Josh Collins - 2,742 Miles on a Paddleboard for Veteran PTSD

Full transcript of the Tom Rowland Podcast, Episode 125 with Josh Collins.

Meet Josh Collins

Josh Collins: Fishing is a cure. Fishing on a paddleboard is another cure. Just paddleboarding is a cure, or at least a modality toward health and well-being, that gets guys moving in the right direction. And once guys are moving in the right direction, especially in the military community and in the first responder community, these are folks that have volunteered to serve selflessly for others. They're folks that are going to do whatever it takes to accomplish a mission. And if you give them the tools, or any sort of mechanism, if you say, hey, this is a path back to better health, whether that's mental health or physical health, they're going to at least try. And sadly, instead of trying a modality like this, like even just fishing, we automatically default to some drugs. And that just becomes this endless spiral downhill from there. So we can do better. We've got to do better. I don't think the pharmaceutical community, the medical community, is doing us any favors by putting Band-Aids on this stuff. And it's obviously not working, and we've got to do something different. I'm Josh Collins, and this is the Tom Rowland Podcast.

Tom Rowland: Josh, thanks for sitting down. I appreciate it. I'm really looking forward to hearing your story. I've done a little bit of research, but I know you have so much more to tell. How's everything going?

Josh Collins: It's going really well. I'm so excited to be on your podcast. I've read a lot about you and seen all your work, and it's pretty amazing. And this whole other side of stand-up paddleboarding plus fishing is something that a lot of people don't understand or know about.

Tom Rowland: Well, you've taken it in a lot of different directions beyond just the stand-up paddleboarding and fishing. I know a little bit about your story, but in order to let everybody else know, I'd really like to go back to the very beginning. Before you were in the military, where'd you grow up?

Growing Up in Miami

Josh Collins: I grew up in Miami, and then I kind of summered in Effingham, Illinois, out on one grandpa's farm and another grandpa's lake house. So I really had the best of both worlds, the city and the farm life growing up. Grew up fishing, hunting, working on the farm. And then nine months out of the year, I'd be back home in the city, enjoying the big city life.

Tom Rowland: And growing up, were you on the water around Miami, Biscayne Bay, and all that?

Josh Collins: Yeah, a lot on the water. We didn't have a boat. What we did have is we were probably about five miles from the water, and there was a place called Chicken Key. It was a tiny little island that we would roll out to. It's kind of funny because later on, when I was doing that big paddle to New York, I actually stopped at the key, and I saw all these signs that said, this is a national preserve, you cannot come on here, etcetera. And the first thing I thought was, I wonder if those have always been there. But when you're a kid, those signs don't matter.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, they don't matter. Later, they tend to have repercussions. As a kid, they just shoo you off and tell you you're not supposed to be here. Later, they call the cops.

Josh Collins: Yep. And looking back, that's why I recall being shooed off on multiple occasions, not understanding why. Okay, alright, we'll come back later.

Tom Rowland: So what led you to the military?

A Grandfather's Legacy and Joining the Army

Josh Collins: Something I always wanted to do. My grandfather was a Marine. I found out after he passed away that he had five beach campaigns in the Pacific Theater. One of them was Iwo Jima. And this was something literally no one knew about, no one talked about. I got his flag and his service record at his funeral. I was 12 years old. When my grandfather allowed me to buy my first rifle, I was probably about seven or eight, to go hunting. And his buddy who had served with him said, you've got to swear to your grandfather you're not going to become a Marine. And I thought to myself at the time, well, that's all I'm living for. I'm buying this rifle so I can be a Marine sniper one day. So I just asked, well, can I join the Army? And they kind of looked at each other, and they said, yeah, we don't see why not.

Josh Collins: So I don't know what kind of experience he had. Obviously it was probably pretty difficult. Totally different generation, didn't talk about stuff back then, but he was such an amazing grandfather and father to my dad. And I knew then, that's all I ever wanted to do. And I joined up when I was, I think, 19. I had dropped out of high school at 16, and I was just working. And then by the time I was 19, I said, it's time for me to fulfill that lifelong goal. That's all I ever wanted to do, and I really enjoyed it so much. I just loved it. Never felt like I had to work a day in my life.

Tom Rowland: Now, eventually you ended up at the highest level pretty much. But in doing that, you were a Ranger first. So when you go into the Army, do you have your sights set on that to begin with, or did that materialize as you were serving?

From the 82nd Airborne to Special Operations

Josh Collins: No, I did. Right from jump straight, I wanted to become a Ranger, but I didn't have a high school diploma at the time. This was 1988. And at the time, those enlistment requirements go back and forth based on the numbers they need. At the time, you had to have a high school diploma to go to the Ranger Battalion. So I ended up going to the 82nd Airborne Division. And from there, which was fantastic, it was amazing. From there, I was on a recon detachment. And then very quickly, within my first five years, I went to selection for a special operations unit, and I spent the rest of my career, the next fifteen years, in that special operations unit. I spent time in the Rangers. At about the twelve-year mark, I was a senior NCO. I was an E-7, promotable to E-8, and it had always been a goal of mine to become an officer. So I went to OCS, Officer Candidate School. From there, straight out of OCS, I went to First Ranger Battalion, which was sort of an anomaly because you really are required to have a first assignment as a lieutenant prior to going to the Rangers. So I went to the Rangers, and then next thing you know, we're watching the towers fall and knowing that we were on our alert cycle and that we would be the first ones over to meet that threat.

Tom Rowland: Wow. And at that point you're a Ranger. I read in your bio that you eventually served in Delta. Is that correct?

Josh Collins: That's correct.

Tom Rowland: So at this point, you're a Ranger, not Delta yet?

