July 28, 2025
Service and Healing: One Dram at a Time with Army Combat Vet Corey Rzucidlo
Shoot me a message! We dive deep into the powerful mission of Last Dram Standing, a nonprofit using whiskey as a vehicle to build community and honor fallen service members. Corey shares his journey from combat veteran to nonprofit founder and how he's turning personal pain into purpose through meaningful connection. • Founded during COVID when Corey was seeking community after military service • Uses whiskey not as a means of consumption but as a catalyst for meaningful human connection • C...
We dive deep into the powerful mission of Last Dram Standing, a nonprofit using whiskey as a vehicle to build community and honor fallen service members. Corey shares his journey from combat veteran to nonprofit founder and how he's turning personal pain into purpose through meaningful connection.
• Founded during COVID when Corey was seeking community after military service
• Uses whiskey not as a means of consumption but as a catalyst for meaningful human connection
• Created to bridge the gap between veterans and civilians through shared experiences
• Honors fallen service members through special bottle releases with proceeds going to charities
• First bottle selected honored First Lieutenant Levi Barnard, killed by suicide bomber in Iraq
• Offers unique experiences like barrel selection trips to Kentucky distilleries
• Structured as nonprofit to clearly communicate their mission isn't about profit
• Breaking the group into chapters allows for more intimate, supportive connections
• Focuses on creating safe spaces for vulnerable conversations about mental health
• Encourages veterans to acknowledge struggles and seek help from community
If you're struggling or know someone who is, reach out. The fact that you're acknowledging it is the hardest step. From there, seek help, find your community, and discover your purpose. Follow Last Dram Standing on social media @TheLastDramStanding on all platforms.
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Episode Powered By Act Now Education
01:24 - Welcome to Morning Formation Podcast
03:53 - What is Last Dram Standing?
10:59 - Finding Community After Military Service
18:51 - Weathering Personal Storms
26:02 - Building Bridges Through Shared Experiences
36:07 - The Impact of Purpose and Community
49:23 - Today's Special Significance: Memorial Tribute
54:04 - Episode Closing
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Warriors fall in.
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It's time for formation.
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Welcome back to the Morning Formation podcast, folks, where we dive deep into the stories of survivability, resilience and real-world transformation.
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I'm your host, kp, and today we're uncorking a powerful conversation with a man whose nonprofit mission is raising awareness one dram at a time.
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Corey, from Last Dram Standing, joins us to talk about service, loss healing and how the single poor can serve a purpose far greater than itself.
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Corey, thank you for joining me on the Morning Formation today.
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Absolutely, man.
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It's a pleasure and it's been a long time since you and I got to connect and you know you're one of my favorite people.
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So this is I'm super excited to be here and super, super proud of everything you're creating and super happy to get into a little bit about what we're doing over here and and tell a little bit of our story.
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You know you've always been a very purposeful, uh, efficient and effective professional, and so I I've always highly respected you for that and, um, everything that you've done with this nonprofit so far, everything that I'm seeing, I am so impressed.
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Uh, even today, looking at your background and just your, your visuals, I can't tell you like how much I am like like kind of an envy.
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I'm like, wow, I want to be like that someday.
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I appreciate that.
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It's uh, I think we're.
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We're very similar in the fact that when we do something, we try to do it right.
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We have we do it with and intentionality, and I don't ever want to show up with less than my best.
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And you know, I have two daughters and I try to emulate that.
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I don't I don't think I can teach them through telling them what to do, but through my example.
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So it's the little things that you do.
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When you tell someone you're going to be there, you'd be there on time, you'd be there early.
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When you're, when you're working with someone, when you're working with someone, you show up with everything you've got and you do your best so that they want to come back and work with you again.
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It's the little things.
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I mess up and I slip up all the time and I don't get it right, but at least I try and that's something I you know every day.
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I just try to show up a little bit better than I did the day before.
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So that's all that is Right.
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You know, and I've often talked to veterans and just people that I know in general, who mess up and fail and they're embarrassed about it, and I always tell them hey, there's nothing to be embarrassed about as long as you walk away as a better man.
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And failing forward is a real thing and I can certainly relate to what you're saying.
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But let's get into the nonprofit.
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So those that may not know what a dram is, tell us what a dram is and what is the last dram standing and how did this entire mission come to life?
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Yeah, absolutely.
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So.
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It was somewhat organic, you know, a couple of years ago.
