Your Own Weapons. An Invisible Injury. | Blast Overpressure with Tim Grossman

You trained to survive enemy fire. Who prepared you for the questions about your own?

Thousands of mortar rounds. Repeated breaching charges. Years around heavy weapons. For the warfighters behind those systems, the conversation about blast exposure doesn’t end when the firing stops.

U.S. Army combat veteran Timothy “Tim” Grossman joins Rich LaMonica and Jake Holland on The MisFitNation for a raw conversation about blast overpressure, traumatic brain injury (TBI), and the invisible burdens veterans can carry into civilian life.

A former mortarman with the 101st Airborne Division’s Rakkasans and the 1st Infantry Division, Tim knows the gun line firsthand. After nearly two decades in veterans advocacy, including work with Disabled American Veterans and Wounded Warrior Project, he now leads the Cohort of Overpressured Warfighters Action Council (COWAC).

His message: veterans need information they can use while the larger fight for recognition continues.

This episode explores military occupational blast exposure through research, advocacy, and personal experience. Tim explains why repetitive low-level blast exposure during military training deserves attention, how he approaches the gaps in the science, and why an individual veteran’s exposure history matters.

Jake brings his own EOD experience into a candid discussion of memory difficulties, emotional changes, and the struggle to explain what life feels like after service.

Together, we examine:

• Blast overpressure exposure among mortarmen, artillery crews, breachers, EOD technicians, and special operations personnel.

• Brain fog, headaches, tinnitus, sleep difficulties, and other concerns raised in the conversation.

• Overlapping PTSD and TBI symptoms—and the importance of looking deeper.

• The distance between military brain-health research and VA disability recognition.

• Documenting military exposure and discussing it with a medical provider.

• The role of medical evidence, clinician opinions, and veterans service officers in service-connection claims.

• Why Tim created a reference to help clinicians and advocates understand blast exposure.

At the heart of this conversation is a question every American should hear: What responsibility do we carry when the weapons we ask service members to fire may leave injuries we cannot see?

If you served around heavy weapons, love someone who did, or work in veteran healthcare or disability advocacy, make time for this episode.

Listen. Follow The MisFitNation. Send this conversation to the battle buddy who keeps saying, “I haven’t felt like myself since I got home.”

Explore Tim’s educational resources and advocacy:

https://cowac.org/

More from The MisFitNation:

https://www.themisfitnation.com/

Be Humble. Stay Hungry. Keep Hustling.

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