Episodes

Antwon Murchison sits down with Dan Black to trace a path from a fractured childhood in Midway, North Carolina, through a Division I football career at Clemson, into a coaching and teaching career that alcoholism nearly destroyed. Antwon spent years hiding a fifth of vodka and a twelve-pack a day behind four different liquor stores, until a 2019 DWI arrest with his young children in the car forced a reckoning. The conversation traces the suicidal walk that followed the next morning, the letter his 96-year-old great-grandmother wrote him in rehab, and the long work of rebuilding a marriage after sobriety alone wasn't enough.

Nick Merritt sits down with Dan Black just 48 hours after Dan felt led to ask him, no prep, no back and forth, both of them going in cold. Nick is an Army officer and PSYOP detachment commander who was unfaithful to his first wife early in his military career, a betrayal that ended the marriage and sent him into years of self-hatred and blackout drinking alone at Fort Campbell. God had already forgiven him. His ex-wife had already forgiven him. It took a sermon years later to teach him the one person who hadn't forgiven him yet was himself.

Efren Garcia sits down with Dan Black to walk through 23-plus years of military service—Air National Guard, Army Cavalry Scout, Haiti earthquake response, deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan, and Morocco—and the parallel, decades-long battle with alcoholism that traces back to childhood chaos in Chicago and Albuquerque. The conversation is anchored by a harrowing rock-bottom: a suicide attempt that ended with an SRT team, a drone, and a hospital blood alcohol reading of 0.46. From there, it traces his full surrender, sobriety, baptism alongside his wife and both kids, and the founding of Battleground Peer Support, a nonprofit for veteran and first-responder mental health and suicide prevention.

Phil Bivins is a three-time United States Navy veteran whose service spanned Vietnam to Desert Storm, including duty aboard the USS Nimitz during the Iran Hostage Crisis. A registered nurse for 40 years, he found faith in 1978 through a chance conversation outside a Navy chapel and has spent the past 15 to 17 years growing in his walk with God at Grace Church, where he leads a men's small group today.

Jose Alvarez closed the garage door, started the car, and decided he was done. A few minutes later he heard a voice inside him say "It is done. It's done. Let it go." — and that was the night God got his attention for good. From Quito, Ecuador to Fort Bragg, from a broken first marriage to a prophetic dream that came true at a baptism years later, this is one of the most quietly remarkable transformation stories The Rugged Path has told.

Retired Green Beret weapons sergeant Justin Koch spent two decades compartmentalizing grief, loss, and spiritual emptiness behind SF selection, combat deployments, and a career he had quietly made an idol. This conversation covers a double life as a young Christian in Texas, Special Forces selection, a teammate killed in Afghanistan, the loss of a daughter, years of drinking alone to feel nothing, retirement identity collapse, and a surrender that finally stuck.

Hunter Gochenour is a 30-year-old Army veteran from Luray, Virginia who enlisted on an 18X-Ray special forces contract after leaving behind a drug-dealing life in Myrtle Beach. This conversation covers drug dealing at 18, four attempts to enlist, a bull riding injury, deployment to Poland with the 82nd Airborne, two broken relationships, a night with a gun in his hand, and the spiritual warfare that hit harder than anything the Army had thrown at him.

Army lieutenant colonel Chris Loschiavo spent 20 years in uniform, a loaded Glock in his hand one January night, and nearly two decades denying it ever happened — until God finally got his attention for good. Chris traces the long arc from suicidal isolation in Fayetteville to retirement, a barbecue food truck, and the first real peace he has known in 25 years.

Keith Golightly watched his father try to end his life on a Dallas highway overpass and spent years in JSOC before understanding that God had been present in both moments. Keith traces a path from a fractured Texas childhood through special operations deployments in Iraq, Syria, and Jordan, to pastoral ministry at Grace Church in Southern Pines, North Carolina.

Air Force veteran Will Johnson shares his journey from LA gang territory to finding Christ in Germany, surviving a miraculous suicide intervention, and discovering God's faithfulness through family reunification and ministry to 200+ students.

Master Sergeant Sean O'Dowd survived two anti-tank mines, six combat deployments, and years of spiritual warfare before surrendering to Christ. Sean shares his journey from the 82nd Airborne to JSOC, from survivor's guilt to saving faith, and from battling PTSD to baptism in Aberdeen Lake.

A Green Beret who survived war comes home to face a harder battle — becoming the father and man of faith he never had a model for. This conversation goes deep into what it costs to trade one kind of strength for another.