How We Got Here

As the Founder of 91WhiskeyRx, my career has always been about helping others. That mission started when I enlisted in the military after graduating from college, followed by a career in consulting, and ultimately, a deep-seated drive to serve people as a physician.

During COVID, as a frontline Emergency Medicine physician, I witnessed firsthand how poor health, age, and comorbid conditions significantly increased the risk of severe illness. But beyond the physical toll of the virus, I saw the devastating effects of isolation on children – my children—masks, a lack of engagement with friends, and undeniable learning loss. No matter what data I provided to schools as a physician, it all fell on deaf ears. Worse still, the policies we as doctors were coerced to follow—preventing families from visiting their dying loved ones—were soul-crushing. On multiple occasions, I was reprimanded for breaking “Hospital Law” by allowing family members to say goodbye in the Emergency Department, as their loved one was dying with Covid.

The weight of this system wasn’t just limited to patient care. When vaccine mandates rolled out, I wrote exemption letters for colleagues who sought an alternative—but I couldn’t save myself. While I managed to fly under the radar for a while, I was repeatedly threatened with termination. It got to the point where my wife and I were preparing for what life would look like without my income.

Enough was enough. I left for another hospital, this time a Level I trauma center in the inner city. But COVID, coupled with administrative failures at both the hospital and federal levels, had done its job well. Medicine, especially Emergency Medicine has always lived by the mantra of “doing more with less” but this was beyond the pale of what anyone had anticipated. So many had left the field, and those remaining had little to no support. The system was—and still is—broken.

Hospital beds weren’t full because of overwhelming patient volume or severity of illness—they were full because we didn’t have enough nurses to staff the floors. This led to a bottleneck, where the bulk of emergency care was maintained in waiting rooms. I’ve been called out to the waiting room on more than one occasion on early morning shifts—only to pronounce a patient dead who had been waiting all night. We continue to delay care, we store the elderly in back hallways, and we force deeply personal conversations—STD treatments, HIV diagnoses, and even cancer discussions—to take place in crowded waiting rooms where anyone can listen.

I knew I had reached my limit when I found myself ordering EKGs on myself during shifts, trying to determine if the relentless chest pain I was experiencing was from stress or something worse. That was the moment I knew it was time to walk away.

And that’s where the evolution of 91WhiskeyRx truly begins.

Even after everything I’ve experienced, I still want to help people—but I want to do it on my terms. I refuse to check boxes created by bureaucrats and administrators who have never held the hand of a dying patient. Instead, I want to provide care that is truly for the betterment of the people I serve, not for the preservation of a broken system.

91WhiskeyRx is my answer to a failed healthcare model—a mission to take control back and give veterans, first responders, and everyday people the tools to optimize their health. This is only the beginning.