Josh Collins: Right. As an enlisted guy, I was in Delta for about seven years, and that's where I left and went to OCS, which is fairly uncommon. There's one or two guys that have done that. It's a really great place to work, and you do a lot of really cool stuff, obviously. But it had been a career goal. And in part because, the funny part of that is, in Desert Shield and Desert Storm, I served under a really good lieutenant. He was awesome. He had it together. So I saw that and I wanted to be like him. His name was John Newman, big old corn-fed dude from Montana. He did it right. And then when we got back, we had this second lieutenant that literally ran around like a chicken with his head cut off. And I just thought, I don't want to go to combat with this guy. I said, there ought to be a law. This is not fair. This is one of those guys that's just going to scream charge no matter what's going on, without a second thought. And so that's where I made the decision, very early on as a private, that I was going to become an officer one day, that I was going to learn my trade, learn to do it well, learn everything I could, and become an officer. And you know what, there's lots of great guys that come out of West Point, that come out of college and ROTC. I just felt that with my path I could give back the best if at one point in time I could become an officer and be one of those leaders, have all that experience behind me. And the guys I worked with in my platoon and in my company, they appreciated that. They liked that I had that kind of experience and could bring some common sense to the table and not be some 22-year-old college grad just screaming charge.

Mentorship and Leadership

Tom Rowland: Right. As far as grooming a leader, I can't imagine you could be in a much better environment. Did you have a lot of mentors like the one you spoke about as you became an officer?

Josh Collins: Absolutely, completely. That's what it's all about. On the one side, you've got to have that desire. You want to be a leader. You have that desire to excel. And then that allows others, when they see that, to want to help, to mentor you. So with your motivation, that begets and inspires other motivation around you. You get folks that go, yeah, this kid is going to go, so I'm going to mentor him. And we all see that. You see the go-getters and you want to help them out and push them along. So I had some incredible mentorship, with some names, General Flynn, some names that some people might cringe at, some people might go, wow. General Thomas. General Thomas just retired out of SOCOM. He was the SOCOM commander. He was an incredible mentor. I worked for him three times, and he's literally the one that sent me to OCS, with some stern warnings. He sent me to OCS and he said, I want you to go to the 82nd Airborne Division for a year, and then you'll come to the Ranger Regiment because you need to do that. You need to learn how to be an officer first before you come to the regiment, no matter how long you've been in.

Tom Rowland: How did you take that at that point in your career? It seems like, twelve years in, you pretty much know the drill. How did you take that suggestion?

Josh Collins: I took it at face value. At the time it was Lieutenant Colonel Thomas, but I knew he was a brilliant man, obviously, then to be the SOCOM commander through so many things in the war on terror. The irony is I knew he was going to the Ranger Regiment, and I wanted to follow him. And that's exactly what I did. So when I went to OCS, this is kind of funny, there are three Ranger battalions. There's second and third battalion, and those battalion commanders said, we'll take Collins. Well, I was going to go do what he told me to do and head to the 82nd. But when he found out that these other battalion commanders had said, yeah, we'll just take Collins straight away, he said, no, no, no, he's mine. And I got orders to First Ranger Battalion. I said, oh, you changed your mind. Okay, that's cool. I was going to do what he said because he is that great of a leader. He was that astounding of a mentor. So my intentions were to do exactly what he told me to do.

Tom Rowland: And it worked out exactly like you wanted, right?

Josh Collins: Yeah, it worked out. I went and worked for him in First Ranger Battalion. It was a great time.

Traumatic Brain Injuries in Service

Tom Rowland: So in this career that you had, just reading over your bio, you're doing some really amazing stuff, surrounded by some really amazing people. That's not all roses. You ended up having several brain injuries, right? And that kind of leads us to the story we're going to go into today. When did those start happening to you or around you, and how did you start handling those first injuries?

Josh Collins: Yeah, that'll kind of begin to occur throughout my career. We all get our bell rung. And so what's a concussion? You get your bell rung. Get up, alright, shake it off. Some of those early on were exactly like that. And I never really believed or thought that they would make that big of a difference, because I continued to drive on any time that occurred. I had a couple in combatives, exercise situations, got my bell rung, whether it was boxing gloves or getting slammed to the ground. I had a couple that were blast injuries, like in the shoot house. And these were very early on. This was before Afghanistan or Iraq occurred. The first one in combat, I had my bell rung by an RPG that detonated right over my head and literally laid everybody out around me. I had a couple of RTOs that were all face down, and I just kind of closed my eyes, tucked my chin, and absorbed it. But I knew at that moment, wow, that was a shock. You see that flash, like pow, like you've been punched in the face really hard or hit with a baseball bat. And I could see on the guys' faces that they had all kind of had their bells rung too. And I was laughing because they were all face down in the mud, and I was like, come on, let's go, get up. And then you drive on.

Josh Collins: It's not until it's the accumulation of those. So a traumatic brain injury can be that one time. And then, let me fast forward. I had two that were the straw that broke the camel's back. But at that moment, while I was serving, these were just, drive on. There are seven with loss of consciousness, where I was knocked out for a short period of time and kind of came to and then shook it off and said, okay, let's go, let's keep driving on. And then those are cumulative. Those need to be noted by the individual at least, and hopefully they're recorded in some way by the unit or organizations so those guys can get help. But the final two were after I got out of the military. One was a training exercise, and I got my bell rung and I went home, and I stopped and was taking a shower and looking in the mirror. And one pupil was about the size of a nickel and the other one was pinpoint.

Tom Rowland: Oh, man.

Josh Collins: And I just went, wow. I knew something was wrong. I really felt off, but I knew something was really wrong. Then my wife looked at it, and we went to the hospital, got seen by the neurologist, and it was a very, very serious concussion. And then about two days later, and this may have been the first time that I had a seizure and I didn't know it, I fell down a hill in my backyard and I kind of scorpioned over backwards. My son literally came down and carried me inside. He was 18 at the time. Carried me inside, called the ambulance. So this second one on top of the first one two days later was really the catastrophic moment. And it's because the first one, we weren't doing the right things. I should have been in bed. I shouldn't have been up moving around.

