Zach Tidwell, Pushing Past Possible: A Marine's Journey from Despair to Purpose

Music. Welcome, everyone, in the United States, Canada, and around the world to another episode of It's a Wrap with Wrap, the podcast of overcomers and the podcast of useful information to better our daily lives and mental spirit.

I am your host, Ron Rappaport. I would like to thank all of our great listeners, viewers, supporters, and sponsors for making this podcast such a success. The podcast is being heard on all major platforms and the podcast website, itsarapwithwrap.com. Where you can find all the episodes, previews of future episodes, and great products and services offered from our sponsors, as well as on our YouTube channel, It's a Wrap with Wrap, the podcast uncut.

My guest today is Zach Tidwell from Denver, Colorado. Zach is a completely blind Marine Corps veteran and suicide survivor, best known for his lighthearted approach to the hard topics in life and the ability to inspire others. Having shot himself in the head to take his own life, he woke up completely blind and deaf in one ear and in time with a new perspective on life.

At only 28 years old, Zach now shares his story and the lessons he's learned along the way to save lives and motivate others to take control and write the stories of their own futures. In addition to sharing his hard-learned lessons, Zach has gone on to create his own software development company so he can lead the way in inclusive design by creating software everyone can use regardless of disability or lack thereof.

Outside of work, he breaks down barriers and social perceptions of what the world thinks a disabled person can do. Zach skis, he rock climbs, he whitewater kayaks, skydives, and even competes in Brazilian jiu-jitsu against others without disabilities.

Welcome, Zach, to the podcast. So glad to have you here. Yeah, that was quite the intro, so thank you for that. You're more than welcome. Let's start at the beginning, Zach. Tell us about your growing up years and family dynamics, in which I understand was a military family, and please mention your incredible younger sister.

Okay yeah so i i i was a military brat my dad was in the air force so we moved all over the place growing up and i knew that i wanted to join the military just having typically all the men in my family have joined the military and i i looked up to my dad so i wanted to join the military as well but i was an only child for the first 11 years then i had my my middle sister was born when i was 11 and she actually has down syndrome so i was introduced to to being around people with

disabilities kind of early on in life and it's it's interesting because i feel like it's set me up for a unique spot now that i have my own severe disabilities but yeah so she's she's almost an adult now and i have another younger sister that's basically a baby she's in elementary school so it's kind of a wild age gap but it runs the gamut oh yeah i was i was on my second deployment and got to call home and was talking to my parents and my mom was like hey we have a surprise i'm

pregnant i was like no you're not and she was like yeah and of course when i got back i had another sister so that was kind of wild but so i moved all over the place growing up played in sports and enlisted in the Marines straight out of high school into the infantry. That kind of takes you through my childhood in a nutshell. It's pretty typical, you know, middle-class family.

It was a good life growing up. My parents were very involved in my life, and I went on my own way as soon as it was time to leave the nest. Well, let me ask you, was your dad in the Marines, or what prompted you to become a Marine? And by the way, thank you for your service.

Yeah, thanks for the support. my dad was air force so total opposite direction but i some of that was the marines obviously have a a certain reputation and i think that definitely calls to young men like myself i mean i started talking to a recruiter when i was 16 i knew i wanted to go in the marines and i knew i wanted to be an infantryman that's i i think that's you know why recruiting works so well on 18 year olds I mean,

that's especially for young men. It's like, I'm going to go do man shit. So that's what I decided I wanted to do. I didn't know, you know, I didn't know if I was going to make a career out of it. I just decided I was going to do one enlistment at a time and go from there. And I ended up serving for four years. So after I finished up my first enlistment, I got out. We're so happy that you did serve in the Marines.

I mean, I really look up to Marines. I mean, you guys are the guys that, that go in there first, that's for sure. So we're, we're very grateful for your service. Now you survived a suicide attempt as was mentioned in the introduction and it did cause permanent damage.

Can you tell us what were the circumstances that, that led up to that event? Yeah. Yeah, there was a lot going on. It was a bad combination of personal circumstances, a traumatic brain injury, and a lack of coping skills on my part. I was married. I'd married my high school sweetheart while I was in. We were together through my first deployment. It worked, so I proposed during the workout for my next deployment, and we got married before I deployed.

I found out that she was having an affair with another man. Found out from the other guy's wife while i was on my second deployment so between the the new sister and finding out about that i i got a lot of good news on that second deployment but.

That's for sure you know yeah so i when i got back we tried to make things work and naturally they didn't because the trust was gone and so we ended up parting ways i think it was it was early 2018 so i you know i wasn't doing great but i was keeping myself very busy that's i've always tended to do better when i'm really busy but especially then like just trying to keep my mind occupied so one of the things that i would do if we weren't out in the field training and stuff like that

was go i would take my dirt bike out to the racetrack every weekend and so i did that like i'd been doing pretty much every weekend since i i had filed for divorce and moved back into the barracks and i was actually in a really nasty motorcycle accident out of the track one day.

