Special Guest: John Davis - Veterans Living Abroad

From serving in Afghanistan with the 101st Airborne to advocating for student veterans at Harvard, John Davis is a man of many talents—and now, he’s helping veterans build better lives abroad. In this episode, we discuss his journey, his move to the Dominican Republic, and how veterans can find purpose beyond service.

Transcript

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so I usually kick these off with you kind of like just going through your background where you're from I know you're from like cornfields of Iowa but you can talk a little bit about that and what LED you into the army sure I grew up in the great state of Iowa where John Wayne is from I got my John Wayne shirt on today and you know like a lot of young people finding myself was a task and I wondered in the college because that's what I thought I was supposed to do after high school and at the time I was way more focused on like girls partying and not really interested going into class so after kind of like failing stopping going to school of course I that LED me into the military recruiters office and I talked to all the branches and ended up deciding on the United States Army where I did 10 years and that medically retired I served in 100 first I did two deployments to Afghanistan and then I did some time recruiting uh on my way out the door and then when I got out of the military obviously like a lot of people kind of figure out what to do and I end up going to school and getting into working with student veterans which LED me to writing my first book about student veterans talking to Congress as legislative fellow and it ended up going to Harvard where I was able to talk about issues with student veterans student veteran employment and all the things that kind of student veterans have to go through when you go to when you go to college because obviously you're a nontraditional student and then the past uh couple of years I've been committed to helping veterans and inform veterans and in a sense kind of encourage veterans to retire abroad as you can see my backyard I have a pool back here I got mango coconut trees banana trees in my backyard because I live in the Dominican Republic uh where I have a higher quality life at half the cost yeah that's um yeah I'm jealous I mean I have I don't have coconut trees but you know California um what was it like so talk about your army time cause so you you've done your time you did your deployments you did 10 years about the same amount of time as I did but um I know our paths crossed when you were recruiting in New York I think that's kind of how we have so many mutual friends but prior to that yeah do you want to just talk about your time in the army and why you're so dedicated like how that has impacted your dedication to veterans I think that the people closest to problems are always the one most best suited to solve them that's kind of how I felt with student veterans because I saw all these kind of like younger student veterans really struggling and I kind of thought about how I could apply the military mentality to the college classroom so I started like kind of doing that and getting into it and then I I really found a great purpose when people said that I helped them when you know I would do this program for student veterans that I created at the school I was going to where it kind of like an incoming checklist kind of like you're taking on a new soldier or whatever the army like here's your checklist here's all the resources available to you here's John's 10 rules to being successful in college and then those 10 rules turned into a book and then I kind of always looked for for where where can I fit in and be an asset to the veteran community I think there's too many kind of fucking people out there be like leadership leadership leadership or like the Navy seal stuff and I wanted to kind of be a voice for regular veterans because that's you know that's what I was I didn't do anything especially cool in the military like yeah I walked around Afghanistan like a lot of infantry infantry guys in the army I got shot at a couple times blown up I never really knew what was going on the entire time so finding myself getting out of the military was something I struggled with and when I kind of like got the recipe for it I started trying to share it with other veterans because listen I you know I've been divorced married and divorced twice before I was 25 I had serious problems with like alcohol and taking pills the VA gave me I struggled a lot with depression and those types of things and then so I started kind of pursuing my own forms of therapy because the VA can only be their form of therapy that's all they can do because it's all they are so then when I started like branching off into all these kind of like various forms of therapy I wanted to kind of share that story and then also talk to other veterans about it because a lot of veterans might not think of like viewing scuba diving as therapy or viewing riding motorcycles as therapy or doing something like Iowa or moving abroad so I kind of always wanted to get in where there wasn't anything there and that's what LED to a student veteran book that's what LED to writing about moving abroad as a veteran and that's what LED to my current project of veteran affirmations because there's no affirmations out there for veterans and affirmations could be such a powerful healing tool to develop like new neural pathways in your head if you really believe in them and so that's kind of kind of what LED to it and then kind of like having this kind of player creativity or wanting to be creative is what's really uh purpose from it you need purpose in your life yeah I think that that says a lot so I know Cody Alfred was just on the resilient show and he said the same thing he was like you serve less than half of 1% of the population serves so there's something in that you don't have to be a green Bray to feel like you did something and I think that definitely does yeah feel that way a lot of better yeah no feel that way a lot of better you're like uh you know I was I had a mop in my hand like half my military career yeah so and then you have all these veterans like listen and not that I don't think dudes like Cody is all awesome and guys like Choco or guys like David Goggins or whatever but I can't really relate to that because I'm not that cool you know like yeah yeah I wasn't a Force Recon Marine like yeah no and I'm not getting up at fucking 4 in the morning to go do jiu jitsu for three hours then go do this and do that like I'm you know so that's kind of what I tried to try to talk to is like normal veterans because it can be you know it's like a normal basketball player like relating to Michael Jordan like oh that you know they're play basketball but I can't really relate to that yeah not that Cody's not awesome you know yeah inspiring all that stuff but yeah no I just think it says something that you know you have someone who is on this pedestal in the veteran community because they were forced recon and who's also saying like dude even though you held that mob for four years like you still contributed to the overall mission um and then yeah I was doing some uh it's interesting because I've been talking to you for a few years now and you have been on this mission for a really long time and it's it's finally starting to like Echo like other you know professionals in the field yeah you know there was a health and wellness physician on the Huberman Podcast who also talked about how your mentality affects your overall health and you know you've been saying it for for quite a while now so it's it's good to see that there's also that like hey listen it's not just me being a kumbaya person it's it's proof in the science as well um you're a combat to college book that I I so I have a copy and I wish I had that when I went through college cause the veterans office they were great but it didn't provide me as much help as I thought I would have needed or that I did need so you also have a veterans guide um the Student Veteran Semester journal can you talk about that real quick yeah that's almost kind of easier because I realized listen a lot of veterans are already going to college they don't want to read more you know they don't want to read a chapter book even if it might be useful but so the the Semester Guide what it is is a