The Shawn Ryan Show
#263 Steve Bunting – Inside the World of MARSOC Medics and Real-World Combat Medicine
18 Dec 2025
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Steve Bunting, welcome to the show, man. Yeah, thanks, brother. It's an honor to be here. It's an honor to have you. Yeah, man. So we got connected... I got connected with Sharp, the company that you're involved with through Catherine Boyle, who's on the show earlier this year and, you know, A16C. And so she kind of told me a little bit about what you guys are doing and at Sharp.
And I just think this is like really important. And I mean, as you know, we talk about, you know, military careers, special operations in particular, more than anything else.
And we talk about the, we do whole life story, but we talk about the effects of war trauma, all the stress that comes with it, traumatic brain injury, all that shit, the downward spiral, what it takes to get out of it, recovery methods, addiction, infidelity, all the fucked up stuff that we go through.
and um and you know i did that because i want to show i think it's important for people to see what that downward spiral looks like and how ugly it gets after service and you know the people that i bring on they they have all these different avenues of
you know what got them out of that you know whether that's entrepreneurship or or therapy or psychedelics or starting a non-profit find a new purpose all these different things and um and many of them have started different nonprofits but what i think is really unique about sharp is
you guys are for profit and i'll be honest when i first i was like yeah it's kind of like for profit but then thinking about it i'm like they don't have to worry about fundraising they don't have to worry about all that in so many non-profits especially in the military space start off with a great mission and a great mindset and then greed greed gets in the way and it goes away
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Chapter 2: How did Steve Bunting's military background shape his career?
No, I'm guilty as well. Right. I would like to say that the last time I tried was in probably 20, probably 2018. I tried and I finally did get a prescription, but they wanted to give you one shot every three weeks. And it was just going to be an endocrine system roller coaster that I wasn't willing to participate in. So they weren't willing to manage it.
They wouldn't give me a consultation to an endocrinologist, a specialist who could actually like build it out and knew what they were talking about. Unfortunately, it was like a nurse practitioner at the VA and I didn't want to risk it. Right. Trying to play that game, even if it meant that I didn't have to pay out of pocket. I was willing to work with a professional and pay out of pocket.
Man, man.
Well, let's move in. So what I'd like to do is I would like to do a life story on you, just like every other military guy that comes in here. I think that's the most important part.
I don't want to interrupt you before you sign. I got a couple gifts for you. Love gifts. So, yeah. First, I want to give you a gift here from my boy, Jake Cervantes, who got out. He's a MARSOC raider, and he started a watch company called Singin'. They call it the Raider Rolex, the beautiful piece. He's my element leader in Afghanistan, and he's actually local to this area.
I just met this guy. I literally just met this guy at the gun shop.
Salt of the earth. Such a good human being. The green bezel on there is only for soft operators. So you have to present certificates and things like that. So you can't just buy that.
Thank you. This is awesome.
Yes, it's sapphire crystal, all the good stuff, anti-magnetic. I mean, a quick research of singing instrumentals. He didn't pull any stops out on that thing. It's a really nice piece.
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Chapter 3: What challenges did Steve face growing up and how did they influence him?
Does a lot of work with the Recon Foundation and things like that. Look at that.
It's got your guys' sharp performance. Dude, thank you. Yes, sir. This is awesome, too. Yeah, man. Shit.
Yeah, sorry to interrupt you. I just didn't want to forget. Dude, thank you. Yes, sir. All right. You ready? I'm ready. Where'd you grow up? Yeah, so the beginning was a little bit shifty, right? And it's going to show you kind of a life of chaos from the beginning. But I was actually born in Oceanside, California, right? Born Oceanside, had a beautiful family, right?
Lots of loving grandparents and parents. My mom and dad, you know, loved me very much. But not long after I was born, probably around I was three years old, they separated, right? So they ended up separating. And my brother and I and my mom moved to Alabama, right? So my mom's dad had a prior marriage and she had a half sister and her sister was from Alabama.
So every summer she'd come out and visit. And I guess once my mom and my dad dissolved, she said, you know what? Maybe if I take the boys and we go to Alabama, it'll be an easier life, right? Maybe it'll be an easier way. She can kind of find her own new way. And she loaded me and my brother Mitch up. We got on a Greyhound bus with a bag of sour cream and onion chips.
And we rode across the United States. Holy shit. Yeah, to Birmingham, Alabama. You were younger.
say again older older sibling or my brother's younger than me yeah younger so you're the oldest yes yep so we uh moved to alabama and i got to grow up there kind of cut my teeth in the south and uh to be honest with you i'm very grateful for it all right i think i would have been better at surfing and skateboarding if i stayed in cali but i got to you know catch crawdaddies in the creek and go hunting and just do some of the good old southern stuff that i think is a little bit harder to come by an ocean side nice nice
How do you know that you came from a loving family if you were only three? Yeah. Well, you know, I was able to reconnect with them once I joined the military. And then little things like going to my grandparents' house for the first time and seeing my height still etched on the wall, right, of when I was there and visiting. Holy shit.