I still don't know what happened in all of my memory from that day is i mean it's not memory it's it's been filled in from you know stories getting pieced together from other people yeah did you have a helmet on yeah i was i was fully kitted up but the only thing that i can think happened it was it was really muddy that day and vaguely remember picking my bike up off the back side of a jump and that's kind of it so i don't know

if i came down on the back side of the jump and the bike just washed out from underneath me or what but my helmet i mean the whole like upper like quarter like front upper left quarter of the head was just.

Annihilated like it it looked like something happened to the bike and i just took a digger straight to the top of my dome and so that that day as i've been told kind of went to i i somehow made it back to my truck it's a big racetrack so there's other people there but i called my parents and i was stationed in california my parents lived in colorado so this makes no sense but i had had head injuries before so i knew something was wrong i guess and i called my parents and was like, Hey,

I, I was in an accident. I think I have a concussion. And they were like, where are you? And I said, I don't know. And so I, I guess they had me, I found somebody else that was parked over by me and they talked to my parents on the phone and they were like, yeah, this is where he's at. My parents got back on the phone with me and said, Hey, just hang out at your truck or hang out at your truck. Don't go anywhere. We're going to try and get ahold of your buddies and have somebody can get you.

And apparently they hung up. And within a few seconds, I called them and was like, hey, I was in an accident. I think I have a concussion. And so it was pretty bad. And the first thing that I really remember that day is going to dinner that night. But my buddies had come and gotten me and taken me to the hospital and they confirmed TBI.

And things really went from like kind of dealing with things and just staying busy is doing all right for like good things for me to really started to spiral just depression i'd never really experienced that before but yeah i was just stuck in a rut i couldn't sleep anymore i was either take me forever to fall asleep because i was thinking about everything with my ex or i would wake up in the middle of night like two or three hours after i went to bed wide awake thinking about

it couldn't go back to sleep and so i i was just struggling and instead of talking to someone about it, I started drinking.

And about four and a half, five months after that is when I was honorably discharged because that was the end of my enlistment. And I got out and was going to school and working in a local hospital. I wanted to be an ER nurse, so I was doing all the things that I needed to do, getting straight A's in school and keeping up appearances like I was doing well. But I was still struggling and still trying to self-medicate with alcohol.

And by the time that March of the next year rolled around, I decided that I was ready to be done and. I held my concealed carry firearm to my head one night, right between my eyes, and I pulled the trigger. And that left me completely blind and deaf in one ear, along with some other smaller complications. Yeah, I know you blew out your sinuses as well, and I believe the bridge of your nose and deaf in one ear. You're talking to a TBI survivor as well.

I had some nasty falls and when they took you after that motorcycle accident when they took you to the hospital did they tell you obviously they must have given you an MRI and chipped you know for a subdural hematoma which is what I had where they where they called me up. Where they they gave me an MRI and let me go and called me up a couple hours later telling me to get to the emergency room that I may not have, I may not have.

Yeah. Well, yeah. Blood, blood was, it was creating pressure on my skull. And, uh, cause I was kind of out of it. I wasn't, you know, I was, wasn't thinking straight, wasn't acting right.

And I couldn't remember anything. And, uh, well, fortunately the next day they did emergency surgery, but so hopefully they, i know what it's like to get knocked on the head like that it's well and that's people don't understand like when you try and explain how out of it you are like there's a difference between getting your bell rung and yeah concussion or a tbi like it is it's totally different ball games that i people don't realize what that's

like i mean it's it's hard to do it justice just trying to talk about it but yeah i mean you're acting what's going on you're acting really strange i I mean, you're putting, you know, cottage cheese, not in a refrigerator, but it's winding up in a cabinet somewhere. I mean, you're just, you're just out of it, you know? So. Yeah. So anyway, that was that, that fateful day, I would assume was in 2018. That was 2019.

So I got, I got discharged. I finished my enlistment August 4th of 2018 and then her August 3rd of 2018. And then I shot myself on March 31st of 2019. So in that, in that time in between is when, you know, I'd gotten into college, I was getting straight A's in school, pursuing a nursing degree.

Working at a local hospital as a nurse's aid and nobody knew that i was struggling yeah you you must have put up a great front yeah this is i mean i get asked this a lot everyone always wants to know the warning signs for things and i like it's hard i were you were in a lot were you in a lot of pain were you in a lot of pain oh yeah i was miserable i was absolutely miserable so you just wanted you wanted out of the pain is what you wanted exactly and that's yeah it's it's

it's tough to explain other the best way that i can and that i always try to is is that you're really you're not by by the time that you reach that point and when you're in that that much just i mean it's like internal torment and there's just not any escaping from it i i mean there is i wasn't doing what i needed to do i I needed to reach out and get help, but I just, I was stuffing it down and drinking, but you're, you've passed the point of rational thinking.

You're not in a, in a sane state of mind. I mean, evolutionarily, the fact that our bodies can get to that point where, where your brain thinks that the only way out is to kill yourself makes no sense. And I mean, it's even trying to wrap your head around like the cause of that stuff. It's, it's none of it's logical. Like, right. Yes, divorce sucks. Getting cheated on sucks.

That does not like that that doesn't when you do the math that doesn't equate to okay i need to kill myself it just doesn't and but i intentionally hit it especially as i realized how bad of a spot i was getting to and i i think and i say that because kind of going back to that that idea that when i before the motorcycle accident i was trying to keep myself really busy i was doing the same thing when by the time that i was really in a rough spot and to keep up

appearances i would you know load all my my snowboarding gear up and drive two and a half hours up the mountains.

