Welcome back to another thought-provoking episode of The Breaking Point Podcast featuring Thomas J. LeGrave Jr., a former Navy SEAL, hospital corpsman, and acclaimed author of "Special Welfare, Social Warfare."

In this conversation, Tom shares his raw and inspiring journey from teenage drug addiction at age 14 to a high-stakes military career in the U.S. Navy, followed by his subsequent discharge due to substance abuse. Learn how he rebuilt his life through addiction recovery, dedicating over 30 years as a licensed clinical social worker to mentoring adolescents and young adults through their struggles.

Tom reflects on the latchkey kid era of the 1970s, the challenges of military life, and the profound impact of working with youth in recovery programs and Boys and Girls Clubs. He also unpacks the powerful message behind his book, linking special warfare strategies to the social warfare threatening America’s youth today amid societal polarisation. This episode dives deep into mental health, resilience, personal transformation, and the urgent need to address the youth mental health crisis in a divided world.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• The journey of addiction often begins unnoticed, as seen in Tom's early experiences, highlighting the importance of awareness.
• Military life can complicate addiction, as Tom's story illustrates how personal struggles can intersect with responsibility.
• Rebuilding trust with oneself is crucial after addiction, and working with youth can foster that trust and healing.
• Reflecting on past experiences can provide clarity on one's life choices, revealing lessons learned through hardship and recovery.

All that you're thinking about is yourself and where you're going to get your high.

And that is a dangerous component when you're in the military.

Doing what I did early on, fulfilling the responsibility was I could do that.

It was in time that I lost that ability.

And no matter how educated you are, no matter how talented you are, it doesn't matter because what you were, you're no longer.

Hello everyone.

Welcome back to another episode of the Breaking Boy podcast.

Today we are here with Thomas Jada Grave Jr. Aka Tom.

That's what I'm going to call him because his official name is too long to be saying all the time.

And Tom is.

Well, first of all, let's start off with you're the author of a book which I can see behind you, which I've written down.

Special Warfare, Social Warfare, great name.

Really want to get into what that means, but why don't Tom, why don't you tell people a very, very short.

Because I've.

I am interested in your past, but there's also other things we can talk about and I think your past will seep into some of the other questions I ask.

So tell people just a very short, truncated version of your life.

Yeah, I was in the military from 19 to 29.

I ended up going into the military, bringing in an addiction.

I started using drugs at 14.

When in the military, brought them with me.

At that time it wasn't a big deal.

It became zero tolerance.

Nine years after my entry into the military, I was discharged for drug use, ended up going to a recovery facility and finding that I had to live life differently.

And I at that time couldn't figure that out because I was told, you know what?

In your childhood, your issues that you take into adulthood started there.

And I couldn't remember childhood.

I was numb to everything.

So I came up with the idea of I'm going to go work with youth that are the age I am or they're the age I was when I started.

And so I took a job at an adolescent recovery facility.

I did that for four years and then I went and took another job at a boys and girls club.

And between that eight year period, I found out that I could live life without drugs.

I found out that I had a gift working with young people and I took it as because of them giving, as I saw it, my life back in the form of living it without drugs and alcohol.

I committed myself to working with youth.

The education I got, the bachelor's master's license, board certification, all that is so that I had the information that when a young person shared with me something that was, you know, that was overwhelming them, I couldn't handle not having an answer.

So with the education and the experience came the ability to interact in the way I wanted to with youth.

So I'm at the end of my career.

I'm what's called a licensed clinical social worker.

I have a private practice.

Over the last 30 years I've worked with the adult population and with adolescents that are transitioning from adolescents to adulthood, 18 to 19, 20 year olds.

And that's what brings me sitting here with you.

And that's it in a nutshell.

No, that's a great, that's a perfect recount, actually.

Got everything, gave me a good basis.

14, that's pretty early to become addicted to things, in my opinion, within reason.

What are you comfortable talking about?

But what was going on at 14?

Where did you, where did you end up?

Yeah, it's like a 26 year old nowadays, isn't it, really what you're doing?

So here's the thing is at that time it was called Latchkey Kids.

And that was, it was when I.

Earlier than 14, my father was the breadwinner.

He, you know, my mom stayed home to raise the kids.

Well, as time progressed, it took two incomes so mom had to go to work too.

