From Marine to Army SMU Operator | Varpas De Sa Pereira | Ep. 382

The Team House

dee takos

History, Government, Society & Culture, Documentary

4.7 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 26 November 2025

⏱️ 118 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This interview features Varpas, a decorated, retired Marine Corps officer and Tier 1 Special Operations operator, detailing his intense career and the harsh realities of transitioning out of elite service. He discusses his unique psychological model, Warrior Withdrawal, which maps the emotional and identity struggles of leaving the hyper-focused warrior life onto the 11 symptoms of Substance Abuse Disorder. The discussion centers on the dramatic loss of purpose and community, and his advocacy for solutions while serving as a psychologist helping veterans navigate these exact challenges.
Grab Varpas' book "Warrior Withdrawal: When BAMF No Longer Means Bad*$$ M^ther#u@!er" here: https://a.co/d/j8NT8Fv
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Transcript

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0:00.0	The Team House with your host, Jack Murphy and David Park.
0:11.8	Welcome to episode 382 of the Team House. I'm Jack Murphy, here with tonight's guest on the show,
0:18.3	Varpis Dessa Pereira. He served as a Marine Corps infantry officer and then jumped over to the Army and served in a Yusasaki unit,
0:28.3	multiple deployments to Iraq, Middle East, Africa, and ended up getting out of the Marine Corps
0:35.9	and is now a clinical psychologist working at Veterans Affairs,
0:40.0	obviously working with veterans and veterans issues.
0:43.4	So we're going to talk about the whole spectrum of all of that in the interview.
0:47.5	Varpus, thanks for joining us.
0:49.7	Thank you for having me.
0:52.0	I should also mention up front, too.
0:53.9	He is also the author of the book, Warrior Withdrawal.
0:57.7	It's a, well, you tell the audience, VARPIS.
1:00.0	What's your book about?
1:02.5	So the book is about this cluster of symptoms that I found that sort of is in between this
1:08.7	idea of adjustment disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.
1:12.4	I have it gone through school and looking at the diagnostics and statistics manual,
1:16.5	kind of what happened to me as like patient zero of getting out of the military,
1:21.0	didn't really fit in either of those diagnoses.
1:24.1	The cluster of symptoms for PTSD, one of them is avoidance. I didn't have avoidance of combat. I sought
1:30.6	out combat. I had an affinity for being with veterans and being in the military. So that would be a
1:37.5	disqualifier for PTSD. And then the other thing that could be described, explain the symptoms would be
1:42.8	adjustment disorder.
	...

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