Just trying to force myself to get out of the house and do something i'd get there sit in the parking lot and then drive home and it would look to everyone else like i'd gone snowboarding but i'd just been up there and been sulking like just yeah pissed off and miserable in the car what's that you just didn't have any desire to do anything like that yeah really the only thing I was consistently doing was showing up for work doing my homework working out and

drinking and everything else was just kind of a facade and I actually I so I shot myself with my concealed carry firearm and four days before I ended up shooting myself is when I had decided that I was going to do it. And so I cleared out my gun and I'd never mishandled a firearm like that in my life. You know, my dad being a vet and a law enforcement officer, like I was always taught weapon safety and then I was a machine gunner. I knew how to handle firearms, but like, it was weird.

It was like, I needed to know what that felt like to hold it to my head. And then I, I knew like, okay, here's my escape hatch. I didn't know when I was going to do it, but I decided that I was going to do it. And the night before I shot myself, my parents were actually at my house with my sisters and had no idea. They thought I was grumpy and thought I was tired, but they knew I was going to school full-time and working full-time. And I kind of had been grumpy since everything with my ex-wife.

And the next night, they got a call after I was in the ER that your son is in the hospital with a bullet hole in his forehead. But so it's tough when people ask about the warning signs and stuff, because I think there's kind of two categories to this. You know, there's people who think that they want to die, who are miserable and think they want to die.

But really that that what that comes out to is like they don't want they don't know how to ask for help and so that comes out as another facebook post or saying things that are obscure but a hint to everyone that that something's wrong and things like that and then i think there's i i had gone a step farther where again i had passed into that that state of on insane thinking and i actually tried to go through with it and unfortunately i mean that gets a lot of vets and yeah

just people in general yeah we've dealt with that extensively on this podcast and and we continue to deal with with that subject matter it's it's it is a lot with the vets and there's and there's many reasons, so yeah and you know i think a lot of it like i i i thought of seeking help as weakness and.

I have suicide back yeah i have suicide going back on both sides of my family i always thought it was a weak thing i thought it was a cowardly act but that didn't even cross my mind when i was there like i don't know where that i'd held that belief my entire life that like those people are cowards like how could you do how could you do that to like everyone around you but you're just you're not thinking about any of that stuff and that whole my my

entire life and especially in the infantry and the marines like just creating my teeth through things it always worked but it's because it had always been physical things or or mental challenges but not mental health issues right that is absolutely something where you need to speak up and i I think the military is getting better about that, but it's still.

That's a tough trade-off too, because in the inventory everything is shut your mouth and suck it up, and that serves a purpose and is totally necessary there when I talk about this stuff, a lot of times people are like, oh, so you think, how can we fix that while you're in the military while you're in service, there's a time and a place for that, and I think that's necessary I'm not saying get rid of that, but looking back, I know that,

I got out and didn't have the proper coping skills to deal with stuff. I was able to do that, kind of slap a bandaid on it and grip my teeth through it and get through it. And then we'd come back and get hammered at the barracks or whatever, you know, if we'd been in the field for three weeks or whatever, and it works while you're there, but that's a temporary fix.

And then once you're out in the civilian world and you don't have that same support system of kind of like the being miserable together from, from the stuff that you've been through, then that can catch up with you really quick. And I think that really contributes to a lot of the veteran suicides. Yeah. And that's what we hear from the veterans is that when they do get out into the real world, outside the military environment, the fact that asking for help is like, they just don't want to do it.

They just consider it, you know, not a macho thing. And that goes through their brain. And I guess they're just, you know, it's been drilled into them in the military. Yeah. And it's, it's such ass backwards thinking. Yeah. Yeah. I, I see that. Go ahead. Now the military needs to do something about that. I don't know, you know, if they're working on it now or not, but mental health issues need to be, need to be addressed.

And, and they, you know, they need to make statements like to the, to the men out there and the, and the women, you know, if you're having problems, you need to get help. I don't know if that message is going out or not, but hopefully it will. Yeah. And I think especially like that, the big, a big hit piece there that I think is being missed out on is that they, they send us to, I think it was a week long course when I was getting out.

It was the transition readiness program, like preparing you for your life. And I really think that spending part of that week discussing the fact that like, hey, you've.

Been developed a certain way over the past however many years you've been here and that has worked for you here but you need to realize that some of these life skills are specifically the coping skills are underdeveloped and here are some more resources as you're you're getting out i think that would be something i don't know how to have an impact on that i'm hoping in the long run i can you know i've gotten to work with quite a few veterans organizations and especially

i've gotten more into the public speaking side of things and i'm hoping to be able to do that on military bases moving forward hopefully here in the near future because we had we had classes as well while i was in it was typically once a year but it was suicide prevention and it was death by powerpoint it was some dude who didn't want to talk about it he's just reading right off the slides, and i think if you're a marine and i show up there and i'm like hey this is what i did yeah Yeah. Yeah.

