Jonathan Arvay came home from two tours in Iraq and was handed the same thing most men are handed: a room, a clipboard, and instructions to talk about it. For some veterans that works. For him it did not, and he spent a long time assuming that was a failure of his own.
It was not. What he carried did not live in language. It lived in his body — in a heart rate, a startle, a night that would not end. Talking about it in a quiet office asked the wrong part of him to do the work.
Last Man Up is the program he went looking for and could not find. It is a 90-day non-combat tour: training in genuinely hard conditions that engage the same stress responses combat did — this time on purpose, under licensed clinical supervision, with someone whose only job is helping a man carry it back into an ordinary life.
It is being built now. The first cohort departs in September 2027.
Why the body, and not just the conversation
The program is being developed from the framework in Bessel van der Kolk's The Body Keeps the Score — the understanding that traumatic stress is stored physically, and that recovery often has to be approached through the body rather than through talk alone.
That is not an argument for skipping clinicians. It is the argument for bringing them into the field. Every element is designed to run under licensed clinical supervision, with a dedicated integration director and a stress management counselor attached to the cohort.
How the 90 days are structured →
Where this stands today
Arvay would rather this page be early and honest than polished and vague.
- The program
- In development. No cohort has run. The pilot departs September 2027.
- Clinical staff
- Being selected now. Every clinician will be named here, with credentials, before the first cohort departs.
- The organization
- Last Man Up Inc, an Indiana nonprofit corporation founded in 2025. Its application for federal tax-exempt status under section 501(c)(19) is pending.
- Funding
- Last Man Up Inc owns the technology companies intended to fund this work, so the mission does not live or die on the next grant cycle.
Who this is for
Veterans living with post-traumatic stress who have tried the standard route and did not find what they needed in it — and who are willing to do something hard on purpose, alongside people who have been where they have been.
Not everyone should do this. This program is not appropriate for every person or every stage of recovery, and screening will be handled by clinicians rather than by veterans deciding who seems tough enough. Turning someone away is better than harming them.
Get involved
Last Man Up is looking for licensed clinicians, veterans who want a place in the first cohort, and people willing to back the work before it is proven.