college planner designed for veterans so there's like section in it for like your budget with your G I Bill there's like a planning calendar in it there is tips and tricks every single every single week so for example like one of the week tips like for week one is gonna be hey if you're a student veteran go in and say to professor these two things how can I be successful in your class and are there any other resources you recommend other than the class materials where I can deepen my knowledge and those are the kind of tips that like veterans are very good at being told what to do I mean that's what the military is you're just like told what to do all the time and if you're operating in that framework it's actually pretty easy then you get in civilian world and nobody tells you what to do and that can be kind harder cause I'm like well if nobody tells me what to do I'm just gonna like do stupid shit all day because that's what I am and then so me telling veterans he's like little tips and then being like here's where you write in your assignments here's where you write this down here's all this information and it's only designed or it's specifically designed for a first semester student veteran because so many student veterans go to college and it's like I've never been in school no my family's been to school I don't really know how to go about myself so I was like if you just take this guide and follow it for 16 weeks it's gonna talk about your midterms it's gonna talk about the finals it's gonna lay out everything you need to do to be successful in your first semester so it's kind of like how can I provide tools that don't exist for for student veterans yeah and that's really important cause when I went to college I went to an Ivy League school and I was like I have no fucking idea what I'm doing I'm with like a bunch of 19 year olds and nobody's telling me what to do I have no guidance I'm also working so there was also that but yeah and then so the another book that you have and you and I kind of collabed on this was the Freedom Challenge which I absolutely love um I love all the input that you that you got into that for that book do you want to talk about the Freedom Challenge a little bit yeah so that me and so like my best friend growing up when uh I joined the military he ended up getting drafted into the NFL obviously a lot uh different than the military but a lot of the mentalities I found were kind of the same and then he retired from the from the NFL about the same time I retired from the army and then we both really missed that kind of built in structure of mentorship teamwork working out having a challenge because if you don't have a challenge in your life it it could be hard to be motivated so kind of the sports and military mentality are kind of similar so what we did was design this like little journal where we got 12 athletes and 12 veterans to submit workouts and then we wrote about our experiences like getting out of those worlds and then kind of like you hit pause because there's nobody telling you go to practice or if you're in the military to go train there's nobody kind of in your face to improve you know there's all this professional development and like built in learning required in the military cause ideally if you're in the military you're getting you know stronger and smarter and a better leader every year but then that fades away and then that push to kind of get better and the constantly improve also fades away and that's why a lot of like retired athletes a lot of retired veterans kind of struggle when they get out because the that whole system just falls apart when you either step off the playing field or or when you get out of the military so and then you miss all these other aspects about that like hey having friends like in the military you got a built in friendship network and same with like sporting teams and stuff like that so we kind of designed it kind of as a fun cool project and it was a lot of fun to do I hope to one day you know do like a second edition of it and things like that but it's just we call it 90 Day Challenge where it's like hey do this for 90 days um and it was fun like it was a fun project yeah it was I liked it I also liked kind of you know looking into some of the people that contributed cause it was a lot of awesome people that contributed in both like the veteran in fitness base um just in general so that that was pretty awesome um now I wanna get to like the most recent event so you have your veteran affirmation book um which kind of compliments the new initiative that you have with the newsletter and the YouTube channel so do you want to talk about the book and then kind of a little bit about the um the newsletter and the new YouTube channel that yeah so I I discovered kind of the power of affirmations for veterans because as veterans we tend to be use dark humor sarcasm embrace the suck mentality and then we get out of the military you kind of have to rewire your brain because the military is not like known for being like a super positive rainbows and butterflies type places it's not really what it is so then you get out of the military and a lot of veterans engage in this really destructive self talk we all have that internal voice in our head and if we listen to it enough it can really drag us down so what I did was create a project for veterans of veteran affirmations written with military culture military creeds military values and language that we can understand because you know in the military we do have our own language we do have our own terms we do have our own creeds so what I wanted to do was create this affirmation project just for veterans so initially you know I'm a writer so I was thinking okay I'm gonna put in a book so I wrote 365 Days of Veteran Affirmations and this takes you from January 1st to this are from January 1st to December 31st and affirmation every single day and I wrote them with no language from the Navy language from the Marines and then I realized a lot of Marines just can't read they're not gonna pick up the book so I was like I gotta do like a you so that LED me into making the YouTube channel so I just created the YouTube channel here in Dominican Republic with a bunch of other veterans so we're creating this project where it's like hey one veteran does like the performance one veteran does the audio one video veteran does the video and then we're gonna have this project of affirmations for veteran PTSD affirmations for veteran success affirmations for like veteran entrepreneurship and wealth creation and fitness and like relationships and stuff for female veterans so it's just kind of on the on the ground now but like the next video we're releasing on the channel is a veteran sleep meditation because what veteran do you know that doesn't you know struggle to sleep sometimes so we did this sleep meditation for veterans that I wrote and this other veteran who's like a silky smooth voice like he recorded it and so I'm really excited about that because you know that's something like I can I can really see the potential impact if you're like hey if you're a veteran here is a sleep meditation written for you and that doesn't exist and when you create something in the world that doesn't exist it's really kind of like a beautiful feeling for me as a veteran trying to help other veterans yeah I really I like the first one you're right he does have this like silky smooth Barry White esk kind of voice and then yours just this morning the sound of my voice like everyone hates the sound of your voice like if you listen to yourself yeah you're like uh is that really what I sound like so I did a bunch of them and you know I'm gonna record a few more and everything but what I wanted to do was connect with you know all types of other veterans to come in and read about them and do like those types of affirmations because that is kind of missing from the veteran community and we do have this tendency like I talked about to be so kind of self destructive in our internal conversations and when we can rewire our brains to to say hey I am capable I am healing I am getting better I am on my journey I am a strong powerful veteran if you could continue to say that to yourself eventually you're gonna believe it even if you gotta fake it till you make it and before you do before you achieve anything you have to believe it so that's what I wanted to do is put