And at that time mom was at work, Dad's at work, and the, the boys, I have two brothers are partying and smoking marijuana and living life and having a wonderful time.

Yeah.

Now in that age group, I've come to find that the experimentation, you have to define whether a young person is experimenting with drugs or if there's an addiction.

And that's a fine line.

And for me, I believe that within a very short period of time, by the age of 15, I was an addict.

And the problem with it is, is that it wasn't any kind of big deal.

It didn't cost me anything at that point.

What is in.

Because you were.

Do you mean financially or in the sense of.

There were no.

You had no responsibility in your life, so therefore there were no adverse effects.

Exactly.

So I'm going to school, I'm getting good grades, I'm playing sports, my father's happy, my mother's happy, but they don't know what we're doing without their knowledge.

And that is where it started.

It became.

And in our family, everybody's in recovery.

My parents, when they were alive, my brothers, everyone is in Recovery.

Because for us, it wasn't experimentation became addiction.

And all the negative that comes with that.

Wow.

Well, that's, that's a, A good point that you sort of alighted upon where you said, when you're like 15 and when you're young, there's no, there aren't any tangible drawbacks as such, because you're so young.

And that made me think nowadays and probably as I'm speaking to you, just forever Young people often engage in things that they don't realize what the potential outcomes are in the future because a, there's nothing to contrast.

There's not like, oh, I've got a wife and kids or a job that I have to uphold.

As such, you're more protected.

But also when you're like a young teenager, you're just conceptualization of the world isn't what it is going to be eventually.

So you can't really.

I don't know, it was just as you were thinking.

I was like, when people, when young people get addicted to things now when they're 15, they don't understand what they're doing until they, until they get older.

But unfortunately, the problem with when you become older is the damage is done at some point, at least temporarily.

How did.

Was that one of the reasons why you enrolled in the.

In the Army?

Is that what you call it in America?

Navy.

Navy, yeah.

I knew that.

You're a seal, aren't you?

I was going to get onto that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You're a seal?

Yeah.

So, yeah, yeah.

It was at the age of 18.

I'm still living in my father's house.

And at that point, they wised up.

My parents caught on and I was getting high with my younger brother, who was.

I was 18, he was 14.

And the old man threw me out of the house.

And at that point, at 18, I'm like, I'm not going back to his house.

I'm ready to go live life.

And at that time, the only thing that was really there was the military.

1975, America ended their war in Vietnam.

So I actually got a good deal.

Everything that I asked for, I wanted the Navy.

I wanted to be a hospital corpsman, a medic.

And so I. I was given everything that I asked for.

But here's the caveat.

When I went in, I brought my addiction.

The military did not create the addiction.

I brought it with me.

The war in Vietnam just took its toll.

And so in a very, not a very short time, but within my first enlistment, it became so that they were no longer accepting that you could use drugs.

The military will always let you drink.

Drinking is part of that culture.

But at that point I wasn't, I didn't catch on fast enough to see that the old days were gone and the new days were drink, no drugs, and, and I ended up getting popped on a urinalysis, like I said, in the ninth year of my military, and that ended the career.

So you were doing drugs for nine years in the military and functioning as a Navy seal, presumably at some point.

At what point did.

I'm not my knowledge on the armed force.

On the armed forces, as you witness is not brilliant.

But how did you, how does that occur?

Are you called up?

Do you enroll when?

I had no idea when I went in the military what a Navy SEAL was absolutely clueless.

Turns out in the third week you can take a screening test and it's, you know, you run, you swim, pull ups, push ups, and if you pass it, they will take you from boot camp and after you go to your A school.

After I became a hospital corpsman, they sent me to what's called basic underwater demolition SEAL training.

And I was in what, what was Class 106.

You know, I got to carry guns and blow things up.

Yeah.

What kid?

What, what 19, 20 year old don't want to do that?

Yeah, no, it's true.

There's.

There's a YouTuber that I watched who applied to be.

It probably was the Navy, I think, when he was younger.

And he went to like a initial not.

I don't know what the correct terminology would be.

Maybe like, I don't want to say taster session, but that's the only thing that come to my mind.

And the guy at the front of the room said, we all know why we're here, boys.

He said we're here to.

He said something like shoot guns and to fuck women.

