Warrior Exchange: Brian White's Story

Content Warning: This story contains references to childhood trauma, abuse, mental health struggles, and suicidal ideation.

The following account is a raw and personal reflection from a member of our community who bravely shares his journey through trauma, crisis, and recovery. While this story may be deeply moving and potentially triggering, it is shared with the intention of helping others who may be struggling in silence.

If you or someone you know is in crisis, help is available. Please reach out to a mental health professional or contact a crisis hotline in your area.

How did I get here? A couple of years ago, I was about 11 years sober and I just couldn’t figure out why I was miserable. I had a good life on paper: an incredible wife, a beautiful daughter, an amazing community. And I couldn’t figure out what was going on. That’s where the Save a Warrior program came in, and where my life really changed. 

If I’m going to tell you my story, we’ve got to go all the way back to the beginning. One of the first steps in healing—at least for me—was hearing someone else share their truth about PTSD. So here’s mine.

BACK TO THE BEGINNING

I grew up in a house that was empty even when it was full. My dad was an alcoholic, and from a young age, I had to figure out life on my own. When my parents divorced, I was only eight, and it forced me to grow up fast. I was the kid who made sure my little sister got fed, the kid walking to daycare to pick her up, the kid who learned to survive because no one else was going to do it for me.

Sometimes that meant leaning on people my dad brought into our lives who didn’t always have good intentions. My dad had a buddy, who moved in to help cover rent and stuff. He’d take me to Sonics and Seahawks games, buy me things that made it seem like he was just the fun guy in my life—but he wasn’t. I was just a kid, and I couldn’t stop the things that were happening behind closed doors, and when I told my dad he didn’t believe me.

By the time I hit high school, survival became my whole focus. I called it being a “young entrepreneur,” but it was really selling weed to get by. I got arrested and expelled, and not long before that, I went through another sexual trauma by a chaperone on a school leadership trip. Drugs, arrests, and carrying the weight of the world—by 17, I’d already lived a lifetime.

Looking back now, I realize that little boy—the one who never felt safe, the one who was carrying the weight of the world way too young—is the same kid I spent most of my life trying to hide behind a wall.

A FRESH START

One day I was sitting at my dad’s house when there was a knock at the door. It was the local chief of police. He said, “I heard you want to join the military.” I told him I did, but I couldn’t with the charge hanging over me. He said, “Call me from the recruiter’s office in thirty minutes, and I’ll make it all disappear.” So I jumped in my little white Geo Metro with the purple stripe, drove to the recruiter’s, and made the call. He answered, confirmed I was joining, and just like that—poof—the charge was gone.

I still had to finish school, but the only way back in was through the Zillah Alternative Program in the basement of a Nazarene church. I went a few hours a week, sat through family meetings and AA, and knocked out my junior and senior years in just a couple of months. By my 17th birthday, I was done—I wanted out more than anything.

My grandfather had always told me, you serve your community and you serve your country. So, as soon as I could, I enlisted. On June 21, 2001, a couple months after turning 17, my mom signed me away and I was on a plane to San Antonio for Air Force basic training. I whooped basic training’s ass. Life finally felt like it was moving in the right direction—though I had no idea how quickly everything was about to change.

THINGS GET REAL

September 11, 2001. I was marching back to my dorm after a long night of classes when our blue‑rope sergeants stopped us at CQ and said, “You guys have to stay here.” I remember thinking, My room’s right there, bro. But then we saw the planes hitting the World Trade Center on a loop, and in that moment, everything I thought I knew about life changed. I had enlisted in peacetime, thinking I’d just party my way through the Air Force—but suddenly the world felt like it was on fire. The upperclassmen told us to pack, saying, “You’re B‑52s—you’ll deploy first.” I was 17, hyped and terrified all at once. When they said President Bush had just landed at Barksdale—the exact base I had orders for—I thought, This is it. In the end, we didn’t deploy. We stayed, finished training, and graduated. 

But life had other plans for me. Not long after 9/11, right as my shift ended, two men showed up. “Hi, Airman White. We’re with the Office of Special Investigations—think of us as the Air Force’s FBI.” My stomach dropped. My first thought was, Man, I haven’t sold weed since I got arrested—I’m good. But they didn’t care. They told me my past was catching up to me, that I could be charged with fraudulent enlistment because I’d been expelled for “exceptional misconduct.” They had me coming in for daily questioning, staring at me through a double‑sided mirror, asking the same things over and over.

