think I'll think I killed it. Maybe not. But I think I did like, okay. They survived.
Scott DeLuzio: 00:18:46 And that's all that matters right there. I remember going to one of those family readiness type things before I deployed and I went with my wife and she's there to kind of figure this out. This was my first deployment. We had just gotten married, you know, not too long before that, so a little over a year plus before that. And we're sitting there and some of the stuff they start talking about, like what happens when your loved one is killed and what to expect and stuff like that. Like she just starts bawling because she's like, I wasn't expecting to be coming here having this covered. There’s got to be a better way.
Heath Britt: 00:19:32 Right. Yeah.
Scott DeLuzio: 00:19:35 Exactly. And they just dropped it on us and I was like, they definitely could have done this a whole lot better. but it is what it is and we got through it. We came through on the other side alright with all that. But you know, I know what it's like being deployed. I don't know what it's like on the other side, but I know what it's like to be deployed and it's not easy. And one of the things that my wife and I did was we made sure that we kept in communication with each other when I was deployed and that's not the easiest thing to do, especially when you're on a remote base with communication that is not very reliable out there. So what was it for you guys when you've dealt with deployments or maybe even just being away from home with military training or whatever it is that took you away. What is it for you guys, that kind of what's the secret sauce that keeps the family together?
Heath Britt: 00:20:35 Well, at the end of the day, brother, you gotta be like, look, this is us or divorce or whatever is not in our vocabulary. You gotta take that out of your freaking vocabulary. First of all, And there's times on ships where you have decent internet access. We're in 2021, you got decent internet, decent stuff like that, but stuff breaks. And sometimes when you're remote in the middle of the ocean, it takes time to get parsed too. So it could be down a few weeks in Jamie's case when she was in Africa. She was on a land base, but first of all, you're in the horn of Africa where it's pretty primitive living, I mean right. Compared to us.
Jamie Britt: 00:21:17 So it's better now than it was. And I'm sure now in 2021 versus 2018, I'm sure it's a lot better. But it was spotty internet,
Heath Britt: 00:21:29 We'd be talking like chatting, like texting or messenger or Facebook messenger back and forth. And all of a sudden, I just wouldn't hear from her for eight hours because her stuff just went down for no reason. But it wasn't like, yeah. In the States that happens once every blue moon, but there it happens once a week. Sorry, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go clean up. I'm gonna go do some house chores or something and not hear from her like sporadically here and there. Hey, I'm good. It's just the internet went down. Okay, cool. Let me go back down again, but you gotta put that in your mindset. You gotta think rational, you gotta be rational right here from your loved one. It could happen. I mean, you're in a foreign country where you're not in America. I mean that person is not in America. So you know, the comforts of home, it's not always there.
Scott DeLuzio: 00:22:19 What advice would you have for other military couples or even other dual military couples that you've been at this for a little while now. And so maybe you've figured out some secrets that help make things work a little bit smoother.
Jamie Britt: 00:22:37 I was talking to one of my coworkers the other day because we were driving through a tropical depression. He and I were driving back in the government vehicle through a tropical depression. And it was on our side, we live in Louisiana, but there's like the border of Mississippi. So it was on the Mississippi side. And you know, he asked, Hey, I feel like I need to concentrate on driving, but his wife was calling. And, and I said, it's because she can't see what we're going through. So my advice would be to say, Hey, it may be sunny on my side, but I don't know what you're going through. So I'm not going to say, let me connect, continue calling me or call, call, call, or whatever it may be, because I don't know what the storm is like on your side. and I don't know what you're driving through. I don't know what you drive on through but I don't know what you're going through. So that would be the advice that I would say is that from the perspective of the person, you have to be careful because it may be sunny and rainbows on your side and it may be a storm on their side. So be understanding about that.
Scott DeLuzio: 00:24:03 Yeah. I think that's great advice. Just being open and kind of understanding of the other person and trying to put yourself in their shoes and see what they're going through is really a good way to go, because if you just assume that everything that's going on with the other person, that's gonna lead to some misunderstandings and inevitably arguments and all that kind of stuff. So I think that's a great way to put it. And I think that storm analogy is a great visual to think about where the storms are on one side of the border, but it's not on the other side. So, maybe the other person doesn't necessarily know what you're going through. So I do like that analogy, that's really good.