Tom Rowland: Maybe I missed that. What was the time frame between the two?

Josh Collins: Forty-eight hours.

Tom Rowland: Oh, god.

Josh Collins: Forty-eight hours. And that's kind of what the neurologist went after immediately. He said, look, when you have a concussion on top of a concussion, it's like a laceration on top of a contusion on top of a broken bone. It just compounds the problem. And so with that, we began to see the devastating impact, both with cognitive issues and with behavioral and emotional issues, immediately following.

Life After the Injuries

Tom Rowland: So now at this point in your story, is this when you're in Tampa and checking into the Tampa VA?

Josh Collins: Yeah, this is about six months prior to this when this happened. And again, life took a catastrophic, that's the only word. My wife would say it was just unbelievable. Like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. My kids would literally run out of the room when I came in. I became a completely emotionally different person. There's a word I learned called perseveration, and that's being stuck in set, stuck in the moment. So maybe one of them got a B on a test, and five days later I'd still be talking about the B on the test and how could they do this and what were they thinking, they're not taking school seriously, to the point they'd look at me like, wow, Dad, you realize we've talked about this every day this week. But I couldn't remember. To me, it would be as fresh as that hour. And these were things that became extremely difficult in our family life. Anytime I talk about it, I bring my wife to tears, because maybe the dishes weren't done or the trash wasn't taken out, and I'd go off on my son, the anger response. And these are the things that guys don't like to talk about when it comes to traumatic brain injury. We're happy to talk about the cognitive stuff. I can't remember this, I can't remember birthdays, I can't remember things. But the really difficult stuff is the emotional stuff, because that's sort of like an attack on our control, and not an attack on the brain injury. And it's because we don't understand completely the brain injury and that the brain injury has everything to do with emotional control. Those are aspects where you get frustrated, and then that frustration and confusion turns to anger. And that anger turns into rage and outburst. And that rage and outburst, you then come back and get depressed about it, and then you want to kill yourself because you're thinking, I've got to put this monster down. This is horrible.

Tom Rowland: At the same time, I'm sorry to interrupt you, at the same time, are you being prescribed drugs for this as well? Or normally, are people prescribed drugs?

Josh Collins: Right. Anybody that goes to a doctor and they're having these emotional problems, naturally, there's medicine for that, right. It leads to anti-anxiety issues, and that's leading up to this, because that's what we prescribe. So we then prescribe this stuff to basically dumb down the emotions, which is essentially dumbing down the brain, which is like pouring molasses over the brain to just slow everything down. And with that, we've got to get control of this thing. For me, the telltale stuff that this was global was the sleep issues. I began to act things out at night. And because I led this violent life my entire life, my wife was in jeopardy. She was such an amazing woman. One night she wakes up and I've got my hand around her throat and I'm choking her. And she gets out of bed, but I'm completely asleep, and I have no recollection of it. But she's got bruise marks around her throat, of course. So we go to the hospital to talk about it, and they start asking, what do we need to do to basically subdue what's going on here? Another night, and this was really the biggest awakening for both of us, I grabbed her by the hair, and I kneed her in the head. And fortunately, my knee hit her forehead, and it knocked her out of bed. And you can imagine, I have no recollection of all of this. But we go to the hospital because she's got a big bruise on her forehead. And it's all because I'm taking all these meds which are supposed to knock me out like an elephant tranquilizer, but they're not stopping these violent dreams that I'm having, and I'm acting out these dreams. So basically, even the medication they're giving me is just not working, or it's wearing off. I've taken it for long enough that it's wearing off. So at that point in time, as the soldier, you start feeling like, okay, I think it's time you guys just put me down. Put me down or lock me up. Because I'm not safe. I'm not safe even around my loved ones. And that was very, very scary. So scary. And obviously scary to my family and to me.

Josh Collins: So with that, I knew I needed to get help. This is where, you go back to the doctor and get more medication, and they just compound whatever meds you're on. This becomes the compounding effect of the medication, and eventually it all begins to wear off or you get used to it one way or the other, but it loses its effect. And with that, I began to add to that self-medication, and that's alcohol, because it's not working. So how do I put this monster to bed, for lack of a better term? And the alcohol, naturally, that doesn't work. That's not going to work. But you're just trying anything. The only alternative, Tom, is to take your life. That kind of is where you get to. I am this monster. I can't control myself. I'm a danger to others and myself. And so the responsible and logical and rational thing to do would be to go ahead and end this. And that's not a good place to be. So my wife saw that, and when she saw that inevitability, she reached out to the SOCOM Care Coalition. That's Special Operations Command Care Coalition, that takes care of our special operations soldiers, that community. Within a day, they had a place for me down in the Tampa VA in the Polytrauma Center to begin treatment for these traumatic brain injuries and for post-traumatic stress.

Getting Off the Medications

Tom Rowland: Wow. That's a hell of a story. And so when you get into this Tampa facility, does it take a little while to start feeling better? Obviously you're getting better care and people that are a little more familiar with your situation. So what happens there? Do they change your drugs? Do they get you off the drugs? What happens when you go to a more sophisticated place for your situation?

Josh Collins: Right. Well, the first thing is, I checked in on May 5 in 2014, and the first thing they ask you for is three goals. You've got to have three goals going in there. My three goals were, number one, I went off all the meds, because I felt like the meds were, you're talking at this point anxiety, depression, pain, sleep, and seizure medication. And the combination of all those, you might as well, you're a zombie. And they lose their effect over time, so you've got to take more and more and more. So I went off all the meds. The second goal is I want my cognitive function back, both analytically and emotionally. I want to get back to who I am. I want me back. It's the loss of self with a brain injury that's the most difficult aspect. And then the final goal, I went off all the meds. And they said, okay, obviously that's important. I said, yeah, that's everything, because I feel like you guys are playing Tetris with my brain. I feel like it's never ending. You're just adding to the problem.