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First I'll start with what a dram is.
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A dram is just a pour, you know, a glass, right.
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And so in this modern day, when you're looking to name yourself other than you know your name, which is these Corys and my last name, no one can pronounce.
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So I wanted to come up with something.
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There's very limited options and as I was kind of scouring the Internet for what was available, you know the last man standing is a little bit tongue in cheek, but it's a little bit about just, you know, looking back at our history, the good parts of being man enough to face your fears and your failures, and you just do the hard thing first wake up in the morning to put your best foot forward.
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So there's a little bit of an homage to that.
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It's a comedy show with the guy from Home Improvement, which I watched as a kid quite religiously, but yeah, that's kind of where the name came from.
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I found something that kind of had a little bit of tongue in cheek but paid a little homage to what I was looking to do.
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But the actual nonprofit came from the fact that I was looking for a little bit of community.
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I found myself, you know, trying to engage with people, and as you get older that gets really, really tough, and I am an introvert at heart, so for me it's even more difficult, but I wanted to.
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You know, it was during the COVID times and I didn't feel like I was getting a sense of community.
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And, you know, the more I grow and get older, I find that that's really one of the keys to a healthy and happy life is community.
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So you build a really strong, hopeful community with your family and your close-knit friends, and then I think you should expand and challenge yourself a little bit to do things that are a little bit outside your comfort zone.
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So in an endeavor to do that, I found this whiskey club that had just started and it was started by a gentleman named Ethan Pope and he was like four or five people strong, and so, you know, I got a little uncomfortable and, you know, I joined the group and I ended up hosting one of the first events.
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It's a whiskey club where people from the northern Virginia area get together and, just, you know, hang out and share a pour, share some stories and use the dram not as consumption but as community.
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I don't look at the whiskey club as a club of consumption, but rather a club of community and bringing people together, and I think it's a really important distinction.
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I think whiskey serves just that single purpose to bring people together for camaraderie and to tell stories similar to what we used to do in the military.
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So it started there and then the group blew up.
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It was remarkable, you know, sometimes you just hit a chord and as the club blew up, you know, we started to say, okay, if we have this opportunity, maybe we should do a little bit more.
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And we started talking about it and ended up ultimately deciding that we wanted to use this group as an opportunity to give back and leave a legacy behind.
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And so that's what we did.
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We started the nonprofit with the Nova Whiskey Club and over time we expanded it nationally with a club called the Cask Collective, which is a single barrel organization where we go out and select single barrels and use the proceeds of that to give back to different charities.
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We've given back primarily to veteran charities, but we don't limit ourselves to veteran charities.
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We look for where we can have the greatest impact and support the community and beyond that we do something which I'm pretty proud of.
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I mean we can get into a little bit later, but every year we do a bottle that honors a fallen service member and, fortunate enough and unfortunate enough for me, I was able to honor, you know, my best friend in the military when we were in Iraq.
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He got hit by a suicide bomb, and so that first bottle that we ever selected was in honor of him, and we did it with one of our good friends, with Blue Bolt Spirits.
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It's an NDP, a non-distilling producer, and he's a Marine, a current Marine.
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He's doing fantastic stuff.
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And so we came together and went down to Mississippi and selected this amazing barrel and did it in honor of Levi Barnard First Lieutenant Levi Barnard, which was just a really, really amazing opportunity for me to show just a small part of his story to the world, and it kind of blew up from there, and then that's it.
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And so now we're just looking for ways to partner with different organizations in the community.
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We're going to do something at the Army-Navy game, hopefully next year with Travis Manion Foundation.
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So we're just looking at all kinds of opportunities to support, you know, not only the veteran community but any important charities.
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Yeah, I certainly feel like Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom is so far in a rearview mirror.
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A lot of people have kind of forgotten about it and it's pretty sad to say that.
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I remember a time where each and every day they would come out with a list of fallen soldiers that were dying in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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And you know, for combat veterans like us that sort of hits home because we were there at one point in time.
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Now, with the nonprofit, what position do you serve?
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So I'm actually the president and CEO of the nonprofit.
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So I stepped up.
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You know, just had some business background.
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I have an MBA.
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When I transitioned from civilian life to actually when I was in LA, I went and got my MBA.
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But so I decided, you know, we decided as a team that would be the best decision.
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So we have a board of committees.