That's going to wake you up a little bit. Just like it would have woken me up. And I I'd like to think that I probably would have gotten help if I had heard a story like mine. Exactly. Exactly. What were those initial days and weeks like waking up in the hospital? What was your mindset? I mean, what were you thinking?

You know, you, you did what you did and you didn't obviously expect to wake up and here you are what was your mindset like so we were talking about how how out of it you can be after head injuries i don't know how much of it was the medications i was on because i was on life support so at some point they brought me off of life support so i'd been sedated i was on a lot of pain medications and i would imagine there's not many worse brain injuries you can

have than shooting yourself in the forehead so i actually i didn't realize that i was blind and i i was totally blind when i woke up but i was hallucinating like there's there's actually a medical condition or kind of just weird thing that happens typically it's it's with people who are losing their sight gradually or when people lose it suddenly from non-traumatic means, whether it's genetic stuff, and it just comes over a short period of time.

Called charles benet syndrome and it's basically boils down to the fact that your brain is so used to having had visual input that now that it doesn't it just fills it in with nonsense and so i don't know if it was that or the head injury or what but i was hallucinating and i could have a conversation like we're having right now and i wouldn't be able to see you but i would see a place like i was i was somewhere and so they were trying to explain to me that i was blind and it just

it didn't click and then when it finally did i think i was so busy with just everything i mean it was non-stop appointments all day every day i can imagine yeah they they kept the bullet hole open in my forehead for almost two months because i had to have facial reconstruction surgery so this entire bridge of my nose my sinuses which is actually it's a pretty like substantial structure back behind like that the bridge of your nose and your forehead my right eye socket or all a

big titanium plate and took a long time for that to get manufactured. So they kept the bullet hole open to reduce scarring when they did the facial reconstruction. And so there was a lot going on with that, with wound care. I had occupational therapy, speech therapy, physical therapy. Talk therapy with a psychologist. And I had to relearn everything from brushing my teeth to walking to, I mean, just every little task I had to learn how to redo.

And so it actually wasn't until after I got out of the hospital, because I had my facial reconstruction surgery and then I was out of the hospital 51 days later, like after I shot myself, was home for a month.

And then the VA sent me to a blind rehab center where I basically went to school to learn how to be blind for two and a half months. And once I was there and had some actual downtime, that is when it kind of sunk in like, okay, I'm going to be blind.

Started to think about you know hanging myself in my bathroom there like it was a it was at a hospital so i was like maybe i could hang myself with my shoe ladies and stuff like that it was it was bad that was a a dark point where i think i think it was magnified because of the fact that i'd done it to myself but i had lost all of my independence and was totally reliant on everyone else yeah i hated that and i think it was harder to swallow because it was all my fault

and it was entirely avoidable so that right that was that was when i really started to struggle but, i just i kept pushing forward and so i finished that that blind rehab that in september of 2019, by january i was or actually finished that in september by december i was snowboarding rocky mountains it was horribly unsuccessful but you know i was up there and trying to do it and get back into something that i i had done before a month after that so like nine months after i shot myself i

was back in college six months after that i was back out on my own another six months later i bought my first house like i just i was it's kind of like you know how when you trip, sometimes and you're you're kind of falling forward and you're kind of catching yourself and you're like running trying to catch yourself and get your feet back under you it was like i. I think because I needed my independence back so badly, and that is all that

I wanted, and I had that as the pinnacle of recovery for me, that just gave me kind of like a carrot on the stick and just carried me through all that stuff. even when I wasn't ready. I wasn't ready to be back in college, but I just kind of faked my way through it. And then when I moved out and was living in the dorms in the heart of Denver, I had to learn how to get around the city with just my cane.

And I would get lost sometimes and have to call people and get strangers to help me get back to wherever I was trying to go and all this stuff. But I always had something else that I was working towards. And so I actually didn't. And it, I mean, I had those struggles, but it was still, it was never over having lost my sight specifically. It was that lack of independence that got to me. I don't know why that is, but. Well, it's understandable. That's for sure. Yeah.

So was there, I mean, what happened mentally to turn everything around to a positive mindset? Was there one thing that happened or was it just a series of things? And what advice do you have for people thinking about taking their life as an option for their pain to do before executing their plan? For me, I think it was maybe spite towards myself, like what I had done and just stubbornness.

I actually, when I was still in the hospital, that initial period after I shot myself, and once it was confirmed that I was going to remain totally blind, because there was a period where they thought that I might get some sight back in one eye after my facial reconstruction surgery. Once we knew that that wasn't the case my parents started like oh you know maybe you could do this with your life or maybe you could do that oh you could get a guide dog and i looked.

