This was a tough year.  January started with a drone crash in Hawaii.  It was the best drone I’ve build ever.  We used it to film part of a Mercedes commercial for the Super Bowl just a few months prior.

Winter months are slower for client work so we went to Kauai to build our stock portfolio.  We thought we’d go big and fly the RED Dragon on our best drone.  After the rebuild from transporting it there I dropped the transmitter.  We did a quick re-bind and neglected to check the programming.  That was my foolish mistake that cost me dearly.

I pulled the drone into a 250 foot stable hover and filmed the sunrise on the way up.  Jonny commented how he’s never seen such stable footage from a RED before.  The drone and gimbal were both perfectly tuned.  Then it happened….  All eight motors cut out completely.  The drone, gimbal, and camera went into a free fall.  Upon impact the lithium batteries ignited.  There was part of my heart and soul burning in a field on our first beautiful morning on Kauai.

Three months later I found myself in the Oshawa Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit for nearly a week.  After taking sleeping pills prescribed by my doctor, and staying wide awake pacing back and forth for four nights while increasing the dosage (by docs orders) and finally adding marijuana usage (not by docs orders), my mind slipped into psychosis.  I had two traumatic, reacquiring, and dominant hallucinations: death and loosing my family.  I also had many other hallucinations and deep insights.

Following that even I restructured my life and the two businesses I was running.  Both businesses were very successful and influential so restructuring was very difficult.  Both businesses became such a big part of my identity the act of restructuring them was a huge loss.

After being released from the PICU the psychiatrist put me on three medications.  The anti-depressant made me very suicidal and it was known to be highly addictive so I weaned myself off it after a couple weeks without his permission.  I eventually stopped using any of the prescriptions and completely eliminated marijuana, alcohol, and caffeine from my life.  Psychosis is an experience I never want to experience again.  It was the most challenging experience of my life.