Scott DeLuzio: 00:24:45 So let's talk a little bit about one of the things that we talked about last time when I was on your podcast. It was obviously the series that we have recorded, or one of the parts of the series that we recorded was surrounding the stigma with mental health, PTSD and all that kind of stuff; because a lot of times I think people think about PTSD, especially as something that comes from being in combat whether you've taken a life or you saw someone die or you were involved in an explosion like an IUD or something like that. but that's not always the case. And I think Jamie, you alluded to it a little bit earlier where a lot of it is when you were deployed, you're just sitting around waiting for that next thing to happen. It wasn't necessarily that anything did happen. It was just that, that waiting, that keeping your head on a swivel and constantly being on alert, hypervigilant, waiting for that next thing to happen. What was that like in terms of you know, with you guys with your deployments and everything, How much of a toll did that take on you and how have you dealt with that?
Jamie Britt: 00:26:01 Okay. So I'll go ahead and answer this because through this series that we did on “to hell with the stigma,” we learned a lot, but I'll put it in another analogy because this is the way I explained things, but let's say that you decide that you're going to wake up every day at 5:00 AM and go to the gym. For the first week or so, it's rough, maybe the second week, but eventually your body gets used to waking up at 5:00 AM and going to the gym. So your body is accustomed to that. When you do come to a time where you can sleep in, you still wake up at 5:00 AM because your body is accustomed to that. That's exactly what it's like waiting for something to happen. So for a year's time, you're like looking over your shoulder, looking at every bag that blows in the wind, any loose items, any boom that you hear you're hypervigilant for an entire year. And then when you come back home, it's like, okay, I'm still hypervigilant because my body didn't go back to normal. My body is accustomed to waiting for that boom or waiting for that bag left unattended or whatever it might be. And so that's similar to what we experienced when we came back home. It's just, you don't just go back to normal because your body has transitioned to whatever that hyper-vigilance is
Scott DeLuzio: 00:27:37 For sure. Yeah. And it's a self-defense kind of mechanism to be on alert and be looking out for that thing that's going to go boom, or that could end up injuring you or somebody else. So you know, it's a way that you protect yourself. So it's not like I'm not trying to say that this type of stuff is a bad thing, that you are on alert and that you're aware of things because if you're not, and you're in a dangerous place, you're going to get hurt. That's just the bottom line and so I think it's a good thing. It's just turning it off is the thing that we have trouble with sometimes. And it's good to be aware of your surroundings, even at home, because you know, bad things do happen at home too.
Scott DeLuzio: 00:28:21 But that hypervigilance where you're constantly, always aware and scanning your surroundings constantly, constantly looking, I think it just kind of wears on you and it gets to be a little bit too much for people. To that point we had also talked about that process that the military goes through after you get back from a deployment, where they send you to various mental health screenings and physical screenings and all that kind of stuff, all the medical screenings and things like that. And I think we all can agree that the process sucks.
Jamie Britt: Absolutely.
Heath Britt: Definitely, definitely, definitely.
Scott DeLuzio: I know when I got back, we talked about this earlier. I was sent about 800 miles away from home. At that time, all I wanted to do was be with my family. And that to me was just torture to be there. And I think that there has to be a better way to go through this. And I believe you guys said that you had a similar experience with all this too, is that right?
Heath Britt: 00:29:26 So Jamie flew back. She left Jabuti and went to Germany for a decompressed kind of thing. You know, where if you're going to raise hell, go ahead and do it here. So she did that and then flew to Norfolk, Virginia, and they had to go to the hearing tests, sight tests, whatever tests they can give you, they're going to give you. And they're like, well how are you feeling? What's your mental state? She's got this dude asking her these questions and she hasn’t seen her family for almost a year. What the hell do you think she'd say, I'm perfect. You have symptoms of PTSD. I mean, no I'm good. I'm ready to go home.