Josh Collins: So you check in there. I spent three months there. Great docs, fantastic triage. Naturally, they immediately say, we're also going to get rid of this alcohol. You eliminate the alcohol aspect. They take off all the meds. They do it in a very safe environment, and then they slowly begin to introduce meds again, because they feel like they need to. They feel like, well, according to our research and what we've done with other patients and with mice, and because you do have this brain damage, we need to control this in some way to make sure that you continue to be safe to yourself and others. And so they naturally begin to put you on meds again. It was crazy. You're like, stop, what are you doing? So, but they're really coy and savvy with it. Like, this is good, just a little bit. It's kind of like a crack dealer. Just try it one time, I'll get the first round. And then next thing you know, they've replaced all the meds you were off with new medications. Even though you're there in this safe environment and you're off all the meds for a month or so, then they slowly begin to replace these meds. So it's what they do.

Josh Collins: But I had a lot of great therapies there, between the brain therapies and also a lot of orthopedic stuff that I hadn't had done. I had several surgeries done. They finally fused my neck. They did a lot of great stuff that needed to be done, fixed a lot of stuff that was causing me a lot of pain as well. But then it was probably about three months after I was away from there. It was probably December. So I got out in August or so, August, September, and it was probably December that I was sitting in my living room staring out the window, and it was about 10 a.m. And I'd been up since five, and I, of course, had forgotten to take my morning pill cup, until my wife came out to give me my pill cup, and I realized that I had been staring out the window for five hours.

Josh Collins: And the only thing missing was somebody to wipe the drool from the corner of my mouth. And I just had this premonition of the nurse coming up at some point in my life. At this point I'm like, I'm 45 years old, and here's your shot, Mr. Collins, the nurse giving me a shot to keep me sedated for the rest of the day. And I just looked at my wife. I said, I'm not doing it. I'm not doing it anymore. And from that point on, we stopped. We slowly titrated off all of the medication. And we told the doctors, I said, I'm not doing it. And it was awesome. It was the best thing. Of course, it was not awesome for the first two weeks, but it was awesome thereafter. So now alcohol free, pharmaceutical med free, and I began to look for what am I going to do with my life next and how can I help others through this whole conundrum.

Finding the Paddleboard

Tom Rowland: Yeah. And so in searching for that, where did that take you? You're kind of almost at that point reinventing your life. You have this tremendous realm of experience that you've gathered, and how did that lead you to what you're doing now?

Josh Collins: Right. I got on a stand-up paddleboard there at the VA hospital for the first time. I'd never been on one. And because of all the balance issues, I've got a compressed cervical spine. My eyes, I wear prisms because one eye is rotated and off. So I've got double vision all the time, and my one ear is completely blown, a hundred percent blown from blast, and the other is still about 80 percent. So I'm always moving on dry ground. So when I got on this paddleboard, the earth stood still. The horizon stood still because of the movement of the water under my feet. It was sort of like having sea legs for a sailor. So my wife had bought me a paddleboard after I got out of the hospital, and I wanted to do something to help others and to raise awareness for this plight. So I said, hey, I'm going to do this stand-up paddleboard. I researched what had been done. Obviously, if you're going to raise awareness, you've got to keep people's attention, so you've got to have some danger element, or a fascination element. And I said, I'm going to paddleboard the whole East Coast. The East Coast would be done, but I'm going to do the Gulf and East Coast. Break the world record. And yet I'd only been on a paddleboard for like a month or two. Somebody like the Gulf's freaking out.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. If all of a sudden that's the most comfortable place you've been in quite some time, I could see how you would be like, well, I'm just going to stay on this thing. The world stands still for the first time ever. I'm just going to stay on this, and while I'm doing it, I might as well go to New York.

Josh Collins: Yeah. Well, we eventually moved on to a boat for a short period of time, until my wife began to get sea legs, anytime she was just getting sick of the movement. She just got tired of it. But for me, I couldn't even tell when the boat was moving. I was just in my happy place all the time, but she's so awesome to have done that even for a short period of time. But we're back on land now. And the paddleboard has helped a lot in terms of healing this. My depth perception has literally adapted and changed, as much time as I've spent on the board. So a lot of friends tried to talk me into doing something a little more down to earth. I mean, at the time, I couldn't paddle a mile without being so exhausted that I'd be bedridden for the weekend. I would literally lose my voice. They were still rebuilding a lot of me from the brain injuries. But the amazing thing with the veteran community, and I think with the human community, is that when I said, look, I don't want to do these pharmaceutical meds, I want to recover the best I can, I want to be the best I can be, and that may not be a complete return to who I was, and I want to give back, I want to be an example that others can do this as well, well, there's all kinds of organizations and doctors and folks that come out of the woodwork that say, we're going to support you, just because you are taking the steps forward. And with that, there were many doctors that came out of the woodwork that said, we're going to support you and follow you. We're going to provide whatever assistance that you need in order to accomplish this mission. And that was amazing. So I had this incredible support crew that was going to be behind me. But again, when I started, I couldn't paddle a mile without total exhaustion for days.

Hormones, Diet, and the Ketogenic Approach

Tom Rowland: Was that ever kind of discouraging? Like, am I just going to do this a mile at a time, or did you just know from your previous athletic experience, as a Ranger and Delta Force, you're an elite athlete, so you've overcome before many times. Did you just think, well, I'll get there, or what was going through your head at that point when you're having such a hard time with just a simple thought?