Vaguely in their general direction wherever i thought they were and i was like i'm not fucking making salt and pepper shakers and they were like what are you talking about and, i i i don't know why this has stuck with me but the i noticed one time at the chow hall while i was in the Marines that the salt and pepper shakers said made proudly by the blind and visually impaired on them and I was like I am not ending up with some with that

being my life where I'm punching the clock and and yeah doing some menial thing that doesn't have a purpose behind it obviously with the Marine Corps I felt purpose-driven there becoming an ER nurse like that is a very purpose-driven thing and like I wanted to be able to to help sure and so that was I was like,

okay, what can I do to start helping people? And that turned out, okay i'll go to college for clinical psychology and then when that didn't work out is actually i was in college and found out how inaccessible you know digital content is like my college work wasn't accessible to me and so that's when i started researching why my screen reading software can use some things but not others and then when i found out it was code i dropped out of college to teach myself

how to code so i could make stuff everyone could use that's always been chasing a purpose. We're going to talk about that, but before we do, I wanted to ask you, I'm sure people ask you what happened to you when they see you. I know with some of my disabilities, strangers will stop you on the street when they see, like I have lymphedema. So at one point I had big armbands around me, you know, hey, what happened to you?

Was it hard for you to tell them and and what was their reaction and if it was negative how did you overcome talking about it and making yourself vulnerable yeah and i know you had asked about the the preventing suicide stuff and we'll come back to that later sorry that i got oh no i don't know i get passionate talking about this stuff but that's okay it really was in the beginning and to the point where i I couldn't even talk about the stuff with my ex-wife early on.

And it turned out, so as I mentioned, that snowboarding trip that I went on, that was with a couple other blind veterans. And I met a guy there who had been blind for about 30 years, another vet, blinded in a hunting accident and has the funniest sense of humor about it ever. That was my first time being around other blind people outside of that blind rehab center. And I talked to him and I was like, Hey man, I don't, I'm essentially unable to talk about what I did. It's, I get sweaty.

I get, I get all, you know, like my skin crawls when I talk about it and I get bad responses from people because I would try and avoid it. And I'd say, Oh, it was a head injury. Oh, so you got blown up in Iraq. And I'd be like, no, Afghanistan. No, they keep pushing. And I'd be like, I shot myself in the face. And then, of course, dropping that on someone like that and probably with a not so happy tone doesn't get a good response.

And he told me, the more comfortable you can be with it and the more open you can be about it. When you tell those people, the more receptive they'll be to it. And so I made an intentional effort to start doing that. And he was right. It got just easier over time as I talked about it more and more. And I don't know have you felt the same with all of your stuff?

Yeah yeah I think honesty is the best policy Yeah you know you just tell them what happened and, It generally turns out to be a positive thing. I've never really had too many bad experiences with it. I just don't like it when sometimes people just come up to you out of the blue who you don't even know. I don't feel like going through my life story with them, so I'll blow them off. But if it's somebody I know, somebody I'm having a relationship or an interaction with, then I'll go into it.

I don't think I'll ever forget. It was when I was at the Blind Rehab Center. One of the local banks and some volunteers would usually put on a little cookout for us on Sunday afternoons and tell that there'd be volunteers around. And one of the guys that was there when we was, he was a former NFL player. And I can't remember what, like how he was associated with what was going on, but he was going around the table meeting the other vets.

The total blindness is very uncommon. Like typically it's people who are low vision or legally blind. And especially the, the next youngest person there at the blind rehab center was older than my dad. So I was 23 at the time, kind of stood out like a sore thumb, but he just walked up to me.

We hadn't talked at all he plopped a hand on my shoulder and he's like so what happened to you, and i was like i i don't think i've ever been so off-put by somebody asking me stuff like that but yeah i've had that or strangers come up to me on the street and pray for me to get my sight back and like weird stuff like that yeah but there's been some interesting ones. Yeah, I've had that happen as well. Can you tell us about the struggles that are still entailing for you?

I know you don't magically happen that everything turns around like in a fairy tale. I know there's got to be ups and downs. And how do you handle that?

So i i've it was kind of forced upon me when i was in the hospital after i shot myself i've been going to therapy since since then at least once a week okay i really i struggled, i'm at the beginning of covid i think like so many people did but that was right when i'd gotten back out on my own about bought my first house and covid lockdowns were going on i didn't know anyone i had no no friends or anything like that and i really struggled and i think finally like the weight of everything because

I had so much time to myself set in and sank in and. I reached a point where I knew that I didn't want to be alive but I knew we're not talking about it would get me because I'd learned from my mistake and so I told my psychologist and we I mean we went from talking once a week to every day and sometimes multiple times a day and she She just, I mean, from the very beginning, when I dumped it on her, she said, first of all, we will get through this together.

Second of all, this can and will get better. And that is something that has so simple as that is something that has stuck with me and is so true. It's like a, this too shall pass kind of sense.

Right but the caveat there is that you have to show up and do the work and the work is going to suck it's going to be uncomfortable but it does get better and that's what i've done in those times of there specifically there was a couple months there like right at the end of 2019 into the beginning of 2020 and then in the middle of 2021 in the summer of 2021 i self-admitted to the VA to the mental health ward because I was back in a bad spot again.

And I had started drinking and which contributed to, to that night. But, you know, I thought I knew if I didn't go, like something was going to happen. And so I went, but that also kicked off almost two and a half years of alcoholism. So there's been ups and downs with that. And then I got along that timeline about a year and a half ago, I got diagnosed with a horrendous degenerative disease called Huntington's disease. That was a big setback and another thing that I struggled with.