And then he was like, yeah, that's why I'm here, so I can.

Yeah, I mean that is a 19, 20 year old.

That's what's going through your mind.

So that makes complete sense.

And the status that comes with being all that and all the, all the benefits that come with that.

So let's talk.

We'll talk a little bit about your career, and then we obviously need to get into what you're doing now.

And I need to ask about your book, because I've got some questions on that.

But how did you find being in the Navy and being in an elite branch of the Navy, I guess how did you manage being in the Navy, and how was that within the context of your addiction?

How did you juggle those two things?

Now, the manner in which you get caught doing drugs is a urinalysis.

You pee in a bottle and they test it.

So as a hospital corpsman, the command would call where I'm working me and say, get the bottles ready.

We're going to have a test.

And so ahead of time, I knew it was coming.

So I could make the necessary, let the necessary other guys know and have a bottle set aside with somebody who wasn't hot.

And I put my name on it.

So I was able to have control.

Now, with addiction, I don't care what it is, it eventually consumes you.

And what started out was able to operate as a Navy SEAL and still party pretty hard and be able to carry both of those.

As time progressed, it started, I got started getting sloppy.

I started getting.

Making mistakes.

I started forgetting that.

Forgetting that there were other responsibilities that I should have been focusing on and I wanted to party.

And in the ninth year, I ended up falling asleep and not waking up for three days.

And in the military, that's called unauthorized absence.

So I come back and they sit me down and say, here's the bottle.

I don't think.

I don't know it's coming.

I can't control it, and I come up hot, and that's it.

Party over.

Wow.

Yeah.

So that's.

You just, you mentioned the word responsibility.

And obviously not only is your tolerance and your need for more of the drugs, your tolerance is decreasing now.

Your tolerance is increasing.

So therefore you need more of the drugs.

But also I imagine your responsibilities on the up, the more you're in.

So you've got these two things that are sort of these two ships, I guess, that are about to converge on one another and crash.

And that was your crashing point, was when that moment came along.

Very good.

Now.

Yeah.

And so you, you were a medic.

So why did you decide to.

What made you want to be a medic?

Is that how it works?

Yeah, I, I always.

From, from.

I can remember wanting to be a doctor at 8 or 9 years old.

That's what I was going to do when I grew up and then I, I, I got derailed with getting thrown out of the house for drug use and ended up in the military where they gave me the opportunity to be educated and thoroughly educated.

I was, I spent a lot of time being educated in the field of medicine.

That is when you're a solo, what, what's called a corpsman and I'm attached with a platoon of SEALs and I'm the medic.

So they made sure my education was all that.

And it was again, early on fulfilling the responsibility was I could do that.

It was in time that I lost that ability.

And no matter how educated you are, no matter how talented you are, it doesn't matter because what you were, you're no longer all that you're thinking about is yourself and where you're going to get your high.

And that is a dangerous component when you're in the military doing what I did.

Yeah, of course that you, yeah, that's ironic in a unfortunate way.

You're responsible for the lives of other people.

So you have to be really on your game.

You're looking up to people in some of the most dire, potentially life threatening situations.

So therefore you really have to A, know your stuff, but B, also be aware of what's going on.

So you clearly are a compassionate person because you wanted to go into the, to the medical side and the, the caring side of the Navy and the, the armed forces.

And that is obviously led onto what it is that you're doing now.

So when you got out of the, when you were dismissed, what was the next thing you did immediately after that, what was your next move?

So let's, let's set the mindset.

You know, at that time I am emotionally, mentally, physically damaged.

I, for the, what I did as a hospital corpsman, Navy seal, that was an identity.

That's all I knew.

There was no separating me from that.

And when I was separated from the military, that was devastating.

I was overwhelmed.

And I have an addiction that is killing me and I now have no support system and I have no clue as to how to stop the use in the manner I was using it.

So I ended up, I went home to the same house to the same father that threw me out 10 years earlier.

And this time he said, look, I'll take you back, but you got to go, you got to go take care of this issue.

And so the deal was if I stayed in his, he'd let me stay in his house if I went and addressed the addiction.

Four months after my discharge, I was in a 90 day recovery facility and it was called Project 90.

And it was the new journey I began a new creating.

Because I couldn't go back, I was not allowed to go back to the military to do a job I love.