a tool in veterans hands to be like listen to this every day you know and some of them are gonna have humor they're gonna be different stuff but I'm really excited about the channel we gotta get you down here to read some of them you can do a Navy one Navy affirmations yeah just keep swimming something along those lines no I know I really liked it I love the the affirmation thing cause you know I think as a veteran who has I myself have struggled with mental health even though I am a you know clinician at this point and I work in you know cognitive behavioral neuroscience I think sometimes that's something that we forget to do is like take care of ourselves so I really like the affirmation and I really like the channel cause it's you know listen to podcast in the morning so I wanna get that little notification that you guys have uploaded a new video I can just pop it in and go about my morning um cause that's usually what I do I either read I either read something from the an affirmation book or I read you know I have a couple different like a Bible study book so like I try to spend the morning kind of focusing inward and I think your channel really compliments that just you know and it's in in our language like get the fuck up and go do great things like that's kind of like we're grinding with that because in the military the morning is the most important part of the day like you get up early you get more done before most people even wake up so alright alright or I guess my channel is gonna have like morning affirmations for veterans hey 5 minute Morning Prayer for Christian veterans we're gonna have all these different kinds of things where you where like you said like hey wake up listen to this because how you start your day is usually how you're gonna run your day if you start your day positive you know you're gonna have different type of a day so I'm hoping to provide that uh for veterans through this YouTube channel yeah I also recommend the affirmation book I kept it on my nightstand um just because it was like just the first thing so I have like a little like morning routine and the book was always there cause it was like before I get up and like before I even look at my phone I wanna like take a second to just wake up and wake up on you know a positive note so I think that's super important but so what's your routine like like what's your what's your 15 minute warning what's the Doctor Virgo morning routine of success looking like gosh it's like shit I have to get up and go do stuff today no um I love what I do so I'm usually really happy when my alarm goes off it's contrary to what most people feel but so normally I when I wake up I have a few things on my nightstand I have water my little scoop of creatine cause that's the only time I remember to take it and then I have a book and I have my headphones so either I pop something in um and I lay there for 15 minutes kind of unwind um I guess start to wind up um and then or I'll read something and then I get up and kind of get into my morning routine I just um now that it's not as chilly out here I swim in the morning but when I get to the pool I don't want to get to the pool stressed so kind of getting there and it being my time is really important for me so the the affirmation book really help with that I also um you know being able to write in that book and being able to reflect yeah I think was also extremely important so there's also some some pens I have pens everywhere but like um I also would take a second to like either make a journal entry or now I'm actually writing in the margins of the affirmation book cause you know you can always go back like what did I do this yeah this today last year and that's what I really liked about the book as well so I can kind of see what was I thinking you know February 11th last year so hopefully you're in a better place now than than than where you were then and that's what progress is I live in Dominican Republic so we don't set alarms here and so I wake up you know whatever I wake up yeah I wanna I wanna talk about that why why Dr why out of all the places you could have lived why Dr so the Dominican Republic me and my friend always say is the best country in the world for veterans for a few reasons one is that we have a thriving veterans community here so now me and uh the group that me and my my buddy co founded is having like quarterly veteran events we are having like veteran beach days we're doing veteran activities and excursions where we get together like you know anywhere between like 10 and 20 veterans and we all go do something and we have that kind of built in camaraderie and community here secondly so here in the Dominican Republic we have veteran healthcare centers that are set up for veteran healthcare so you can get all your service connected healthcare here in the Dominican Republic so I go do my you know weekly physical therapy for my back I do aqua therapy and then the centers also put on some cool events like yoga on the beach so we go do yoga on the beach together and things like that which can be a lot more healing than medication and moving here you know it's step me back from kind of like I think the American mentality the American world the American consumerism all that stuff and then I started thinking about what's really important and eventually you know I got off all of the sleep medication all the anti anxiety medication all the medication that that I had been on and then the immigration stuff here is really easy you don't really need to do anything whereas when I was living in Thailand prior when I was teaching English there you have to it's the bureaucracy it's really hard um here you can come here pretty much stay as long as you want and then you just pay money when you leave depending how long you stay for so I would say the veteran community here the healthcare for veterans and mental health aspect immigration aspect make the Dominican Republic one of the best countries for veterans to retire in and then like where I live is incredibly safe and I think that plays a lot into it too because I think anyone who lives in an American city especially a major city uh you have to kind of stay on your guard you have to kind of stay alert then you're you're devoid of nature you're surrounded by like everything from like noise pollution to real life pollution and then coming here enabled me to really like connect with nature like I mentioned I got mango trees in my backyard I can go literally get a mango off the tree and eat it this afternoon if I want and for me coming here and being able to engage in that type of stuff was really mentally emotionally and spiritually healing yeah I think there's so many benefits I know I was always a little scared and you had made a comment in one of your videos and I was like he doesn't know what the hell he's talking about you had made a comment at Dr was yeah you made a comment about the safety in Dr and I was like no fucking way cause I I've done the crime stats for Dr like I I you know it's my field now but um and then I looked and I was like shit he's right haha it's like son of a bitch it depends what area yeah obviously like yeah there's places that you avoid that you don't go to yeah a lot of people view America yeah and a lot of people view America is like as like oh but America is kind of wildly dangerous because like you don't have like mass shootings here that kind of thing obviously doesn't exist and you don't have a ton of what I don't know the legal you can probably help me but like bystander crime or randomize crime like that doesn't really happen here like that random crime that happens in the states of like you know you're walking on the street and somebody stabs you or you've randomly robbed or something like that that kind of stuff doesn't really happen as much here as it does in the United States yeah I think so what I did was I looked at the per capita right like how many crimes are occurring in the United States and a general metropolitan area that would be similar um to the Dr and it's actually a lot less and you're 100% right I mean there are pockets um I have you know tons of from New York so I've tons of friends that are friends that are from Dr and there are their little pockets but like that's the same thing like nobody wants to travel down skid row in LA or yeah it's just like that yeah no one's with the Bowery in New York at night so and I