Josh Collins: What was going through my head was, like, what the hell is going on? And in part, well, maybe I'm just getting older. And I would say, no, that's crap. I've got lots of older buddies that are still athletes. I learned about the body's endocrine system, and that's in the brain, and the pituitary and the hypothalamus, and how these things, when they're damaged, they control your hormones. Your hormones control everything that you are. So we started looking at doing some very natural hormone replacement therapy, and then we began to look at diet. I went on a ketogenic diet in order to stop the seizures and to create an environment in my head that was full of clarity. I went on the ketogenic diet.

Josh Collins: The ketogenic diet was the first antidote or cure for childhood epilepsy back in the nineteen twenties, until the first epileptic drugs came out in the nineteen thirties. And then when that came out, people said, well, hey, we don't have to be on this keto diet anymore. We'll just take the epileptic drugs. So there were all these things that I began to do with these docs that were looking at this from a very holistic standpoint and life standpoint. And when I started the paddle in March, I guess it was March 2015 or 2016. When I started that paddle, I could barely get 20 miles. And every day was just a struggle for life. I would hit the beach and it would be all I could do to make camp and collapse. I wouldn't even want to eat, just so sore, in such pain, find a place to sleep and collapse. And then I'd wake up in the morning in complete and utter pain and realize that, okay, I'm going to do this all over again. This is crazy. I'm never going to make it. That went on for probably the first thirty days, until suddenly the paddle started kind of sliding through the water a little easier. I began to go further and further, and then at the end of the day, I wouldn't be sore. And then in the morning, I wouldn't be sore.

The Body Adapts

Josh Collins: And Tanya was following me. There was this billionaire in Texas that, when he realized the plan was for Tanya to camp along the way, he saw that and said, that's crazy. And he put her in an RV. He said, that's nuts, she can't do that, we can't have the spouse following along this thing. So he put her in an RV, and his name is Randall Reed. He's an amazing guy. And at about the thirty-five day mark, my body was just morphing into what was going to be required to complete this mission. I remember when I came into the RV and they took my shirt off, she said, oh my god, your back is going from your elbows to your waist. And your shoulders are like bull. Basically, your body just adapts. Your body, with this emergency override, I think your brain is like, launch the Alert Five. This guy is going to kill us. He's not going to stop. So doing anything and everything possible, my body adapted. Next thing you know, I was doing 40 miles a day.

Tom Rowland: Now as your body's adapting, how's your brain adapting to this? Because I tend to think that the two are deeply connected, more so than conventional medicine might give it credit for. Obviously, when your body's feeling better, the paddle's feeling a little lighter, going through the water a little better, you probably are in a little lighter mood, and you're thinking maybe I can do this. But how was it as far as your brain injuries go, and, you were saying, brain fog and stuff like that, and then you're on this ketogenic diet, now you're probably eating even less, and then there's intense exercise throughout the day. At this point, how are you feeling?

Josh Collins: Yeah, and that was one of the things that was just ultra amazing. People would ask me, what do you think about all day? And I would say I would think about the next paddle stroke. So on one aspect, there is this just being in the moment, just slowing the mind down. And with that, there's kind of this, for lack of a better term, this Zen healing that's taking place. You're literally just allowing everything to slow down and the neural pathways to just start connecting again. And so that was something that was fantastic. At the same time, I'm also having to navigate. I'm having to make very critical decisions. Do I cross this ten-mile bay? Right now the wind is out of whatever direction, there's a storm coming, and having to make these very important decisions because they were often life or death sometimes. So with that, you're also exercising your mind to the point that you're forcing your brain to work like it needs to work again. And I think that was one of the, I had one particular neurologist that was following me. He's a phenomenal neurologist, and as I was writing or doing these video updates every day, by about the second, third month, he'd say, Josh, man, we're seeing it. We're seeing the clarity again.

Tom Rowland: In your thoughts and your writing.

Josh Collins: Better, yeah. Your writing, your videos are becoming more concise and clear, and that's because of the extreme environment. What you've been through is an extreme event and done this damage over time, and it's extreme. And so what better way to heal it than this extreme environment of need and necessity. Your body has to adapt. Your brain has to adapt to survive. And I think that's the most critical part. Obviously, we can't diagnose and prescribe someone to go walk the Appalachian Trail by themselves after some sort of significant physical or emotional traumatic event. But to me, that would be the best way to heal, in terms of your body coming back to itself.

Isolation, Necessity, and Healing

Tom Rowland: Yeah. And you see that. The Appalachian Trail is a very good example. You see people that are suffering from similar situations, PTSD, they go on this solo, long hike. And I was going to ask you that. How much of your significant improvement do you think was the fact that you were by yourself? There was no one else to rely on, and you're talking about connecting these neural pathways and thinking again like you're supposed to and your brain's working. When you said that, I was kind of thinking, and you mentioned the Appalachian Trail too, and I know of some other stories where people just go by themselves. And it just seems like maybe that could even help even more. You're out there, there's no one to rely on, and you need to make all these decisions yourself. And then it's just, how do you eat an elephant? You eat it one bite at a time. Like you said, one paddle stroke at a time, and you're just thinking about those things rather than relying on anyone else for really anything.

Josh Collins: Right. And that's, necessity is the mother of invention. So that necessity is the mother of healing in this extreme environment as well, and that's where I think it's most important to isolate, naturally. This is Josh and Tom talking about this, and there's probably some PhD or doctor out there going, we're killing them. But they're going, look, dude, when it comes down to it, you're going to survive. You might cry for a while. It might really suck for a while. But when you finally wake up, whether it's in the middle of the night or that next morning, the sun comes up and you realize that, okay, all there is to this is me. There's no amount of tears, there's no amount of complaining that's going to get this done. This is me, and it's time to go. I can't lay here and die. It's go time. And with that, I believe that not only does your mind respond, but your body responds. And your body says, this has been proven over and over again with extreme events. Guys that row oceans, and this is how I learned about this, guys that row the Atlantic. There was a guy named John Beeden. At 61, he rowed the Pacific Ocean, mainland to mainland, California to Australia, over five months. And I was in contact with him during his trip, watching how at the thirty-day mark, just like me, his body adapted. And suddenly the oars were moving more smoothly and easily through the water. Over time, the mind just adapts to the situation. The body adapts, the mind adapts, and next thing you know, you're overcoming, and you're getting through it. And you're getting through it without the aid of medicine, without the aid of supplements, or without the aid of anything other than this is what must be done in order to survive. And it just says a lot about one human being and who we are and how adaptable we are.