As if that wasn’t enough, life threw me another punch. On base, I saw a familiar name on the student leader roster—the man who had abused me on that school leadership trip. I knocked on his door, he saw me, and slammed it shut. Just like that, all the old trauma came flooding back. They put “military sexual trauma” on my record, but at the time, all I felt was that same story in my head: I’m broken. I’m screwed up. This stuff only happens to me.

STARTING TO TURN AROUND

To my surprise, I got deployed to a place called Guam—and I mean it—Guam is f*cking amazing. I turned nineteen there, the drinking age was eighteen, and given my history, you can probably guess I found some trouble. I went AWOL for two days once—not on purpose, I just got really drunk and missed the bus. Another night, I lost my wallet at an “adult entertainment emporium” and had to call my first sergeant at 2:30 a.m. from the gate to come get me. He was not thrilled.

Even with all that, I actually did really well in the Air Force. We flew 54 sorties out of 54 missions with six B‑52s—something I don’t think anyone else has pulled off since. We all got medals for it, and I even launched one of the B‑52s that bombed Iraq during Operation Shock and Awe in 2003. I wasn’t a war hero, but I got to play my part.

When I got home, life was finally looking up. At just twenty years old, I got a line number for Staff Sergeant—pretty much unheard of with my time in service. I remember I was in the back of the hangar messing around when they called “Staff Sergeant select Brian White.” I thought there had to be another Brian White in the unit. They had to call my name six times before I realized it was me.

A NEW DIAGNOSIS

Once again, things were starting to look up—and then life threw me another curveball. Around this time, I was diagnosed with narcolepsy. I didn’t have the “fall asleep mid‑sentence” version you see in movies, but I was known for crawling into the wheel well of a B‑52 with eight running engines and just passing out. It got to the point where I had my assistant get on the headset during launches because sometimes I wouldn’t wake up when they called me.

I had a doctor tell me, “As long as I keep prescribing this medication, you’re safe.” It was Adderall. I hated it, but he told me to keep filling it every month to stay “stable on medication” per regulations. So, I’d refill it… and just not take it. I thought I could skate by like that.

Around then, my first marriage was falling apart, and I volunteered to deploy to Iraq as a recruiter to shake things up. I was one of the top five recruiters in the country, over 200% of my quota, and I felt like I finally had momentum again. But when I went for my medical clearance, the Air Force flagged me. That prescription I wasn’t taking? It killed my worldwide qualification.

In an instant, everything changed. I went from feeling unstoppable to being slapped with a medical board that would decide if my Air Force career—the only real identity I’d ever had—was about to end. I appealed, fought, even hired an attorney, but in the end they gave me 20% and a “have a nice life.” My whole world collapsed. I broke my leg three days after leaving the military, filed for bankruptcy, and found myself as deep in a hole as I could get. I didn’t know how to handle the loss, and that’s when I attempted suicide for the first time.

I ended up in Yakima, Washington—there for my grandpa’s passing, then my dad’s. By then, I was a casino dealer, drinking hard, and running with the wrong crowd, even tied up with the Mexican Cartel. My second marriage fell apart because, honestly, who would want to be with me then? Everything I thought I was had been stripped away.

DOING SOMETHING DIFFERENT

Two years after my dad died, I decided it was time to do something different. I got clean and sober—and I’ve stayed that way ever since. I knew I needed a fresh start, so I applied to Worcester State University in Massachusetts. I thought the best thing I could do was get as far across the country as possible, pack up my life, and start over.

I drove a U‑Haul all the way to Massachusetts, ready to move onto campus—only to have the school realize they’d made a mistake. They’d misclassified me as an in‑state student, and suddenly tuition jumped by nearly ten grand. Between that and losing my campus housing options, I couldn’t make it work. After a few failed attempts to figure it out, I finally picked up the phone and called my cousin Monica in Idaho. She had always told me, “If you ever get clean, I’ve got a room for you.”

I never even unpacked the U‑Haul. I turned it around and headed west, and I’ve been in Idaho ever since. I went to Boise State and earned a degree in social work because I thought, if I could help even one kid choose a different path than I did, it would all be worth it.

AFTER GRADUATING

I graduated with my bachelor’s degree and even started a master’s program. I was training to work at a suicide hotline call center, and unfortunately ended up losing that job. And here’s where the story starts to sound familiar, right? I get things going in the right direction, and then something knocks me flat. That was the second time I attempted suicide. I even checked myself into the VA, signed the paper that said they could hold me if they thought I wasn’t okay, and still walked out against medical advice before the 72 hours were up.