think if if you traded that for going and grabbing a fresh mango every day like that doesn't sound like a bad eye like a bad idea and we have we have a police force here called the polluter which is basically tourism police and that's in every like tourist area high expat area or something like that you have this tourist police and crimes here against foreigners are basically treated in United States like hate crimes would be like they if you commit a crime against a foreigner like if you're like say you're a Dominican and you create a crime you rob or whatever to a foreigner your crime your punishment is through the roof there's no way getting out of it they're gonna lock you up and throw away the key because so much of the country is reliant on tourism dollars cruises that come in resorts and all those types of things that if you commit a crime against you know it's that's what one of the reasons why it's so safe because you know they know like so much of the country's economy is based on tourism like you need surfers coming in you need people coming to play golf you need all the stuff that you know the Dominican Republic has yeah I wanna talk a little bit about and this is totally selfish cause I you've made Dr seem like a dream and I'm like I will gladly retire I've retired in a few years so I'm like I will gladly pick up and go I had plan on traveling the world anyway but having a home base on a freaking island sounds amazing but my question is uh so veteran resources so if I'm a veteran and I've decided that I want to move to Dr what would be what would be the first thing that you recommend that I do the first thing is to come visit and stay for an extended period of time so I kind of call this like a moving abroad trial run because a lot of people kind of fantasize about stuff in their head I call it the Margarita effect is where like you go somewhere on vacation and you're like oh I wanna live here you know like I'm here on vacation I'm at the resort every day I'm like drinking beer at the pool I'm eating the buffet at night I wanna move here so then a lot of people kind of feel that way and then they come and they're not really prepared for the reality and the culture shock and all that stuff one thing about veterans is we're like really good at other cultural stuff because you're constantly kind of like meeting people from different places and doing different things and traveling around so I think veterans are really well suited to be expats but I would say the first thing if you're thinking about moving abroad is come stay for like a month see how you feel do more real life activities and in my free Veterans Guide to moving abroad which I have on my website it has some of these steps where it's like hey when you come here you know don't just eat at the expensive restaurants like go live life more like a local go to local stores go get your laundry done live like live you know life like you normally would but I love being here and when I came here it's like man there's so many veterans already here there's so many veterans who are thriving and I see so many veterans in the United States just kind of surviving or struggling so coming here is is an option for I think more and more veterans especially as the cost of living goes up the United States as kind of like the bullshit takes over you know if you can come here and work on yourself even even if not for you know a lot of people come here to make a republic and spend the winter here like come here for the winter like instead of you know moving here full time so for me it's like my home base I go to Thailand on Sunday I'll be in Thailand for like a month so I think that would be my second second favorite country for veterans and then third maybe the Philippines because they speak English in the Philippines uh which is helpful and it's incredibly cheap sure so my um the my first apartment here I lived in for 3 years and my rent was $500 a month and I just paid that up front in cash for the entire year and I was like here's the rent and I don't have to even think about it so not having to kind of think about money all the time to me um was was really good was really cool like just not cause the United States I know anyone watching this it feels like you're constantly paying for stuff I mean every day you're like another Bill another tax whatever so kind of taking that out of my life um you know having to pay rents like all the time was was really cool and then as far as like food goes obviously way cheaper than the United States I mean so I have a cafeteria that I walk to that's like I don't know 200 yards from my house or I take my golf cart cause I own a golf cart so I'll go there for like lunch uh that'll cost me like four or five bucks and that'll be enough usually for lunch and dinner so you can come here and live incredibly cheap and I I know veterans that come here and are like they spend 15 hundred dollars a month you know all in and I know some veterans that come here and they spend like five grand a month because they're going out they're doing ball of shit they're they're kind of living the life because if you come here I'll just use generalized figures if you come here like with your hundred percent or like maybe four grand a month you're in the top 5% of earners in the country so you can kind of take that and put it in United States terms you know that's like you're making like 300 grand United States or something like that if you take your four grand a month or five grand a month and you go to Philippines then you're in the top 1% of earners a lot of people don't think about income levels kind of in in those terms but in order to be in the top global 1% in the entire wide world all you need to make is like $60,000 and you're in the global 1% so most Americans are in the 1% just not the 1% of America they're in the global 1% yeah damn yeah I think I mean anybody with a rating over like 50% I mean maybe even less than that could live there comfortably reasonably um and not even yeah I used to tell like here hundred percent you're good like you know I I I that's usually I tell people like because you always spend more money especially the first few months as you kind of figure stuff out when I came here I didn't speak any Spanish now my Spanish is like pretty good to where I'm possible to where I can get by um so learning that obviously helps a lot when it comes to like just life yeah I I think I've heard you speak Spanish once it was awesome it was hysterical but hey yeah I talk like a like a like a second grader in Spanish but I can communicate yeah I can get by yeah I can go out I can talk to people you know so that's kind of what I wanna do so what um so you talked about these like monthly was it um meets that you have with your group your group of veterans what um so what does that look like so you guys are scuba diving I know you you got scuba certified at some point right yeah so scuba diving is fun we just did a fishing trip last week um we took out like two boats with like 30 veterans with one of the veteran centers here and then we have our next for my organization uh veterans in Paradise which you can see veterans in paradise.com we're having our next event April 9th this is gonna be for any veterans who are interested to coming to the Dominican Republic or veterans who are already living here and it's gonna be information on things like real estate information on things like healthcare mental health fellowship we're gonna be having some like raffles and some cool opportunities cause a lot of what we want to do is just build this supportive community of veterans here so we have friends you have battle buddies you have people you can rely on you know people within the community and then we also talk about things like how we give back to the community so we're gonna be doing things to raise money for some local kids organizations at our veterans event April 9th so if any veterans are like I wanna check out Dominican Republic you can come that weekend uh or that week and it's gonna be it's gonna be a cool time with a lot of veterans a lot of fun a lot of you know information and networking yeah I every year at Christmas I send toys and gifts to the kids out in Dr I have a friend who collects everything she's from Florida she's in the and she's in the Navy right now but she'll collect donations and she'll bring it down there and that's definitely that's awesome