From the VA Prescription to the Street | Travis Gribble & Brandon Spangler | Ep. 465

Brandon Spangler did five years in the Marine Corps. He broke his neck, crushed his lower back, and walked out with a VA prescription that turned into eight years of addiction. The last stretch was heroin. He got sober in 2013, started college from zero, and is now a licensed clinical social worker with his own practice for cops and veterans in northwest Montana. Travis Gribble spent 24 years in law enforcement, 16 on SWAT, and retired out of Mesa PD in 2022. He now works for the Boulder Crest Foundation.

He walks through the jump from pharmacy to street, detoxing cold turkey three times, and a month and a half living out of a truck in the Blue Mountains waiting on a bed.

The second half is the system. Why cops are carrying moral injury more than post-traumatic stress. Why a diagnosis turns into a cage. What five days of training did that years of therapy did not, the 400 to 600 traumatic calls a cop absorbs over a career, why the average officer dies seven years after retiring, and the retainer model that put a therapist inside a sheriff's office.

The Boulder Crest Foundation: ⁠https://bouldercrest.org/⁠

Join the Cleared Hot Newsletter: ⁠https://www.clearedhotpodcast.com⁠

Take the Operator Code Assessment: ⁠https://www.theoperatorcode.com⁠

Today's Sponsors:

Montana Knife Company:
⁠https://www.montanaknifecompany.com⁠

Firecracker Farm:
⁠https://www.firecracker.farm⁠

Det här avsnittet är hämtat från ett öppet RSS-flöde och publiceras inte av Podme. Det kan innehålla reklam.

Avsnitt(792)

The Conversations Nobody Wants to Have | Full Auto Friday | 8.21.2026

Four questions this week... An F-18 simulator is going into the coffee shop sometime in September. I don't know why either. Carrier landing competition to follow. The opener is about reaching the age ...

21 Aug 1h 7min

Butler, the Correspondents' Dinner, and the Truth | John Constantine | Ep. 464

John Constantine spent almost 23 years in the United States Secret Service. Fifteen of them on the Counter Assault Team — the assaulters who exist for the day everything goes wrong. Team leader. Instr...

17 Aug 3h 10min

Vote For The Garbage Can | Negligent Discharge Friday | 8.14.2026

Michael is moving to Missoula, so this one opens with a resignation and gets worse from there. A man in a garbage can is polling at 20% against Nigel Farage in Clacton, and his platform makes more sen...

14 Aug 1h 6min

Welcome to the Age of Collapse | Drew Miller | Ep. 463

Drew Miller is an Air Force Academy honor graduate with a master's and a PhD from Harvard. His dissertation was on underground nuclear shelters and field fortifications. Thirty years in uniform across...

10 Aug 2h 49min

The Fingerprint You Leave On Your Kids | Full Auto Friday | 8.7.26

Just me today. Michael also dropped some news on me — he's moving on in a few months to go better himself, so there's a change coming to Negligent Discharge Friday. Three questions this week. All of t...

7 Aug 1h 3min

Jail, Lawsuits, and The Comeback After Everything Fell Apart | Mike Glover | Ep. 462

Mike Glover served 18 years in Army Special Forces, worked as a contractor for the CIA, founded Fieldcraft Survival, and wrote the national bestseller Prepared. He's been on this show before. A lot ha...

3 Aug 2h 4min

Mid-Flight Exits and Robot Gun Rodeos | Negligent Discharge Friday | 7.31.26

No guest. Just Michael, a stack of conversation cards, and whatever the internet served up this week. Opening cards: simple is not the same as easy, and failures are tuition payments, not a definition...

31 Juli 1h 6min