But again, I've, I've continued to put in the work and I feel like through that and getting sober, I'm, I think what is today's the fourth and two days I'll be 11 months sober. Oh, congratulations. Yeah. Thank you. All of those things, both on, you know, building up the coping skills and learning how to not always have to have therapy to rely on them. And I mean, I'm also about a month and a half off of, of antidepressants for the first time. And since pretty much since I shot myself that stuff.

And then I noticed as well with the alcoholism, I essentially drank away my ability to deal with stress, like in any reasonable way, because over time things became, and I mean, it was rampant alcoholism, like two or three day binges.

I'd stop for two or three days be sober and then do it for like two or three days again and i couldn't stop and typically it was some sort of frustration or just i've frustration or stressor and i would use that instead of actually dealing with it and i have a drink and then i wouldn't have to deal with it because i would just tune out getting sober has made me kind of rebuild those skills and i feel like now i'm in the best place that i've been since i shot myself and it's,

again it's all it's been intentional and i i think that's the big thing with with the stuff when people are struggling is again that that idea it it will get better but you have to show up and do the work and you owe it to yourself to show up and do the work and you owe it to those around you i put my family through a hell of a lot with all this oh yeah i'm sure you did yeah but thank god they you know they were there to support you do you think that that therapy was the catalyst for you

to be open about all this and talk about it with others like honestly i think that conversation at that on that that snowboarding trip with that other veteran his name his name is lonnie bedwell and he's if you google him he's a impressive man but that conversation with him that i like i decided after that i was like i am going to be more intentional about talking about this and so i started trying to be more open with him i really feel like that's and i mean he's.

Become like a it's more than a mentor he's like kind of like a second parent almost at this point he's like someone I can really go to if I need just some sage advice and maybe it's not something I want to talk to my parents about.

But yeah it was that conversation I think the therapy helped me be able to process that stuff but there's a big difference between you know talking about it in therapy versus now I. Do public speaking on this stuff like i just spoke at a tech conference last week and i don't know how many people were there in person there were like another thousand people attending remotely and like i just doesn't bother me to talk about it and i spilled all the beans on it

all you're helping people you're helping you're you're definitely have a purpose now you definitely do you have a platform yeah the hope is that you know someone else can benefit from my mistake and oh Yeah, there's plenty of people listening to this worldwide that are going to benefit. I don't know how many people you're going to help, but even if you help one, just think about that. That's an accomplishment. Yeah, that's the goal, man. That's the goal. Yeah.

So you currently, let me get this right. You ski, you kayak, you rock climb, you compete in jiu-jitsu against non-disabled combatants, and you skydive. So tell us how you got there to do these things and what uplifting effect it must have on you. Did it open up pathways for you to interact better with people?

It's it's funny because that was kind of my first taste of independence you know before i could i was on that snowboarding trip before i could cook for myself like i was living at home with my parents and just kind of stumbling my way through every day and actually like i totally forgot about this but during my intake at the va hospital because i was initially taken to a private facility and then they transferred me to the va once i was stable but i met they they

brought in a blind rehab professional and she was talking to me and I, you know, I told her all the stuff that I used to do.

The dirt biking and the mountain biking and all these other things and she was like well you can still do all that if you want other than the motorcycles and so we don't want we don't want your back on motorcycles yeah i would that's i always say i'm like if they can fix my eyes at some point that is i want i want another motorcycle but and so that that kind of first culmination of that like that that was my goal is that i was going to be able to do that

stuff again was that snowboarding trip and everything again like the guy's name is Lonnie Bedwell was a huge connection for me with all that stuff and all all that we do whether it's the the the skiing and or the whitewater kayaking I'm on my own skis I'm not attached to anyone I'm in my own kayak I'm not attached to anyone but we have radios because I'm people who are totally blind and have two ears will typically follow sound since i have one ear

i'm pretty bad at that when there's background noise yeah and so they just you know someone if we're about to hit a rapid and in the kayaks they'll start telling me like all right little left little left paddle paddle paddle paddle paddle and then you know i'll flip upside down and then i flip my boat back upside like right up and the water's pouring out of my ears i can just hear him screaming like paddle paddle and it just it works man i mean it's your body adapts where

you can feel all this stuff and it's maybe maybe i ought to think about stuffing your good ear with some wax or. Something yeah but i need to be able to hear them yeah i guess that's a weird. You're right it's a weird combo but i mean it's all that stuff it's i a lot of it i think is just your body adapting to being blind too i mean well how do you to fight a guy in jujitsu. So how does that work?

Are you familiar with jujitsu at all i mean a little yeah but there's no striking it's all about just like mangling each other it's all it's all chokes and joint manipulations and you start on your feet like it's wrestling so but it mostly once you get into a match it's mostly on the ground like 95 percent of it is on the ground and so we will they'll start me the only thing that they change so we still typically when it's two guys

who can see they'll have them start standing like two or three feet apart just out of reach of each other with us we start if you've ever seen the geese like those karate looking geese i get to grab a collar on one side and a sleeve on the other and they get to get to do the same with me so we start connected and then once we go down if there's a scramble like for some reason we kind of detach they'll let it go unless that person is deliberately like you know trying to be silent and walk 10 feet

around me so i can't tell where they're at and then come in behind me then they'll reconnect us would they actually do that to you yeah i've only had people that i know that are just doing it to screw with me because okay i think it's funny like i've never in a match like the wrestle they they just bring us back together and we go again but okay i mean it's it's all by feel so i'm really i'm at a disadvantage when standing for sure. But after that, it's really not a big deal.