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Ethan serves as the chief operating officer, he's the founder of the Nova Whiskey Club and then we co-founded the Cast Collective and we really look at it as a partnership.
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My title may be president, I don't view myself as that.
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I view myself as a partner and 100% will be forever with him and kind of accomplishing our mission.
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So, yeah, that's my first time ever being a president, probably the last, but it's been a fun little adventure.
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No, it's a great cause, for sure.
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Now, from my understanding, it sounds like this idea slowly came about and was executed slowly.
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Or was there a specific event that pushed you and your team to actually execute and create the last dram standing?
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Yeah, so it was a little bit of a challenge when we were looking at selecting our first single barrel.
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There's so many laws and regulations that surround operating in the in the spirits, you know community and and industry, and so while we were looking down that road, you know we, you know LLC and these different things and it felt a little odd.
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You know we were not in this for money Never were, never are going to be.
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This is not what our intention was and, like I said at the beginning, I want to do things purposefully and with intention and I wanted to be clear with the expectations for the group that this group is never going to be pushing alcohol and whiskey and other spirits for the sole purpose of making profit.
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So we thought the only way we could broadcast that in the clearest terms is to work on getting a nonprofit together, and so that's kind of what spurned the idea.
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We talked about it, we looked at the feasibility and there's precedent for doing this actually quite a bit of it and we found that that was going to be the best option for us.
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We're very happy we made that decision.
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Yeah, wow, what a journey.
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So, corey, tell me how.
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Tell me how has your own journey influenced the core message behind this organization?
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Yeah.
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So I mean, my journey is long and windy, like most people's.
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So I will say, starting kind of midway through my journey, exiting the military, I found that it was quite difficult to find where I fit in, and I went through a really, really rough time.
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Although I didn't know, it was a rough time during that time.
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I think that story is very familiar to a lot of veterans, where you think you're fine and then you look back 10 years later and you realize that the damage that you had done was directly related to some of the trauma that happened while you were either in combat or wherever.
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You know.
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These types of things can happen in any situation, combat or not.
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And so, as I looked back, I realized how much I could have used a real community, a group of people that were not there, to tell me you know everything's okay and you know, do whatever you want, and the world owes you this and the world owes you that I needed a stronger community of people that I could share my you know needs and my issues and my challenges with, and also celebrate some of the accomplishments and joys in my life.
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And so I found, through the busyness of my life I've always wanted to get back to helping other people find that important community, and that's really really what drove us to kind of expand this group.
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It's kind of where I found myself lacking in life at a young age, in the formative years.
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I wanted to provide that opportunity and, like I said, this is a very small niche type of opportunity, so this will only serve a small subset of a group of people that are really interested in bourbon and whiskey and coming together to and, like I said, our group is very much in person.
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We want to.
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We saw a gap in what people were doing with whiskey.
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They were collecting and waiting in lines and all those other types of things, and so I wanted to bring people together for what we thought was the best part of whiskey, and so that's kind of what drove us to that to serve a little bit of the community in a way, to bring people together and then hopefully other people are doing the same thing and finding ways to get veterans engaged and just not even just veterans, just everyone, to find a sense of community and purpose in life.
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Yeah, community is so important when it comes to being understood and mental health.
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So, you know, on this podcast, I just recently started switching my direction towards survivability, both physical and mental.
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My direction towards survivability, both physical and mental.
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So tell me, how does the Last Tram Standing support those silently battling mental health issues that you mentioned earlier?
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Yeah, absolutely so we.
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I think the greatest part about what we're doing is, like I said, we got really big really really quickly, and so we realized we weren't able to serve the community in the way that we wanted to.
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Ethan and I couldn't talk to thousands of people on a regular basis.
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It's just not possible.
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It's not possible to meet that many people in a short period of time, because we have other responsibilities, both work and family, which continue to be priorities for me.
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So we broke our group up into different chapters and we identified people that we thought were strong pillars in the community and strong leaders themselves and kind of embodied the things that we found to be important.
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And by doing that, or by kind of separating these groups into regions, we're able to have these really, really purposeful small shares on a regular basis where people can come together and share their challenges.
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Like you just talked about, We've had numerous issues where people came to us with specific challenges and we were able to get them the help that they need, and it's through conversation.
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I gave a speech the other day for Veterans Day and the conversation revolved around you know, when I sat down I said what one thing, Because people don't remember much of what you say.
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They really don't.