no matter where you are whether it's going to Dr whether it's going to you know the suburb in New York um so if I was okay so if I go down there I spend that month I decide I want to live there I know you have your veterans moving abroad I have to leave link for that in the description what does it look like to get enrolled in healthcare there do you have to do anything with the department of Veterans Affairs or do you just walk into one of those clinics so you can go to a clinic and as of now the clinics only treat service connected veterans so but they don't really turn veterans away so if you have a service connection then you can get your treatment there and how it works is to the foreign medical program of the Veterans Administration so you go into the center you get enrolled then they basically get your information from the VA they get your records sent down to the clinic and then they can see everything so like for mine you know go down they can see all my ratings what I get treated for and then you can basically just do treatment there and then the center itself builds the Veterans Administration so there's nothing out of pocket for veterans which is kind of just cool thing cause like I don't wanna you know in in some places the foreign medical program you have to pay up front and then they reimburse you but here in the Dominican Republic basically go in you do your treatment you sign hey my name is John I did physical therapy on this day they build the Veterans Administration Veterans Administration pays them and you can come in and get rolled in like 30 minutes it's usually best to just do it here opposed to in the states a lot of veterans were like I want to roll in the foreign medical program you have to do it like by mailed mistakes and takes a lot of time it's kind of complicated it's best to just come here walk into a clinic and you can get enrolled within like 30 minutes oh that's easy as hell okay so it's kind of when it comes to care yeah normal healthcare yeah it's the easiest thing in the world so then when it comes to normal healthcare like if you maybe you're not service connected or you're not a veteran then you could pay like $1,000 a year for like top notch healthcare where you're good to go all the way and plus the like the pharmacies here for example you have everything over the counter so a lot of veterans who come here they're like oh I need medication for diabetes or hypertension or like blood pressure or whatever else people take medication for you can just go to the pharmacy and buy it for a couple of dollars like most of the medications are insanely cheap cause they don't have like the bureaucracy the insurance the doctors the uh kind of scans United States uh healthcare system to where I can walk to a pharmacy and just pretty much buy whatever I would need that's how I felt when I went to Mexico I walked in to like I didn't know it was a pharmacy I thought it was like a little Bodega like a little store and they had like everything on the counters and there's no questions asked like oh you want you want this right here I'm like that requires like a prescription and like a sign of Congress to even get that so no that's that was kind of like one of my big concerns and I'm sure other veterans share the same sentiment um can let's talk about your veterans moving abroad cause I remember when that first came out you release a series of videos kind of like demystifying and talking about some stuff like giving up your guns which I know a lot of veterans don't wanna do but can you kind of talk about the the guide and then some of the the big things that might keep a veteran from from going down this avenue when I started talking about moving abroad initially it was kind of just for fun and it was during the pandemic cause I'm on the Dominican Republic I'm in the Dominican Republic on the beach and I'm like hanging out drinking beers and all of America was like a a loony a loony bed you know like stuff was burning down people running around all crazy so I just started sending funny videos to my friends like I'm in Jamaica Republic like I'll be on a boat or something drinking a beer and they're in the United States like you know going through all the pandemic stuff and then people ask me like my my buddies like so you're really living down there I was like yeah and I was like yeah there's lots of veterans here we all hang out and then that kind of LED me into trying to be more informational and being like okay like I I see the need for this like initially I was just kind of screwing around and then when I decided to stay here long term I wanted to let other veterans know that this is a possibility for you as well because a lot of you know a lot of Americans don't think about moving abroad cause we're the country that people move to not the country people move from but I wanted a high quality life at a lower cost I wanted to work on my mental health I wanted to kind of escape the chaos United States so I came abroad and then since that since I came abroad like we we kind of have this big program all these veterans here all the stuff that that happens here in the Dominican Republic and that's definitely why I'm gonna stay here I think a lot of veterans are hesitant to move abroad one I think you have the language thing here you know in most expat areas there's actually a high level of English because Dominican Republic so close to United States and uh tourism so high here that I I do know some veterans that come here that don't learn any Spanish um which I think you should learn you know enough to get by um and then you can't really bring guns here once you come here you stay for a while you can get a gun but there's so many rules to it like the bureaucracies with gun ownership is is really high so I think that stops a lot of veterans and then there's some of the kind of fear of the unknown that I think is you know is can create some anxiety so that's one reason why we're like okay hey April 9th we'll have this event if you want to come down and really check it out like find out the real the real story about living here you come here meet veterans living here talk to us find out about the healthcare find out about real estate cause we'll have like you know some people we know like in the community who do healthcare or doctor there people do real estate stuff so people can kind of like ask their questions and find out their information um so and then you know a lot of people don't think family life is for people abroad like most people that move abroad are like single people because obviously like it's it's kind of more of a thing but I worked in international education and I can tell you that like the private international schools are usually superior to American public education and if you don't believe me just look at American public education and it should be pretty obvious yeah as a product of public school I can tell you that it sucks public schools like we didn't have a music program gym no there was no gym like yeah no I and I've seen I have a friend who teaches in Korea he is a Navy veteran he teaches English in Korea but his thing is he goes to work there to make money and then he just hikes all over the world he goes by mountain man yeah he just he's in a different country and he's like hiking across it he did all the major hikes in the US and um yeah and from what I've seen it's the education quality is definitely through the roof so have you and you're 100% right about the like programs that they have here where here they have more like music and art oriented stuff and also you know private education could kind of be more flexible and adapt with the kind of changing the rapidly changing technology stuff you know whereas public schools are kind of set on this curriculum that takes a long time to ever change so I find you know a lot of international private education really will gear to set people up for a successful life in our kind of like high high pace technology world where public education is like setting people up just to like fail when they hit the real world yeah that's I went on this like fake rant one of my last podcast episodes where I was like public education is designed to create consumers it's not designed to create independent thinkers and I think that's where other countries shine I also like the idea of you know I don't have kids but I like the idea of if I had a kid that they