After that, I threw myself into work. I got a job at a hospice where I’d done my undergrad internship, quickly moved into leadership, and even turned the place around. Ironically, I worked myself out of a job—the owners decided to close the agency after I fixed it. I moved on to another hospice agency, but the pattern was the same: climb, achieve, and somehow, life would flip the script.

I eventually moved to a care center in Boise as the director of social services, and that’s where I met my wife. She was the Unit 2 nurse manager, and we met during COVID, so I couldn’t even see her face—just these really nice eyes behind the mask. We eventually got married, and somewhere along the way she looked at me and said, “Bro, you hate it here. Why don’t we both quit? I hate it here too.” I said, “Cool, let’s do that.” So we both walked away, ready to figure out what was next together.

FINDING MY OWN PATH

In the meantime, I bought a laser—because that’s apparently what one does when they’re trying to reinvent their life. I started a little business called 2A Custom Creations, doing laser work and small projects. My wife wasn’t thrilled about the laser at first, but I told her, “We can make money with it!” At first, we were just selling items at cost and not making anything. Then one day, a guy called and asked if we did T‑shirts. I said, “No, but we’re looking into it.” He said, “We need 100, and I’ll pay $21 each.” I said, “Yeah, we do shirts.” And that’s really how it all started.

The business grew quickly from there, expanding into promotional items. Eventually, we had to decide: either I’d find a new job to make more money, or my wife would quit nursing and join me full‑time. She came home, and for the past year and a half we’ve been running the business together.

Fast forward to that Veterans Entrepreneur Alliance meeting where I reconnected with Alex—the one who had gone through Save A Warrior. That’s how the seed was planted for my own SAW experience, the one that would finally help me understand who I really am and break the cycle I’d been living my whole life.

COMING BACK FROM SAVE A WARRIOR

My wife picked me up from the airport when I got back from Save A Warrior, and we were cruising through Meridian when a sweet little old lady pulled out of the library. She probably should’ve waited for us to pass. She hit the brakes, looked over, and mouthed, “I’m so sorry!”

My wonderful wife lit up in so much anger creating the narrative that she just killed our daughter, when she wasn’t even in the car. And here’s the thing—one week earlier, I’d have been right there with her: “Yeah, screw that lady! What the hell is she thinking?” But Save A Warrior taught me something that changed my life: it’s all story.

What happened? A lady pulled out, we slowed down, she said sorry, and we kept driving. The story we tell ourselves? She’s someone who almost killed our daughter—who wasn’t even in the car. Sitting there smiling, I realized how often I used to live in that story instead of reality.

NO LONGER AVOIDING MY LIFE

Before Save A Warrior, I didn’t know it, but I was avoiding my life. I’d work from the moment I woke up until I went to bed—every day. My wife could tell you, I didn’t know how to slow down. The first time I stayed in bed a little longer and said, “It can wait,” she thought something was wrong.

What I was really doing was running from fear. I was afraid I’d ruin our marriage. I was afraid I’d fail our business. I was afraid of everything. Save A Warrior taught me to separate what actually happened from the stories I told myself—and it changed everything.

Now, I have a weekly date night with my wife and one with my daughter. I actually participate in my life instead of hiding from it. Some days I slip back into old habits, but I know how to climb out—4:45 a.m. workouts, a 5K run, reading, meditation. Those mornings are when I can live fully present and at peace.

For the first time, I’m comfortable in my own skin. I can admit where I’ve messed up and let go of the need to control everything. And I’ve finally let that little boy I hid behind a wall all those years come into the light. Life has never been better—and now, I’m living it.

Q & A

Q: What do you do when the story starts taking over 

A: There are a couple different tools I have in the bag. Usually the first thing I’m gonna do is pick up the phone. I’ll call Jarad or Alex and talking to them will help separate the story from what happened, to have another vantage point. Sometimes I don’t even notice it. When I start seeing myself sliding back on things like meditating, I can tell I’m starting to get to a bad place. When I need to get myself back to that place then I’ll do something like make myself an appointment for the sensory deprivation tank. Two years ago I wouldn’t have been able to handle that, but after meditating and all the work I’ve done I love it.

Q: Do you have anything else to add?

A: We all need a story. As humans, we crave it. We need a narrative to make sense of our experiences. And the thing that changed everything for me was learning how to rewrite my story. That’s what really made the difference. I had to go from being a victim of my circumstances to someone who could step back, see what happened, and tell a new, empowering story. In absolutely almost every situation people are doing the best they can with their way of thinking at the time.