Former SEAL Team 6 operator Eddie Penney says repeated close-quarters combat changed the way he thought about violence so deeply that taking enemy lives eventually felt less like a mission and more like an addiction, one that followed him home and steadily damaged his marriage and family life.
Speaking with former Navy SEAL and podcast host Shawn Ryan on the Shawn Ryan Show, Penney described how the adrenaline of combat grew stronger with each deployment, particularly after he lost friends and saw evidence of atrocities committed by enemy fighters.
What began as eagerness to prove himself, he said, eventually hardened into something far more consuming.
“I loved it,” Penney told Ryan. “It was my oxygen.”
His First Killing Changed Something Immediately
Ryan asked Penney if he remembered his first enemy engagement, and while Penney said he could not clearly recall his first mission, he remembered the first person he killed.
Penney said he was still relatively early in his operational experience and had already watched teammates engage enemy sentries during previous missions, leaving him eager for the moment when he would finally be tested himself.
During a nighttime raid, he said, he saw a man reach toward a weapon and fired.
What stayed with him afterward was not only the shooting but the reaction of the man’s wife, who was lying nearby and, according to Penney, showed almost no visible emotion.
He told Ryan that the scene felt strange and difficult to understand, although he acknowledged there was no way to know exactly what she was thinking or what circumstances had led her there.
The experience nonetheless became a turning point.
Penney said the physical and emotional rush that followed was unlike anything he had previously felt, and he compared its pull to stories he had heard about powerful drug addiction.
“I want my life to be this feeling,” he remembered thinking.
Penney Says the Desire Only Grew
Ryan asked whether that feeling faded as the missions accumulated.
Penney said the opposite happened.
“I wanted it more,” he said.
He estimated that there were dozens of occasions when he personally engaged enemy fighters and said he never kept an exact count, although he believed the number of solo engagements may have been around 50.
Penney said the desire intensified further as later deployments became more personal and friends began dying.
He described a mindset in which every loss reinforced his determination to return overseas and keep fighting, especially after seeing what enemy forces were capable of doing to civilians, contractors and military personnel.
That gradual escalation is one of the most revealing parts of Penney’s account because he does not describe himself as becoming numb overnight. Instead, he portrays the change as something that developed incrementally until aggression and combat began to occupy nearly every part of his identity.
One Discovery Erased Much of His Remorse
Penney told Ryan about one mission in which he shot an armed man but felt unusual remorse afterward, even though he believed the shooting itself had been justified.
The feeling bothered him enough that he later asked intelligence personnel to tell him what they found about the man.
A few hours later, Penney said, someone showed him captured material allegedly depicting that fighter participating in the torture of kidnapped contractors.
Penney described the footage as deeply disturbing and said the realization changed him.
After seeing it, he said, much of the remorse disappeared.
“You get no more remorse from me,” Penney recalled thinking afterward.
Rather than calming him, the episode further hardened his outlook because it confirmed, in his mind, that the people he was fighting represented a form of evil that did not deserve sympathy.
That conclusion became dangerous in another way, because Penney said it helped him justify an increasingly aggressive internal posture where compassion felt like a liability rather than a safeguard.
Combat Became the Priority Over Everything at Home
Ryan later asked how Penney felt after returning from some of his deployments with Gold Squadron.
Penney said he became numb and increasingly convinced that the mission mattered more than almost anything else in his life.
“The country is priority. Shooting bad guys is priority,” he said, describing the mindset he carried home.
His wife and children were still physically part of his life, but emotionally, Penney said, he was pushing them farther behind the demands of the job.
Problems that initially seemed manageable began widening into what he described as fractures, then cracks, and eventually “gaping holes.”
His wife suggested counseling, but Penney refused.
Instead, he volunteered for trips whenever possible because deployment felt easier than dealing with ordinary family life.
He told Ryan that he did not want to deal with school issues involving his children, home repairs, or conversations about his marriage.
“I want to play with my gear and I want to go overseas,” Penney remembered thinking.
That is perhaps where his use of the word “addiction” becomes clearest, because the combat did not simply give him excitement. It also became the place he fled to whenever life at home required emotional work he no longer wanted to face.
The Marriage Began to Break Down
Penney said his anger worsened over time, while his relationship with his wife became increasingly hostile.
He acknowledged that he began looking at her with resentment and disgust, even though he now believes much of the damage was being driven by his own behavior and emotional withdrawal.
He also described alcohol use and escalating conflict within the marriage.
According to Penney, the situation eventually deteriorated to the point that his wife attempted suicide during one period of his training.
That detail makes clear that the consequences of Penney’s wartime mindset were not confined to the battlefield.
The aggression and emotional detachment that may have helped him function during missions became destructive once brought back into a family environment, where patience, communication and vulnerability were required instead.
Ryan Lets Penney Describe the Cost in His Own Terms
Throughout the conversation, Shawn Ryan largely allowed Penney to explain the transformation in his own words, occasionally asking whether the feeling changed over time or whether he had access to intelligence about the people his unit targeted.
Penney’s answers consistently returned to the same theme: repeated exposure to violence made him more comfortable with it, while evidence of enemy brutality gave him additional moral justification to suppress whatever hesitation remained.
He even used the word “calloused” to describe what happened to him.
Penney said he began looking at humanity differently after enough time in combat, and that emotional hardening protected him in one environment while damaging him in another.
There is an uncomfortable honesty in that admission.
Military training can prepare someone to function under extreme conditions, but Penney’s account shows how difficult it can be to turn those adaptations off once the person returns home.
‘It Became My Oxygen’
Penney’s most memorable phrase was also the simplest description of how far the transformation had gone.
Combat had become his oxygen.
It was the thing he wanted most, the thing that gave him clarity, and eventually the thing he preferred over dealing with the ordinary complications of marriage and fatherhood.
His story is not presented as a celebration of violence, even though he openly admits that there was a period when he loved it.
Instead, the interview shows how repeated exposure to combat can reshape motivation, identity and emotional responses until the same mindset that once helped someone survive begins creating problems everywhere else.
By Penney’s own account, he did not recognize that process early enough, and by the time he understood how deeply the addiction had taken hold, the damage at home was already significant.
The result is a portrait of someone who became exceptionally effective in war while gradually losing the ability to live peacefully outside it.
Gary’s love for adventure and preparedness stems from his background as a former Army medic. Having served in remote locations around the world, he knows the importance of being ready for any situation, whether in the wilderness or urban environments. Gary’s practical medical expertise blends with his passion for outdoor survival, making him an expert in both emergency medical care and rugged, off-the-grid living. He writes to equip readers with the skills needed to stay safe and resilient in any scenario.