would learn multiple languages cause whenever whenever I watch world leaders talk like Canada he uh the Canadian prime minister gave his speech in French and then English same thing with Mexico English and then Spanish so I look at all these world leaders that speak multiple languages cause they've been practicing fluently since they were in school and that's my remedial third grade Spanish is not gonna get me a damn thing except where's the library like I don't know shit like well you can find it you can find the library in the bathroom then you know that's that's that's Alicia Star don't ask me star I was like you know I I uh I think that's awesome I I remember gosh it was on one of your posts there was a guy I want to say it was on your one of your Instagram post there was a guy who um who basically thanked you for the moving abroad guide because he left him and his whole family moved to Thailand or the Philippines but your guide helped him literally uproot his entire family and then get three kids and move and I was like that's how you know that you created something of value cause a single person to someone who's getting out of the army after 25 years of service and has kids and deep roots in the US has everything that they need to move abroad so do you want to talk about the guide real quick kind of like what it includes yeah so it's basically everything that you need to know and I recently so I did a first edition and then after the first edition like so many people are asking me like follow on questions and more stuff so I wrote an expanded second edition which is like 150 some pages and this is gonna include a ton of links and resources to different uh different things about being a veteran moving and living abroad what I wanted to do is kind of write like an FM for moving and living abroad for veterans like here's everything you need here's every resource you could possibly think of here's how you set up your mail here's how you do banking stuff here's how you do your taxes you know kind of all those things that are kind of like the nitty gritty details you have to do but then also be able to share my own personal story about why I moved abroad and my life now and how I'm like living a high quality life at a very low cost and how my mental health has been so much better since I moved abroad so I wanted to kind of spread that message to other veterans in like kind of a friendly and fun way and I made it totally free so it's like every veteran could just here's the information here's here's the links here's everything you need to know to step by step guide about moving abroad so so that was like really cool to do and I love to write for me that's it's therapeutic it's cool and being able to share my personal story about moving to the Dominican Republic and then all the veterans here and everything like that has been awesome so I'm gonna do a third edition of it um I'm gonna get get started on it here soon to kind of incorporate more information like second one I forgot to you know write about like pets abroad like how do you bring your service animals abroad and kind of like and you're someone who asked me about that type of stuff so it's gonna have more information like that and then well as kind of like some expand information and resources yeah that's um one of the avenues I've been considering as I move up in my regular job is taking a gig out in Germany and uh cause I tried and we have a we have an office in the Virgin Islands and I was like hey do we need anybody down there like I'd love to move but there was a lot more loopholes and not loopholes but like hoops I have to jump through to bring my dog down there but Germany was like this is cause you know we all the bases that we have out there they're like this is what you need to bring your pet yeah yeah but there's tons of better in Germany yeah I also noticed that just kind of on the pets topic is that pet care is so much better in other countries it's like first of all in Germany it's free cause people pay a pet tax that covers most of your vet cost but how would you say um so if I were to bring my service animal to to Dr is it the same kind of rules like I can bring them into a restaurant if it's like an actual service dog okay that's interesting yeah what are the you know like the 80 The American Disability Act the Ada like has specific protections in America yeah and a lot of veterans kind of run into that roadblock because here in the Dominican Republic and a lot of other countries are just not as animal friendly like in the United States yeah animals are your kids they're like you can take them anywhere you take them to Starbucks and so uh people that have dogs like you know they're not as widely accepted like you couldn't take a dog into like a mall here like people would be like what the hell are you doing you can't bring a dog into the mall whereas in United States you can so a lot and a lot of other countries are like that more westernized countries are gonna be more dog friendly you know places like Canada places like in Europe like those are more animal friendly places so but there are you know and then here you have like stray dogs so like whenever you see a dog on a leash you know hey that's that's like a right yeah yeah this dog or whatever so it's yeah it's it's it's different you know the Ada exists in America so that's one thing I also wanted to talk to veterans about when I do the foundation that guys like some of those kind of little things as like a yeah I'm curious how that would work I mean I don't anybody who has a dog that is like an emotional support animal I think that's great but they're not service dogs and even though they're protected under the Ada they're not actually providing a service in the legal sense meaning that they're not detecting a seizure or they're not guiding you because you're blind so that would be um I think that would be interesting cause I mean that might really narrow a list down for veterans who are looking to live abroad cause I know when I retire I'm trying to get the fuck out of here like I love the US and a lot of but yeah a lot of people don't understand the difference between emotional service animal and a service dog like a service dog is like a expensive like 20,000 dollar type German Shepherd who can find like bombs and things like that yeah and your emotional service animal is just because you want your Chihuahua to go with you to Starbucks or something like yeah there's kind of a big difference um so you know I think that that can be something that can hold veterans back from going abroad is animal ownership but you obviously come here and bring your dog here like all you gotta do is get like a rabies shot before you come get a certificate from a from the vet saying your dog is healthy enough to fly and you can absolutely bring your pet here and all the airlines have like ton of information about traveling with pets on their on their website so you can figure that out but as far as like the actual service dog aspect of bringing a dog like that to the Dominican Republic is like no like it's not the same yeah I think for me if I was gonna live abroad and really do that I don't think it would be fair to a pet to kind of go through all of that in the crazy quality of life change for them I'd probably wait until it was just me that's just my personal opinion is I would wait until it's just me and then this way I have more flexibility I only have to worry about my own shots I don't have to worry about their shots too and everything else and getting them acclimated plus I feel like if they're not as widely accepted and I wanna go sit on the beach all day or I wanna go run around town and I can't bring my dog I get hate to leave them in in an apartment but that's just a personal opinion I guess but so okay so you're going to Thailand for a month how does that work when it comes to citizenship I know you mentioned that you have to like pay out basically when you leave Dr it's like a very small fee and I'll leave that in the comments it's nothing um you and I had talked about that before but yeah what's that like with the citizenship so I I'm still an American citizen still pay American taxes you know still have my American passport all that stuff and then I come down here I think I've been here for like two or three months at this point um so then when I leave I'll pay like 60 bucks at the airport or something like