Heath Britt: 00:30:15 I'm ready to go home. So that's it and in my opinion it’s kind of bullshit. You know, why would you do that? Why would you ask these hard questions before a sailor or soldier or airman or Marine gets to their family. That's something I think you should do maybe, two months later, in the nearest medical facility. Hey, we still want to talk to you. You've been home for a little bit and you get used to your family. You've been back with your family, get reunited with your family, come back and be like, Hey, let's talk about mental health. How do you feel? You know, and then ask the questions you want to ask, but don't do that shit right before they go back to their family after not seeing each other for a year, you know? And what would you say? What would you say, Scott? I know what you would say.
Scott DeLuzio: 00:30:59 Oh, for sure. I lied through my teeth and everything. Everything's great. Let's check the box. Let's get me out of here. I'm done.
Heath Britt: 00:31:10 Everything's roses, man.
Scott DeLuzio: 00:31:11 Exactly. Yeah. We had rainbows and unicorns. Everything was great. Let's move on and let's get to the next thing so I can get out of here. And that's I think a common theme.
Heath Britt: 00:31:26 You know what, Scott, I've been in the Navy 25 freaking years, right. Maybe six months ago, I realized how important it is to talk about what issues you've had from what you're going through. It took me 25 years to figure that out. Can you imagine somebody that has been a Navy six years and you were a reserve, you were in the guard, right? So you were a weekend warrior, you had to deploy, right. So you didn't know, you didn’t have people mentoring you and telling you this stuff. So, yeah. I mean, they should understand that, look, these guys don't know this stuff let's help them out.
Scott DeLuzio: 00:32:02 Right. Exactly. And I think one of the things that really got me was when I had to go through all that screening me and everyone in my unit for the most part, there's a few people who came from other areas, but we're pretty much all from Connecticut. And we all lived in Connecticut and our families all pretty much lived in Connecticut. A few people were New York, just over the border Massachusetts, maybe but for all intents and purposes, we're all pretty close to the Connecticut area. And they put me on a plane and sent me 800 miles away to Indiana to go do this screening, all the medical screening and mental health and stuff like that. So there's no way for me to see my family and go be with them or anything like that.
Scott DeLuzio: 00:32:46 I had to be there and same thing with all these other people. And so, it just didn't make any sense to me. Like why couldn't we do this back home even if they wanted to do it right away when we first got back, fine, no problem. But let's do it back home. So we can at least go home, be with our family, hang out with our kids that we missed a year of their life and stuff like that. Like, it just doesn't make any sense that we have to go do that. So it's one of the things I think we do have a problem with mental health in the military, especially coming off of deployments. And I think that's just something like low-hanging fruit.
Scott DeLuzio: 00:33:27 If we can do this process better I think that that will help improve overall mental health, get people back into their families and back into a stable area and granted, not everybody has a family to go back to and stuff like that. But generally speaking, most people have somebody whether it's their parents or a girlfriend or boyfriend whatever it is, they have somebody that they can probably go back to even friends and just be around.
Heath Britt: 00:34:00 I would say Scott, that 90% of the people that go do either active duty, reserve, to get deployed and deal with it, deal with the shit, and then have to go back to somebody that's going to be negatively affected by what they've seen. I guarantee you, and it's so easy. Like you said, low hanging fruit. Let's just make this process a little better. That will make a lot of shit better. You know what I mean?
Jamie Britt: 00:34:25 What we just learned that the VA is inundated with treating military members after the fact, because nobody wants to bring up the mental health issue while they're in, they're afraid of not being deployable or just getting reprimanded or having their work fall on their shipmate or their battle buddies’ backs. And so nobody deals with it while they're in. And then the expense of dealing with it afterwards is falling on the VA and they could have dealt with it while they were in, but they just didn't know that it was okay to deal with it while you're in.
Heath Britt: 00:35:09 I would have known it was okay to deal with while you are in, I would think, well, they're gonna kick you the hell out. And that's for sure.
Scott DeLuzio: 00:35:14 Right. Exactly. And I think that was one of the things that went through my head too, was I don't want to deal with this. You know, I wanted to get back to my family, but I also didn't want to put my job at risk either. You know, I, I didn't want to get kicked out because I was, you know, maybe deemed that I had mental health problems or things like that. So I was like, you know what, screw it. I'll just deal with it on my own. And I'll figure it out.