So I want to talk a little bit about you taught yourself to code in 2021 because you wanted to learn how video games were made and you wind up creating accessibility software for the blind and disabled community so they can utilize the internet and apps.

Can people with other disabilities besides blindness just use your software yeah so this is that's a little scrambled so what happened was well when i was back in college actually everything was going all right i've never been a big fan of school but you know writing papers is pretty straightforward blind or not like it the those software like microsoft word works fine with screen reading software however i got to my first math class and everything

became a shit show it was also over the summer semester so like my.

School had a disability services center where legally they were obligated to make all of my course content accessible to me they'd convert my textbooks into formats that like my screen reading software could use and stuff like that but for whatever reason they didn't do it that semester and it pissed me off that's also that's when i started drinking it was literally like like it talked about how i would use those frustrations like i took my first exam and i I was like,

man, I'm going to blow off some steam. I hadn't drank in a long time and had no malintent with it. I was like, I'm just going to have a drink. And then that kicked off the alcoholism. But I was so frustrated by... I'm fully independent. I live on my own. Again, I have a house and I walk completely blind through Denver and I do all these other things, but I can't do my math homework and that pissed me off.

And so it kind of pushed me over the edge and I ended up, I was like, why, what causes this? How come I can pay my mortgage, but not my water bill? How come I can't pay my HOA dues and I can't do my math homework, but I can take an Uber or whatever. It was so inconsistent. And I researched kind of how the screen reading software, these other access technologies, like the stuff that people with no arms can use to control a computer

with their voice and stuff like that. I researched how it all works. And it all comes down to the code of each app or website that you're accessing. And I got the wild idea to where I decided, okay, I'm going to drop out of college and to teach myself how to code so I can be part of the solution. Like I understand how these systems work. I know nothing about coding, but I think I can do this.

And so I did. And the first thing that I made, it's a word puzzle game that's on the app store right now. And it was essentially a test run to make sure that I could do all of this on my own.

I do all the visual stuff. It looks and functions normally for people without disabilities, but it's accessible for the entire range of visual impairments from whether you're just colorblind legally blind totally blind it's accessible to all of all of those disabilities if you have no arms or a spinal cord injury to where you can't use your arms or mobility issues you can control it with your voice and if you're totally deaf and blind it even outputs

to to refreshable braille displays so someone who's completely blind and deaf can play this iphone game that i made with braille that's just amazing I mean, how you did that and you, and you learned it, you learned coding on your own. Yes. I just read articles online and practiced. And so that, that app came out and is done really well. And it was like, that's actually because of how accessible it is.

And all of these, like the, the sentiment behind what I'm doing is why I was presenting at that tech conference last week, which was really cool.

That's the first time that I've ever done any speaking on tech stuff. So that was kind of wild, but yeah.

All of that was kind of a test run and i'm working on something behind the scenes now that will have a much wider reaching and and like broader impact for people with disabilities that is not a game the game thing was a fun project to work on it's cool what it does it was a great way to learn but i have bigger plans and it's just not something that that that app that you developed that's out what's the name of that it's xanagrams so z-a-n-a-g-r-a-m-s okay so that's like a word play game yep

it's it's all it's all centered around xanagrams and again if you don't have any disabilities it looks and functions like any other app so okay go download it go play it go rate and review it and share it around i'm gonna have to check it out talk a little bit about your support system and how important that is to you and every and every and everybody else in that in your situation i've had my family the entire time i mean they were my parents

were at the hospital every day while i was in the hospital and now if you think back so that was march you know march through june of of 2019 right had i shot myself a year later that would have been mid-COVID and I wouldn't have been able to have anyone in the hospital. I don't know that I would have come out on the other side of that. That was a rough time. And even more so than that, I lived with my parents when I first got out.

I had so many appointments that they were taking me to. I legitimately couldn't have afforded to go if I didn't have that support system to go do all that stuff that I needed even just to make sure that like my body was operating as it was supposed to after all that had happened. And, you know, my, I would basically ask my mom to babysit me while I practice cooking scrambled eggs or okay, I'm going to cook ground turkey.

Can you please come check this and tell me just so I know and I could learn the feel of like when this stuff was actually done so I wouldn't get sick when I didn't move out on my own. And they were there for all that stuff. And even I think the Huntington's disease thing was huge. Obviously those two other times that I've really struggled, they've been there through all of that.

And outside of them, honestly, I haven't had a big, I've never had, since I've been blind, I haven't had a big social network so like that has been i really i don't know where i would have been without that familial support i it's just i i can't i think that it's it's can't really explain that and like do it justice that has been huge for me gotcha gotcha yeah now if someone out there.