Josh Collins: But it also says, when it comes down to it, doctors today, they'll say, oh, no one should be in pain, so we're going to prescribe these pain meds. But you kind of think back to, how did we deal with this in 1942? We didn't have Percocet. We didn't have this stuff. Guys just sucked it up, and pain was a part of life, and that's okay. There's nothing wrong with it. It's okay. But we're not doing something that masks it that also causes some greater detriment to our brain, which is obviously more important than anything else.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. And you just see it so often, people that have a physical job of some sort, whether they're digging a ditch or putting stuff on a shelf, or a special operations warrior. The athletes tend to know how to deal with their body, but people get these injuries. And it's something that, an athlete could probably work it out and be back to training in a week or so, but certain individuals get prescribed medication, and they get hooked on it right away. It's not hard to do. And the next thing you know, they don't have a job, and they go down this terrible rabbit hole of just one thing leading to another and compounding upon this one injury that they didn't know how to deal with. And in some cases, it's a very significant injury. You hurt your back. We wouldn't wish that on anybody. A hurt back is a terrible thing, but when you pile on the drugs, that can lead to lots of bad things happening after that.

Reaching the Statue of Liberty

Tom Rowland: So on your journey, you start feeling better at thirty days, and now, thirty-day mark, where does that put you? Leaving from Texas, and now you're obviously well into Florida. Do you remember where you were around the thirty-day mark?

Josh Collins: Yeah, I was, like, day 35, 36. I was at the Panhandle. And we did a rally there, that was the first big rally, and it was in Pensacola, I think. And it was with my sponsor, Bote paddleboards, at the time. And it just kind of was this, oh, man, I can do this. Up until then, I wasn't sure. So my first thirty-five, thirty-six days, I was like, I don't know, we'll see. I'm just going to keep on one paddle stroke at a time. And then after that, I was like, I can do this. And then, heading across, the Gulf Coast is very sparse in terms of connectivity with the land. So I wouldn't see Tanya for, it would be like every three or four days, we would link up again. I would camp along the way, until we got down in Southwest Florida, Marco Island. I tried to go all the way across Florida Bay. I tried to do a hundred miles across to Key West in one shot, and I got hit by some weather. And I ended up getting picked up by a safety boat. They took me to Key Largo. I went hypothermic. It was ugly. But it was like, okay, you're still a human being. You can't paddle through everything the ocean throws at you. And then from there, once on the East Coast, I just had a phenomenal time all the way to Virginia Beach. And at Virginia Beach, I turned left, and I went up to the Potomac. I paddled upstream. Did about 205 miles in five days, got to DC, did a rally there. And then I turned around and went up to the Delaware. So going down the Delaware, this is where I kind of hit the wall again. So this is like month four, and I just ran out of steam. And I was like, at this point I'm 2,000 miles in, and my body just went, okay, we're done. And so from there on out, it just became a drag. And I remember crossing the Delaware with a kayaker that came out and paddled with me.

Connection Is the Cure

Josh Collins: And I've got to talk to you about that, the connection, because people started coming out to paddle with me very early on in Texas. Or people came out in boats to paddle with me, and that became everything. And then I realized that, and I would think to myself, man, I'm just out here, some average dude out here paddling on a stand-up paddleboard. I'm doing this event, but there's guys with bigger injuries that need more help than me. And you're coming out here to support me, and this is awesome. And they would always say the same thing, is there anything you need today? I just kept hearing the same thing. My answer would always be water. I need some water, because I didn't carry enough water. And I thought, can you imagine, there's 20 million veterans in the United States. There's 330 million Americans. If every American were to call a veteran once a month, then every veteran would get a phone call almost every day. People don't leave suicide notes that say, I'm just so sick of all these people calling me to check on me and how well I'm doing. And so the point is that this connection is the cure. It's not the meds. There's an appreciation. People are constantly stopping. Hey, thanks for your service. Got it. No, it's beyond that. It's, how you doing, man? Everything going well? What are you up to today? And that level of friendship is what guys miss the most out of the teams and out of their military service. And getting connected again with their civilian community is all that's needed to keep this mess of a suicide epidemic in the veteran community, to quell it.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. I mean, that's incredible, that connection. Some people, I think, might be afraid to do that, to say thank you for your service, because it sounds kind of cliche at times, everybody says that. But to really mean it, or to really say, hey, man, could you get a cup of coffee and sit down with someone that you know is suffering, or maybe you don't know is suffering, it seems just fine. That could be the biggest thing that you do. So as you conclude your journey, you conclude that at the Statue of Liberty. Is that right?

Josh Collins: Yep, yep.

Tom Rowland: So you do that. You raise a bunch of money and awareness, and things are good. Now we fast forward a few years from that, and you've continued your life's work with Veteran Voyage 360, right? That's what you're still working on. So tell me where that is now. What is it that you're doing now? How has your work continued?