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They remember like two or three things that you say at most.
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If you say good things, they'll remember two or three things at most.
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And so I sat down I said, okay, I can talk about a lot of things, but what one thing do I want people to walk away from as I speak to these people and that one thing was me is that you need to ask for help, that there's people that are willing to help you, there's people that want to help you, and so that's kind of what I want this group to be.
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When someone feels like they're backed into a corner and they have no one to turn to, they don't have friends or family that's willing to listen to them, that they have this community that they can go to and share some of those challenges or issues or pain points.
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And if we help one person's life with this mission, then that makes me happy.
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And I feel like we've already done that and hopefully we continue to use this group to make people's lives a little bit better, to give them a safe space, to have those important conversations and just to have fun, just to share some whiskey and try new things.
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But yeah, that's really how, and to me personally, I make myself available to anyone.
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I tell my story.
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That's the most important thing I think I can do is tell my story, tell that I was broken, that I didn't know how to have all the answers and I still don't and I hope that that vulnerability allows other people to feel safe talking about the challenges, uh, in their life and that's that's.
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That's kind of what we do.
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Yeah, I can tell you that when I got out of the military I was the same boat as you with that.
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I got divorced.
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I remember my ex-wife.
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She said she said I'll never get involved with another military person ever again and I was like at first I was like screw you.
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And then I was like that still to this day has stuck with me and that was my calling to take some accountability.
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And, um you that that was tough because I actually threw away, like all my deserts, my dress blues, cause I just wanted to shed the skin and I had to kind of come full circle again and realize that this is who I am and this is what I've done.
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So, um, yeah, I can totally relate with with what you're saying and you know, suicide, suicide prevention, has been a really big thing, especially in the military community and for the first responders I know here LA County sheriffs I just saw an article today where they had like 13 sheriff's deputies kill themselves and the veteran community has been deeply involved in that as well.
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How do you personally stay strong while carrying such a heavy message through the non-profit?
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yeah.
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So staying strong is, is, is, is tough.
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I think, um, I'll tell you, I think perspective is is really important.
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I don't think that anything I do will ever uh diminish a little bit of of of what I'm dealing with, but I find that it gives me an outlet to funnel some of that pain, um, and mental, mental health, uh, challenges that I have Right.
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So so I think that that's kind of really the key.
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It's not that I'm strong, it's it's that I find productive outlets to to kind of leverage, uh, leverage or you know there's probably a better word but you know, expel some of that pent up pain.
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Because that's what happened for those 10 years is I didn't acknowledge it.
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Like you, I didn't watch a military movie.
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I got rid of every single thing.
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People didn't know I was in the military.
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I was ashamed of that time.
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I had survivor's guilt, which I didn't know was a thing until now, or until a few years ago, that I was carrying survivor's guilt with me.
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Everything I did, I was an imposter.
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I shouldn't have been here.
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The self-talk was awful.
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We kind of walk through this life and people you're doing everything great, you're a go-getter, you're an, a personality, you, you know you work hard, um and, but inside you're you're telling yourself you suck, and that's that's kind of really the.
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The painful thing that I don't think people see is is is everyone has their own you know burden that they're carrying and and and.
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So I've done a lot of work on self-talk and accepting that I'm not perfect and accepting when I fail and say, okay, I failed, acknowledge it, have accountability, fix it, it's okay, right, no one's perfect.
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No one is perfect, not even close to it, and so that's really important, like I started talking about is perspective and outlet.
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So I try to maintain perspective that there is no perfect path, but as long as you can try to do your best and go to bed at night thinking that you did your best and when you didn't talk to yourself about it, quickly Acknowledge it, make the correction and move on.
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Do not sit and let it eat at you.
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And if you did damage, that's the other thing.
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If you did damage to someone or a relationship, you know, fix it, talk about it, have a conversation.
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You know clarity is kindness.
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You know don't leave words unsaid.
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Talk to that person and acknowledge your part in it.
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And if they're wrong, if they did something to you.
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Okay, you know, grant them grace, because it's not a competition.
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So some of those are like life skills that I've learned over time and I am far from perfect.
00:18:57.481 --> 00:19:03.151
If my wife listens to this she'll probably laugh, because I'm still making the same mistakes I made before.
00:19:03.151 --> 00:19:12.363
But I think, more than ever, I think I have a little bit more internal dialogue and try to wake up a little bit better and learn from my mistakes, where in the past I would bury them and move on.