Doesn't have a support system what do you suggest they do to acquire one for me i mean so that was actually one of the big things i i've been really interested in jiu-jitsu and that was i started doing jiu-jitsu when i was really struggling after i'd moved into my house in denver because i had no social network so i'd like i was trying to do everything i could to find like a ways to meet people like that for me was a huge help because i mean i it i

was getting some social interaction and i ended up making friends who have become like a very big part of my life there but i think that stuff especially not having the support system is huge but the i think the the key factor there is that when you're struggling like that and you don't have the support system like just like i was you're probably not going to be in much of a position where you want to go out and do that stuff but making yourself go

do it make yourself get out of the house to get out of your own head space like go find whatever if you want to try playing pickleball find a facebook group and from your town and go play pickleball or whatever like if you will meet people but you have to go out and kind of put yourself into those situations that you really don't want to do it's that with all this mental health stuff it ultimately comes.

Back to like you have to push yourself out of your comfort zone and like that little, party having for yourself and it's totally reasonable to be feeling that way but you have to help yourself right now have that pity party for a few minutes and then move on yep yes that's the key exactly what what is next for zach tidwell if you have any new projects on the way i know you talked about another coding project another computer project anything else going on that thing that's going to be a big

one for me i just can't talk about it much right now i understand you know what i'm trying to do i understand yeah but the other the other big thing is the book so i am i'm writing a memoir on all of this i'm 65 000 words into it and i think i'll be done with this this first draft here before the end of the year after that trying to find a publisher and an editor and a lot of stuff is going to be its own undertaking but that is a big one and outside of that i've really been moving more and

more into the public speaking side of things and just trying to get this out there so that again someone else will hear this and decide to go get help instead of going down the same road have you have you done any ted talks no ted talks i don't know i someone one of my friends reached out to me recently and mentioned nominating me for one, and I never heard anything of it. So that's a big undertaking. Well, they're only, I think they have a time limit of 15 minutes or something like that.

So I don't know. I just know a lot of our former guests had done TED Talks. Zach, for people out there listening to this, how can they contact you? The big one, if you want to contact me, the easiest way is. While you're doing this, you can actually join my mailing list, which is no spam on there. It's just to keep you up to date with when the book comes out. It's at ZachTidwell.net. So that's Z-A-C-H-T as in tango, I-D as in delta, W-E-L-L.net. Also on X at Zach C as in Charlie Tidwell.

Give me that X again. At what? Zach. And then my middle initial is C as in Charlie and then Tidwell. And I'm also, I have a Facebook page that is Zach Tidwell pushing past possible. Okay. That's Facebook. Yes, sir. I can send you the links for all that stuff. Okay.

Yeah. We'll put them in the, the podcast notes. One last thing, Zach, before we, we, we got, we have to go for those out there listening to the podcast struggling and hopeless from a person like yourself who has been down that road what advice can you give them you have to speak up that is the biggest lesson that i have learned in all of this is you have to speak up and it doesn't have to be therapist it should be someone you trust and someone who you know will listen.

It's, you know, before the first time that I actually spoke up when I was struggling and, you know, having self-admitted to the psych ward at the mental or at the VA, like, I was terrified because I thought I was going to be whisked away and put in a straight jacket in the padded room and, you know, dosed to the gills with some meds that made me a zombie until they decided it was safe for me to be out. And that's not how it is. It wasn't a pleasant experience, but it was not that.

It the biggest thing speaking up big thing that i've noticed about it for me is talking about these things helps me be more objective with them when i'm dealing with them i think because, when anytime that you have a conversation with someone whether it's conscious or not you are cross you're considering how they're going to process what you're going to say and so i think sometimes if i'm really stuck on something and whether it's therapy or if i'm

venting to a friend like and i need advice on stuff that that subconscious act of considering how they're going to voice it i think removes any of that the added nastiness that you have around whatever's going on because you think like okay they're viewing this reasonably they're not they're not beating me up for this whatever it is i think that's the really the big ingredient and you know there's i guess it doesn't have to be a therapist it can be someone you trust If you are really,

really struggling and like on the verge of doing something, call them the suicide hotline. It's free. They will get you help. Again, no one's going to put you in a straight jacket. They're going to make sure you're okay. They're going to get you connected to resources and they're going to help you get better. Good advice. Thank you. I want to thank you again for being on the podcast. And as you progress into new avenues of creation or perhaps writing a book, please come back. Please talk to us.

Anytime the podcast can help you out, let me know. You have my email. I wish you good fortune and good health going forward. And once again, thank you for your service. And thank you for coming on the podcast and really speaking clearly to the audience. And I believe everybody who's listening to this podcast has gained a lot of respect for you to how you're making yourself vulnerable, but you're talking good sense to people and people who are out there struggling listening to this.

I believe they, they believe what you're saying. It's, it's authentic. It's the real thing. So thanks again.

Thanks for letting me get on my soapbox for an hour. Well, yeah, my, my pleasure. Comments and suggestions for the podcast. You can email me at it's a wrap with wrap at gmail.com. We have a Facebook group. It's a wrap with wrap. We have about 2000 people in there. If you're on Facebook, feel free to join. Our website is itsarapwithrap.com. We're on Instagram, itsarapwithrappodcast, and we're on X at rapper, W-R-A-P-P-E-R-1-3-0.

YouTube, itsarapwithrap, the podcast uncut. All the episodes are on YouTube. I want to thank everyone for listening. Please stay safe. And for now, it's a wrap.