Jamie Britt: 00:35:42 You know, recently Heath and I had this epiphany because within our last weekend I fell down and I hit my head on the concrete, I got a concussion. So I was very confused and just dizzy and that sort of thing. Well, a day afterwards, he was running and fell down and three days later, he fell down and he cut his arm. So he had a bandage around his arm. Well nobody would ask him to lift a heavy box or anything like that. But me having this concussion and being confused and dizzy, they were like, what's your deal? Why can't you work? I don't understand. And so it's very similar to the stigma of mental health, because you can't see it. You don't physically have a bandage around your head or bounded around your arm. And so people are like, well, why can't you be normal? What's your deal?
Scott DeLuzio: Yeah. That makes sense.
Heath Britt: 00:36:50 And Scott, you mentioned it in the episode you did with us, “to hell with the stigma” of somebody going through chemo, you don't ask them to do shit. It should be just the same damn thing. Right? Oh, you're going through chemo. Oh, you bumped the hell out of your head and you got a concussion. We're not going to ask you to do too much either. Right. It's still not that way. Even all the strides that the military has made or the world has made toward mental health, concussions and everything else. It's still not there yet.
Scott DeLuzio: 00:37:26 Yeah. It's definitely gotten better. I know, even from when I was in you know, I got out probably just about 10 years ago now and it wasn't quite there and the stigma was still there and it wasn't as easy to just ask for help. I think it definitely was better than it was 10 or 20 years, even before that, but you know, it still wasn't all that great. It was a lot of just suck it up, be a man, drive on and deal with it. It's just how things were, but things are getting better. It's moving in the right direction. But I think conversations like this one, it's just important to have to raise awareness and make sure that people understand what's actually going on. Definitely with mental health and the things that are available to them too.
Heath Britt: 00:38:24 That's what attracted me to your podcast is because I read “we’re here to give military, you didn't specify which military, the tools to “drive on” like your podcast so much.
Scott DeLuzio: 00:38:38 Yeah. And that's one of the things I tell people who are guests on the show who come on, or other people who talk about the show. I don't care what branch you served in. I know we all joke on each other and we rip on each other and stuff like, that's all it is all in good fun. You know, I want to help out the Navy as much as I do the Marines and the Army, and the Air Force and the Coast Guard and even the Space Force, too you know?
Scott DeLuzio: 00:39:06 So I'm here for the military period; for veterans, no matter what branch or what era you served, we're all going through stuff at one point or another. And I want to be there for all of them too, to help reduce that 22 a day down as low as we possibly can get it, you know?
Heath & Jamie Britt: Definitely.
Scott DeLuzio: Well, Heath and Jamie, it has been a pleasure speaking with you today. Could you let people know where to go to follow you online, social media and where to go to listen to your podcast?
Heath Britt: 00:39:46 So our podcast is on every platform you can find a podcast. So you got your Apple, Google, Spotify, we're on everything, right? So definitely you can find us anywhere. Our Twitter is @E14podcast. Our Facebook is E-14podcast. Our Instagram is @E14podcast. We're on every platform. We're easy to find. And you know, we got some more stuff coming up, “charge of leadership.” We've got that series coming up real soon. We've got our first recording, hopefully tomorrow. And yeah, we're easy to find. So if you can't find us, that means you're not trying hard enough.
Scott DeLuzio: 00:40:29 And I'm going to make it even easier. I'm going to have links to all that in the show notes. So anyone who's checking this episode out, go check out the show notes. You can follow them online, social media, you can check out their podcasts wherever you're listening to this podcast, go search them in the podcast player of your choice. And you should be able to find them there. Check out all the episodes of the series that they did on mental health to help with the stigma. It was really great and definitely check that one out and all the other episodes that they have going on, too. So again, thank you both for joining me. I really enjoyed the conversation. Really had a great time and look forward to listening to your episodes in the future and hearing more from you guys.
Heath Britt: 00:41:13 Thanks brother. It was a pleasure, man. Thank you for having us.
Scott DeLuzio: 00:41:16 Thanks for listening to the Drive On Podcast. If you want to check out more episodes or learn more about the show, you can visit our website DriveOnPodcasts.com. We're also on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube @driveonpodcast.