Veteran Voyage 360 and Ongoing Missions

Josh Collins: Yeah. Well, of course, I've continued to paddle, and I've paddled a lot shorter distances. There's, like, 300-mile races here and there, that I'll go and paddle for an organization. With Operation Phoenix, we raised about a quarter million dollars for the Task Force Dagger Foundation. And since then, we've raised money for several other organizations. I did the Race to Alaska last year, which is 750 miles from Washington state to Ketchikan, Alaska. I got hurt about 461 miles in, and I got an infection in my knee that began to go septic. I had to get pulled, was hospitalized. That was tough. It was tougher to leave it on the table than anything else. So, of course, I wanted to go back immediately this next year, but my wife is like, not so much.

Tom Rowland: So what kind of injury was that? Like a cut?

Josh Collins: Yeah, just a tiny cut on my left knee. This happened, I left checkpoint two, that's about 400 miles from the finish. I made ground one time, and I knelt on some barnacles, a little cut on my knee, and didn't think anything of it. And then the next night, I started having to urinate about every fifteen minutes. It was crazy, and the smell became, like, toxic. It smelled like a kidney. And I was like, what's going on? So I would drink a pint of water, and I would piss a quart, and I started getting really nervous about it. So I went through all of my water, and the next morning, I refilled my water at a waterfall. I kept on going, and then before it got dark again, I could barely stand. And when I made landfall, I got all my stuff up, and then I couldn't walk.

Tom Rowland: We were talking about the connection and how important that was to you and your recovery, and what people can do to maintain that connection or to offer that connection to people with PTSD.

Josh Collins: Yeah. But in the time that we got cut off, I was watching your episode 11, season 14, on the paddleboard, man. We've got to talk, brother. We've got to get you on the right board. Two, we've got to get you paddling right.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, I need some help. I definitely need some help. I really do want to do one of those.

Josh Collins: Sneaking up on those snook, man. That was awesome.

Tom Rowland: Yes. I do want to do one of those longer races. I think that it would be really cool. That's actually one of the ways that we got hooked up here. Your buddy, Mike Dunlap, was in contact with me, and he was telling you about some of the races that he had done that sounded really awesome. Like, I like the idea of those longer races, but I don't know. Maybe we can hook up. We'll go fishing, and you can work on my paddling a little bit.

Josh Collins: And you can work on my fishing, man. Because I tell you what, redfish, if I could eat a snook every night, man, I'd be in heaven for the rest of my life.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, no doubt. They definitely eat well, and redfish can be good too if they're cooked right, I guess. But yeah, we'll do that. We'll get together and do that for sure. That'll be fun.

Josh Collins: Right on. We were talking about that connection, and it was that these folks were coming out, whether it was on a boat or on a paddleboard or on a kayak or on a canoe, whatever. It didn't matter. And that started happening very early on, especially when it was around populated areas. So I'd get out in the wilderness, nobody would show up for days. But the support was just so amazing, and that's where I realized and kind of came up with this, connection is the cure, man. Connection is the cure. Nobody kills themselves when people are reaching out and actively taking part in their recovery and in their life and showing care and concern and making them feel like they've got a part of life and part of a mission again. I think that's been a theme for me ever since, just realizing that when you've got a mission, people take an active part. And we need to help provide a mission for those guys that are out of the military and looking for their next thing to do or the next mission in life. And whatever it is, just to become a part of something.

Providing a Mission

Tom Rowland: Yeah. But is there a way that, when you say we have to provide the mission, what does that look like to you?

Josh Collins: So there's two aspects I think are the biggest part of the anxiety and depression guys feel, and that is, they're a part of this thing that's much bigger than themselves. National defense, or they've got this mission, this priority thing that they're doing. And then afterwards, I would say there's three reasons why guys look in their own life. One is they just can't find that next mountain to climb, that next mission, that next part of their life that brings fulfillment. The other one is the PTS, and whether that's post-traumatic stress, and it becomes a disorder when it affects your life. And it's a mobility disorder. It's a mobility disorder because it locks you down. You don't want to go outside anymore because it's just too overwhelming. You don't want to get in your car and drive. It's too much. Every little stress, every little turn is a threat. This is where guys are sitting with their backs against the wall in the restaurant, kind of a thing. And it's like, how do you overcome that? Well, in part, it's practice, but in part, there's a bigger piece of that. And then the other thing is the traumatic brain injury, and that's where everything starts malfunctioning. When the docs at the VA would start to ask me, did I think this was just post-traumatic stress or did I think this was related to the brain disorder, I would say, I don't know, doc. I'm listening to a jukebox. The music is skipping. Is the record scratched, or is the needle broken? The record being like the input, like PTS, and the needle broken being the brain. So which is it? Because it's very easy for them to diagnose the PTS and then apply drugs to it. But they also do the same thing with the traumatic brain injury. That, I think, is detrimental, because we don't test those drugs on people with broken brains. When the FDA is doing their testing, they don't say, yeah, of these thousand test people, we need a hundred of them to have previous brain injuries. That's not happening. And so how do we know what this stuff is doing? It's supposed to do this in a normal brain. What's it doing in an abnormal brain? And so this is where, with all this stuff going on, it's just much better to find first these alternatives. I wish these were the first options that were presented, but of course they're not. But these are certainly the first options that everyone can know about and everyone can recommend and everyone can be a part of to help guys that are going through this stuff.

Tom Rowland: It's certainly prevalent, and I think that as a society, we don't know what each individual should do, like reaching out or providing this mission or inviting people in, or even what to say in so many situations. And we live in this culture now where people are so afraid of saying the wrong thing that a lot of times they just don't say anything, which pushes people away even further. That can't be a good thing.