that like to get on the plane so basically I'll go to the airport to look my passport to say okay you've been in the country for X amount of days pay the money I know some veterans that come here and stay for like four years without leaving and and then you leave you're like oh you have to pay like 300 bucks or something like that so it's not that much money or a big deal or something to think about but if you do want to get citizenship here you can you might want to do that if you want to run a business if you want to like buy property if you want to do things like that that sometimes having the dual citizenship can be good you can have dual citizenship and it doesn't impact like your military benefits or anything like that the only thing I would say to that is you can't renounce your citizenship otherwise you lose your military benefits which why would you renounce your citizenship anyway yeah I know that doesn't make any sense yeah I think that's why a lot of folks have found like Puerto Rico um or any US territory appealing is because um there's a little less of that but there's also it's at a cost it's gonna cost more to live in the in Puerto Rico and you know than it is anywhere else yeah well I mean yeah it's US territory and people go there because of the tax benefits like Logan Paul for example not that he's a veteran but he lives there for the tax benefits and because it's a little bit easier to travel like you know little things that I think are worth the sacrifice considering how much more you get in Dr yeah there's no perfect place like there's always issues like you know like I said Thailand it can be pretty hard unless you have like a ton of money then it's easier or if you're over 50 it's easy to get the retirement visa there and most countries like let me take an example somewhere like uh like Costa Rica or Panama if you can show that you get like over 14 dollars a month then you're good to go with their pension program they have like pension visas and that's basically to get the Americans and the Europeans who don't want to retire within their own country they want to go somewhere that's like expat friendly like Costa Rica or Panama and there's a lot of other places in the world so I kind of list some of the information on my guide like how much you need to make per month to get to apply for some of this visa stuff and everything but of course it's not it's not very much like I think Mexico is like 15 16 hundred a month that if you want to go live in Mexico with their pension program you just have to show that you make that much much amount which most veterans do yeah oh yeah I went to Rosario last time I was in Mexico and um it's all just most of them are like Navy retirees who retired at Navy Base San Diego they just cross the border and there's also a lot of Americans who live um live in Mexico and and commute every day um million Americans live in Mexico like a ton of Americans live there and America and Mexico actually has like something else I should mention is Mexico also has like 10 American Legion posts so they're all and they have like a bunch of V F W's there too so there are uh a veteran community kind of already established there there's also like an American Legion post and Costa Rica that's really big there's uh they have a Marine Corps League there that's pretty good they have uh V F W's in the Philippines like I went to the Philippines a couple months ago and I was at uh really nice V F W there they have in Thailand too so you have these like uh veteran communities abroad that a lot of people don't really know about so that's kind of one thing that I've been talking to veterans about is just like you can move abroad and there are other veterans there it's not just you know you moving abroad so that's one thing that we're trying to create here is like a supportive receptive community for veterans if they wanna come here like you can come here and we'll tell you everything and help you out um you know help you live live a good life and god forbid you know if you're a veteran who's who's struggling with your mental health if you're you know hurting or something like that then sometimes you need a break sometimes you need a fresh start and there's real beauty in a fresh start that's something I've been thinking about a lot lately like it's hard to hit the reset button if you're in your current situation in your current environment in your current job or on this same people so moving abroad is like the ultimate fresh start where I came abroad and I wanted to kind of like reinvent myself you know there's stuff about all of us we don't necessarily like and I wanted to kind of like downplay the stuff I didn't like about myself and upplay like the stuff that I liked about myself and coming here and getting to start over was like a really amazing thing for me just from like a soul perspective yeah real quick I wanted to talk about your trip to Peru cause I am gonna be talking to Luke Luke is gonna be on the podcast um in a couple of months what was that like being at the um I forgot the name of the the retreat the ayahuasca retreat right mm hmm yeah I so I wanted to go with like I wanted to do Iowa State mainly because I saw so many better people talking about it you know it was kind of like you hear it a little bit I've never done drugs before like a lot of veterans like I used to you know I used to get fucked up me I never did drugs before like I love to drink but I never did any like real drugs before and when I started seeing all these veterans talk about the incredible benefits they got from doing some of plant based medicine like ayahuasca I wanted to do it myself and I wanted to go to like the root of it like in Peru like that's where it is like that's where they have the plants that's where it comes from like I didn't want to do it you know in Mexico or Columbia or Columbia is pretty good but I wanted to go like to shaman stuff and kind of go through it so I found uh T Wall's Awakening online and the the gentleman you're talking about Luke he's a good mix of like a hippie and intelligent and kind of cool so that kind of really attracted me to it and then they incorporated other stuff the other treats didn't like brain scans they also had like martial arts there so we did jiu jitsu we did Heights we did some cultural stuff that I wanted to get into so then doing the actual ayahuasca was an incredible experience to where like and it's kind of different for everyone like my personal experience with it was pretty emotional and it kind of like broke me down a little bit to like your core and you really think about stuff from a different perspective for me I saw you know visions of people in my life and everyone has people in their life that shouldn't be in their life everyone has people they should cut out and to me the eye of the wolf that kind of showed me like in different colours like the good positive people in my life and the bad people in my life because we all kind of have these individuals around us or these situations that drain us that we know we need to stop feeding so for me it was kind of like a really good confirmation to be like you know some people I should push away and some people I should bring forward so that was kind of like one big thing I got from it and then also it kind of like opened me up emotionally I think as veterans were kind of told to be like robots rigid you stand there in formation so it kind of put me a little bit more in touch with like my human emotions um and then also you know another thing I wanted to do was have a better relationship with like alcohol because that was something that I've struggled with uh in the past especially when I was in the military and get out of the military was I wanted to kind of develop a healthy relationship with alcohol I don't want to be one of those veterans it's like I don't drink anymore you know I'm gonna keep drinking but I wanna do it in a way that's better so you know having the medicine help me with that is also a big benefit because since the experience I had a couple months ago I've I've been better about drinking and about you know my my personal relationship with alcohol yeah I'm really curious about that so this is so you're the first video on our mental health series so Luke will be on I also have a doctor Leslie Cohen if I remember her name correctly she is a Navy veteran she was a doctor in the Navy she's green side