In this episode, Cody and guest host Mike Dempsey have a conversation with John Stallone. John comes from a military family—his grandfather served in World War II, and his dad and his uncle served in Vietnam—so enlisting in the military was a no-brainer for him. He joined the US Air Force at 18. From 1998 to 2002, he served as a security forces member and was deployed four times in support of Operation Southern Watch and Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. In 2002, at the age of 22, he joined the Alaska Air National Guard. After he left the Guard in 2009, he took a number of jobs where he was in a position to promote and encourage safety, namely as a safety officer for OSHA, and a bouncer in downtown Anchorage. The common thread that links these jobs is John's sense of duty. He says that one of the core values of the Air Force is, "service before self," which is something he continues to live by.
For a good portion of this conversation, John talks about his struggle with depression and PTSD. He talks about the psychological aftermath of spending 8 months in active war zones. How it was a continuous evolution of “hurry up and get ready” or “hurry up and get used to this.” But by the time you acclimated to that environment, it was time to go home. And then once you were home, you were forced to deal with everything you had been through—among civilians who have no frame of reference for war. In 2011, everything kind of came to a head and John had a mental breakdown. He called the Veterans Crisis Line and they helped him work through it and also directed him toward local mental health resources.