So now I got to figure out how to live life and do in what the, you know, the military.

I went in at 19 and that's all I knew.

The civilian world that everybody else had been living made sense to them, made no sense to me.

So what it came down to is I started working at a, or I grad or completed a 90 day recovery facility.

And then like I shared, I had about a year and it was going to fall apart and I made the decision to take a job working with youth.

And I did not take that job to go help kids.

I want to take that job to help me.

You know, it was, I needed to see with my own eyes and then through their emotions, I learned to find my emotions.

And in doing that, they gave me the greatest gift that I have ever received and that was the compassionate caring that they put trust in me, that I had none of that for myself.

Yeah.

And I, I used to work with sort of minor special needs children a bit when I was a little bit younger.

I'm not, I'm not that old, but a bit younger.

And I think what you said is absolutely true about, there's something about the sort of raw state of children that they reflect back to you aspects of yourself and you can sort of look at what they're doing and go, oh, that's interesting.

That's, I can relate to that.

And if you scale that up, you get the way an adult might react.

But, but that's how a child is reacting.

And if I, maybe if, if they just did that they would react differently and maybe I could do the same.

And all this, the sort of whirlwind of new revelations as, as you're witnessing them react, I, I can, I imagine that was very therapeutic for you and for them, obviously.

Yeah.

Because to me, the loss of my military career, this is my, this is how I'm thinking.

I, I, what I did and the manner in which I left the military was I betrayed a sacred trust, a brotherhood of like men that did a very specific job.

And that betrayal overwhelmed me long after I started getting sober.

It wasn't until years later that I could finally figure out how to forgive myself for that.

And again, it came from my extensive work with young people.

It was they who came to me, trusting me, that I finally figured out how to trust myself.

So yeah, and that's what.

That's what addiction.

I've spoken to people in the past who know people who are very close to people that are alcoholics.

And the only way they can describe an addiction is that is like the devil is just the.

Its ability to cloud your entire mind, body, you're in from every cell is just phenomenal.

And the things that will make you do.

Have you had any?

Because there's.

There's lots of talk about like addiction.

And there's a guy who wrote a book, I think called Lost Connections.

I think it's Johan, maybe it's something along the lines and his sort of ideology was that an addiction is like a maladaptive connection or it's like a.

It's a half connection.

So people are trying to recreate a genuine connection with something that is disingenuous, I guess, or isn't faulty.

Have you had any revelations on not just why you were potentially went down that route or not went down that route implies that you chose it, but you were unfortunately found yourself down that road.

And then also have you found any hadi this.

Had any revelations about just addiction in general and the way that we conceptualize it, if we get anything wrong or right, what we get wrong and right.

Yeah, excellent question.

From where I'm standing today, this person that's talking to you, I can look back over the last 40 years and I can see that had it not been for those experiences getting thrown out of father's house, getting thrown out of the military and re establishing my life.

I'm not sitting here like this with you.

I couldn't see it 20, 30 years ago looking forward, but I can see it looking back.

And it is.

I am forever grateful that those who held me accountable when I was not accountable, I am forever grateful that they had the courage to say we're going to let you go.

There's nothing that we want to do with you out.

And I'm today grateful.

So, okay, so the.

You're putting a spin on it of what happened to you was exceptionally misfortunate, but it's led you down the path for you to help other people.

So in some sense it was.

Yes, we've spoken about it before with someone else, but wasn't necessarily worth it.

But it was the best outcome that could occur.

Yes.

And here I sit and this person, I like this one better than I've liked any of the other ones in the past.

Really.

Oh, that's good.

Let's talk about your book and particularly the.

This is.

I haven't obviously haven't been able to read it, but I've read little aspects of you potentially speaking about or speaking about parts of it.

Are you saying that there's a correlation or not correlation, but a similarity between special warfare and then social warfare?

What do you mean by combining those two terms?

Okay, it's special welfare, social warfare, so.

Oh, I get what you mean.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Here's the thing is the book was written as a vehicle so that I could get into the national eye to have a conversation to say that America's youth today are being overwhelmed and that there are there is nothing that we are that we can give them that they need because of the way the adult population is so angry at one another and so fearful.

I wrote the thing just because I wanted this opportunity to talk about America's youth.