Where it begins
How to Stop Hiding From Your Past and Make a Life Worth Fighting For
A Former Navy SEAL and PhD-Level Counselor Shares His Brutally Unfiltered Story, and the Clinical Framework That Took Him From Rock Bottom to a Life of Lasting Recovery
Dr. Dice survived the Teams and the life of a mercenary. He spiraled through meth, moral injury, and secrets that nearly cost him everything. He rebuilt himself from the wreckage, and then spent fifteen years in recovery and earned a PhD figuring out why it all happened.
The result is the HC-Mod, a practical framework anyone can use. No matter how far you've fallen, there's a roadmap back.
If you've ever chased the next high and found that more is never enough, this book is for you.
What if the problem isn't your willpower, but the wiring underneath it?
Shame is heavy. Secrets are heavier. And carrying both alone will eventually break you. You've tried to outrun it. You've white-knuckled it. You've told yourself this time will be different. But the crash always comes.
And when it does, it's not just the substances or the risk or the wreckage that gets you. It's the quiet afterward. The secrets you're still keeping. The version of yourself you perform for everyone else while the real one is barely holding on.
Most recovery programs treat the symptoms. They don't touch the engine. They don't ask why you need the rush in the first place why slowing down feels like dying, why asking for help feels like surrender.
You don't need more willpower. You need a framework that actually fits the way you're wired.
THE CYCLE THAT'S BEEN KEEPING YOU STUCK
Step One
Step Three
Step One
You already know how this goes.
Step Two
Step Three
Step One
Something happens. You reach for the thing that works.
Step Three
Step Three
Step Three
It works…until it doesn't. The crash comes.
Step Four
Step Three
Step Three
You promise yourself it'll be different. And then you're back at the start, wondering what's wrong with you.
Here's why the cycle keeps winning, and how to finally break it…
This is what I know after fifteen years in recovery and a PhD studying exactly this: there's nothing wrong with you. There's a pattern. That pattern has a name.
I call it emotional compulsivity: the learned habit of regulating your inner world through intensity. Danger. Secrecy. Substances. Speed. Success. It's not weakness. It's wiring. And wiring can be rewired.
What If You've Already Tried Everything That's Supposed to Work?
Standard recovery programs ask you to stop the behavior. This book asks a different question: what's driving it? That's the difference between white-knuckling it and actually getting free.
The Guy Who's Already Been Where You Are
Dr. Dice: Warrior, Addict, Clinician, Survivor
I didn't learn this from a textbook; I built it from the wreckage of my own life
I was a firefighter, a paramedic, and a Navy SEAL. I survived Hell Week twice. I took private security contracts in Afghanistan, standing between the president and a bullet for a thousand dollars a day.
I also spent years running from shame, drowning in meth, and carrying secrets that nearly cost me everything.
Fifteen years ago, sitting in rehab, something cracked open. I had a moment of clarity that changed the entire direction of my life.
In the decade that followed, I went back to school and didn't stop. Associate's degree. Bachelor's. Master's. PhD, all in mental health, counseling, and clinical studies.
I didn't write this book because I had all the answers. I wrote it because I've lived every stage of this problem, and I've mapped the way out. I call it the HC-Mod, built on the framework of 12-Step recovery. This is the foundation I built from my own ruin, and it works.
After the Trident: A Navy SEAL's Battle with Secrets, Shame, and Addiction
This is my brutally honest memoir PLUS and the clinical roadmap that turns your worst chapter into your greatest tool
I didn't write a recovery memoir that leaves you inspired but empty handed. And I didn't write a clinical manual that explains your problems without ever having lived them.
After the Trident is both. It's my unfiltered story the violence, the meth, the moral injury, the marriages, the near misses paired with the HC-Mod framework so you can use what I learned in real time.
You'll follow me from a small town water tower arrest to Hell Week to the streets of Kabul to rock bottom and back out again. At the end of each chapter, I give you the clinical debrief: what was actually happening beneath the surface, and how it connects to where you might be right now.
By the time you finish, you won't just understand your own pattern. You'll have the tools to change it.
Your Hardest Chapter Doesn't Have to Be Your Last One
The crash always comes. But so does the choice that follows it. I made mine in a rehab chair fifteen years ago. I've spent every year since building the map back for people like you. The HC-Mod is that map. After the Trident is where it starts.
You don't have to hit rock bottom to begin. You just have to be willing to keep reading.