00:19:12.363 --> 00:19:15.483
So that's a little bit better and learn from my mistakes where in the past I would bury them and move on.
00:19:15.505 --> 00:19:16.704
So that's a little bit about how I handle it.
00:19:16.704 --> 00:19:24.317
Accountability is absolutely huge and I always tell veterans you know, a lot of times veterans are like, well, civilians just don't get it, they don't get it, they don't get it.
00:19:24.317 --> 00:19:26.790
Well, I mean, how about you meet them in the middle?
00:19:26.790 --> 00:19:34.290
Understand that, like most people didn't have to worry about rockets and mortars and IEDs when you were 24 years old.
00:19:34.290 --> 00:19:36.996
Not everyone has that experience.
00:19:36.996 --> 00:19:47.957
So let's meet them in the middle of the pasture and try to understand that their perspectives are not the same as ours and I think that will help you digest and help your mental health a lot more.
00:19:47.957 --> 00:19:49.221
A lot of times.
00:19:49.221 --> 00:19:51.165
And you mentioned positive outlet.
00:19:51.165 --> 00:20:02.939
I mean, for me it was Brazilian jujitsu back in Chicago, Like I, literally anytime I had a rough patch in my life, I would just submerge myself in that and just go to the gym almost every single day.
00:20:02.939 --> 00:20:10.498
Um, what were some of the positive things that that you that helped you through and, uh, get through those tough times?
00:20:11.358 --> 00:20:11.679
Yeah.
00:20:11.679 --> 00:20:18.256
So when I was not acknowledging them, probably not good things, right.
00:20:18.256 --> 00:20:23.579
So I probably did things that you know helped me mask the pain a little bit.
00:20:23.579 --> 00:20:26.150
But you know, I look back and I say that's what I needed.
00:20:26.150 --> 00:20:33.443
I don't think I was old enough Old enough meaning not age but I wasn't mature enough to to deal with it Right.
00:20:33.443 --> 00:20:37.298
So my body, my brain, uh, found its own coping mechanisms.
00:20:37.298 --> 00:20:44.623
But once I acknowledged that I was in pain, um, I found hobbies and found family and found different things that brought me joy.
00:20:44.623 --> 00:20:50.330
I try to look at things, uh, that that brought me joy in life and and and pursue them with a passion.
00:20:50.371 --> 00:20:58.996
You know, I got into woodworking and started building furniture around my house, which gave me a sense of satisfaction to learn and grow in a specific skill set.
00:20:58.996 --> 00:21:02.182
You know, stuff like that craftsmanship always scared me.
00:21:02.182 --> 00:21:04.920
I'm not good enough to, I'm not creative, I can't figure this out.
00:21:04.920 --> 00:21:11.303
So one day I said, screw it, I'm going to go build a workbench with just the tools that I have, and it sucked.
00:21:11.303 --> 00:21:16.979
But I spent months building it and, you know, learn, but along that process through failure.
00:21:16.979 --> 00:21:18.611
This is the perfect example of failures.
00:21:18.611 --> 00:21:20.496
Woodworking is nothing but failure.
00:21:20.496 --> 00:21:25.742
I mean, you literally fail every step of the way, and you figure out how to fix it and cover it up, but it's never a perfect fix.
00:21:25.742 --> 00:21:47.682
That's okay, though, because an end product when you, when you, when you learn and grow from these challenges actually looks fantastic, and no one is the wiser when they look at these woodworking projects that there's mistakes riddled throughout, because you've kind of done your job, you've grown and you've figured out how to kind of repair that to the extent that you can.
00:21:47.682 --> 00:21:54.364
Like I said, there's still imperfections, but you're not broken in any real way because you've grown from it.
00:21:54.364 --> 00:22:09.363
So that's one of the things I did, and then I just really dove into my family and enjoying my time with my daughters and my wife, and you know, me and my wife at one point, we've never done this before to the extent that we did.
00:22:09.450 --> 00:22:09.570
So.
00:22:09.570 --> 00:22:11.155
You know we needed time for ourselves.
00:22:11.155 --> 00:22:17.434
Our kids are getting a little older, we can leave them with the grandparents, and so we took what money we had, and you know.
00:22:17.434 --> 00:22:26.531
So, instead of buying things this year, let's go on a really remarkable trip, and we went for 10, I think it was almost 12 days to Thailand and a little self-care, you know, take care of yourself.