They still had my same original pictures of when I was a young boy on their mantle. Wow. Right. And just the amount of love I felt when I reconnected with this side of the family out in California. It was just like, it was undeniable. Plus there's pictures, there are pictures where I got to see, it's like everyone was happy. And, you know, it seemed like I was surrounded by love.
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Chapter 4: What challenges did Steve face during his transition from military to civilian life?
And I think because of that, it robbed me of the joy. It was just like, well, that's cool. It doesn't matter if I make it through this whole thing. So I'll celebrate later. I'll celebrate at the end. Jeez, man. Yeah.
so where do we go where do we go from here graduate brc you've already been to you're going to 18 delta you're reconnected with the other side of your family yeah you went on deployment yeah how was 18 how was 18 delta for you 18 delta is the real deal man it's the real deal yeah
I mean, for everything else that's physical, it's one thing. But the one thing I found one intimidating, impressed by the Army is there's a million people that want to be an 18 Delta in the Army. There's a small amount of Marines. There's a small amount of recon Marines. But they're like, hey, they had the 18 X-ray series going.
So they're pulling dudes off the streets and stuff to go through this process. And it's like they were cutting people left and right. Right. If you fail the test, it was like so sad back to the needs of the army. And it's just happening all around you where you're like, oh man, like this is the real deal. And it was, it was a real deal too. Cause you couldn't bull crap your way through it, man.
Like the standard was real. They make the best medics on the face of the earth. Right. Other, you know, other military.
Where all do 18 deltas go from school? From school? Yeah. What units do they go to?
Yeah, so they, all soft components, majorly. You know, Rangers still go to Ranger Bat.
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Chapter 5: How did Steve's experiences in combat shape his views on medicine?
SF guys, there are still SEALs going through our program, so they go back to the teams. SARCs could go anywhere between Recon Battalion, Force Recon, and MARSOC. And then they also have...
the special operations aviation guys there too oh no the 160s guys are going through there and then they'll squeak in some civil affairs people and things like that psyop people uh in there as well but that's it's majority all the soft components pretty badass man dude pretty badass yeah so you get done with that then you go on deployment Yeah, I actually did dive school after 18 Delta.
And you do dive school? Yeah, I went to Marine Combatant Dive down in Panama City and then followed up with dive med tech. So you go to DMMP, the dive med tech course. So you learn to do the recompression therapy and all that type of stuff.
So you completed pretty much everything by the time you went on your first deployment. Yep, for sure. What's it like checking into your team?
Yeah, it was one, I was like, I made it. So there I was a little bit happy about that. But then two, the Marine Corps has a magical way of just crushing you, right? Which I know it's probably very similar to on the teams too. It's like, you're a new guy and you ain't shit yet. Yep, and it was very much that too. Luckily for me, which I'm very grateful for, is I went to recon battalion first.
So we did have some guys going straight to MARSOC. You know, I had other guys that if you were a fleet returnee and you had a combat deployment or two under your belt, they'd send you straight to force recon. So luckily for me, I got paired up on a team that had junior guys in it. So I had, it wasn't just me, the new guy, but there was a lot of junior recon Marines as well.
So we're all cutting our teeth at the same rate. And same pace. But dude, I had a tremendous platoon sergeant. Was well-decorated, just war fighter. Took it seriously, really embodied what it was to be a reconnaissance Marine. And he did right by us. We trained our faces off, man.
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Chapter 6: What insights does Steve share about the culture in MARSOC compared to the CIA?
Nice. We trained. There was war on the white space. There was no vacation. You're not going home. If there's free time, you're going to go sleep on a bush and report on an empty field, send up comm shots, practice E&E plans, breakout drills. Like, yeah, he made men out of us. Badass, man. So what were you guys doing in Africa?
Yeah, so right now it was kind of, they had what was called the Maritime Raid Force. I'm still sure they had that. So it'd be three different ships.
It was like the Amphibious Ready Group, which was actually nostalgic because Jocko was talking about a lot of this on a few podcasts ago, but talking about just that life on the ship and essentially the ships just being marine carrying vessels, essentially. And we were doing a lot of that Somalian counter piracy stuff. Oh, okay. Yep. Oh, shit. Did you guys get any?
Yeah, so we didn't get to board any ships, but we did get to isolate one, right? We were right next to Indian waters. So instead of us doing BBSS, we actually called in the Indian Navy, and they lit that thing up. It was pretty crazy. Nice. They did it in a different manner than we would have. We would have taken people, and they didn't. They just doused it in fuel and lit it on fire.