Josh Collins: And I can tell you, Tom, as I'm sitting here with your video playing in the background, if you were to give guys, whether it's with PTS or traumatic brain injury, and if their mobility is to the point where they can get on a paddleboard, they've got a handhold and they can learn to paddleboard and get out there and fish and get involved in something like that, look, man, fishing is a cure. Fishing on a paddleboard is another cure. Just paddleboarding is a cure. Or at least a modality toward health and well-being. They get guys moving in the right direction. And once guys are moving in the right direction, especially in the military community and the first responder community, these are folks that have volunteered to serve selflessly for others. They are folks that are going to do whatever it takes to accomplish a mission. And if you give them the tools, or any sort of mechanism, if you say, hey, this is a path back to better health, whether that's mental health or physical health, they're going to at least try. Sadly, instead of trying a modality like this, like even just fishing, instead we automatically default to some drugs. And that just becomes this endless spiral downhill from there. So we can do better. We've got to do better. I don't think the pharmaceutical community, the medical community, is doing us any favors by putting Band-Aids on this stuff. And it's obviously not working, and we've got to do something different.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. Over the years, we've worked with a few different organizations that do bring fishing to veterans. There's Project Healing Waters, and then we worked with another one as well. And you could see that it was very effective, even in just the short times that we had worked with them.

Success and the Road Ahead

Tom Rowland: So at this point in your life, and what you've done so far is very admirable, but I tend to think that maybe you have larger goals. What does success look like for you now, and what do you think it looks like in the next ten years?

Josh Collins: You know, I started this whole mission, we started this conversation with, when you get on an airplane and they do a safety briefing and the flight attendant says, if there's a sudden loss of cabin pressure, these masks are going to drop, and if there's someone in need of assistance next to you, make sure you put your own mask on before you assist somebody else. And that's for first responders and for infantry guys and Rangers and special operators. That's contrary to what we think. We've got to save the day. Somebody needs help, I'm going to help them. But it's so important to put your own mask on first, or you're not going to be able to continue to help others. And so I realized that very early on, fortunately. One of the biggest things in all of this has been a mission for me, and also to get back to me. So that's one of the things, I want to be a productive, contributing member of society. I want to be a business owner again one day, like I was before. I want to be doing these things, which at one point in time had to all stop because of the brain injury. And then at the same time, at this point in time, I meet so many people that say thanks for what you're doing. And they say, I was in this really bad place, and I started following you, and you changed my life. And so with that, it's kind of like you go, man, I've got to keep going in this. When you start seeing the fruits of your labor. And again, for me, it's ones and twos. I've never been looking for a hundred or a thousand people to be going, oh, you know, and write a book and do it more. It's not about that. It's literally the ones and twos that fuel my fire every single day and make me go, yep, that was worth it. If there was just one that came off the ledge, that is enough for me right there.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. That's awesome. Well, you have such a good story, and you tell it so well. And you seem to really have a grasp of a solution, and also at the same time, which I think is kind of unique, you have obviously a lot of experience to draw from that a lot of the doctors and health professionals don't. They truly have no way of knowing what someone like yourself or any of the first responders have been through. They're just trying to help, but you seem to have such a good understanding of both sides that I think maybe you should write something. You should appeal to the larger audience, because as you appeal to the larger audience, then there's more of those ones and twos. You get your message out there, and you have a better chance of reaching somebody that really needs it. So I wouldn't totally write it off, man. I think that you could do that, and you could end up helping a lot more people. But things like this, like this podcast, you never know how many people are going to listen to this.

Josh Collins: My wife is punching me in the arm all the time about that.

Tom Rowland: Well, you have a good story, and maybe that's one of the many gifts that you have and one of the many ways that you can choose to give back. And if you spun it the right way with maybe some science, I could see it being incredibly helpful to a lot of people that aren't just special operators, other people that suffer from traumatic brain injury, and maybe there's a path through physical exercise and the kind of things that you talked about that can help more people. Because that's obviously success. And you are doing a good thing, even if it starts as, gosh, I just have to heal myself. Maybe that's the most important thing, and then you end up helping to heal lots and lots of other people. I see it, man. I think it's terrific. I think what you're doing is awesome. I wish you all the best of luck.

Tom Rowland: I'd like to continue to talk to you more and more. I don't want to chew up all your time today. We'll have to get together and do that paddleboard fishing trip. I really want to do that. So we'll continue to talk at that point, and then maybe we can do the first paddleboard podcast ever in the history of the world, on the water as we're crossing some bay somewhere. If people want to follow you, if people want more information about you and what you're doing, where would you send them?

Josh Collins: Oh, I'd send them to, just on Facebook, Veteran Voyage 360. With every paddle I do, there's always different areas, but I always go back to Veteran Voyage 360, and I've supported some other veterans on there doing their journey. The 360 kind of stands for coming back to civilian life, and that return. And, yep, I do look forward to getting out there on a paddleboard with you, man. And again, I've got your video playing up in front of me, and it's just great. And I tell you what, you probably, I don't know if you felt it at all, but when you're out there and you think you're doing nothing, you get off that thing and you realize that you're moving the whole time. It's a whole total body workout just standing on that thing.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. It's good. And then, so much of what we were doing there is so shallow that you're really not paddling. You're kind of pushing across super shallow water, which I'm hoping is why you think I can't paddle, because I'm actually paddling across almost dry ground. But yeah, I have a lot to learn on the paddleboarding. I also want to hook you up with one of my friends that I did a podcast with earlier. Interesting guy, because I saw on one of your things, you had what looked like a boat like he did. His name's Tim Crockett. I did a podcast with him. He did that Talisker Whisky row across the Atlantic recently, and he was a special operations guy also, and was doing that row for a similar cause to what you do. So you guys would have a lot in common, and he's a great guy. I'd like to help you out with him too. You can listen to the podcast that I did with him if you want to, but I'll definitely hook you guys up. And maybe we can do, it'd be fun to do a podcast with both of you one day. As for today, man, thank you so much for telling your story. I really appreciate it. It's an amazing story. You're doing great work, and I look forward to meeting you in person and getting out on the water.

Josh Collins: Right on. Thank you, Tom. It's been awesome. Thank you.

Tom Rowland: Thank you. See you.