00:22:26.531 --> 00:22:29.698
There's a lot of guilt with parents about doing things like that, and I understand it.
00:22:29.698 --> 00:22:30.259
You know every.
00:22:30.259 --> 00:22:36.150
You know time and and money are really important, um, and you want to make sure that you're doing right by your kids.
00:22:36.230 --> 00:22:40.171
But for us, we thought we'd show up as better parents if we finally took a time out for ourselves.
00:22:40.171 --> 00:22:41.575
Um, so that was another way.
00:22:41.575 --> 00:22:52.921
You know, me and my wife found a way to connect and and had some really really powerful conversations about who we are and what we want out of this life and acknowledge some of our you know our challenges.
00:22:52.921 --> 00:22:59.074
This wasn't any type of like marriage trouble thing, but I think you know I've been married, I've been my wife 20 years.
00:22:59.074 --> 00:23:04.692
It's time to you know, go go, go re, get to know each other a little bit after having you know kids for 10 years.
00:23:04.692 --> 00:23:07.236
So, yeah, that's, that's a little bit what I do.
00:23:07.615 --> 00:23:16.830
I love, I love how you weathered that storm, because I feel like a lot of especially combat veterans go through that with their marriage A lot of times.
00:23:16.830 --> 00:23:22.163
It's weathering that storm, getting through it and then the veteran eventually taking some accountability, ideally.
00:23:22.163 --> 00:23:30.196
And I remember when you were doing the woodworking thing, you did a couple of pieces on Instagram with that and then I didn't see anything else after that.
00:23:30.196 --> 00:23:39.596
Next thing, I know you're popping up on Instagram like doing all these videos for the last dram standing and I gotta say, man, you, you're very polished.
00:23:39.596 --> 00:23:49.403
I don't know if you've been, uh, in the background doing like Instagram video training or what, but your videos are really nice, man, I, I, I'm really proud of you for that.
00:23:54.269 --> 00:23:55.854
Um, you know each and every combo I, combo I the conversation that I have.
00:23:55.854 --> 00:23:59.241
I feel like I learned so much about myself and other people.
00:23:59.241 --> 00:24:13.459
Um, how do you think this journey with the last tram standing has challenged you to better understand other people and to and and what stories have you heard about?
00:24:13.459 --> 00:24:17.480
You know, adapting and overcoming in in some of the most unexpected ways?
00:24:18.430 --> 00:24:21.194
Yeah, that's actually a really fantastic question, right.
00:24:21.194 --> 00:24:26.713
So, um, I, I can say for certain that it was.
00:24:26.713 --> 00:24:32.153
Remarkably, I'm an introvert, like I said, and I don't like, uh, you know, new situations.
00:24:32.153 --> 00:24:33.457
I don't like the awkward.
00:24:33.457 --> 00:24:37.672
First meets Uh, and this group is nothing but awkward first meets, right.
00:24:37.672 --> 00:24:48.083
So, uh, now that we're a little bit uh farther into developing this community, it's a little less so for me, but, um, so so for me, first it was a challenge, right.
00:24:48.083 --> 00:25:00.200
So I got to, I got to learn how to embrace that awkward tension at these kind of early engagements and realize that there's a reason I'm doing this, right.
00:25:00.200 --> 00:25:08.923
So, once you get past that awkward tension, you get to meet some remarkable people, and that was something I never like.
00:25:08.923 --> 00:25:10.613
I was like I don't want to do that because it, because it's awkward.
00:25:10.613 --> 00:25:12.856
Well, I had to like talk to myself again.
00:25:12.856 --> 00:25:18.976
Well, what happens if I can just embrace the suck and and and face that that kind of fear of mine?
00:25:18.976 --> 00:25:32.579
And I've met some amazing people, people I would never would have met in my entire life that tell me, uh, stories that I would never have had the opportunity to, to hear about and to learn about their challenges.
00:25:32.579 --> 00:25:35.305
It's really interesting.
00:25:36.211 --> 00:25:36.974
It's not a veteran group.
00:25:36.974 --> 00:25:39.838
There are so many veterans, so many veterans.
00:25:39.838 --> 00:25:52.699
And I went to a veteran dinner the other day for you know, working on some charitable opportunities, and we sat around the room and every one of us brought a skill set to that table that no one else had.
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