That's awesome. Dude, it was crazy. Yeah. We had a... A colonel named Colonel Kaufman, who was in charge of the battalion for 1-1, badass dude, was a pilot in Iraq, got shot through and into his jaw and completed the mission like the dude was a legend. But he pulled us all out onto the deck of the ships and he gave us like a...
uh like a braveheart speech right he's like you are now in syncom this is the super bowl he's like and we're watching this this uh somali ship mothership and skiffs just burning in the background right as we're sitting there at attention and he's just giving this motivational like marine corps speech like only they can it was like yeah it's pretty cool that's awesome man yeah so you come home from that deployment and then what happens yeah so when i came back from that deployment it was uh it was marsoc time
So I came back, kind of cut my teeth there, got to do some, you know, FID work too. We didn't just stay on the ship there, but got to see a little bit of the world, which I was happy about, which was cool to me, you know, being a little trailer park kid from Alabama, going to Thailand and all this stuff. So you immediately redeploy with MARSOC? Yeah.
Well, I went there and I got assigned to a team at MARSOC. Okay. Yep. So I went up the hill on there, still on the same camp now in Camp Pendleton. And yep, went over there and I check into my first team there. So how was it checking into a MARSOC element from...
from reconnaissance.
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Chapter 7: What experiences led to Steve's realization about the impact of his past?
I found myself at the very edge of that. I was kind of watching that happen and, you know, just seeing it being facilitated around me. And, you know, for me as a Delta on their team, some of the other guys that were leaving the wire and doing more kinetic stuff, I had friends there. So they'd hit me up and they'd be like, hey, Slylock, will you go on QRF with us? So I'm like, yeah, okay. Yep.
So I caught myself kind of going on QRF a few times, trying to help them out, and things just kind of shifted there. Their partner nation force was getting chewed up, dude.
And I just kept finding myself, like, jumping on some of those ops and running out there and actually, you know, elbows deep in blood and just doing the medical stuff and being in that environment again that I wanted to be in so much, but it was just hitting different this time. What was different? It was just, I think it was, to be honest, I think it was just my body was just worn out, dude.
I think the nervous system was gone. You know, in the beginning you get that rush and it's like the adrenaline hits and all this stuff. And now even at that level, it's just the numbness was becoming greater than anything. where I catch myself doing situations that used to light me on fire and have me fired up, and I'm just like kind of numb to it. Did you realize that immediately?
I didn't, but it started to raise its head pretty quickly, right? What did you notice? Well, for me, it was the insomnia started happening really bad, where I couldn't sleep at all.
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Chapter 8: How did Steve's journey influence his decision to become a therapist?
Like I was struggling every single night to go to sleep.
and it was just uh against severe insomnia where i couldn't stop my mind from racing it's like no matter what i was doing i couldn't couldn't get any peace from that and um that's when i started kind of meditating at this point to try and figure out how to get to sleep but um it's worn pretty thin um at this point still on the bottle heavy yeah anything else no at this point i think um
I was having severe back pain and this stuff called Kratom. Have you heard of that? Yeah, that was kind of a hot thing back then. It was an uncontrolled substance and it was supposed to be good for pain. It was better than opioids. And I remember I started kind of dipping in on that Kratom stuff, started consuming that and yeah, it was not helping anything. It's actually making everything worse.
Well, kudos to you for being a medic that's not self-medicating from the supply. Maybe the first time I've ever seen that, to be honest with you.
It's very common, man. It's very common. It's hard not to when it's right there. Yeah, yeah. Between the tramadol and Nubane and all that, you know, we had a few people die along the way from that that were medics. So I knew better than to mess with that stuff. But the booze and the Kratom was something I was probably hitting pretty heavy back then.
Yeah.
Yeah. But there was this one situation that happened there that kind of turned me away from the whole process. At this time, they were starting to use drones to do reconnaissance on the camp right there where we were at. And they'd run drones over and find out where all the UTVs and stuff are parked. And then that night, they would either mortar or shoot rockets in.
So part of this, the static guys, part of their job was shooting the drones out of the sky. I was also a radio guy, a comm guy, because I'm a newer guy, right? So like, slide lock, you're on all the comm. I'm like, great, thanks. So I'm in charge of rolling all that stuff every other day. So as part of my routine, I would grab all the radios and I would go into the static side of the house.
They're always happier. They seem like they had a better life. The GRS guys were disgruntled, angry. I could barely have conversations with them. And those guys were always having a party. They had no shit. Yeah, I mean, there's some good dudes. They're not all bad, but, you know, it was a different energy.
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