she's with the Marines the entire time and then she now runs her own clinic focused on um veteran mental health and a lot of it is more like integrative medicine so incorporating things like um like how Ti was it was Ti was awakening right with Luke's stuff so they're both gonna be on to talk a little bit about that cause I think that and at least for me I've had a really bad experience I love the VA I will say that like I've had a really good experience with the VA but when it comes to the VA mental health stuff I've had terrible experiences with them they put me on all these crazy medications and the medication said like all these crazy side effects and then um I just decided I didn't want to do anything anymore with them and they were like like nope we're not gonna treat you anymore was their response so then I found this like you know being a holistic doctor myself I found other means it's kind of like putting myself in the patient seat so things like the iowaska things like the veterans affirmations I think there's really a lot of help out there for veterans or anybody struggling with their mental health or wanna improve their overall quality of life and you know sometimes it is just getting up and and just starting over just going somewhere new but yeah a lot of ayahuasca stuff is is done like in the before and after too like I did 30 days like you just follow a special diet you get your body ready for it and afterwards you kind of have to do the integration into your life like it doesn't really help if you like just show up do the drugs and then without kind of the preparation for it so like there is there was an aspect to it that I should mention that that's kind of like the valuable part is like you know for a few weeks beforehand like I didn't have any alcohol or sex I didn't you know I was living like a monk I was just kind of hanging out not eating pork not eating spicy food so it's kind of getting yourself ready for that and then afterwards you know I did a lot like meditation and things like that to kind of like make it take hold to where to where I actually got value from it and you know the thing about like Iros is like you gotta pay for it like that's you know how it is right now at the VA is not gonna do it but how much is her health worth how much is like you know your mental health and fresh start worth and if you're I always tell people like when it comes to Iowa since my experiences if you're a veteran and you've tried a bunch of different shit and none of that worked then what do you got to lose like what are you scared of like it's just just go do it um and it's probably terrible advice I'm not a doctor so say that but you know what do you like yeah I mean there's there's ways to do it no I I agree and I think for me I think if the medication is helping you and you're reaching your treatment goals then fabulous like there should be a goal for your treatment plan right but for me the goal was unattainable because the medication seemed to give like an artificial happy and then it was very um like one of the medications I was on was an SSRI my body just hated it I gained a ton of weight like I was actually having mobility issues like joint problems and they're like oh you're allergic to it like three months later and I was like you know what I'm gonna take my treatment and I'm gonna take my own mental health into my own hands cause you guys are doing the best that you can but the treatment plan you've created for me is not helping and I think there that independence is a little bit freeing assuming that you have the ability to do that and you're not entirely dependent upon the medication cause not everybody has this experience but um I think I think that's great and I think that you know maybe spending a month in Thailand is sometimes all you need or or just giving yourself the ability to exhale is what I call it yeah the retreats the retreats are good that's what the like the retreats are for and the retreats you kind of have to sometimes get out of your environment or to really like process and feel and move forward so that's why I think you know if you're better and you wanna do like a travel retreat you wanna do like a Iowa's retreat you wanna do a yoga retreat you wanna do any type of retreat like I think those can be can be especially helpful and like you mentioned it's the responsibility factor is big like you have to take responsibility like that's that's what you should do anyways take responsibility for your own mental health for your own physical health even and you gotta take that personal responsibility and if the government broke you then maybe the fix is elsewhere like if if the VA isn't helping you like you gotta look within and kind of design your own treatment plan even if you're not a doctor like for me it's like I'm just gonna try different stuff like so I tried different things I tried doing different stuff to improve myself and I realized that you know how complicated life is that sometimes you need a lot of different things it's not just one pill like it's like oh I need to be in nature more or I need to eat healthier or I should if I scuba dive once a week like that's a really a powerful thing for me so kind of figuring out that own personal recipe for your mental health I think it was something more better I should like seriously sit down and consider yeah I wrote that um Veterans Guide to Mastering Life as I was on my own journey to taking responsibility for my own mental health which people always look at me and they're like oh you're a doctor you should you should know and it's like I try not to you know they may say doctors make the worst patients and I like I try not to to do that but it did come to a point where it was like I'm not taking responsibility because I'm a doctor I'm taking responsibility cause I'm a person and I you know being a veteran you know you have kind of a heads I would say like a step up compared to everybody else cause you're used to being in situations where you have to make the decisions but you have all of this guidance so between your guides and a lot of the other things that are out there I think that veterans are starting to kind of put together like a resource library like they have a lot of things and a lot of places to go seek help so at least non traditional means uh for seeking help so um but yeah thank you so much for being here I just I want to give you a second is there anything that you wanna throw out there or anything that you wanted to to shout out hey guys I wanted to interrupt this video real quick and remind you that my free guide Wellness Wisdom and Warfare a Veterans Guide for Mastering Life is now available for download using the link in the description or if you go to my website jessevirga com free guide or it's under the podcast tab you can download it for absolutely free it's over 60 pages of just tips and tricks and things to help my veterans out there master their health master their fitness master their mental and spiritual health just things that I've Learned through my journey as just a veteran and that I've Learned as an educator and as a professional in multiple fields as an entrepreneur I put all these things in one place and I put it together for absolutely free so again link is in the description or if you head to my website jessevirga com you can download it for absolutely free I just like to tell veterans hey if you're interested in moving abroad go check out my website I have my free Veterans Guide to moving abroad as well as my blog it has a ton of articles even has a article like Veteran Germany and Thailand and Costa Rica and Mexico like all these different resources and country specific guides and then you new YouTube channel Veteran Affirmations which I'm super excited about because like I said it's the first affirmation channel for veterans and you can go here if you're not tired of hearing my voice you can go hear my voice you can hear other veterans voices and talking about our personal experiences with mental health as well as you know helping other veterans rewire their brain to positivity to success to healing so go check that out veteran affirmations on YouTube yeah thanks so much uh this this new video the second one that you sent me today was awesome so uh definitely recommend that everybody goes checks it out I will leave a link in the video description but with that thank you so much for being here John