Jail, Navy SEALs, Fentanyl & the French Foreign Legion | Taylor Cavanaugh
About this episode
Taylor Cavanaugh shares his journey from Navy SEAL to battling addiction and finding redemption in the French Foreign Legion.
Taylor Cavanaugh’s life has been a cycle of achievement, self-destruction, and rebuilding. Before becoming a Navy SEAL, Taylor had already been expelled from school, arrested repeatedly, survived a violent car crash, and served time in county jail. After multiple branches of the military turned him away, the Navy finally gave him a shot. Taylor made it through BUD/S and Hell Week and eventually served with SEAL Team 7 as a communications specialist, JTAC, and sniper. His deployments took him to Yemen and Iraq, where he called airstrikes, worked alongside local forces, and operated under rocket and mortar fire. But outside the teams, the same patterns that had followed him since his teenage years never fully disappeared. An aggravated assault case nearly sent him to prison. Another alcohol-fueled incident and a positive steroid test eventually ended his SEAL career. Civilian success followed, but so did Adderall, Xanax, opiates, and eventually fentanyl. Taylor went from working in real estate development and venture capital to withdrawing alone in Hawaii, living out of his truck, nearly broke and contemplating suicide. Instead of ending his life, he bought a one-way ticket to…
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